And slowly, her breathing and her heart hushed. Her chest and muscles calmed. Her tears dried. And then she felt Asher’s little hand on her back too. And just as it was about to get quiet, Asher’s voice was in the air.
“Can we live hewe now?” he said through that enduring gap in his front teeth.
Willow peeled her chest off her father’s shoulder and looked straight into his eyes. His big, brown, serious eyes. And then her father laughed. With full belly and full smile. And it made Willow laugh too. With full body and full heart.
“I think that sounds like a great idea, Ash,” Rex said as he rubbed Asher’s straight blond hair back and forth.
“I brought your stuff. It’s in the other room.”
And then Willow sank right back into her father’s shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled them in so tightly. So, so tightly. And her father’s arms pulled her in so tightly back. So, so tightly. Willow let herself sink even more deeply into her father’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She did it with all the love—past, present and future—on her mind.
56
When Rex opened the door and watched his daughter fall to the ground in sadness, his heart broke. It broke so much it hurt. He scooped his daughter into his arms and let her cry on top of him. And into him. And he rubbed her back and cried too. For Willow. For Rosie. And for Asher.
And for himself. And for everyone in the whole world that has ever loved or lost.
And when his daughter’s breathing and tears finally slowed, he felt the warm tingle of fatherhood. He felt the pride of consoling his daughter. The power of love flowing so truly, so wholly, from him into her, and from her into him.
He could not help but laugh at Asher when he excitedly yelled, “Can we live hewe now?”
And he could not help but agree to the idea when he looked into his daughter’s longing eyes.
Rex and Willow rocked back and forth there on the floor for maybe minutes or maybe a lifetime until Willow sat up again. And without saying a word, he carried Willow over to the cabinet full of CDs. CDs of Prince and Blondie and Elton John and all of her mother’s and father’s favorites.
And then Willow and Asher and Rex put on some music and ate Chinese food. They played Go Fish and Candy Land and laughed. They lay on the couch as Rex told them stories about the apartment. The apartment and Manhattan and what their mother, Rosie, was like in it. And right there in the kitchen of 299 East 82nd Street Willow and Asher and Rex were happy. And Rosie was wrong. She would have been too.
When the sun went down, and the room went dark, Rex put a VHS tape into the old television and pressed Play. Blazing Saddles appeared on the screen and they all danced and laughed and talked along with the movie in Rosie’s honor. In Rosie’s memory. In Rosie’s wake.
Willow looked her father in the eyes for the second time that evening as they sat there on the couch. And, this time, it was full of so much thankfulness. So much love. So much ease. And then Willow, tangled up in her father and in the happy memory of Rosie, drifted into sleep with a smile on her lips.
And then Rex smiled too. With all the love in the universe—past, present and future—on his mind.
57
Rex’s love crept slowly into the crannies of 299 East 82nd Street until it filled all the rooms. Filled all the rooms and then Willow Thorpe’s whole being. And Willow was better with Rex’s love inside her.
In no time at all, the scratches on her skin healed and the redness in her eyes subsided. She spent her summer painting a mural of the Virginia coast on her new bedroom wall. She made friends with her classmates at her new school that fall. They even performed the Time Warp for the school talent show. And all the girls teased their hair to make it look like Willow’s.
One crisp fall Sunday morning, after a breakfast of homemade chocolate chip pancakes, Rex picked up a bucket of flat rocks for skipping that he had taken with him from Virginia and proposed a picnic in Central Park next to the reservoir.
“Hurry up and get dressed,” he urged, and gave Asher a gentle pat on the head. And then he waited by the door in his baseball hat and jeans. He thought about what it meant to be happy. For all of them to be happy.
Willow’s door slowly creaked open and there was his daughter in one of Rosie’s old dresses. It was too big on her and dragged along the floor, but Willow looked so beautiful in that floral-printed dress. So at peace. So perfect. She looked so much like Rosie, but Rex could also finally see Willow as herself. Willow outside of those purple leggings and black T-shirt with the horseshoe. Willow as her own little girl. Willow as her own young woman.
“Can we go now?” his daughter asked.
“Sure we can, honey,” Rex responded, looking straight into his daughter’s eyes. “And you look so beautiful in Mommy’s dress.”
Rex pressed his hand into Willow’s tight curls and rubbed them back and forth gently. And then he drew her into his chest and kissed her decidedly on the forehead. With her curls at her father’s chin, and the sound of Asher skipping across the room, Willow smiled with her whole body. Her whole heart. Her whole being.
Everything was good and everything was right.
EPILOGUE
Fifteen Years Later
Willow Thorpe nervously fiddled with the locket around her neck on another Friday-night date with Aaron Jackson. He was tall with a strong jaw and kind gray eyes, with thick blond hair and soft hands. Willow liked how his T-shirt tightened around his strong shoulders when he reached down for his glass of beer. She liked how Aaron subtly licked his lower lip after taking a sip. But most importantly, she loved how her heart pulsed when his eyes met hers. And how her cheeks tingled when he leaned over the table and brought his lips to her face.
“You said your parents used to come here?” Aaron inquired as he turned his torso toward the stage at Ray’s Piano Bar.
Willow inhaled the smell of old whiskey and wooden chairs that were chipping at the corners.
“My Mom said she fell in love with my Dad here.”
She sank into the scene of red lamps and the sense that she was sitting in a seat that perhaps her mother had sat in before. And then Willow smiled, but with a hint of sadness between her brows.
“She thought he had slipped off to get a drink, but the next time she saw him, he was already up onstage with his hands on the keys.”
Aaron leaned back in his chair. Willow thought it might have been the weight of the story pressing down on him.
“Sounds like a stud,” Aaron said, accompanied by a wink.
And then Willow changed her mind about his pose. It was the comfort of knowing that love had begun here before and could begin here again.
Willow pushed out her chair and made her way toward the stage. Her knees knocked only once before she sat down on the bench, fanned her floral-printed dress out and placed her fingertips gently on the keys.
She closed her eyes, and then pressed her fingers down.
There were three slow notes that moved effortlessly into a tune the whole bar knew.
Aaron and the rest of the patrons tapped their hands on the tables and shoes on the carpet and belted out the chorus from “Bennie and the Jets.”
“Show-off!” Aaron mouthed through a smile. And then he hugged her when she came down from the stage. So tight. So thoroughly.
“How did you learn to do that?” Aaron asked, still buzzing from his proximity to cool.
“A stud I know taught me,” Willow joked.
As soon as Willow sat down, Aaron reached under the table and placed his hands on her knee. Willow wondered if her father had placed his hands the same way on her mother’s knee all those years ago. She wondered if her mother had the same quick heartbeat when he did.
When she turned to face Aaron, Willow wondered if it was love. She wanted it to be love. Big, all-consuming love. Magical, particular, ove
rwhelming love.
Willow thought back to the way her mother described falling in love with her father. The way she described loving her children. How it was “most mad and moonly.”
Willow looked into Aaron’s eyes and almost found herself yearning for something “most mad and moonly” too.
But then, Willow paused. She had “most mad and moonly” love. She had it for her mother and she had it for her father and she was ready for a different kind of love with Aaron. An uncomplicated, effortless, simpler kind of love. A quiet, tickling, easy kind of love.
Willow kissed Aaron deeply. And it may not have been “most mad and moonly,” but it was her favorite kiss she ever had.
* * * * *
Rosie Coloured Glasses Page 24
