—
But I also wondered why they did not offer to come up and see us. Both girls and Michael had already had the virus, surely they could drive up and see us, safe-distancing. When I mentioned to people how much I missed my girls, sometimes a person would say, Why can’t they come up and see you? And I did not dare say: Because apparently they don’t want to. And I was not going to ask them to come. That is not the kind of mother I am, that much I know.
iv
William was finding a new calling.
Lois’s nephew—her brother Dave’s son, called Joe—ran the Trask potato farm these days with his father. The potato farm had had trouble with parasites. William got very interested. He told me that the first time he called Lois’s nephew, Joe referred to him as “Dr. Gerhardt.” Joe spoke at great length with William about the University of Maine at Presque Isle, which had a program that was trying to help with this stuff. William spent a lot of time on the phone with Joe—who William said sounded like “a great fellow”—and he also spent time on the phone with other parasitologists he had worked with over the years who knew more about these particular parasites than William did. And William also researched. At dinner he would tell me about these parasites and what he was doing to help; he would go on and on, and to be truthful I was often made tired by this. But I was glad he was so involved in something. He seemed younger to me.
I felt older every day.
* * *
—
My mother—my real mother, not the nice mother I had made up—once said, “Everyone needs to feel important.” And I thought of this as I listened to William go on about the potato parasites.
* * *
There was one night when Bob and Margaret invited us to a small gathering with one other couple at a place on the coast that was doing takeout. And so we went, and it was fine. Their friends were really nice, it seemed to me, and we had—I had—a pleasant enough time. But this is not the point.
* * *
—
The point is this: That as we drove home, we went through a part of town where I had not been. There were houses, intermittently through the outer town area, there were trees in front of them, and the houses were blue or gray or white, and as we drove by them it all seemed very quiet—it was a small town—and as we drove by these houses, it suddenly came to me with a terrible force: These were houses not unlike those I had driven past in my childhood. I would sometimes go to the neighboring towns of Hanston or Carlisle, Illinois, and—in my mind I was with my father—we would drive by these kinds of houses, and I remembered how once I saw a young couple by a house, they were all dressed up and their parents were out front taking photos of them, and I asked my father, Was it a wedding? And he said no, it was a school prom, and he added, “All foolishness. Total rubbish,” he had said. And that night as William and I drove home from a perfectly pleasant evening, my insides collapsed and I felt that old, old desolation, because these were houses where people lived and did normal things, this is how I had seen it as a child and it is how I saw it now, and I said to William, “My whole childhood was a lockdown. I never saw anyone or went anywhere.” And the truth of this hit me straight into the bowels, and William just looked at me and said, “I know, Lucy.” He said it as a reflex, without thinking about what I had said, is what I thought.
* * *
—
But I was so sad that evening: I understood—as I have understood at different points in my life—that the childhood isolation of fear and loneliness would never leave me.
My childhood had been a lockdown.
v
And then—that same night came my terrific panic attack.
* * *
—
It came to me as I tried to fall asleep—it was warm in my little bedroom, and I could hear the ocean through my skylight, which was now open, and also the window, but I did not really hear it, because I was panicking. The panic started as I pictured my apartment in New York, and it seemed to me as I thought about it that I really did not want to see it again. I could picture its emptiness; David would never again come through the door, and whenever I got back there I would have to walk into that apartment alone. The thought of this felt unbearable.
And when I thought of my apartment, I remembered that David had almost always been there. Because of his bad hip, he did not go out for long walks, or to the gym the way other men might have, he had always been there except when he was at rehearsal or playing at the Philharmonic at night, and I thought of that now—that the apartment, it held no appeal for me.
I thought of David’s cello where it sat in the corner of the bedroom in its case, and the thought of it disturbed me. It was almost off-putting, the image of his cello.
This frightened me. It petrified me, the idea that the apartment waiting for me in New York was not one I felt any genuine connection to—it made me panic in a way I had not panicked while this entire pandemic had been going on. I got up and went downstairs, and then out onto the porch, and then out onto the lawn, and the moon was almost full and I watched the water down below, the tide was coming in, and the water was lazily slapping at the rocks below me.
Mom, help me, I’m so scared!, I said to my made-up mother, but her answer—I know, Lucy, and I’m sorry—was weak. Oh dear God! I had made up everything in my life, I thought! Except for my girls, and maybe even them I had made up, I mean their graciousness to me and to each other, how did I know?
I turned around but my vision was blurry, and I could only see our house on this cliff, almost tilting in my mind, because I was so frightened. I sat down on the grass and said to myself, Lucy, stop this! But I could not stop, I kept picking at the grass and my hand was shaking.
Oh please help me, I thought, please please—but when you are really panicking there is no answer for it, and I knew that.
I wept, but not much, I cannot always cry.
* * *
—
I got up and went back inside, almost stumbling, and I could hear William coming out of the bathroom upstairs, and so I went quickly up the stairs and I said, “Pill, Pillie, oh God.”
And he was on his way back to his room and he looked at me and he said, “Oh Lucy, you look so pretty.”
He said that!
I said, “Are you crazy? I look like an old woman in a mug shot!”
And he said, “No, you look pretty, your hair is down and your little nightgown, but, Lucy, you’ve gotten far too thin.”
And then he seemed to notice my distress, and he said, “Lucy, what is it?”
I went into his room and began to cry. To really, really cry. I said, “William, I am so homesick!”
And he started to be nice, but I said, “No, you don’t understand, I have no home to go to!”
He said, “Of course you do, Lucy, you have your apartment—”
And I said, “No, no! You don’t understand! It’s a place where I lived, and I loved David, but it was never a home. William, why wasn’t it a home?” And then I said, “The only real home I ever had in my whole life, I had with you. And the girls.” And I cried and cried. He opened his arms to me and brought me to sit with him on the bed. “Come here, Button,” he said. “Sit on my lap,” he said, and I did.
He held me very tightly. I had forgotten the strength of William’s arms. It had been years since he had held me. And I said, “Closer, Pillie, hold me closer.”
And he said, “If I hold you any closer, I’ll be behind you.” Just as he had when we were young: the line from Groucho Marx.
* * *
—
He hugged me for a long time, rocking me slightly back and forth. His kindness made me cry harder, and then I finally cried myself out.
William said, “Okay now, Lucy.” He brushed back the thin strands of hair by my face. “I have a few suggestions.”
“What,” I said, and I ran the back of my hand against my nose.