Marianne smiled. “You go ahead. You helped too much as it is for a paying customer.”
Rebecca liked baking with Marianne. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she loved baking; she found measuring ingredients boring, and she often forgot if she’d added the baking powder or the baking soda, which meant having to start over. But she liked baking with another person, talking through it. And she loved when the delicious smells began emanating from the oven into the entire house, smelling like Christmas morning, when her mom always made her cinnamon rolls. And, of course, Rebecca did love the finished product, the warm whoopie pie straight out of the oven. She liked to take just a half of a little round cake and top it with cream that would melt over the sides.
What she didn’t like about baking was how arbitrary it was. You measured, you mixed, and set the timer on the oven. And what you got wasn’t always the same. That was what Rebecca didn’t get. Why some of her creations, when she did attempt to cook, came out fine and other times came out like crap. It was why she had a kitchen drawer full of delivery menus in her New York City apartment.
With some of her thoughts and some of Marianne’s knocking around in her head, Rebecca walked to Theo’s, taking the path by the beach and hoping the cool ocean air would clear her mind. It didn’t. What did clear her head of all other thought was the sight of Theo Granger in his backyard. She watched him, mesmerized by the afternoon sunlight on his sandy blond hair, on his tanned forearms. On his delicious, tall, strong body in his long-sleeved T-shirt (dark green this time) and low-slung jeans. A thing of beauty, she thought absently, recalling a favorite line of her mother’s, from a poem Norah Strand had loved. They’d be walking down the street and it would start to snow, and her mother would marvel over a snowflake and say, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” even as the snowflake melted on her palm at first contact.
Charlie barked and began racing around in circles, and Theo looked over to see what had caught his attention. At the sight of her, Theo’s smile lit up the rest of him.
Oh God. He liked her, too.
“No wonder you’re so excited, Charlie,” Theo said, opening the gate for her. “Welcome back.”
She kneeled down and hugged Charlie, rubbing his belly when he rolled over onto his back. Theo threw a chew toy, and Charlie and Spock went running. The dogs were friends. Theo was clearly a good mediator himself.
She wanted nothing more at the moment than to flop into his arms the way Joy had into her husband’s. To have those strong arms around her, supporting her, giving her strength. The way Michael’s arms had made her feel the day she’d found out about Joy. Now she wondered if that comfort had been about him and his muscular arms in particular or if she’d been in desperate need of a hug and anyone’s arms would have helped.
“You look exhausted,” Theo said. “Beautiful, but exhausted. How’d the weekend go?”
“Ellie and Tim didn’t work out. But the other couples seemed to be on surer footing.”
“Too bad about Ellie,” he said. “She okay?”
“She left early. Maggie’s taking care of her.”
He nodded. “Have you eaten? I just picked up a pizza from Mama’s on my way home.”
“I had a huge brunch, but thanks.”
“Well, hang out, then,” he said. “You can be my trusty assistant on this cello. Arlene commissioned it for Matteo.” Behind him was a worktable and a block of beautiful wood that he’d begun carving into.
“Is he feeling better these days?”
“Nope. His girlfriend dumped him.”
“Awww, poor guy.” Everyone was having trouble in the love department. The big, sticky, difficult department of love.
She envisioned Theo storming off after an argument, disappearing into his workshop for hours to carve something. Theo canoodling. She was suddenly very tired, bone-tired. “I am exhausted and need to head home. But thanks again. And thanks for taking such good care of Charlie.”
He turned to look at her. “So … home home or Finch’s?
“I don’t know.” Tears pricked at her eyes and she blinked them away. “I really don’t know.”
He stopped working for a moment. “A good reason to stay in Wiscasset, then. Since you’re already here.”
She stared out at the ocean, the great vast endless blue-brown of it. It was a good reason, actually. “Agreed. So it’s Finch’s for the moment. Something about that place makes me able to think.”
“The secret ingredient is the air,” she remembered Arlene saying. The woman had been right. There was something about this Maine air, this Wiscasset air, that did something calming to Rebecca’s soul.
“Anyway, I could use a quiet walk with Charlie right now,” she said.
He nodded. “See you soon, then.”
It was as good as a hug.
She sat with Charlie in the little park with the gazebo, appreciating the plastic bag dispenser next to a sign that said: PLEASE PICK UP POOP! since she’d forgotten to bring her own bag. The park was a simple grassy field with a path along the wooded edge, and the lovely wooden gazebo topped with a wrought-iron weather vane. At the other end of the park, she saw a couple walking two golden retrievers. “What now, Charlie? I’m back to that same old question.”
Charlie rested his sweet little face on her arm.
“You don’t know either, huh?” she said, scratching behind his ears. “Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do? And why don’t I know?”
The chimes of her cell phone rang. Michael.
Rebecca bit her lip and answered. “Hi.”
“It’s Sunday, Rebecca. Sunday number two. Are you coming home now?”
Yeah, are you? she wondered.
“Michael, I wish this made sense. To me, too. But I’m just not ready to come home. I think I want to stay here for a while. I want to work on my relationship with Joy. Here.”
He sighed in her ear. “I don’t get this at all. You’re just staying up there? What the hell for?”
“I just told you. To work on my relationship with Joy.”
“Right. With Joy. With this stranger who you told me doesn’t even want you there. Well, do you want to know why I think you’re staying up there?”
Actually, she did want to know. Michael could be cold, but he could also be incredibly insightful.
“I think you’re staying up there because you’re really just running away, Rebecca. Your father died. You’re screwing up at work. We’re having problems. So you booked out of here. And as long as she’s pushing you away, there’s no pressure. You get to stalk her to your heart’s content.”
“I’m not stalking her, Michael. Jesus.”
“Whatever. She’s not coming to you, so you get to go to her, as it feels right to you. You say things are on her terms, but they’re really on yours. You’re the one making the decisions. You’re the one deciding to stay.”
“So I’m not running from anything, then, am I? I’m pursuing something. Why can’t you understand that?”
“Because it’s bullshit, that’s why. There’s nothing to pursue. You’re going to make a relationship out of nothing? Out of thin air?”
God, he was like an old-school grandmother. You couldn’t win.
“Something happened this weekend, Michael. I went on one of Joy’s tours, this one for couples in troubled relationships—not as one of the participants, I mean. My background in mediation was really—”
“You’re not a mediator, Rebecca. You’re a paralegal. And one who’s made a lot of mistakes lately. I hope Joy’s having you sign a legal waiver limiting—”
Jerk! “Will you say anything to get your way?” Rebecca interrupted. “Is that what mediators do? Put things so that the person has no choice but to agree because you’re not wrong? Well, there’s something called shades of gray.”
“Fine. Here’s a black and white question. The firm needs to know if we need to hire a temp—or a replacement.” He sighed again. “Rebecca, everyone knows you’re going
through a tough time. We’ll hold your job. But I need to know what you’re doing.”
“I know,” she said, and suddenly realized he was talking about more than just her job. She stared up at the evergreens across the park, then closed her eyes. “I think you should hire a replacement. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m hardly irreplaceable.”
“You’re not so fucking replaceable,” he said, and hung up.
When she got back to Finch’s, there was a small basket on the floor in front of her door. Rebecca picked it up. Something warm and delicious was underneath a white cloth napkin. A loaf of freshly baked bread and a jar of strawberry preserves with a label that said STRAWBERRY, SEPTEMBER in black ink.
There was also a little card: Thanks.—Joy.
Rebecca smiled and called Joy. “Did you bake the bread yourself?”
“It helps me think.”
“What are you thinking?”
“That the weekend was a very big success, even for poor Ellie. She’s ready to let go of Tim.”
I’m not ready to let go of you, Rebecca thought. There was still barely a connection between them, despite two weekends away, despite everything that had been said. There was no … something.
“So, are you going back to New York?” Joy asked.
“Do you want me to?”
Silence. “I don’t necessarily want you to go. And you’re hardly a stranger anymore. You know more of my personal business than anyone.”
Rebecca’s heart leaped in her chest.
“The situation, our situation, is what it is,” Joy added.
Rebecca smiled. Joy had definitely not grown up with Daniel Strand.
“I mean, you are who you are, Rebecca. My half sister. That’s not going to change, regardless of whether you’re here or hundreds of miles away in New York. I guess it might be even harder to deal with you in New York because of the wonderful ‘out of sight, out of mind’ thing. Because I can’t push you out of mind. I’ve tried, trust me. If you’re here, at least I can make some sense of you, try to figure out how I feel and what to do. I mean, we can’t just blink and become sisters.”
You’re going to make a relationship out of nothing? Out of thin air? …
“I know. And I don’t know what to do about it, either. Maybe it would be easier if we had some big life thing in common, like if we were both new mothers or mothers of preschoolers or single and unemployed and completely alone in the world.”
“Is that how you feel?” Joy asked.
“That’s how I felt. But there’s something about this place, the people I’ve met. And, of course, you.”
“I don’t want to talk about our mutual father,” she said. “Harry will think I’ve taken a giant step backward, but I really don’t want to go there.”
“I can understand that.”
“What else is there for us to talk about, though?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “We could talk about your marriage, but that might come back to you know who.”
“Right. So I guess we’ll have to think of something else.”
Relief flooded through her. This was so strange, this being at the mercy of someone else. Someone who wasn’t a boyfriend who wanted to dump her. That Rebecca had experience with. But this thing with Joy was something very different. Joy did get to call the shots here. She got to decide whether or not she wanted Rebecca in her life. Rebecca didn’t feel like she had the reins here at all. Though she was beginning to remind herself of that hilarious and pathetic woman on Seinfeld who’d refused to allow George Costanza to break up with her. “No,” she’d just kept saying.
“Joy, I was wondering—could I take Rex to the playground sometime? Or to Story Time? I’d really like to get to know him. If you’re okay with that.”
Silence. And then: “I’m taking him to Story Time at the library tomorrow morning at ten thirty. You’re welcome to meet us there.”
“Thanks, Joy. That means a lot to me. I’ll see you there.”
“Well, good-bye for now,” Joy said.
“Good-bye for now,” Rebecca repeated, something easing inside her heart.
Rebecca lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She couldn’t sleep. She cut yet another slice of the bread, forgoing the jam this time, and made a cup of tea and sat with it by the window. It was just before midnight. Charlie was nosing around by the door, so she put on a sweater and socks and her clogs and went out, in a different direction than she normally took, Charlie scampering at her feet, sniffing the leaves that covered the sidewalks. The streets were deserted, yet Rebecca felt utterly safe. She was about to turn the corner when she saw the most beautiful old tree, its changing colors illuminated in the glow of moonlight—red, gold, yellow. She crossed the street to stand under it. Her mother had once told her that when something was bothering her, when she couldn’t make a decision about something or figure something out, she would go to Central Park and stand under a berry-bearing tree, and for some reason, the answer always came to her. This old tree wasn’t berry-bearing, but it seemed so old and all knowing.
Rebecca stood underneath its lowest branch, the still soft leaves just brushing against her temples. Perhaps if she stood here for days, her heart would tell her something, like Marianne said it would. She would know whether she did love Michael or not. If she should go home or not. Did people have to ask themselves if they loved somebody, though? she wondered. Didn’t everyone always say you just knew?
Why was the one thing she knew, with certainty, that she wanted to be here, where Joy was? Because Michael was right? Because it gave her somewhere to be, somewhere to run and hide where not much was asked of her? Was Michael right? Or was where she’d been just so … wrong?
The answer would have to wait because Charlie had tangled up his leash around her legs. As she spun and darted to free herself, she saw the house.
The house.
The one in the painting at Mama’s that she’d seen her first day in Wiscasset. The little yellow house with the white trim and the flower boxes and the cobblestone path. It was a cross between a craftsman bungalow, like Theo’s, and a Cape. She stood there and stared at it, at the yellow sweetness of it, at the small porch with its rocking chair. The house wasn’t the same one as in the painting, she realized. But it was so close.
She imagined the porch swing Theo would build for her. She imagined sitting there with him, holding hands. She imagined herself inside that house, coming and going.
Living here.
And there was a FOR SALE sign in the yard. She smiled at it. She imagined running up the three little stone steps to the porch with her tote bag full of textbooks from her grad school program in counseling. She glanced up at the second-floor window and envisioned herself sitting at a desk overlooking the tree in the front yard while typing a term paper and researching happily with a cup of tea and Charlie at her feet.
But it was just a fantasy. And reality was the fact that there was something to work out with Michael, something true, despite all their problems. He wasn’t completely wrong when he accused her of running away from what bothered her in New York—from her job to their problems to the stress of the city itself. She was a New Yorker visiting someone else’s life for a little while. She couldn’t just up and buy the little yellow house of her dreams in a tiny town in Maine.
But she jotted down the name of the real-estate agency and the telephone number anyway.
thirteen
A little before ten thirty, Rebecca was waiting inside the Children’s Room of the Wiscasset Public Library. Six or seven children were seated on colorful little cushions in a semicircle around a young woman with a big smile and great enunciation. Parents and caregivers sat on sofas and chairs along the back walls, reading or chatting or watching. Rebecca glanced at her watch. Perhaps Joy had changed her mind.
But there they were. Adorable Rex wore a red Superman cape and blue swimming goggles, which elicited happy laughter from the other kids. He squeezed between a boy and gir
l he seemed to know, and stared up at the young woman. He was so cute! The Story Time leader held up a book, Caps for Sale, which Rebecca remembered reading as a little kid. When the woman began reading, the children focused on her. Joy came over to Rebecca’s love seat and sat down beside her.
As the kids giggled over the antics of the naughty monkeys in the story, Rebecca thought about how she and Michael used to lie in bed and talk about the children they’d have one day. Two boys and two girls. Michael liked classic names like Catherine and Henry. Rebecca liked Clementine and Milo. They’d finally agreed that he could name two kids and she could name two kids. But those conversations had stopped long ago. Now, she couldn’t imagine having children with such a rigid person, a father who’d tell his three-year-old daughter she was operating under an “information deficit” when she wanted cake for breakfast.
“I love his cape,” Rebecca whispered to Joy. “And his goggles. He’s just adorable.”
Joy smiled. “Harry has a picture of himself as a kid in a Superman cape, and you’d swear it was Rex.”
Rex did look like Harry in terms of coloring—the same thick, shiny brown hair and hazel eyes. But the features were Joy’s—the round shape of the eyes, the slightly aquiline nose, the strong chin. There was Strand in him.
After the story, the kids scrambled up and began choosing books from atop the low shelves. Rex came over with Curious George Flies A Plane and squeezed between Rebecca and the edge of the sofa, then put the book on her lap.
“Wow,” Joy said. “He usually wants only me to read to him. He must like your face.”
Rebecca laughed. “Do you like my face?” she asked Rex.
Rex didn’t answer, but he did lean his head against her, the straps of his little blue goggles cool against her skin. He stared at the book, waiting, and so Rebecca opened it on her lap, and Rex pointed at George staring out a large airport window at a small airplane. “He fly the plane!” Rex said, giggling.
Rebecca laughed again and let Rex turn the pages and comment on the pictures, which he seemed more interested in than the story itself.
The Secret of Joy Page 18
