—
I have written about this before, but I should just say that William’s father had been a German soldier and he had been captured in a ditch in France. He was sent as a prisoner of war to work on a potato farm in Maine, and he had fallen in love with the potato farmer’s wife—this was Catherine, William’s mother. Catherine had left the potato farmer and run off with the POW from Germany, although that took a year or so because William’s father had had to go back to Europe after the war and do reparations.
During that time Catherine, it turned out, had a baby girl with the potato farmer, and then she left them both, her baby daughter and her potato farmer husband, because William’s father had come back to America, to Massachusetts. And William had not known about this other child—this half-sister called Lois Bubar—until long after his mother had died, he learned about it, as I said, last year.
William’s father had died when William was fourteen; Catherine never remarried, she had doted on William, who thought he was an only child.
ii
It was a few days after William had walked to the guard tower that I was looking at my email when I saw something forwarded to me by my publicist. Do you know this woman? my publicist had written.
It was an email from Lois Bubar, William’s half-sister. She had sent it to my publicist asking that it be forwarded to me. In just a paragraph she said that she had been thinking of me during this pandemic, she hoped very much that I was all right in New York City and that William was all right too. She ended by saying, “It was so pleasant to have met you that day, and ever since I have felt very sorry that I did not agree to see William. If you speak to him, could you please tell him that, and tell him that I wish only good things for him. Please tell him I hope he is safe. Sincerely, Lois Bubar.”
* * *
—
I did not especially care about Lois Bubar right then, I will admit that. It was Becka that I could not stop thinking about.
* * *
—
But when William came back from his walk, I showed him the email, and I was a little surprised by his response. He sat down and stared out the window at the ocean and did not say a word. “William?” I finally asked, and he turned to look at me; he looked slightly stupefied. “I’m going to write to her,” he said, and I said, “Okay.” He spent the afternoon writing drafts of an email to this woman; only when Becka called did he put his computer down.
* * *
—
You can imagine how taken up I was with everything that was going on with Becka, but as time went by Becka sounded fairly good each time I spoke to her, increasingly so. She told me she had not been happy for a long time, and I said, How long? And she said she couldn’t even remember, but she said that she didn’t like Trey, and I said, “Okay, honey.” She said she had been on the phone to her therapist twice a week; William was paying for that, and Becka sometimes quoted the therapist; she had seen this woman, this therapist, before, and had now started back up with her. I suddenly remembered how when Becka had seen this woman years earlier—after her father and I had split up—Becka had said to me one day, “Lauren says that you let Dad manipulate you.” I never understood that, but I had not said anything about it.
One of these days in Maine when I was talking on the phone to Becka she said, “Mom, Trey was jealous of you,” and I said, What in the world do you mean? And she said, “Your career.” Then Becka added, “You know, his poetry sucks.” And I remembered how awkward I’d always felt when I had gone with William and Estelle and David to a few of Trey’s poetry readings, because privately I thought his poetry was so bad, and so now I said, “Let him go, Becka. Good riddance.” And Becka said, “He thought you were just an older white woman writing about older white women.” And I have to tell you, that stung me a bit. And I said, “And he is a young white guy writing about— Oh, never mind.” But it distressed me; I was embarrassed.
* * *
—
“He’s just an asswipe,” said William when I told him this. “She’s had her life saved by this, I’m telling you.”
* * *
—
And it seemed maybe she had. Chrissy and Michael were clearly being good to her. But as I spoke to her she seemed increasingly distant from me, and one night she said, “Mom, this whole thing is exactly what I needed.”
iii
And then one morning when I went out for my walk I saw a bright yellow dandelion growing by the edge of the driveway near the bottom of the hill. I stared at it; I could not stop staring at it. I leaned over and touched the top of its soft head. I thought: Oh my God! After that I began to see more and more dandelions on my walks. Dandelions had grown along the edge of the long dirt road we had lived on when I was a child, and I had picked a small bouquet of them for my mother one day when I was really little, and she was furious because they had stained the top of a new dress she had just made for me. But they still—after all these years—made my heart open with wonder.
* * *
Bob Burgess showed up again, this time with his wife, Margaret, and she made me nervous at first, I think because she was nervous. It was still cold, but there was a slice of sun that fell across the grass our lawn chairs were on. Margaret and Bob, both wearing homemade masks, had come over right after lunch, and so William was there, and the four of us sat on the small lawn—I was freezing, even in my new winter coat—far away from each other in lawn chairs. Margaret was a shapeless woman—I mean she seemed to be shapeless in her coat—but she had amazing eyes, very lively behind her glasses, and even with her mask on you could see her energy streaming out at you. It was the beginning of May by now, but still so cold. She asked if I needed anything, and I said, No, thank you.
And then she suddenly said, “I’m intimidated to meet you.”
I was so surprised. I said, “Intimidated? By me? Oh Margaret. I’m just…just me.”
“Yes, I can see that now,” she said, and that confused me. I wanted to be talking to Bob, as William was, I did not want to be stuck with Margaret. But she asked about my girls, her eyes were very sparkly as she asked about them, so I told her about Becka’s husband and how Becka and Chrissy and Michael were all in Connecticut together, and she seemed to really listen, I could see her listening, and she responded exactly right somehow. I cannot remember what she said, but I remember thinking, Oh, she is right here with me.
She told me that she was a Unitarian minister, and I asked her what that was like, and she told me all the things she did, the Alcoholics Anonymous group that had to stop meeting on Tuesday nights, they Zoomed the meetings now, she was afraid it was not as effective, and she told me how she Zoomed her services. It was interesting to think of her life, although I could not get a real sense of it.
They stayed an hour and then stood up to go. Bob said, “Hey, Lucy, how’d you like our little snowstorm?” And I said I hadn’t liked it at all. “Can’t stand it,” Bob said. “Just can’t stand that stuff when it comes in May, for crying out loud.”
Margaret said, “Bob has a tendency to be negative.” But she said it cheerfully, touching him lightly on his shoulder. I said I probably had that tendency too.
* * *
That night I could not sleep. I did not take a sleeping tablet because it did not matter if I slept or not, and I was not especially uncomfortable as I lay awake, I was thinking about Becka, and also about Bob Burgess, and I heard William get up and I thought he would go downstairs to read as he did sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, but instead he stopped at my door—our bedroom doors were always open—and he whispered, “Lucy? Are you awake?”