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“It’s a boring fact,” Smith protested. “We were all babies once upon a time. Writers across history have made that point again and again. It’s banal.”
Anna furrowed her brow, even as a smile played across her lips. She had the sudden sensation that she wanted Smith to remain at her bedside to argue about ideas and writing for the next several hours. Something about his presence made her brain quiver with ideas.
“But your story is specific to you,” Anna pointed out. “And if your memoir is really a story about you and your mother…” She hoped he wouldn’t get angry that she knew so much about his project. “Then isn’t it essential to talk about the dynamic at the very beginning? Your helplessness? Your mother driving down a Midwestern highway in a stolen eighteen-wheeler?”
Smith’s smile widened, and dimples formed on both cheeks. Anna had never seen him like that. It was hard to imagine him smiling much at all, but the effect wasn’t alarming. It was nourishing.
“She was really something,” Smith said thoughtfully.
“She sounds strong,” Anna said. She didn’t add stronger than me, although she felt it was true. There was no way in heck she could have driven an eighteen-wheeler to the hospital during the throes of labor.
“That’s just one of many definitions of her,” Smith agreed, his smile fading bit by bit.
In his bassinet, Adam groaned, then wailed, trying out his vocal cords, learning to cry. Fearful, Anna asked Smith to bring back her mother, who, she hoped, would know what to do. But, even as Smith fled down the hallway, it was strange how the mothering instinct took hold of her. One minute, she was fascinated with Smith’s story, doubled over with flirtation and intrigue. And the next, it was as though Smith wasn’t anywhere nearby at all. Her body and mind were programmed to help Adam. And that was just the way things had to be.
But as Adam fell back asleep in Anna’s arms ten minutes later, Anna returned her thoughts to Smith, whose mother, in the wake of his birth, hadn’t found herself with any real mothering instincts at all. It terrified her, imagining mothers across the world without the innate care required for their baby’s health.
“You’re already a natural,” Julia said, stroking Anna’s hair as though she’d heard Anna’s anxious thoughts rolling around her head. “This is day one of the rest of your life. And you’re doing great.”
Chapter Eight
Last April
Violet found it ridiculous that she was required to hold a wake. Only a few days ago (days that seemed unreal and totally nightmarish), her darling son, Dean, had fallen off a cliff on Orcas Island and passed away. Now, for social reasons that dictated how you acted and how you were seen by your peers, she was stationed at the kitchen counter, making one hundred and fifty tiny sandwiches with tuna, roast beef, or roasted tomato with cheese and checking on her wine, beer, and spirits order, which was set to arrive within the hour. She hadn’t cried since last night, alone in her bedroom, and she’d begun to ask herself if she’d run out of tears. Maybe you were only allowed to do so much mourning before something inside you broke.
Midway through her seventy-fifth sandwich, Violet heard footsteps in the living room. She retreated from the counter to find her husband, Larry, still in his boxers and a ratty T-shirt, a collapsed heap on the couch. He hadn’t showered in several days, and she could smell his body odor from the doorway.
Violet had once read a novel in which a married couple had fallen more in love in the wake of a family member’s death. She’d considered it romantic, the idea that two people could come together and build each other up in their times of darkness. But now that she and Larry had suffered a traumatic loss of their own, Violet wasn’t sure how something like “falling in love” would ever be possible again. Larry could hardly look her in the eye.
Even before this happened, Violet and Larry didn’t have the most passionate of marriages. They ate meals together; they watched television together. They complained about their city’s politics and the ever-rising gas prices together. But now, Violet suspected something had irrevocably broken between them. There was no repairing it.
On the drive to the funeral that afternoon, Violet babbled softly about Anna, mostly to herself and whoever wanted to listen. Anna was Dean’s girlfriend, the young woman who’d dragged him into the woods of Orcas Island. If it wasn’t for her, Dean would still be alive today. Violet felt that fact deep in her bones.
“I don’t know how I’ll be able to look at her,” Violet was saying of Anna. “I don’t even know why she feels the need to come. The two of them hardly knew each other. They dated for less than a year.”
“They were engaged, Violet,” Larry shot back, his tone harsh. “They were planning a life together.”
Violet wanted to protest, to remind Larry that young people got engaged and broke up all the time. It was just a matter of passing the days away for them.
Violet had no memory of the funeral. Even as she sat in the pew and listened to the dull babble of the pastor, she sensed the words flowing in, through, and out of her without her making sense of them. She was reminded of being a teenager in science class, blinking up at the teacher, pretending to listen. How many hours of her life had she wasted like that?
After the funeral, Dean’s girlfriend told her she didn’t plan to come to the wake—that she needed to return home to Nantucket. Violet allowed herself to get angry about it for a moment; she felt it flash across her chest. But when the anger passed, she felt only gratefulness that Anna got the hint and headed out. She didn’t want to see Anna lurking through the crowd at Dean’s family home. Anna was the last person to see Dean alive. If this was a thriller novel, Violet thought, Anna would have been the unassuming murderer. The one they took down at the very end. “It was her all along!”
At the wake, Violet tried to joke about this to her sister, who gave her a look that told her this was inappropriate to say.
“We know you’re going through a hard time, Vi,” her sister said. “But be careful what you say to other people right now, okay?”
Violet got the hint. Nobody actually cared about her state of mind. Rather, they cared about how her grief looked to outsiders. And if she wasn’t grieving “correctly,” then they wanted to give her a wide berth. Acting differently, especially in a place like Ohio, wasn’t rewarded. You had to fit the mold.
As Violet wandered through the wake, saying hello to people and trying her best to look the part, she couldn’t help but live through hundreds, if not thousands, of memories of Dean. Wasn’t it right here, on this Turkish rug, that Dean had taken his first steps? Hadn’t Dean burst through the front door thousands of times, throwing his backpack to the ground before he grabbed a snack in the kitchen? And there, crying in the corner, was Dean’s high school girlfriend, whom Violet had never really liked. She’d never seemed good enough for Dean. Now, though, Violet wished Dean would just have married her when he’d had the chance. He never should have run off to Seattle. He should have stayed here, where it was safe.
Miraculously, Larry had showered, shaved, and donned a suit for the funeral and wake. He was soft-spoken yet frequently smiling, walking through the crowd and greeting guests. He looked as though he’d just stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine. Violet thought this was yet another hardship of getting older as a woman. Men in their mid-forties gave off waves of confidence; they looked good when they threw on a suit and put a little gel in their hair. By contrast, Violet had to go through the wringer of face creams, Botox, Pilates, perfumes, and makeup in order to prove she cared about herself. And even then, she was a woman in her forties—which frankly made her less desirable than ever.
It was inappropriate to think about such things at her son’s wake. But it was also hard not to remember her own demise now that her son was gone. Time was so fleeting.
Violet returned to the kitchen to restock a bucket of ice. Her sister scampered after her, saying, “Let me do that, Vi. Sit down.” But didn’t these people understand? Violet felt better and more useful when she had something to do with her hands. She was a mother. She was accustomed to being busy.
With her sister busy with the ice bucket, Violet let her hands fall to her sides and gazed out the side window, which faced west. The gorgeous day in April reminded her of Dean’s old baseball games. Her heart felt crunched.
