Chapter 6
March 4
“Your mother called last night,” Bee said
at the breakfast table, her head buried behind the Seattle
Times. Her face was expressionless, as it always was when she
spoke of my mother.
“Mom called . . . here?” I asked, applying a
generous slather of butter to my toast. “That’s strange. How did
she know where I was?”
My mom and I weren’t close, not in the traditional
sense. Sure, we talked on the phone, and I’d visit her and my dad
in Portland often enough, but there was always a part of her that
seemed distant and closed off. Our relationship was tinged with an
unspoken disapproval, one I could never understand. She’d been
nearly heartbroken when I chose creative writing as an emphasis in
college. “Writing is such an unhappy path,” she said. “Do you
really want to do that to yourself?” At the time, I shrugged it
off. What did my mother know about the literary life? Yet, the
words followed me through the years, and haunted me quietly until I
began to wonder if she was right.
And as I wrestled with my mother’s censure, her
natural relationship with Danielle, who was two years younger than
me, did not go unnoticed. When I got engaged to Joel, I asked her
if I could wear Grandma Jane’s veil for my wedding, the one I’d
clipped to my hair during dress-up sessions a hundred times as a
girl. Instead of giving me her blessing, however, Mom shook her
head. “No, I don’t think that veil is right for your face,” she
said in protest. “Besides, it has a tear.” I was hurt, but even
more so three years later when Danielle walked down the aisle
wearing the lace veil, perfectly pressed and mended.
“She called your apartment, and your friend
Annabelle told her you were here,” Bee said. I could hear that tone
in her voice, the one that said she took pleasure in the fact that
my mother was out of the loop on my life.
“Did she say whether it was important?”
“No,” she said, turning a page of the newspaper.
“She just wants you to call her back when you can.”
“OK,” I said, taking a sip of coffee. I paused and
then looked up again. “Bee, what is it with you and my mom?”
Her eyes widened. I knew I’d caught her off guard.
After all, I’d never before asked her about family matters. This
was new territory for both of us, but there was something about
where I was and what I’d gone through that made me feel
bolder.
She set the paper down. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve sensed some tension over the years,” I
said. “I’ve always wondered why the two of you don’t like each
other.”
“I love your mother dearly, always have.”
I scrunched my nose. “It just doesn’t add up,” I
said. “Then why do you barely speak?”
She sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ll take the short version, then,” I said,
leaning in closer, clasping my hands around my knees.
She nodded. “Your mother used to come stay with me
as a girl,” she told me. “And I loved having her. So did your Uncle
Bill. But one year things changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” she said, carefully choosing her words,
“your mother started asking questions about her family.”
“What about her family?”
“She wanted to know about her mother.”
“Grandma Jane?”
Bee looked out the window at the water. Grandma
Jane had passed away about ten years ago. Grandpa was devastated,
and so was my mom, though she’d had a complicated relationship with
her mother. I’d felt a little indifferent about Grandma’s passing,
as awful as that sounds. It wasn’t that she was unkind to me. Every
year on my birthday, even after I graduated from college, she sent
a birthday card, with well wishes written in the most beautiful
cursive handwriting—so elegant that I needed my dad’s help to
decipher it. She displayed photos of my sister and me on her
mantel. Still, there was something missing about Grandma Jane.
Something I could never quite put my finger on.
She and my grandfather left the island when my mom
was young and moved to Richland, a city in Eastern Washington
that’s about as exciting as boiled broccoli. I once overheard Bee
talking to Uncle Bill about how they’d been “hiding” there for too
many years, that Grandma Jane wouldn’t let Grandpa move back to his
home, the island.
Every year we’d visit Richland for Christmas, but I
never wanted to go. I loved my grandpa, but with my grandma, well,
there was just something forced about it that even a child could
detect—the sideways glances she’d send my way at the dinner table
or the way she’d stare at me when I spoke. Once, when I was eleven,
my parents left my sister and me in Richland for the weekend while
they went on a trip. Grandma offered us a box of her old clothes
from the 1940s, and of course, Danielle and I relished the
opportunity to play dress-up. But when I put on a red gown with
lace around the bodice, Grandma looked at me, horrified. I can
still picture her standing in the doorway of the living room,
shaking her head. “Red is not your color, dear,” she said. I felt
embarrassed and awkward. I pulled the white gloves off my hands and
unclasped the costume jewelry from my neck, trying my best to choke
back the tears.
Then Grandma walked toward me and put her arm
around my shoulder. “You know what you need?” she said.
“What?” I sniffed.
“A new hairdo.”
Danielle squealed. “A perm! Give her a perm!”
Grandma smiled. “No, not a perm. Emily needs a new
color.” She held my chin in her hand and then nodded. “Yes, I’ve
always pictured you as a brunette.”
I numbly followed Grandma into the bathroom, where
she pulled out a box of hair color and directed me to sit on a
little silk dressing chair near the bathtub. “Hold still,” she
said, combing my hair into sections and methodically applying a
black paste that smelled of ammonia. Two hours later, my blond
locks were so dark, I cried when I looked in the mirror.
I shuddered at the memory of it. “You grew up with
Grandma Jane, didn’t you, Bee?”
“Yes,” she said. “And your grandfather, too. Right
here on the island.”
“So what was it that you said about Grandma that
drove my mom away?”
Bee looked lost in thought. “Your mother took on a
very ambitious project when she was young,” she said. “When her
efforts failed, she decided that she didn’t want to be a part of
the family anymore, at least not in the same way she had been. She
stopped coming to the island. Eight years passed before I saw her
again. That was when you were born. I drove down to Portland to see
you in the hospital, but your mother had changed by then.”
Bee drifted off again, retreating into her
memories, but I was quick to pull her back. “What do you mean,
changed?” I said.
She shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it
other than to say that it was as if the very life had been sucked
out of her,” she said. “I could see it in her eyes. She had
changed.”
I shook my head, confused. At that moment, I wished
I could talk to my grandfather. He had been in a nursing home in
Spokane for years now, and I felt a pang of regret in my heart when
I realized that it had been at least two years since I’d visited
him. The last time my mother had made the trip, she said he hadn’t
recognized her—his own daughter. She said he kept calling her by a
different name, and that he’d said something to make her cry. Even
so, I was overcome with a sudden urge to see him.
“Bee,” I said cautiously, “what project did my
mother take on?”
She shook her head. “After the blowup with your
mother, Bill made me promise not to speak of it again, for her
sake, and for all of us.”
I frowned. “So you’re not going to tell me?”
She clasped her hands together in determination.
“I’m sorry, dear. It’s water under the bridge now.”
“I’m just trying to understand,” I said, feeling my
frustration rise up into a flush on my cheeks. “All those years,
all those summers we visited—this is why my mom hardly spoke to
you?”
“I don’t really know anymore,” she said. “Nobody
stays the same. But she still brought you girls here. I will always
give her credit for that. She knew how much you enjoyed your
summers on the island, as she once did. And no matter what
resentment she has for me, I think she managed to put it aside for
the sake of you and Danielle.”
I sighed and looked out the window. The sound
looked angry, its waves churning and swirling and then lashing down
on the cement bulkhead with such ferocity that salt water
ricocheted off the windows. It didn’t seem fair that Bee could keep
these secrets from me. Whether it was painful or not, didn’t I
deserve to know this family story she spoke of?
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, patting my arm.
I sighed and looked away. Bee had always been a
stubborn woman, and I’d learned long ago to pay attention to her
cues, and to leave some subjects well enough alone.
Bee nodded to herself, as though she was
remembering something—perhaps something disturbing. I studied her
face, hoping to get a glimpse of whatever she was harboring inside.
The light from the window amplified the deep wrinkles that
crisscrossed her forehead. I was reminded of something I often
forget: Bee was getting old. Very old. And it was apparent to me,
for the first time, that my aunt was carrying something heavy on
her shoulders—something troubling, definitely, and, I worried,
something dark.
I had told Bee that I was heading to the beach for
some quiet time. What I hadn’t told her, however, was that I was
bringing the diary with me. I walked along the shore until I found
a log to lean against—not exactly a comfortable sofa, but there was
enough beach grass growing around it to cushion my back a bit.
Feeling the cool breeze hit my skin, I closed the top button on my
sweater and picked up the page where I had left off, eager to dive
in again, but then my phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw
that it was Annabelle.
“OK,” she said, “so I figured that you have either
been off having a hot island fling or that you died.”
“Alive and well,” I said. “Sorry for not calling. I
guess I’m getting kind of wrapped up in things here.”
“And by ‘things,’ do you mean a member of the male
species?”
I giggled. “Well, sort of.”
“Good lord, Emily, tell me everything!”
I told her about Greg and Jack.
“I love that you haven’t mentioned Joel once,” she
said.
My heart sank, the way it did whenever anyone
mentioned his name.
“Why did you have to say that?” I said.
“Say what?”
“Why did you have to bring him up?”
“Sorry, Em,” she said. “OK, change of subject: How
are things going over there?”
I sighed. “Wonderfully. There’s just something
about this place.” The seagulls were flapping and squawking
overhead, and I wondered if she could hear them.
“I knew it would be better than Cancún,” she
said.
“You were right. This is exactly what I
needed.”
I told her about last night’s beach kiss with Greg,
and she squealed. “And why did you not call me at three in the
morning to tell me this news?”
“Because you would have screamed at me for waking
you up.”
“Yes, I would have,” she said. “But I would have
still wanted to know.”
“Fine,” I said. “After my next kiss, if there is a
next kiss, I will ring you. Satisfied?”
“Yes,” she replied. “And I’m going to want
details.”
“I can do details.”
“You have about three more weeks there,
right?”
It seemed too short. And instantly I felt like the
child who panics when she starts seeing back-to-school ads on TV in
July: Don’t they know that school doesn’t start for two whole
months? “I have a lot to figure out before I come home,” I
said.
“You’ll piece it together, Em,” she said. “I know
you will.”
“I don’t know, I guess I get the feeling that
there’s something bigger going on here—something about my aunt and
my family. A family secret. And, oh, there’s this diary I found in
the guest room.”
“A diary?” She sounded intrigued.
“It’s an old diary that someone kept, from 1943, or
maybe the start of a novel. I’m not really sure. Honestly, I feel a
little strange reading it. But I have this haunting feeling that
I’m supposed to be reading it—that I found it for a reason. Is that
weird?”
“No,” Annabelle answered quickly. “Not weird at
all. I once found my mother’s diary from high school and read the
whole thing cover to cover. I learned more about my mom in those
hours reading under the covers with a flashlight than I have in the
thirty-three years I’ve known her.” She paused. “Who did you say
wrote it? Bee?”
“That’s just it,” I said, “I don’t know. But I
haven’t been this engaged in a book in years.”
“Maybe you are meant to read it, then,”
Annabelle said. “Wait, didn’t you say you had a date with
what’s-his-name tomorrow night?”
“Yes—well, I’m having dinner with Jack, at his
house,” I replied. “So, yeah, I guess you could call it a
date.”
“Emily, if a man cooks for a woman, that, my dear,
is a date.”
“OK, I guess when you put it that way. And what
about you? Any progress with Evan?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I think it’s sunk. I will
just wait patiently for my Edward.”
We both knew that according to Annabelle’s
research, Edward is the name of the most reliable and
longest-lasting husband.
“Oh, by the way, Annabelle,” I said, “just
curious—what does your research say about the name Elliot?”
“Why? Is this mystery bachelor number three?”
I laughed. “No, no, I, um, know someone with the
name here, and I was just wondering.”
I could hear her fumbling around at her desk. “Ah,
here it is,” she said. “Elliot, yes—wow, it’s a very good
name. Average length of marriage for Elliots is forty-two years. It
still doesn’t beat Edward at forty-four, but Elliot is about as
good as you can get.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling. When I hung up the
phone, I realized that I had forgotten to ask her about the names
Jack and Greg. But for some reason, that didn’t matter to me as
much as Elliot’s name did. I wanted to know, on Esther’s behalf.
And I was certain that she’d be pleased with the answer.
Bobby came home at ten to nine, just as he said he
would. Bobby was always on time. He took off his blue suit jacket
and hung it up in the closet, then walked to the kitchen and
greeted me with a kiss.
“I missed you,” he said.
This was what he always said.
Then I rewarmed his dinner and sat down with him at
the table, watching him spoon the food into his mouth and listening
to him recount the details of his day.
This was how our evenings always went.
And then we went to bed, and because it was
Wednesday, Bobby rolled over and tugged at the bodice of my
nightgown. Bobby always wanted to make love on Wednesdays. But
tonight I didn’t tense up. I didn’t count to sixty and pray for it
to be over. Instead, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was with
Elliot.
Three years before I married Bobby, I was engaged
to Elliot, and for a while, all was right with the world. I
remember the chill in the air the day of the clambake. I didn’t
know it then, but it signaled the beginning of the end.
Frances, one of my best friends, suggested I wear
gloves. But my other best friend, Rose, came to my defense: “And
hide that ring?” she said. “Nonsense. You can’t cover up a ring
like that. It would be sacrilegious.”
We laughed and primped and powdered our noses. An
hour later, we made our way, arm in arm, to the event of the
season, the one that drew every man, woman, baby, and child to the
beach in Eagle Harbor. Picnic tables and campfires dotted the
shore, where freshly harvested butter clams and Dungeness crab
roasted near pots of fresh chowder.
On the beach, little strands of white globe lights
crisscrossed overhead, and as was the tradition of the island
clambake, there was music and dancing. The three of us cheered when
“Moonlight Serenade,” our favorite recording by Glenn Miller,
sounded over the loudspeakers. I started to sway to the music, and
as I did I felt Elliot’s strong arms behind me. He kissed me on the
neck. “Hi, my love,” he whispered, leading me to the dance floor.
Our bodies moved in unison as the moon shone down on us.
When the song ended, we walked to the bench where
Frances was sitting alone. “Where’s Rose?” I asked.
Frances shrugged. “Probably off looking for
Will.”
I detected hurt in her voice, so I let go of
Elliot’s hand and reached for hers.
“Let’s go have some fun, shall we, girls?” Elliot
said. He offered us each an arm, and we obliged. Frances perked up
immediately.
Will and Rose joined us on a blanket that Elliot
had spread out on the beach. We drank beer and ate clams out of tin
bowls and reveled in the beauty of the crisp, star-filled
night.
Elliot reached into his dark green knapsack and
pulled out his camera, fiddling with the flash for a second before
gesturing at me to look up. “I don’t want to ever forget the way
you look tonight,” he said, making one, then two, then three snaps
with his finger. Elliot was never more than a few feet away from
his camera. He could capture a scene in black and white with such
poignancy that it almost made you weak.
Looking back, I wish I had prevented Elliot from
leaving that night. I wish I could have made time stand still. But
shortly before ten p.m., he turned to me and said, “I have to go to
Seattle tonight. There’s some business I have to attend to. Can I
see you tomorrow night?”
I didn’t want him to go, but I nodded and kissed
him. “I love you,” I said, lingering in the moment a few seconds
longer before he stood up, brushed the sand off his legs, and began
walking to the ferry dock, whistling, as he always did.
The next morning, Frances, Rose, and I caught an
early ferry to Seattle to do some shopping. Rose wanted to go to
Frederick & Nelson to get a dress she’d seen in the latest
issue of “Vogue.” Frances needed new shoes. I was just happy to get
off the island. I liked being in the city. I must have told Elliot
a hundred times how I dreamed of a big apartment downtown with
windows overlooking the sound. I’d paint the walls mauve, and the
drapes would be cream with little sashes holding them back from the
windows, just like in the magazines.
And then, walking out onto the sidewalk on Marion
Street in front of the Landon Park Hotel—a big brick building with
two enormous columns in front—was Elliot. He was with someone, but
it wasn’t until the traffic cleared a few seconds later that I
could see whom. She was blond and tall, nearly as tall as Elliot. I
watched as he wrapped his arms around her in an embrace that lasted
an eternity. I was close enough to hear their conversation—well,
just bits and pieces of it, but that’s all I needed to hear.
“Here’s the key to the apartment,” the woman said,
handing him something, which he immediately put in his
pocket.
He winked at her, which sent a chill through my
body. I knew that wink. “Will I see you tonight?” he asked.
The noise of a passing truck muffled her response.
Then he helped her into a cab and waved as it drove away.
“Will I see you tonight?” My mind suddenly turned
to a novel I’d read years prior. Never before had a heroine in a
book spoken to me in the way Jane had in “Years of Grace.”
My eyes widened. Years of Grace! I shook my
head in wonderment before turning back to the page.
The fact that Jane, married to Stephen, had pined
for another man, going so far as to let herself feel the passions
of love, a certain betrayal of her marriage vows, prompted my
mother to call the book “rubbish.” I told her it had won the
Pulitzer Prize and that my high school English literature teacher
had recommended it to me, but it was no use. Novels like these, she
said, were filled with fanciful, dangerous ideas for a young woman,
so I was forced to keep it hidden under my mattress.
As I stood there on the sidewalk that day, it all
came rushing back: Jane’s story, now so painfully intertwined with
mine. There was tenderness in Elliot’s voice when he spoke to this
woman. I thought of the ties that bind us together, the vows we
make, and break. If Jane could give her hand to Stephen and still
love another, Elliot could give his word to me and still pine for
someone else. It was possible. It seemed poetic in the story—Jane’s
love for Andre, and for Jimmy, a midlife love—but now, seeing it
played out before my eyes, as an outsider, it only felt wrong.
Could one not love one person for eternity? Could one not keep his
or her promise? Elliot could have any woman he wanted, and until
that moment, I’d believed he wanted only me. I’d never been so
wrong.
The letter. I remembered the perplexing letter Jane
had received from Andre years after their declaration of love. It
was all in the story, all tragically detailed. He had broken her
heart with his decision to go to Italy instead of returning to
Chicago for her. It is why she agreed to marry Stephen, an action
that forever changed the trajectory of their lives. It is why she
wrote him that cold, blunt letter shortly before the war broke out,
snuffing out any further possibility of their love, even if that
love still smoldered in her heart for years to come. “When you
killed things,” Jane had said, responding with decisiveness to
Andre’s actions, “you killed them quickly.” And I knew, at that
moment, what needed to be done.
Rose and Frances stood by me in silence, each
holding one of my arms, to steady me or to prevent me from darting
across the street, or both. But I broke free from their grasp and
ran, without caring if I’d be hit, across the street to where
Elliot was standing in front of a newspaper vending machine.
I pried the ring, the one Elliot had given me last
month, with its enormous pear-shaped diamond nestled between two
red rubies, off of my left hand. It was way too extravagant, and I
had told him so, but he wanted me to have the best, he had said,
even if it meant going into debt for the rest of his life, which I
think is what he did. None of that mattered now, though, not after
seeing him here with another woman and hearing him say those
incriminating words.
“Hello, Elliot,” I said coldly, once I’d made my
way to the other side of Marion Street.
He looked at once startled and at ease, as though
he had everything and nothing to hide. My face felt hot. “How could
you?”
A confused expression clouded his face, and then he
shook his head. “No, no, you have the wrong impression,” he said.
“She’s just a friend.”
“A friend?” I said. “So why did you lie and say you
had business to attend to? This is clearly not business.”
Elliot looked at his feet. “She’s just an old
friend, Esther,” he said. “I swear.”
I clutched my necklace tightly. It was just a
little gold starfish that dangled from a simple chain. I’d won it
at the street fair years ago, and it had become my good luck charm.
I needed all the luck I could get then, because I knew he was
lying. I had seen the way she looked at him, the flirtation in her
mannerisms, the way they embraced. His hands had been low on her
waist. She was more than a friend. Any fool could see that.
I regretted what I was about to do before I did it,
but I proceeded just the same. I squeezed the ring in my hand into
a tight fist and threw it as far as I could down the sidewalk. We
both watched as it skipped along the pavement, until it sputtered
and rolled—right into a storm drain.
“It’s over,” I said. “Please don’t ever speak to me
again. I don’t think I could bear it.”
I saw Rose and Frances staring in horror from the
other side of the street. It felt like a Herculean effort to walk
back to them and away from Elliot. Because, you see, I knew I was
walking away, forever, from our life together.
“Wait, Esther!” I could hear him shouting from
across the street, through traffic. “Wait, let me explain! Don’t
leave like this!”
But I told myself to keep walking. I had to. I just
had to.