CHAPTER 8
Maria
I weeded my garden every day. Although it was only late June, I could already see weeds popping up through the mulch Julie and Lucy had spread for me. Most people hated weeding, but I didn’t. I loved being in the sun—the Italian portion of my blood, no doubt. Maybe I had more wrinkles than I would if I hadn’t spent so much of my life outdoors, but I didn’t care. It was a privilege to grow old, and not everyone got to enjoy it. I was grateful for every minute I was given.
I liked keeping the flower beds neat and orderly, scratching out the weeds from around the red begonias and pink peonies, making order out of chaos. Julie was exactly like me in that regard. Lucy was another story altogether. She was sloppy and complicated. I tried not to think of where Isabel would have fallen in that continuum of neatness to messiness. Thinking about things like that could drive you crazy.
That morning in late June, I was sitting on the little seat-onrollers Julie had bought for me, working on the flower bed near the front steps, when a car pulled into my driveway. It was a big car with a long hood, the kind of car an old man would drive, and sure enough, I watched as a man about my age got out of the driver’s side.
I set down my trowel and stood up slowly. That’s one thing I’d learned—I had to take my time getting to my feet after working in the sun, or everything would go dark for a few seconds. I took off my gardening gloves and dropped them to the mulch as I watched the old man retrieve a cane from the car and begin to hobble toward me.
“Hello,” I called out, taking a few steps across my lawn.
He waved at me. “Hello, Maria,” he said, and my mind started the frantic racing it did when someone unfamiliar seemed to know me. My memory was not bad at all, but when I’d meet people out of context, I often couldn’t place them. Did I know this man from church? From Micky D’s? I shaded my eyes with my hand, trying to see him more clearly. He was tall and nearly gaunt, his white hair very thin on top. He limped when he walked toward me and I knew he needed that cane and that it wasn’t just for show. He looked like a complete stranger to me.
He smiled as he neared me, and although there was something familiar in the curve of his lips, I still couldn’t place him.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” he said, without reproach.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t,” I said. “Do you go to Holy Trinity?”
He held his left hand toward me, his right hand leaning heavily on his cane. “I’m Ross Chapman,” he said.
I had stood up slowly enough, of that I was certain, yet my head went so light I thought I might pass out. I took his hand more to steady myself than to shake it and I could not seem to find my voice.
“It’s been a long, long time,” he said.
I managed to nod. “Yes,” I said.
“You are still a stunning woman,” he said, even though I was wearing my gardening overalls and probably had dirt smeared on my face.
“Thank you.” I couldn’t bring myself to reciprocate. Ross Chapman had once been a very handsome man, but in the fortyone years since I’d last seen him in person, he had withered and paled. After we left the summer house for the last time in 1962, I would see his picture occasionally in the papers and on TV, since he was a prominent figure in New Jersey and had even run for governor. But he looked nothing like that robust politician now.
“Is this how you spend your days?” he asked, motioning toward the flower bed. “Working in your garden?”
“I also work at McDonald’s in Garwood and I’m a volunteer at the hospital,” I said.
“McDonald’s?” he laughed. “That’s marvelous. You always knew how to keep busy,” he said, nodding with what I guessed was approval.
I wasn’t sure what to do with him. We stood for a moment in an awkward silence. I didn’t want to invite him in, but I saw no alternative.
“Would you like to come in?” I asked finally. “Have something to drink?”
“I’d like that,” he said.
I walked up the front steps and inside the house, holding the door open for him. I could see that the four concrete steps were a bit of a struggle for him and I looked away, not wanting to embarrass him by noticing his frailty.
“Why don’t you sit here?” I motioned toward the armchair in the living room, then rattled off the things I could offer him to drink.
“Just ice water,” he said.
In the kitchen, I took my time getting out the glasses, filling them with ice. I wished he had not come. I could see no point to this visit. I could have quite happily lived out the rest of my days without seeing my old neighbor again.
When I returned to the living room, I saw that he had not taken a seat as I’d suggested. Instead, he was looking at the pictures on the mantel. There was one of the four of us—Charles and myself and Julie and Lucy, when the girls were fifteen and eleven. It was the last picture I had of Charles; he’d dropped dead from a heart attack in our kitchen only a few weeks after it had been taken. Then there were Julie’s and Lucy’s old college-graduation pictures and, next to them, Shannon’s senior picture. Ross lifted that last one up and looked toward me, a smile on his lips.
“A granddaughter?” he asked.
I nodded. “Shannon,” I said. “She’s Julie’s.” I thought of telling him more about her, how she’d been accepted to Oberlin, how accomplished she was already, but I didn’t want to extend my conversation with Ross any longer than I had to.
“Lovely.” Then he poked a finger at Julie’s picture. “That’s Julie, right? She was the sharp one. The one with the brains and the spunk.”
His words jolted me. Julie had brains, all right, but her spunk had gone out the window long ago. He was right, though. When he knew my girls, Julie was the one who’d had the most gumption.
“Yes,” I said, to keep things short and simple. “She was always up to something.”
Ross limped over to the armchair and sat down. “I have one granddaughter and a great-granddaughter,” he said. He took the glass I held out for him and looked up at me. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
I set a coaster on the end table next to him, then sat on the hassock in front of the other armchair. “Why are you here?” I asked. The back of my neck ached a bit, and I rubbed it. My skin was slick with perspiration, more from anxiety than the heat.
“Do you know that my Ethan and your Julie are meeting for lunch today?” Ross asked.
“What?” I’d been about to take a sip of my water and nearly dropped the glass. “Why on earth?” As far as I knew, Julie and Ethan Chapman had had no contact since 1962.
Ross shrugged. “Ethan just said he was thinking about her and felt like getting together. They planned to meet in Spring Lake.”
“Well,” I said, recovering from the shock. “Good for them. They were friends when they were little.”
“Anyhow,” Ross said, “when Ethan told me he was going to see Julie, it started me thinking about you…about your family. About how I…” He set his glass down on the coaster and looked directly into my eyes. “I mishandled things, Maria. In every which way. I—”
“Water under the bridge, Ross,” I said. “It’s not necessary to rehash it.”
“But I think it is,” he said. I recognized his earnest look as one he’d employed when running for governor. It was a look that made you want to trust him.
“I’m old and tired,” he said. “I really doubt I’ll live much longer and I just want to make amends to any people I might have hurt during my lifetime.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. I wondered if he had cancer. He was so thin. “Are you sick?”
He shook his head, brushing my question away with his hand. “I lost Joan last year,” he said, then looked away from me, toward the pictures on the mantel. “And Ned…Ned died just a few weeks ago.”
“Oh,” I said. I understood then how his world had been altered. Ned must have been close to sixty, but that didn’t matter when it came to burying your child. “I’m sorry, Ross.”
“It gave me a new understanding of how you felt when Isabel died.”
“Yes,” I said.
“So, I wanted to talk to you about…I just wanted to apologize.”
“And now you have and that’s fine and enough,” I said. I didn’t like the sympathy I felt for this old man. He was a politician, first and foremost, capable of talking out of both sides of his mouth.
He looked at me so long and hard that I had to look away. I knew he wanted to say more, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it. So I stood up.
“Come on,” I said, holding my hand out to help him from the chair. He’d hardly touched his water, but he had not come here for the refreshments.
He clutched my hand hard as he struggled to his feet. I let him hold on to my arm as I walked with him back down the front steps and out to his car. Neither of us spoke, although I knew there was a lot we could have said if we’d had the courage. I opened the driver’s-side door of his car for him. It made me nervous to think of someone in his condition driving. I had not even asked him where he lived, how far he had to drive.
“What did Ned die from?” I asked, before closing the car door.
“Drinking,” Ross said. “Drowning his sorrows. I don’t think he ever got over losing Isabel.”
I winced at that, then closed the door. I watched him drive away before returning to my seat in the garden. I pulled on my gloves and drew the trowel through the soil, barely able to see what I was doing for the tears. I don’t think he ever got over losing Isabel.
“Neither have I, Ross,” I said out loud. “Neither have I.”