She stands with her arms crossed over her one-piece suit and stares out at the water, trying to see what I’m seeing. “It’s beautiful here.”
I’m having a hard time thinking about what’s here because I’m mostly thinking about what’s not here. I wish there was a way to know when you were seeing someone for the last time so you could pay extra-close attention to that person when it was happening.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013: We get off the train from New York City and Gavin carries me on his back the whole way up the hill. He lets me down and we turn onto our street and Mom is waiting on the steps. She runs to us and hugs me. She walks me into the house and then she sends me to my room and that part happens so fast that I never think to turn my head back once more and look at Gavin.
“Come on,” Mom says. “Let’s swim.”
She holds my hand and we walk into the water. We go deep until my feet can’t reach and I’m kicking. Mom tilts her head back and reaches her arms out and floats. I do the same and we both look up at the sky and I think back to when I first learned to float and the swim teacher had to hold my butt up because it kept sinking.
I think Mom is saying something but with my ears in the water I can’t hear so well. I lift my head up and shake the water out of my ears and ask, “What did you say?”
She’s not floating anymore. She’s kicking her legs and now I’m kicking too. “I said, maybe we’ve been looking at this the wrong way.”
I still don’t know what she’s talking about. “We?”
“Yeah,” Mom says, looking at Dad back on the beach. “We get frustrated with each other, I know, but we each have our own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe it’s best to just let people do what they’re good at instead of forcing them to do something that doesn’t come naturally to them.”
I look back at the beach too and I see that Dad isn’t reading his magazine anymore. He’s playing his acoustic guitar, the Gibson, which is the only guitar he didn’t stick inside a box.
“He’s happiest when he’s creating,” Mom says. “That’s what he does best.”
Dad has that look on his face like his head is in the clouds. I don’t love clouds because they sometimes get in the way of the sun, but I don’t mind them when Dad has his head in them because that means he’s getting lost in the music, which means he’s forgetting where he is, and that’s the only type of forgetting I really like.
“And what you do best, Joan, is remember.” She’s facing me now. “I know you get annoyed sometimes, but no one can remember like you and you shouldn’t expect them to. That’s not what they’re good at. Remembering is your job. And it’s an important one.”
She winks and then dunks her head back. When she pulls it up again her hair is slicked down and she looks like the prettiest creature. I want to be a creature too, but a different kind. I hold my nose and dive under the water and I pretend I’m a walrus gliding around in the dark and quiet. When I run out of breath, I come up and open my eyes and I don’t know how but it looks like the sun got a little bit brighter.
The waitress takes our dinner plates away and she asks if we have room for dessert and Dad says yes. I’m glad we got a table next to the window because the sun is saying good night in a pretty way, making orange and purple swirls in the sky.
Cold Spring Harbor must be lucky because John Lennon wrote most of the songs for his Double Fantasy album here and he won his only Grammy award for that album. Also Billy Joel has an album named after this town and he’s a very big artist even though I don’t like his music. Dad tried to play some of Billy Joel’s music in the car today but the only song of his I ever liked is “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and I don’t like that song anymore because now it reminds me of a person who actually did start a fire.
Dad orders coffee with his dessert but Mom is still drinking her wine. She’s wearing her new white pants because Labor Day hasn’t passed yet. I have no idea what happens after Labor Day but Mom loves to follow the rules. One of her hands is busy playing with her hair, or maybe she’s just using her fingers as a comb. She didn’t bring her brush with her to dinner because it was too big to fit inside her fancy purse:
She’s staring at Dad, turning her wineglass round and round, holding it by the stem, and she won’t look away.
“What?” Dad says.
“I think we should keep the studio,” Mom says.
That makes my ears open because that’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear one of them say. Dad looks shocked, probably because he had to carry all those heavy boxes outside and now he’ll have to carry all of them back inside again. “What are you saying?” Dad says.
“I saw you today,” Mom says, “sitting on the beach, playing your guitar. I haven’t seen you look that way in so long. You seemed so happy. I don’t want to take that away from you. I never wanted that. This is all I’ve ever wanted, the three of us together, no work, no projects, no distractions. If we could just set aside some time during the year, I’d be content. I just need a break sometimes so I can feel like a normal person. And I need you to take a break with me. I need you. We need you.”
Now we’re waiting for Dad, but the waitress is back. She hands out pie and ice cream and slides the hot coffee in front of Dad. He smiles at her and when she’s gone he says, “I’ll make more of an effort. I promise. And we can take more weekend vacations like this. It’s long overdue.” He lifts the steaming mug to his lips. “But we’re not keeping the studio.”
“I’m okay with keeping it, Ollie, really. If it makes you happy.”
“It doesn’t,” he says, sipping the coffee and setting the mug down carefully. “Today was the first time I can remember when I was playing guitar just because I felt like it. Not for work. Not to earn money. Nothing was on the line. It was just for fun. That’s why I started playing in the first place. It was nice to feel that again. I don’t have all that pressure anymore.” He stares down at his coffee, which is so black you could show movie credits on it. “I’m okay with the way things are.”
Dad smiles at Mom but I don’t like what he’s saying. For a second it seemed like one of my biggest wishes was going to come true. It’s like being at the rescue shelter and you ask the person to take a dog out of his cage and he wags his tail when you pet him and he thinks he’s coming home with you, but then you have to send him back to his cage because your mom says it’s just too soon to get a new dog (Saturday, September 4, 2010).
And now there’s some lady at another table staring at me and I’m wondering if it’s because there’s chocolate on my face or maybe I’m crying and I don’t even know it. It’s really spooking me out, the way her eyes are squinting but there’s no sun in here. I’m trying to look away but for some reason I can’t.
Now she’s standing up and dropping her napkin on the table. She’s coming to our table and I’m wiping my face just in case. Now she’s standing next to Mom, but she’s looking at me and she says, “I know you.”