“Look who’s talking. How many hours is Kristi Osgood working for you this summer?”
No, she did not. Sheila Rackley did not just go there. “That’s different! I’ve been consumed with the gala this summer. I’m not just on a committee. I’m on all the committees. I am the committees. And Sofia is an only child. I can’t leave her all by herself all summer. It is so not the same.” Maybe, Deirdre admitted in the recesses of her mind, it was a little bit the same. But she would never, ever, say that to Sheila.
Sheila refilled the flutes.
At the table in the corner somebody spilled a glass of water, and that made Deirdre think about her very first date with Brock, when he knocked over his water and left an extra-large tip to make up for the mess. She felt something in her heart turn over once, then twice. She thought about how on that first date he’d had a recent haircut. It was too short on top, and Deirdre could see a little bit of his scalp, which looked pink and vulnerable and called to mind a half-sheared sheep. Maybe it was the champagne, but she felt a wave of tenderness for the old Brock, the old them.
“Should we talk about the centerpieces?” asked Sheila. Deirdre couldn’t tell if Sheila was mollified or plotting or just plain drunk.
“I’m doing the centerpieces,” said Deirdre. “On my own, like I’ve done most of the work for this gala.”
“But—”
Deirdre waved over the server and said, “I think we’re all done here, thank you so much. You can put this on the Rackleys’ tab.”
42
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
The next part isn’t a lesson at all. There’s something about dying that makes you want to clear your conscience of anything you’re ashamed of. And I’m ashamed of this.
Oh, Eliza. It got dark so early in the afternoon in the winter. Every day was the same after the same after the same, with your dad getting up before dawn and leaving the two of us alone. I’d lie here in bed sometimes and I’d hear his truck pull out of the driveway and I’d look at the clock and it would say four thirty and I’d think about all of the hours ahead of me that stacked up to one day and then the days that would stack up to a week and then a month and then a year.
When you were two and a half years old, I thought I didn’t have it in me to be a good mother. I didn’t think I could do right by you. I dropped you off with Val one afternoon when she was done working and I told her I was going into Ellsworth to do some shopping. But when I got to Ellsworth it looked so small and suddenly I felt it like a punch: This was it. This was all it was going to be, this was the big city to our tiny, tiny town. I thought I was doing you a favor, leaving you with someone who was more cut out for that life than I was. I didn’t think I deserved you, didn’t think I deserved your dad. He loved me so much, and I knew I didn’t have a right to be loved like that.
So I kept driving. When in doubt, I used to tell you, choose brave. I didn’t choose brave that day. I left. I drove all the way to Boston, and I used the last of the money I had tucked away to stay in a hotel. I wasn’t happy to be there, though—I was tortured. Every day was an effort to get through. Every night I dreamed about you, and I dreamed about the wharf and the boats and the way the air smells in the evening, and the way the fog looks rolling in. Every morning I woke up and said, Today I will go back. And every day I didn’t.
Six days went by like that and on the seventh day I went to a pay phone and I put in all of the coins I had and I called Val’s house. I didn’t think I was going to say anything, I just wanted to see if I could maybe hear you in the background, hear some of your babbling, the little sentences you were trying to string together. Then I was going to hang up.
I knew you’d be at Val’s because it was hauling time. But when Val answered I heard you screaming in the background, not babbling. So right away I said, “It’s me. Val, it’s me.” She put Charlie on the phone. He wasn’t out hauling, he’d come in because you’d come on with a fever out of nowhere earlier that day and somebody had radioed out for him to come back. They were both in a panic, trying to quiet you, get you comfortable until the fever broke.
I got in my car and I drove as fast as I could and by the time I got there the fever had broken and you were sleeping on Val’s couch and they were both sitting there, not touching, but sitting close, and watching over you.
They looked like two parents.
Your father has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, Eliza, a heart bigger than the universe. I was never worthy of him, not really. He forgave me for leaving, and he accepted me when I came back. We never talked about it again, never once, and he continued to love me and I did my best to love him. I tried my hardest to be as worthy as I could be, worthy of him, worthy of you. I’m so sorry I left you, Eliza. But I’ve never, ever been sorry I came back.
I thought when I fell in love with your dad I was like a character in a fairy tale, waiting on the wharf for the boats to come in, for the men to appear out of the fog. Then I found out that there’s no such thing, no fairy tale. I guess that’s Lesson Number Five. I love you, Eliza, I have always loved you. I know a lot more people will love you in your life but nobody will love you the way I have.
When Eliza looked up from the letter she was alone in Val’s living room, except for Sternman, who was flat on his side, his front paw twitching, his big lips rising and falling with each breath.
“Val?” she called. “Val?” She hadn’t heard the front door close; hadn’t heard if Val had said anything to her before she’d gone. She searched the small kitchen, the dining room with the round maple table, the copper curtains that had hung there as long as Eliza could remember.
Of course she knew where Val would be. It was getting on toward the late afternoon, and the boats would be coming in. She’d be at the wharf.
“Come on, Sternman,” she said. “Let’s go, boy. Get up, we’re going for a walk.”
———
She was right. There was Val, back straight, facing the water. All of the boats were out except for the Joanie B. You could read a lot of different things into the sight of that boat, if you didn’t know the backstory. You could read loneliness or comfortable solitude. You could think the captain of that boat had taken a vacation or that he’d fallen on hard times and couldn’t afford fuel or that he’d come back early because he had to go to the dentist or that he’d had the haul of a lifetime over the last three weeks and had just, plain and simple, decided to sleep in and take a day off. So much of life was about knowing the backstory.
Eliza stood for a moment, watching Val watch the water. Sternman wagged his tail and whimpered low and long and pulled a little bit on the leash. When they got closer to Val, Eliza said, “How come you didn’t give me the whole letter at once, Val?”