Page 11 of Wildwood

When I reach the game room, there are small tables on which games of checkers and cards are set up. There’s one lively game going on, with a bright-eyed-looking gentleman with a few wisps of white hair lying across the top of his head accusing his partner, a wiry man with a ring of gray hair around an otherwise bald head, of cheating. The partner is waving away these claims, making dissatisfied grunting noises.

My grandmother sits in a wheelchair, which is positioned to look out over a tiny outdoor space. She looks so small and frail, with a shawl draped over her narrow shoulders. I feel an almost maternal urge to protect her. I walk up to her side and touch her arm.

“Hi, Gran.” She looks up at me, but her eyes don’t register recognition. She looks back out the window, perhaps assuming I am another nursing home worker, or perhaps assuming nothing at all. I lean over and wrap my arms around her in an awkward hug. My heart aches a little, as hugging her now feels like hugging a small child.

I pull up a chair next to her and place my hand on hers, feeling the rise of veins under her paper-thin skin. “I’ve got news. I’m pregnant.” I say this, beaming, as though I’m talking to a girlfriend. Alzheimer’s is such a strange, tragic disease in this way. It turns us into stage actors.

“We are so excited. It’s too early to know the sex, but I have a feeling it’s a girl. If it is, we’ll name her Mathilde. I’m hoping she gets my brains and Topher’s looks.” I chatter on like this for a while. She doesn’t reply to anything, but I tell myself that deep down, she must recognize my voice and that hearing it must bring her some innate level of comfort.

After a few minutes, I take a deep breath and launch into the topic I’ve been dreading. “So, I have some news that I feel I should share with you. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but I would have felt wrong not telling you.”

She is still staring out the window and I take a raggedy breath and continue, “First, I have some sad news. Your brother, Ezra, has died.”

Slowly, she turns to look at me. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but her eyes, though still glazed, seem ever so slightly sharper.

“I’m so sorry. I know you weren’t close, but of course he was still your brother.” I squeeze her hand. “He also has left me Wildwood.” Still she doesn’t speak, but her jaw works back and forth. “I know that you two had a falling-out, so I guess I wanted to get your approval, or at least tell you, before I accepted. It’s so hard to know what to do. I got laid off, and we have a baby coming, so inheriting Wildwood could change our lives. But I would never do anything that would hurt you.”

I pause and feel my heart thudding, wishing so desperately that she’d talk.

“What happened between you two?” I move, to put my face directly in front of hers, as if that will bring her back to me. Her eyes evade mine. “What happened?” I repeat, more urgently. A wave of frustration washes over me and for a brief, savage moment, I want to slap her. Shake her. Do anything to elicit a response.

She blinks at me, mouth closed, and the anger melts and is quickly replaced by guilt and sadness and the usual mix of useless emotions. Finally, defeated, I sigh. “It’s okay, Gran. It’s okay.”

I sit for another ten minutes or so, not wanting the last thing I’ve said to be that her estranged brother has died and wants me to move into his estate. I talk about the weather, my friends, politics.

Finally, it’s time to go. I stand up and gently kiss my beloved grandmother on the head. “I love you. I’ll come back in a couple of weeks, okay?”

As I walk out of the nursing home and into the fresh air and bright natural light, I make a decision. I’m going to convince Topher and we are going to accept the house. We’re going to accept the house and sell some of the ridiculous amount of land and we’re going to move Mathilde to Vermont and get her the best fucking live-in assistance that money can buy.

Chapter 8

“Well?” Topher’s eyes bore into me.

There’s part of me that wants to push back, more on principle than anything else. But I swallow down the thought. I don’t actually want to go back to work. At least not right away. Ever since coming back from Wildwood, I’ve been creating little fantasies about what our life would be like up there. Who I would be when we are up there. I’ll learn to grow vegetables. We’ll raise chickens. I’ll be a wonderful mother. I’ll take our baby for walks every morning. Our child will grow up playing in the meadow and exploring the woods. In the evening, we’ll read books in the library and have cocktails in the conservatory. Eventually, I could find a job that has nothing to do with the Alex Bromleys of the world. We’ll be content.

“I think it’s a really good idea,” I say earnestly.

“Really?” He cocks an eyebrow toward me. I can’t tell if I’ve disappointed or impressed him by giving in so easily.

“Yes. I want to have more time with the baby. And I want a change of pace. And I don’t want to go back to work until I truly know what I want to do.” I smile to emphasize how much I believe it. “We give it a year and if we like it, we stay; if not, we move back to Cambridge.”

“I’ll have to secure a job first,” he says.

“Of course.” I squeeze his hand. “Doc.” I cringe slightly at how thickly I’m laying it on.

“Okay, then,” says Topher. “I guess we are moving to Wildwood.”

He pulls me in for an embrace, and I breathe in his scent, a mixture of detergent, sweat, and some woodsy note. I’ve told him the truth. I do want all those things.

But I’ve left something out too. I’ve remembered something since visiting Wildwood. I remember an argument between my mother and grandmother. It was Christmas and we were at my grandmother’s house. They thought I was asleep on the couch, dressed in my corduroy dress and itchy tights and exhausted by toys and chocolate. “Why didn’t you invite him?” my mother was asking. They were in the kitchen. “I don’t want to talk about it,” my grandmother had snapped. As she left the room and stalked by me, she muttered, “He should have done it. Why didn’t he just do it?”

Something happened that caused my family to be ripped apart. Something Ezra did. Or didn’t do, rather. And I want to know what it is. But I don’t tell Topher this. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because I fear it makes me look selfish. Am I uprooting us all on a fool’s errand? I also don’t tell Topher another thing. I don’t tell him that while my body is aching to go to Wildwood, there’s a part of me, a small but nagging part of me, that sits deep in my belly, that is a little scared of what we’ll find there.

Chapter 9

One month later, we move out of our small condo in Cambridge and into a two-hundred-acre estate in Vermont. I’m on what I’m calling a sabbatical, though I know that’s not accurate. I’m not doing research or writing a book. I’m unemployed, straight up. It makes me hope that my belly begins to show soon. So, if someone asks what I do, I can point at my belly and say, “See! I’m growing a baby. I’m voluntarily taking time away from work to focus on my child.” Topher was able to land a job as an ER doctor at a regional hospital, Green Mountain Medical, a few towns over.

The first week passes in a blur of unpacking, setting up the house, breaking down cardboard boxes and letting in a steady stream of utility workers. We put Hugo in a kennel for the first two weeks, so we have a chance to get the house in order without him knocking over boxes and to move the more breakable of Ezra’s belongings, of which there are many. Fortunately, the weather has turned gray and drizzly, which at least makes me feel better about being cooped up inside.