Roseanna, it said. And then, simply, Sorry for your loss. —Jerry.
She handed the card to Lance, who had been hovering over her with poorly disguised impatience. If indeed he had been attempting to disguise it at all.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Maybe I really did soften up the old guy.”
“Either that or he’s about to take me to the cleaners without having to worry about seeming uncaring about my personal losses.”
“Oh,” Lance said. “Right. Well, it’s definitely one or the other.”
Chapter Twenty-One
You and Your Big Ideas
When Roseanna stumbled out of bed the following morning she heard the thump of the splitting maul smacking down onto its wooden target. For just a fraction of a second, she assumed Martin was out there splitting firewood.
Then, with a sickening, sinking feeling in her gut, she remembered.
It put her in mind of a brief incident, months earlier. A moment that had played out on a Manhattan avenue. She had seen a glimpse of Alice in a crowd. And then, less than a second later—before the woman could even turn her head to reveal herself to be someone else entirely—Roseanna realized. Realized not only that it wasn’t Alice, but that it could not be. That it never could be again. Because her friend Alice did not exist anywhere on this planet, which struck her as a concept so difficult and foreign that it made her head swim.
Roseanna walked to the window of her little home, but could not see who was splitting wood.
She dressed quickly and stepped outside into the mildly warm summer morning. Buzzy walked with her, his whole body wagging into punctuation symbols—commas, open quotation marks, close quotation marks. She reached down and patted his overly enthusiastic head.
As she rounded the corner of the barn she saw Lance, splitting maul raised for another thump. He had earbuds in place, the wires running into his shirt pocket. She could see his head bob rhythmically to the private music.
He looked up suddenly and saw her standing there. He lowered the maul and pulled an earbud out on the right-hand side.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Isn’t that rather self-evident?”
“There you go again. I guess I meant why are you doing it?”
“Somebody needs to.”
“Not really. It’s the middle of summer.”
“Indeed,” he said. “But only for a couple of months.” He leaned on the end of the maul handle and offered up a quirky grin. “You do know it’s going to be very cold in a few months, right?”
“Yes, I’ve mastered the basics of weather and the four seasons.”
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll freeze?”
“Not really. I was planning to get a big heater and air conditioner combo that can sit outside. You know. With a duct into the house.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Sounds expensive.”
Then he raised the maul again and whacked, swinging it down hard onto the pie-shaped piece of firewood. It stuck there, so Lance raised maul and wood both, then slammed them both down again. The wood popped open into two smaller pie-shaped pieces, freeing the maul.
Meanwhile Roseanna had time to realize that she had made her heating plan several weeks earlier, when she had assumed there would be plenty of money for whatever improvements she cared to make.
“I’ll probably get one even if I’m fairly broke,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to act like you couldn’t. If I thought you needed help buying a heater, I could chip in.”
“Thank you.”
“So how are you doing with all this?”
“All what?”
Lance leaned on the maul handle again and rolled his eyes.
“Now that’s vintage Mom for you. This. What’s happening to you right now. You know. The fact that Jerry has your fate in his hands and is dragging it out, and he hasn’t bothered to call yet.”
“Oh,” Roseanna said. “That.”
“Yes, that.”
“You keep reminding me of things like that. When you know my strategy is to think about them as little as possible.”
“Maybe it’s time to tackle your emotions head-on.”
“Why on earth would I want to do that?”
“So they get tackled?”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed to realize he might have a point.
“What does it feel like when you do think about it? Like right now, when I’m being a huge thorn in your side by not letting you sweep it under the carpet?”
Roseanna sat down a couple of feet away on a full and uncut round of tree trunk. She thought about that a moment before answering. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she felt about it.
“Remember when you were a kid—” Then she stopped herself midsentence. “No. Never mind. No way you would remember. This was ages before your time. This is from when I was a kid. Your grandpa used to bring me these little airplanes made of balsa wood. Very thin sheets of balsa, with these airplane parts punched out. You had to put them together. They had little plastic propellers, and they worked on a rubber band. A big, long rubber band that ran the whole length of the underside of the plane. You’d wind up the rubber band by hand—by spinning the propeller until it was twisted all the way along. And then if you were an overachiever like I was, and wanted the plane to fly a long way, you just kept winding. And then the rubber band would twist into double knots. Well, not knots, but . . . into this series of little knot-like . . . I’m not doing a good job describing it. I don’t know if you can picture this at all.”
“I get the general idea,” he said. “You feel like that rubber band. See? It doesn’t hurt to get in touch with how you feel now and then.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Then Roseanna decided to take the conversation in a different direction.
“Why can’t Nelson chop wood?”
“He took the scooter into Walkerville to buy a gas pump for Patty’s car.”
“Does he know how to install a gas pump?”
“Apparently.”
“That seems odd,” she said.
“Seems right in keeping with Nelson to me.”
“But if he knows how to fix a car, why didn’t he fix hers a long time ago?”
“They couldn’t afford the part.”
“And now they can?”
“It’s possible that I might have floated them a small loan,” Lance said, breaking his gaze away from her eyes.
“I’m not saying that wasn’t nice of you. But I also can’t imagine how they’re going to manage to pay you back. They don’t work.”
“They’re about to. Nelson right now, Patty when Willa goes to school in the fall. That’s why they want to get her car fixed.”
“Got it,” Roseanna said, and looked up into the glaring sunlight for no reason she could name. “So they have some way to get by if I lose this place.”
“Actually,” Lance said, “No. They want to have a little money so they can help you.”
Roseanna considered that for a moment, then released a burst of laughter she had not seen coming.
“I can’t see them earning the kind of money that would get me out of this bind.”
“Not that kind of help. They just want to be able to help if you’re having trouble. Like if you need more grocery money down the road. If you’re pinching and just barely scraping by, they want to be able to help you.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because you helped them.”
Roseanna began the process of letting that sink in. Allowing the warmth of it to fill her gut. Letting herself actually believe such a thing could be true.
The process was interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing in the house. It was faint, but she could hear it from where she sat.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and she found herself sprinting across the dirt with no memory of having stood up.
As she ran she heard a second ring
. And then a third. Louder each time because she was getting closer. Then she was flying up the porch steps, listening to the fourth ring.
She threw the door wide.
“Don’t hang up!” she shouted out loud.
She grabbed up the receiver.
“Rosie?” a voice said.
It was a familiar voice. But it was not Jerry. And it was not Franklin, her attorney. And it was a male voice, so definitely not Franklin’s secretary, Jill.
Meanwhile Roseanna said nothing. Just panted.
“You sound out of breath,” the voice said.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Nelson.”
“Oh. Nelson.”
She stood silent a moment, feeling everything collapse inside. Feeling her suddenly acquired hopes and expectations sink down into her shoes. There is no better way to learn how desperately you hate waiting than to think the waiting is over and then find out you were wrong.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I just had to run for the phone.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“I’m at a pay phone in Walkerville. I just wanted to know if you need anything while I’m in town.”
Roseanna saw a movement in her peripheral vision and spun to see Lance walk into her living room through the open doorway.
“Nelson wants to know if we need anything from town,” she said.
Then she watched the same falling process happen in him.
“Maybe some juicing oranges,” he said. “I miss fresh juice.”
“Juicing oranges,” she said into the phone.
“Check,” Nelson said.
“Oh wait. I don’t have a juicer.”
“And a juicer,” Lance added.
“Is there a place in Walkerville that would sell a juicer?” Roseanna asked Nelson.
“We’re about to find out,” Nelson said.
“Okay,” she said, her depletion painfully obvious in her voice. At least, it was to her own ears. “See you when you get back.” Then, quickly, before he could hang up, she added, “Nelson?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. This was very thoughtful. All of it, I mean. I guess I mean . . . well . . . you’re a very thoughtful young man.”
“No worries,” he said. “See you when I get back.”
Then he hung up.
Roseanna looked at the phone receiver in her hand for several seconds. Suddenly, and without knowing she was about to do such a thing, she smashed it down hard onto the counter on which its base sat. It survived the hit. But Roseanna knew it might not survive the next few. And she was far from done. In fact, she was barely getting started.
She turned around to face the couch, and smashed the phone down onto its soft upholstery. Then she fell to her knees and brought it crashing down again. And again. And again. She just kept raising it and bringing it down, the plan being to do so until she had no more breath or energy, and could not go on.
Instead, the receiver disappeared from her grip on the upswing, and her hand hit the couch, empty.
She looked up to see Lance standing over her, holding the phone receiver.
“Mom. Whoa. Really. Whoa. Take a deep breath and settle.”
She pulled up straighter on her knees and looked up into his face, panting.
“But it was your idea for me to get in touch with my feelings. You know. Hit things head-on.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well . . . on the other hand . . . what the hell do I know?”
“Here’s what disappoints me,” she said during their midday nap, which only rarely resulted in any actual sleeping. “When we were watching that meteor shower I told you I would be okay no matter what happens. But then that revelation seems to have gotten lost.”
“They always do,” he said.
“That’s not very optimistic.”
“I’m not saying you’ll never see it again. Just that it’s not very realistic to think you won’t go back and forth on this. It’s just how emotions are. They rise and fall. Chunks of them fly up when you least expect it. Even if you do get it that you’ll manage one way or another, it makes a huge difference to your situation how these next few days go. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t stressed out about it.”
She rolled over and looked at the side of his face. His eyes were closed, his face perfectly slack. Just for a moment she thought of Alice in the hospital.
She pushed the thought away again.
But before she could, she touched on something in her mind. Something she had not consciously taken in before. A small moment upon which she had never stopped to dwell.
She remembered the look on Jerry’s face when she told him to leave Alice’s hospital room.
“How do you know all this?” she asked her son.
“Just from living, I guess.”
“I’ve been living a lot longer than you have.”
“But I take my feelings head-on. Everything just comes up and out like a bad dinner. I mean, I deal with things to a fault.”
They lay quietly for a moment before Roseanna said, “That doesn’t sound like a fault to me.”
A minute or two later she opened her mouth to say more on the subject, but just then Lance let out a light, gauzy snore.
In time, Roseanna stood up and left her son to nap on his own.
She walked into the kitchen and took notepaper out of one of the drawers. Got her best pen from the little table by the door. She sat on the couch and—using a book as a lap desk—wrote Jerry a note.
Jerry, it began. I’m sorry I was rude to you that day at the hospital. But Alice was so scared, and I was just trying to protect her from . . .
She stopped. Wadded up the paper and made a three-point basket into the kitchen trash.
It would not do to include the part about how Alice clearly withered in Jerry’s presence. It would not help him want to show legal mercy. Beyond that, it simply would not help anybody or anything. It would do no good in the world. It was a truth best kept to herself.
She began again on a fresh piece of notepaper.
Jerry, she wrote. I want to apologize to you for that day at the hospital. Not because you’re suing me and I don’t want you to, but because I just now remembered that I was rude and dismissive, and I know it must have hurt you. I didn’t mean it to. And I didn’t mean to act like I belonged there and you didn’t.
She stopped again. Based on what Lance had just told Jerry, that was not a believable sentence. If she and Alice had been in love since college, of course she would feel that she had more of a right to be alone with Alice in her last minutes on earth. They weren’t all just coworkers, at least, not in the version of events Jerry now believed to be the truth.
She started over, copying everything but that last sentence. Ending with I didn’t mean it to. Then she started fresh from there.
I was just terrified, and not handling things well. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. No matter what happens with the suit, I hope you’ll accept my apology.
Then she signed her name. Folded the paper and slid it into an envelope. Addressed the envelope to the achingly familiar street number of her old firm.
She stuck a stamp on it, which she pulled from the drawer where she kept the stamps she used when paying electricity and water bills.
Then she walked it out to her mailbox at the road while her son slept.
She raised the red mail flag and let the whole thing go.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ithaca Is Gorges
“We’re going on a field trip,” Lance said.
It wasn’t a question. It left little room for argument, though Roseanna assumed she would mount one anyway.
It was three mornings later. Three days of staring at a phone that never rang. Seventy-two hours of losing her temper at the tiniest provocation, usually shortly after swearing the situation wasn’t making her the tiniest bit nervous. No, of course not. Not in any way.
She leaned back on the couch and stared up at the mountain of him. He was hovering above her. All the better to control the moment, she figured.
“Why would I want to go on a field trip?”
“To get you away from the damned phone.”
“But I need to stay by the phone, and that’s the point of staying by the phone. I thought you understood this concept.”
“But it’s wearing you down, Mom. More than I think you even realize. You need to get away and think about something else for a change. Before you crack right down the middle like that ice shelf in the Arctic that everybody thought would stay in one piece forever.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate being compared to unstable ice,” she said, “but what if Jerry or my attorney calls while I’m away? And then I call back but I can’t reach them? So I have to spend part of a day not knowing what they called to say. That would definitely crack me. Come to think of it, I don’t even have voicemail or an answering machine yet. So I’d never even know if someone called.”
“But you have voicemail on your cell phone.”
“But it doesn’t get reception.”
“Not here. But probably on most of our field trip, it will.”
“But Franklin might call me at home.”
“No. He won’t. He’ll call you on your cell.”
“Now how could you possibly know that?”
“Because I called him this morning while you were in the barn feeding the horse. And I told him we’d be out all day and to call you on your cell.”
Roseanna breathed quietly for a few moments, realizing she had lost the battle. They were going on a field trip. It was a desperate feeling to detach from the lifeline of the telephone. As if she were drowning, going down for the last time, and someone had just convinced her to stop grasping at branches to try to save herself.
In another way it felt like a relief to simply let go.
“Fine. Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” Lance said. “But you might want to bring a bathing suit. Or wear it under your clothes.”
“A bathing suit?”
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