“I don’t know. Did she know him? Were they friends?”
“Not as far as I know. But she did have a lot of friends.” He looks down into his plate again, lost to his own thoughts.
I wish it weren’t just the two of us. I wish my father had a bossy sister who could swoop in and tell us both what to do. Or that I had a sibling to call on for backup. Even a mildly invested cousin would be welcome.
Of course, the person we’re really missing, the person who would set this all right, is my mother.
If my mother were here, we would not be having spaghetti with butter and Parmesan. She would have made us dinner using every herb and spice she could get her hands on, and then, with the windows fogged and the kitchen throbbing with scents and pots and pans piled in the sink, she’d have gathered us to the table and regaled us with stories about the painting classes she taught at the community center. She would have told us that Abby Chen had finally mastered the complicated shadowing of the rolls on her infant son’s legs. Or that bald Lionel Berger had painted a self-portrait in which he had raven-black hair that fell in luxurious waves past his shoulders. She would have told us how she’d almost run out of gas on the way into town, because she was always almost running out of gas, and then my dad would have said that he was sure she did this on purpose, that coasting downhill to the station on the corner of Miramonte and Vallecito clearly gave her a thrill, and my mom would have shaken her head and laughed until she’d finally nodded and admitted that, yes, it was one of her absolute favorite things to do. Andwhen she’d finally stopped laughing, she would have asked if the food was too spicy and we would have said no, even though my dad would have spent most of the meal mopping his forehead with his napkin.
Instead my mother’s missing voice threads the air like an invisible needle, pulling it taut.
A light has gone out within my father. And if that light was kept bright for so many years by my mother’s love for him and his love for her, as I suspect is the case, I wonder what I can possibly do now to help him, to return that spark back to his soul.
“Your mother would be very happy that you’re staying for a month,” he says then, looking up from his plate.
I smile. “It’s almost like she planned it. Coming home when I did. That note in her calendar. The job.”
“That would be just like her,” my father says, but I know he’s indulging me. He doesn’t really believe in this sort of thing. He always expressed a sort of benign tolerance when my mother and I spoke of our gifts. His feet are set firmly in the rational world.
Already, he has gone back to pushing his food around listlessly. “It made her so upset,” he says, almost to himself, “to see you heartbroken for so many years.”
I stare at him, but he doesn’t look up from his plate. I’m not sure he realizes that he spoke out loud.
Isthatwhy my mother thought I stayed away from Bantom Bay? Because I was heartbroken?
Well, Iwasheartbroken. She was right about that.
But it is something far worse than heartbreak that has kept me running from this place all these years.
In bed that night, I stare up at the ceiling. For all of my childhood, a long crack ran above my bed, but it’s gone now. My father has fixed it since I was last home, just as he has replaced the old grout in my bathroom, and sealed the windows so that cold air no longer seeps into the room. I wonder what he will do when he runs out of house projects.
Gully snores beside me. I lay my hand on his side and he quiets.
My mind returns, as it does more often than I would like, to the final year that I lived in Bantom Bay. I was eighteen years old and hopelessly in love with a boy in my senior class named Jack Harris. Jack’s parents were fixtures in the Bantom Bay community—his mother, Marianne, owned the Seadrift Gallery on Miramonte Drive, and his father, Patrick, was on the town council but was probably more well known for coaching the high school’s football team through many winning seasons. Jack was the team’s quarterback.
We were together for a year—long enough, I suppose, that the two of us walking hand in hand down Miramonte Drive, stopping into his mother’s gallery on our way to get pizza, was a common sight in town. People always smiled when they saw us—affectionately, but quizzically, too. We were an unlikely pair. Jack was in his element on the football field, where he was agile and adored and knew with certainty that he made his father proud. And I felt most myself, most grounded, among the flowers I’d planted beside my mother’s studio.
But what I liked about Jack wasn’t that he was practically a celebrity in Bantom Bay, or even that he was good-looking and funny. I fell in love with his quieter side, the side he only showed me. I loved the tender way that he wiped my cheek with his thumb when I arrived atschool with dirt from my garden on my face. The way his expression became dreamy and peaceful when we lay in the grass, our fingers entwined, and watched the clouds drift overhead. The way he smelled of leather and apples and the electric charge in the air during a storm.
What he loved about me, I think, was that he felt safe with me. Safe to let his guard down. Safe to admit that his life was not nearly as easy as it seemed.
The Jack I knew was sensitive and troubled. He struggled with depression, and admitted to me that he sometimes felt a despair that he could not understand, could not name.
Of course, I wanted to save him.
I wondered if I could.
Since that day when the scent of the rosemary I’d planted in my elementary school’s herb garden had returned me to a memory that helped me understand my connection to plants and their fragrances, there had been a few other times when the aroma of a flower I’d cared for had risen above all others, whispering and rippling over my skin. Each and every time this happened, the scent returned me to a forgotten moment from my life, a long-buried memory that helped me see my future with new clarity.
There was the time when I was in sixth grade and feeling lonely, certain that everyone but me had a best friend, and the citrusy fragrance of the Persian buttercups in my garden transported me back to a day when a girl in my first-grade class named Jody had singled me out to be her partner for an art project. For a moment, I was back in time with Jody, six years old and giggling uncontrollably as we bent the rules of the assignment, painting fish flying through the air and birds swimming undersea.
By sixth grade, Jody and I had barely spoken in years, but the very next day after I remembered doing that art project with her, I asked her if she wanted to come over to watch a movie. Jody and I were best friends for years after that, and though we haven’t been as close since high school, we still keep in touch. She owns Bantom Bay Books now, and I try to stop in and see her whenever I’m in town.
And then there was the time when I was fifteen years old and feeling incredibly anxious about a presentation I needed to give to my entire English class, and the sweet aroma of the snapdragons in my garden brought me back to a moment when I was standing in front of the mirror at four years old. I was wearing my favorite striped leggings, a pink tulle skirt, a polka-dotted knit sweater, and a giant smile on my face. I felt completely confident, utterly sure of myself in a way that perhaps only a four-year-old can feel. The memory helped me recapture some of my younger self’s confidence, that courage to be exactly myself, and I carried it with me into my presentation the next day.
And so when I was eighteen years old and Jack, my troubled, handsome boyfriend, came to visit me in my garden one day looking more lost than ever, I could not help wondering if the scents of my flowers could give others a feeling of clarity, too. Why not see if there was more I could do with my gift, if the flowers I grew could return Jack to a moment from his past that might help him in the present?
In my mind, I heard my mother’s voice.Be careful with your gift, Lucy. Every action has a consequence.
