I don’t say anything. I’m a mom. And a joke and a terrible role model. I have a daughter who’s never seen her mother stick up for herself. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve been living in a fantasy where the summer would never end.”
He doesn’t say anything. He always says something. “This is ridiculous,” he says finally. “I can make this work.”
“This isn’t a problem you can solve. To make this work, you’d have to alter the whole space-time continuum.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” he says.
And I want to tell him to grow up. You can’t just have what you want all the time. This was fun and easy for the summer. Now it’s painful and hard.
“It’s not going to work,” I say. “It was a summer romance, and it’s run its course. Maybe I’ll see you when you come to close on the house.”
He doesn’t say anything. My chest aches like I’m tied to train tracks and someone’s placed a boulder on me. We sit in silence for a few beats. I can hear him breathe and I want to go back to yesterday. I want to go back to any time before this.
“Don’t do this, Ali,” he says, and I hang up.
43
I move through Sunday like I’m moving through Vaseline, slow and murky. There’s a heaviness to every step I take; I am the opposite of carbonated. Flat.
We go to my dad and Libby’s for lunch, and he knows the minute he sees me. I go in for the long hug and wish I knew him well enough that I could cry. This is a whole new kind of grief, something beautiful that had to be killed.
“Just the fourof you?” Linda asks when we get to the boathouse for our canoe trip. I’m not sure what she sees on my face, but she backpedals. “Well, great! Let’s get you guys out there!”
Greer steps forward and takes her paddle and mine.
“Come on, Mom, it’ll be fun,” says Iris.
“Of course!” I say. “Let’s go!” Exclamation points are false enthusiasm, but I’m taking my cue from Linda. Today they’re the only enthusiasm I have. We paddle out, and I amon autopilot. I say all the things I always say. I comment about the light breeze. I smile at Iris when she makes a joke about Cliffy’s flip-flops, even though I’m not sure it was nice.
“Mom, you look like you’ve gotten a little tan,” Iris says.
“Yeah, looks good,” agrees Greer.
“Thank you,” I say, and keep rowing. I’m trying not to look at the inn as we go. I don’t want to look up at the widow’s walk where I might as well be confined to pacing for the rest of my life, a newly tragic figure gazing at the horizon. All the times I looked up there and felt my own longing, I really had no idea what love could be. And now I can never unknow the truest true thing—the intensity of the love you feel will match the intensity of its loss. This is practically physics.
“Mom,” Cliffy’s saying. “Want to do Fancy’s crazy dinner tonight? What’s the game called?”
“Mystery Dinner,” says Greer. “No. Let’s barbecue a pizza. I saw it on YouTube.”
“It’s too late to make a crust,” I say, watching Pelican Island appear behind her head.
“I’ll ride my bike to get one when we get home,” says Iris. All of my alarm bells go off. My children are complimenting me and offering to do errands. My poor kids.
“That sounds great,” I say. “Let’s eat it down by the creek! Cliffy, we need to work on your footbridge.”
Camp’s over sothe girls sleep late on Monday. I leave them a note and take Cliffy to the diner for pancakes beforeI do the books. Marco walks out from the kitchen with Theo on his hip.
“How are you cooking back there with a baby in your arms?” I ask.
“It’s not easy and probably not entirely safe,” he says. “I have the playpen, but he lost his mind when Frannie left.”
“Where’d she go?” I ask.
“She had to go to the inn. Again. Harold forgot to schedule the laundry service, so there are no clean towels.”
I reach my arms out and he hands Theo to me. I balance him on my lap and he grabs Cliffy’s nose. The laundry service is on the checklist I sent him. “Frannie thinks they should sell,” he says. “The Beekman offer is still good.”
“No.” It comes out of my mouth so fast and so emphatically that I feel my face go hot. I don’t want someone to buy it and change it or, God forbid, tear it down. But more than that, it’s an open door for Ethan to walk through, a reason for him to come back here. I try to change course. “Sounds like a mess.”
