by T. Greenwood
“Tell me about San Francisco,” I said, as Eva slipped back into her dress and sat on the shore with her knees tucked under her chin, staring out at the still water. I reached out and touched an exposed part of her thigh with my finger, let it linger there. “I want to know who you were before you met Ted.”
I still had such a hard time envisioning Eva without Ted, without the children. That Eva was like an apparition: a ghostly Eva, a shadow Eva. But I wanted to know her, everything about her. Sometimes, with Eva, I felt unsated. Even after we had made love for hours, or held each other through an entire night. It was as though I had an itch I couldn’t reach to scratch; I couldn’t ever seem to get enough of her. I sometimes dreamed of a terrible thirst, of drinking glass after glass of water and still feeling as though I might die, my tongue and lips and throat parched. I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask, so many things to learn.
She sighed and looked away from the water, studying my face. She twisted her loose hair into a ponytail, securing it with a band she slipped from her slender wrist. “I left Oregon when I was seventeen. I met Liam at school. I got pregnant. He had a wife. I met Ted. The end.”
She didn’t like to talk about Ted. Here, Ted and Frankie were no different than the characters in the novels we read. But from the fragments of information I gathered, it seemed that Ted had fallen madly and instantly in love with Eva (how could he not?), so much so that when he learned she was pregnant, and that the father had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared, he agreed to raise Eva’s baby as his own if she agreed to marry him. He loved her, and promised he would take care of her and her child. He swooped in like a giant pelican to a fish and carried her away.
“What was it,” I asked, “about him?” I knew it would pain me, to hear what had attracted her to him, but I still wanted to know. Needed to know.
“Ted?” She laughed. “I don’t know. I guess he was just so charming. Always the salesman. He could sell a cage to a lion.” And I thought about how Ted had cajoled her, tamed her, caged her. I promised myself I would never do that.
“We should get back to the kids,” she said, shaking her head and pulling her dress down over that soft beautiful expanse of flesh.
There were other questions I wanted to ask, but now as she reached for my hand and stood up, I knew the opportunity was gone.
Eva didn’t like to talk about San Francisco, but she did like to talk about her childhood in Oregon. She’d grown up in a small coastal town; her father was a fisherman, and her mother died in a car accident when she was just a little girl. She didn’t have any siblings. She spent her days collecting debris she found on the beach and assembling it into sculptures. She built fairy houses out of seaweed and pebbles and twigs.
“What happened to the mobiles?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re long gone now. I left most of them on the beach.”
“No, I mean the ones from art school. Do you have them still?”
She shook her head.
We were sitting on the grass watching the children play in the lake. Chessy and Donna were doing handstands, their pink feet sticking up out of the water.
I wanted to see the things she had made. I thought maybe they might help me to understand her better. “Do you have any photos of them?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“Mommy, Mommy, look!” Sally said. She was learning how to float on her back. In the water, she bounced and bobbed like a doll.
“I see you!” Eva hollered. “Good job!”
“Can you tell me about them?” I asked softly.
“Billie,” she reprimanded. The way she said my name stung. She sighed. “Ted destroyed them. All of them. An entire year’s worth of work was ruined in the matter of one night. He hated Liam. He was so jealous. My artwork was just a reminder to him of my life before he met me.”
I pictured Ted with his hulking body smashing her artwork to pieces, destroying all that beauty with his stupid rage. And then I started thinking about Ted’s anger, his bullishness. What Eva and I had was so pure, so good. It too was something beautiful, crafted meticulously with our hands. I tried not to think about what he would do to us if he were ever to find out, the destruction he was capable of. I had to will him away from my thoughts. He didn’t belong here. Not between us on the soft grass as our children played together in the lake.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
And then a shadow came across Eva’s face, as though she were remembering something. Her brow knit and she blinked hard, shaking her head as though she could shake the memory away.
“Eva,” I said softly, remembering what she had said when we were camping, about him not being a good man. “He wouldn’t ever hurt you, would he?”
“Mommy! Mommy!” Donna yelled. “Look what Chessy and I can do.” Francesca was riding high on Donna’s shoulders. Johnny was chucking rocks at the shore.
“Johnny, don’t throw rocks while the girls are swimming!” Eva said. She looked at me then, and said, “No more silly questions. Okay? Rule number four.”
The day that Frankie was due to arrive for his visit and then to take Eva and her kids back to Hollyville, I could barely drag myself out of bed. It was as though someone had pulled my heart out of my chest and shoved it back in. It no longer fit. It felt swollen, constricted.
Eva had risen wordlessly with the sun and started to pack her bags. I watched her from the bed as she folded her clothes and put them into the suitcase, the lid open like a mouth. She didn’t speak as she tidied and packed; then she disappeared downstairs. When I finally came down from the loft she was standing at the stove with an apron on, Rose nestled against her hip. She was making eggs and bacon in a cast iron skillet. There were gutted oranges littering the counter and a pitcher of fresh-squeezed juice.
“There’s coffee in the percolator,” she said, motioning to the pot.
We had stayed up late, as though morning wouldn’t come if we were waiting for it. I don’t want you to leave, I had said. I love you, I’d whispered, fearful that my words were lost in the dark expanse of her hair. But then she had embraced me, pressing every inch of her skin against mine, and my words, like the children’s voices bouncing back to them at the lake, echoed back to me. I love you.
And, despite the thrill of those three words, the way they repeated endlessly in my head, in my chest, in every muscle of my body, I was still able to fall asleep just as the sun was starting to illuminate the pale curtains in the loft window. But now, my sadness, coupled with fatigue, made me wonder how I could possibly get through this day. Coffee, I suspected, would be an ineffectual elixir.
Somehow, I had managed to put Frankie out of my mind for the last two weeks, or at least into a small, quiet corner of it. I had to. The idea of him appearing, in the flesh, after all that had transpired between Eva and me seemed somehow ludicrous. And terrifying. I worried that he would see what had happened in my face. That the places she had touched somehow still bore the imprint of her lips, her fingers, her tongue.
“What time will Frankie be here?” she asked as though reading my mind as she set a plate of eggs and bacon down in front of me.
“No idea,” I said. “If he sees any tag sales, he’ll stop. He also usually grabs a bite at the Miss Quimby Diner.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
We sent the kids outside to play, but Johnny complained that he wasn’t feeling well.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?” Eva asked, her voice strained.
“I have a headache and a stomachache, and my legs feel itchy,” he said.
Eva sighed heavily. These were our last hours together before we had to return to that other life, the one we’d shrugged off two weeks ago. “Well, it sounds to me like a good old-fashioned case of the gollywobbles,” she said, lifting him up onto her lap. “And do you know the treatment for the gollywobbles?”
“Pepto-Bismol?” Johnny asked, clutching his stomach. His cowlick was sticking straight up, as usual, giving him an
impish look.
“No.” Eva shook her head. “Guess again.”
“Aspirin?” he tried, bouncing back and forth in anticipation.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “Something much more potent. Something very powerful.”
“Tell me!” he said, clutching his hair with both hands, his wide blue eyes imploring.
She stood up and motioned for him to follow her to the kitchen. “This way,” she said.
I followed them, lingering in the doorway, and watched as she opened the cupboard door and peered inside. “Now, where did it go?” she asked, browsing the shelves, running her fingers across the canned vegetables and soup. A bag of marshmallows, a dusty box of Cream of Wheat. “Aha,” she said finally, reaching behind everything and grabbing a can of Hershey’s Syrup. “Did you know that the cocoa bean has healing powers?” she asked, crouching down to Johnny’s level. “It is the only known cure for the gollywobbles.”
“Really?” he asked, eyes widening joyfully. “Chocolate?”
“The mighty cocoa bean,” she said seriously, nodding her head.
“There’s a church key in the drawer,” I said.
And with that, she punctured the lid and poured the syrup into a shot glass she found in the top of one of the cupboards.
“Now drink up,” she said, and handed him the glass.
Gleefully he swallowed the syrup, wiping the chocolate from his lip with his sleeve. “Better?” she asked.
He nodded, amazed. She winked at me and swatted his bottom. “Now go play!”
Frankie called from Quimby at six o’clock, and said he was just sitting down to supper at the diner, that he’d be at least another hour. We were down to our final hour, the last minutes of this strange haven, this stolen piece of heaven. And as the sun slipped quietly behind Franklin Mountain, I felt all of this slipping away too.
“You’re a good mother,” I said, as we sat on the front lawn side by side, not touching, watching our children dart about like fireflies in the waning light. “I wish I were as patient as you are.”
“Stop,” she said, shaking her head, blushing.
But it was true. I was too selfish to be a good mother. All day I had wished the children away so that these last few minutes could be spent together. It made me feel terrible.
“Look, Mama!” Mouse said, running up to me with her small, dirty hands clenched together, her eyes wide and excited.
“What is it?” I asked, suddenly feeling such tenderness toward her, and such an overwhelming sense of inadequacy.“Let me see,” I said, and leaned forward to peer into her hands.
But when she opened them to show me what was inside, her face fell. In her excitement, in her eager hands, the firefly had been crushed. The luminescence smeared across her palms. My heart ached. Because I understood this clumsiness, this dangerous greed.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I said, and kissed her hand. “You didn’t mean to.”
Juan insists on parking in the garage and walking me inside the airport, though I keep telling him that I’ll be fine getting dropped off at the curb. He carries my suitcase (which is so old it doesn’t even have wheels) and holds the elevator door open for me, ushering me in first.
There is a lot of noisy construction at the airport. A new parking lot, Juan says. It looks like rubble to me, as though we are in a war zone instead of America’s Finest City. It is overcast today, and the air has a chill to it. I have a sweater for the flight, and I packed some snacks. My boarding pass is in my pocket, and my license is in my wallet.
“I used to love to fly,” I say to Juan to fill the empty quiet between us. It is early, and the ride from my cottage to the airport was a silent one.
“Not anymore?” he asks.
I shake my head. The last flight I can remember enjoying was when I left the East Coast, bound for California. Perhaps it was because that flight had indeed been one of flight, of fleeing. It had purpose, intent. It signified the end of one life and the beginning of another. I remember I had felt like my heart was soaring as the engines roared and the plane taxied down the runway. All the others since then have been imbued with portent: the flight home for my mother’s funeral, for Frankie’s funeral, and later when Gussy’s Frank got sick. Even Francesca’s wedding had my stomach in knots as I soared back to Boston. I had never met her fiancé, Michael, and I spent the entire trip imagining the worst. And now Johnny.
I can’t remember the last time I flew for pleasure. When you live at the edge of the world, inside a postcard picture, there seems little need for vacation. I’ve become happily sedentary in my old age. But now, here I am once again, flying home, feeling queasy already, even before I have checked my bags.
“You don’t need to stay,” I say. “I can find my gate.”
“You sure?” Juan asks. His eyes look tired, and I realize that despite what he’s said, he must have risen early especially for me.
“I’m fine.” I smile and give him a little hug.
“Okay,” he says. “Call me when you get back. I can be here in a few minutes to pick you up. We’ll miss you at the bar.” I watch him disappear up the escalator and through the glass doors to the walkway. I get in line to check my bag and take a deep breath. The girl in front of me has a giant backpack on her shoulders. It looks like it might weigh more than she does. She smells strongly of patchouli oil, and her hair runs down to her waist in thick, dreaded ropes. When she turns, looking for something or someone beyond me, I see she is pretty, her eyes a sparkly green. She looks a little like Mouse actually, at that age. Wild and unruly. Mouse and Francesca have always been opposites: Chessy in her tidy skirts, never a hair out of place; her clothes never got grass-stained or torn. And Mouse, who never cared how she looked, favoring fun and freedom over fashion.
When I told Francesca I was going back to the lake to speak with Johnny, she said she didn’t think it was a good idea.“Why go digging up those old bones?” she said, her father’s expression. I hadn’t expected her to understand. “And Mom, that’s a really big trip to make by yourself,” as if her concern were truly only about my health and welfare.
“I’m healthy as a horse,” I said. And it was true. My last doctor’s visit had confirmed that, besides my blood pressure, I am in good shape. So far I’ve eluded all those other harbingers of old age: diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis. I am much more like a sixty-year-old than an eighty-year-old, except for my heart. I even have my hearing, my memory, and most of my marbles, though I’m sure Francesca would argue that.
“I can’t wait to see you,” I said.
“You too, Mom. Have a safe flight.”
I called Mouse right after I spoke with Francesca. She is living in Taos now; she’s been there for nearly a year, if I am remembering correctly. She met a man, a fellow artist, and they are living together in some sort of teepee, though when she described it, it sounded relatively palatial (as far as teepees go anyway). I’ve learned to let go of Mouse over the years, to understand that she will always surprise me with her choices. Because despite financial instability, her decision not to get married or have a family, her meanderings all over the globe, she is the happiest person I know. And something about that makes me proud.
The girl in front of me turns and says, “Excuse me? Do you have the time?”
“I do,” I say, gently tugging my cuff upward to reveal my watch. “It’s six o’clock.”
“Thank you,” she says, smiling. “I’m going home to see my parents,” she says, continuing the conversation. “It’s been a whole year.”
I nod and smile at her. “They must be excited.”
“They don’t exactly know yet. It’s kind of a surprise,” she says, and twists her mouth a little, a nervous tic, I gather. “Or ambush.”
This makes me laugh. I hope we get seated next to each other on this flight.
Suddenly, I feel someone moving behind me, hear a voice saying, “Excuse me. So sorry. I’m with her up there.”
It’s another girl loaded down
with a heavy backpack. This one has short dark hair and freckles across her face. “I’m so sorry,” she says to me as she moves to meet the girl in front of me, whom she kisses quickly on the lips.
The other girl punches her gently in the arm. “I thought you’d ditched me.”
“Never,” the dark-haired girl says, cooing dreamily at my new friend.
I feel my heart swell up, tears coming to my eyes. I look away, ashamed as they kiss again. I grimace as the old man behind me clears his throat. So much has changed, I think. And so much has stayed exactly the same.
“Have a nice flight,” the girl says to me after she and her girlfriend have checked their bags and, liberated of their luggage, turn to go to their gate.
“You too,” I say, and then I am alone again, overwhelmed by the smell of cinnamon buns and coffee and too much perfume.
There are few undeniable perks to being an old lady. One, I learn now, is that you get to pre-board most flights. I am quickly ushered by a helpful attendant to the line where families with small children and all those needing special assistance (the man in the wheelchair with the oxygen tank at his side, the blind woman with the service dog, and another old lady like me who seems to have lost the battle with her bones and is bent at the waist, her spine at a forty-five degree angle) are all congregating. I sit down on one of these restricted seats and study my boarding pass. My driver’s license. In the photo, I am only seventy-five years old. But other than a few more wrinkles across my brow, little else has changed. I still wear my hair in two braids pinned on top of my head. I still weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. I’m still five foot eight inches tall when I make the effort.
The loudspeaker announces that we’re boarding, me and the other infirm, and I rise from my seat, thinking, This is it, lady. Your last chance to back out. To simply backtrack through the airport, maybe grab one of those cinnamon buns on the way out. Get a taxi, go back to the cottage, and just take a nap. But as I start to plan my route through the crowd of early-morning travelers, my eyes catch sight of the two girls who had been in front of me in the check-in line. They are at the gate across the way. They are sitting side by side, one resting her head on the other’s shoulder. Their flight is headed to New York. And I think about how much more courage they need than I.
