I hold her tight. She’s never felt more human to me. It should go without saying that parents are humans, but it doesn’t always feel that way. “Mother, I promise I’ll never leave you. I’ll go to school close to home. If life takes me far from Boston, you’ll come with me. There will always be a room for you in our home.”
“Wait until the woman you marry hears those words. It will scare her right off.” She laughs off her fears and gives me a strong kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry I burdened you with my thoughts,” she says. “A mother is meant to be a container for her children’s emotions, not the other way around. Go to the theater. Enjoy ourlast night here before real life puts its lobster claws in us tomorrow.” She turns her hands into claws and mock stabs me with them. We laugh, but not as boisterously as we did earlier. The moment has passed, ephemeral like a sunset.
Mother takes her shoes off and holds them in her hand as she crosses the street. She looks back at me from the other side. Waves to me. I wave back as she disappears into the dark night.
I rush to Edna, who seems to be waiting for me. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
“What amIdoing here?” she asks. “What areyoudoing here?”
“You’re like the Cheshire cat,” I say jokingly. “You seem to appear everywhere.”
“Or perhapsyou’relike the Cheshire cat,” she says with a sad laugh. “I suppose it depends whose perspective we’re seeing things from.”
I laugh at the truth of this. “What play are you seeing?”
“I’m not sure.” She shrugs. “Some new young playwright now that Eugene O’Neill has become too big for us.” A worried look crosses her face. She seems to search mine for similar concern. “Are you all right, Oliver?”
“Oh, Edna, I’ve never been better,” I confess. “I brought Mother here with the money I won, and you’ll never believe it, but Shams showed up. He pretended not to know us, but we had the loveliest time. And shelikedhim. She genuinely liked him. And more importantly, or perhaps not, I don’t know...Ilike him. So much.”
“That’s wonderful,” she says sadly, like she doesn’t quite believe me. She feels different than before. There’s a layer of defeat covering her like soot.
“And she was so wonderful today. We walked everywhere. Wemet everyone. What a town. I wish every day could be like this.” I hear the joy in my voice, and I love the way it sounds. Happiness suits me.
“You do know this has become a bit of a home for our kind of people?” she asks.
“The Cape?” I ask incredulously.
“No, just Provincetown,” she says.
“Really? Why? How?” I ask.
“Asking why and how is always tricky,” she says. “No question outside of mathematics ever has just one answer. It’s an arts colony, and many of our people are artists, because we have repressed lives we need to find a way to communicate. Or perhaps it’s simply because this is the very tip of the Cape, as far out as you can get. Land’s end, as they say. Makes sense we’d want to get as far from what they call civilization as possible, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” I look toward the water, but I can’t see it from here. Not in the darkness. “That makes sense. We don’t fit in anywhere else, so of course we would find a place at the very edge of the world, where earth meets water, and say,This is us! This is where we belong!” A few theatergoers look at me as they linger outside. “Oh gosh, sorry, I didn’t mean to deliver that like I’m onstage. Perhaps it’s because I feel like a stage star. Like my life is big all of a sudden. I belong, Edna.Webelong. Isn’t it grand?”
“You don’t know, do you?” she asks.
“Know what?” I search her face for a clue. All I find is grave sadness. Inside the theater, lights flash and everyone enters. “You’ll miss the show,” I say.
“I don’t care about that. I care about you. And all your Harvard friends.” Some of her friends call out to her, and she tells them to go ahead without her. One of them, a beautiful womanwith wild red hair, lingers longer than the others. This must be Edna’s love.
“My Harvard friends?” I ask. “Why? Life is a ball for them.”
“Oliver.” She hesitates before saying, “Cyril Wilcox killed himself.”
“No.” That’s the word that escapes my lips. No, this can’t be true. No, Edna is mistaken. Brendan would have told me.
“I’m sorry to be the messenger,” she says. “Were you close?”
“Close?” I echo. “No. But...” His birthday words come back to me.Be happy now.Why didn’t he take his own advice? “How did he...” I can’t even finish the words. They’re too painful to speak.
“They say he inhaled gas and his mother found him. Can you imagine? A mother finding her son dead like that....”
I feel my throat tighten. I can imagine it. Ihaveimagined it. Throughout that whole dreadful pandemic, I prayed Liam and I would survive, more for Mother than for us. All for her.
“She says it’s an accident, but of course we know.” She sighs sadly.
“What do we know?” I ask.
