Morning Glory

by Sarah Jio

  I don’t ask him about his demons. If I learned anything in therapy, it’s that it’s best when someone elects to share of their own accord, not by prodding.

  He scratches his head. “You know, things fall apart. You grieve. And then you sit around and wait for things to somehow get perfect again. But they don’t. They never can. There is no perfect. There’s just different. But different can be wonderful.” He smiles to himself. “If I would have realized that a lot earlier, I’d have saved myself a lot of grief.”

  “What finally made you realize?”

  He leans back. “I was out in the kayak, alone, in the middle of the lake. It was a cold day in November. It was clear when I set out, but it clouded up and started to rain. Heavy rain, you know. Bone cold. I decided to paddle back. I was cursing the sky for ruining my morning row. I cursed everything back then.” He grins to himself. “But then I noticed something. I looked up at the sky, rain falling down, and the birds—they were all out flapping around, flying this way and that. I never noticed before that moment how rain doesn’t affect birds. They couldn’t care less about it. Sure, maybe they bristle a little when it hits their feathers. Maybe they decide to fly back to their nests and settle in until the clouds pass. But do they squawk and curse and protest? No. They roll with it. They chirp and sing the way they always do. They don’t let a little storm ruin their days, their lives.” He sighs, and turns to me. “Maybe this sounds crazy to you, but that day on the lake, I realized I wanted to be like a bird. I wanted to stop being so affected by the circumstances that were dragging me down.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s beautiful.”

  “That’s not to say that some things aren’t worth grieving over. I mean, what you’ve gone through, Ada . . .”

  I nod.

  “There’s a time for grief,” he continues. “I’ve gone through it. But I just didn’t want my life to be characterized by it.”

  “Me either,” I say.

  My eyes well up with tears, and he wipes one away, just as fellow diners around us begin cheering and clapping. We look around, oblivious to what has just transpired near us, and then notice a young couple at a table embracing. The woman holds up her left hand, and I see the sparkle of a diamond.

  I think of the way James proposed, at our favorite New York City restaurant. He’d tucked the ring in his pocket and gotten down on one knee. Simple, perfect. I feel the familiar pain creeping back, and then I remember what Alex said. I know I may always ache for the past, for the two greatest loves of my life, but I want to be a bird now. I want to flap my wings through the rainstorms. I want to start my day with the earnestness of the morning glory, the way its blossoms open with the sunrise, ready to shine no matter what.

  My eyes meet Alex’s and moments later, he presses his lips against mine. I’m hungry for his kiss, his embrace, just as he is for mine.

  “Alex,” I whisper. “I want to tell you about my past.”

  I feel like opening up for the first time in a long while. I want to tell him about everything, every painful detail. I want to lay it all out for him to see, like found rocks and jagged shells on the beach that he can pick up and examine and turn over. I want to be transparent again. I want him to see me, for all that I am.

  He leans in closer, ready, open, waiting, and listens intently, as if I’m the only person who matters in the world.

  Chapter 23

  PENNY

  Dex returned from California with tan skin and a bottle of perfume for me from Lana Turner. He said she had cases of it from a photo shoot she did for Macy’s, which made the gift seem even less special than it was.

  “Did you miss me?” Dex says, taking me into his arms.

  “Yes,” I lie, prying the cap off of the perfume bottle. It smells bold and sickeningly sweet, like the type of women at the art shows who always brush up alongside Dex with their low-cut dresses and lipstick-stained champagne glasses.

  “Oh,” he says, disappointed. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “I guess I’m just not used to such strong scents.”

  “It’s what all the women are wearing in Beverly Hills,” he says authoritatively, as if he may have personally sniff-tested every female on Sunset Boulevard.

  I spritz a bit onto my neck, and it pleases him. “I’m sure it just takes some getting used to,” I say. But now that the scent is on my skin, I feel a little nauseated.

  He takes a step closer to me and unclasps a pin in my hair, and then another. My body still responds to his touch, and a chill immediately trickles from my neck, down my arms.

  “Let’s change your hair,” he says, sweeping my bangs across my forehead the way Lana Turner wore hers the night at the Chateau Marmont. “Like this.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, pulling my bangs out of my eyes. “I much prefer to wear my hair up.”

  He looks momentarily wounded but then shakes it off as if none of it matters—my hair, me. “I’m going to spend the afternoon in the studio,” he says. “Lana wants a few paintings for her guesthouse.”

  “Oh,” I say without emotion.

  “I’ll be home tonight. For Bach on the Dock.”

  I almost forgot. The night in July that everyone on Boat Street looks forward to. “Yes,” I say as he grabs his bag and heads out the door.

  “Mama,” I say with a trembling voice on the phone later that day.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she says.

  I feel the cramp in my belly then, the type I’ve been having for a few weeks. I haven’t yet gone in to see Dr. Roberts. I don’t need him to tell me what I already know. “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “Oh, honey!” she exclaims. “Really? This is the most wonderful news. Have you told Dex?”

  “Not yet,” I say guardedly.

  Of course, I haven’t told Collin my news either.

  “I’ll talk to your aunt Sue,” Mama says. “We’ll have a baby shower for you, invite all your old friends from the neighborhood.”

  “Mama, no,” I say quickly. “I’d really rather not have a shower. Please, don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I just want to keep things quiet for now.”

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. “Does Dex have any sisters who I should send invitations to? I can’t recall if I met any at the wedding. And do you want to invite any neighbors, any friends from Miss Higgins Academy? We really ought to invite Miss Higgins. She’ll be tickled pink with this news. Her prized pupil is having a baby!”

  “Mama,” I say, this time more firmly. “I don’t want a shower.”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” she says. “We’ll have it in your second trimester, when you’re a bit farther along. And you needn’t worry about miscarriage. Nobody has those in our family. Your grandmother delivered seven healthy babies, and I would have had a half dozen if I’d found the right man.”

  What I don’t tell her is that I won’t be around for a shower. If all goes as planned, I will be leaving tonight with Collin. He just finished the sailboat, and instead of him selling it to his client, it will be our home. Together we’ll sail the world, have breakfast in the Bahamas, dinner on the coast of Maine. The world will be our oyster, as Collin says. But most important, we’ll be together. Forever.

  Dex’s return has put a damper on our plans, but we won’t let that stop us. I’ll sneak out after Dex falls asleep, pack my bag quietly, and leave a note before boarding the sailboat that we’ve spent the past week stocking to our liking. Canned food, blankets for when it gets cold. Plenty of kerosene for the lamps. Stacks of books to read.

  It wasn’t easy to come to this decision. It was my view that the end of a marriage, even a bad one, would leave me brandished with a scarlet letter. Part of me wanted to continue to play along—Dex with his secrets, I with mine. As disjointed and dysfunctional as our marriage has been, there’s comfort and security in the ebb and flow of our lives, where a kiss on the cheek after a week apart erases the ice between us, the deception. And isn’t this the
arrangement that some women long for? A life of independence, where I can come and go as I please, with a husband who does the same? But that isn’t the marriage I bargained for. I married for love and togetherness, not long stretches of silence and then a blue box from Tiffany & Co. three weeks later.

  No, I couldn’t continue on like this, nor would Collin. And while I’d miss the comfort Dex provides, I wanted Collin more than I wanted comfort. Besides, the writing was on the wall. On the night I made my decision, I found a shirt of Dex’s that had slipped behind the laundry machine. When I went to put it in the wash, I noticed a stain on the collar. At first I thought it was paint. Deep red, it had the tinge of a tube of burnt umber acrylic. But then I took a closer look, and I saw it for what it really was: a smudge of lipstick. I could even smell the perfume lingering on the fabric. I shook my head then, deciding instantly that I would no longer participate in a marriage built on deceit.

  I’d write Mama, of course. I’d explain everything to her in a letter. She would be hurt. She’d never understand how I could leave a man like Dexter Wentworth. It wouldn’t make sense to her, but it would to me. And that’s all that mattered.

  After I hang up the phone, I glance out the side window to Collin’s houseboat. I hope to catch him before Bach on the Dock to let him know that Dex has returned. I don’t want him to worry. Nothing will change our plans. But I don’t see any trace of Collin, and then I realize the sailboat’s gone. At first, I panic. Where did he go? Then I take a deep breath and consider that he must have taken it out to make sure everything’s shipshape for our departure. Our departure. I bite my lip, realizing, perhaps for the first time, that I am really going through with this. And the thought of the two of us sailing out of Lake Union tonight makes my heart beat faster.

  Chapter 24

  ADA

  I look up at Alex seated beside me at the restaurant table. The Space Needle has rotated a full 360 degrees, and now it’s turning our view toward Elliott Bay, where a ferry is sailing out of the harbor, perhaps to Bainbridge Island to the west. Alex’s eyes are big and attentive, and he waits for me to speak. I don’t know if I feel brave enough to tell him, but somehow I know I must. I hear Joanie’s and Dr. Evinson’s voices in my ear. I hear James’s and Ella’s voices, too. I feel that they’re near. Alex waits patiently.

  Two years prior

  I’m sitting on the bed in our room at the Waterbrook Inn, typing on my laptop. I have two hundred more words to write and I’ll have a first draft, and then I can finally play a little on this working vacation. James and Ella have been saints, keeping busy with trail walks and other activities while I work. Sunrise sent us here to scope out what is quickly becoming known as the hottest family destination on the East Coast. With its enormous property and access to the falls, I’ve decided that it definitely lives up to the reputation, and the article is shaping up to be a favorable one.

  Ella bounds into the bedroom and leaps onto the bed. Her pigtails are lopsided, so I straighten them. That dark, silky hair. She’s an Italian beauty, like her nonna. “Mommy,” she says, smiling to reveal a missing front tooth. “Daddy says we can go out for ice cream.”

  “Oh, does he?” It’s only an hour past breakfast, and I feel a little annoyed with James. He spoils her, and he has no plans to change his ways. I love this about him, and yet at times I feel like the odd woman out—the naysayer, the party pooper, the one who’s always eschewing fun for the practical. I sigh. So what if he says yes to ice cream more than I’d like? At the end of the day, I know that Ella’s the happiest little girl in the world because James is the kind of daddy who says yes. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Ella nods and jumps up and down. Her pink tutu flounces beneath her. “I want chocolate,” she says. “With sprinkles.”

  I save the draft of the article in progress, then turn around to face her again. “Sprinkles, huh?”

  She pulls my arm. “Come on, Mommy. Let’s go.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t. I have to finish this article.”

  “Mommy,” she whines. “You always have to finish an article.”

  She’s right. And I feel the familiar pang of guilt that I’ve felt since the day she was born. The one that sneaks up whenever I’m doing anything but being her mom.

  “Just give me twenty minutes,” I say. “I’ll finish this up and we can all go out together.”

  James appears in the doorway. He’s wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt. A recent trip to Mexico has turned his skin a deeper shade of olive, the way it did on our honeymoon in Italy. He grins at me. “You coming?”

  “Give me fifteen?”

  Ella runs to James and he scoops her into his arms. She’s small for her age, petite in stature but not spirit. “Mama said I can have sprinkles,” she says.

  I fold my arms. “Did I say that?”

  Ella smiles, and James sets her back down. “Wait, I have to go find Aggie.”

  When Ella was three, she saw an old carved wooden sailboat in an antiques store in Monterey, on a press trip I’d been invited to. We had no idea why, but she fell in love with the little boat. Its varnish had long since worn off, but red lettering on the side remained: “Agnes Anne,” now “Aggie.”

  She wouldn’t let it go, so James bought it for her. She slept with it that night, and every night after that. “Aren’t little girls supposed to love dolls, or teddy bears?” James asked. We had to stifle our laughter while watching her cuddle the boat on that first night. “It could have been worse,” James said. “She could have fallen in love with your curling iron.”

  Ella isn’t like other little girls. She’s inquisitive and curious, with a heart that senses others’ emotions with the precision of Doppler radar. She drops coins from her piggy bank into the outstretched hands of the homeless in Times Square, frets over the plight of hurt animals on the roadside, and two Christmases ago, organized a coat drive at her school when she saw a little boy shivering on the playground.

  “You know,” James says, “what in the world are we going to do if she ever loses Aggie?”

  I sigh. “We’ll have to find another one.”

  “There is no other Aggie,” he says. “Have you seen the way it’s carved? It’s an original. It was all hand-done. There’s no way it could be re-created.”

  “Well,” I say with a smile, “then we can’t lose her.”

  James nods as Ella returns with the little sailboat under her arm. “I’m ready,” she says, looking up at her dad.

  “Let’s give your mommy a few more minutes,” he says. “Then we’ll all go together.”

  I finish the article as planned, just as my cell phone rings from the bedside table. I groan. It’s my editor. “Hi, Suzanne,” I say, motioning for James to shut the door.

  “Oh, good, I caught you,” she says. “The photographer we hired for the shoot bailed. Did you bring a camera?”

  I glance at James’s camera on the desk across the room. “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Then you can add another piece to the story,” she says. “We just need some candids of families near the falls. Kids and parents hiking together, out in nature, that sort of thing.”

  “Suzanne, I’m a writer, not a photographer.” I recognize the annoyance in my own voice, but I don’t apologize or try to mask it. Suzanne already assigned this trip at the last minute—the week of Ella’s birthday, no less. I had to cancel a party at Princess Beatrice’s Tearoom. And there were tears. Lots of tears. And now Suzanne is asking me to bring back photographs, too?

  “Oh, don’t be such a diva,” she says. “They don’t need to be perfect. Candid is fine. Remember, that’s what Juan likes. The type of stuff people post on MySpace. You just take some snapshots. He’ll make it work.”

  I sigh.

  “Hey, aren’t you there with your husband and daughter?”

  “Yes,” I say reluctantly. I can almost hear the wheels in her mind turning.

  “You could photograph them together,” she sa
ys. “In front of the falls.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Great,” she says. “I know you won’t let me down.”

  I hang up the phone and throw on a jacket, then tuck James’s camera into my bag and walk out to the front room, where James and Ella are playing a game of Uno.

  “Ready?” James asks, looking up.

  “Yeah,” I say. “But we have a slight detour before ice cream.”

  Ella groans.

  “Suzanne needs me to get some family shots of the falls.”

  James smiles. “Good. We can walk up that trail we found yesterday.”

  Ella folds her arms across her chest. “Do we have to, Mama?”

  “Sorry, love,” I say. “I promise, it will be quick. And you and Daddy get to be my models.”

  She grins and runs to the door.

  The waterfall is farther away than we thought. By the time we get to the ninth switchback, James and I are winded.

  “C’mon, you guys!” Ella calls out from ahead. “I can hear the waterfall!”

  We catch our breath, then trudge on. “It’s beautiful out here,” James says to me. He stops and reaches for my hand. “You know, we wouldn’t be getting to see all of this if it weren’t for you.” He kisses the top of my hand. “Am I married to the greatest woman on earth, or what?”

  I smile. He’s never complained about my career, choosing only to see the positive side of all of it. I love that about him.

  “Look!” Ella calls from around the bend. “I see the waterfall!”

  “Ella!” I shout. “Be careful.”

  James and I jet ahead and find Ella standing precariously close to a rickety railing that looks like it might have been constructed in 1892. “Honey, come back here, right now,” I say.

  “Oh, Mama,” she says in a voice that tells me she has the potential to be quite the teenage drama queen. “I’m fine.”