Acts of God (34 page)

I know a lot about you, I wanted to tell her. You can't have children, you give friends poor advice, your marriage is floundering. “You should eat something,” she said. “I'm going to call your daughter and tell her to come. I'll stay here for a few hours while you rest.”

“I'm not very hungry,” I told her. “I think I want to go to bed.”

“All right,” Betsy said, “I'm going to help you to bed, then I'll wait until your daughter gets here.” Betsy took me by the arm, led me back to my room. As I crawled into bed, I got a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the bathroom wall. I didn't quite recognize the person who stood there. I was dirty. My hair clung to my head. Dark circles like saucers lay beneath my eyes. I looked like a shell of my former self. How long had I been alone? Three or four days? A week? I couldn't recall.

Now as I crawled between the sheets, I was so tired. I couldn't remember ever being so tired. I was vaguely aware of time passing, the light moving across the wall of the room. Somewhere in the house, appliances whirred. It was a strange sleep, like on an airplane, when you are aware of everything around you, yet you are sleeping. I heard the sound of the dryer, clothes being tossed around. Somewhere a dog barked and I knew it was Betsy's dog.

When I woke again, it was dark and Jade was sitting in a chair beside me. She was staring at me in such a concerned way that I thought perhaps I was in a hospital until I heard the surf pounding below. “Mom,” she said, “what's become of you?”

“I'm not really sure.”

She put on the small light by the bed stand. It was just five in the morning, but she had me sit up. “When did you eat last?”

I shook my head. “I don't know, really. I was so tired.”

Jade pulled the covers back and led me into the kitchen, where all the dishes had been washed, the counters wiped clean. She made me eat some soup that sat bubbling on the stove. Then Jade ran a hot bath with orange-scented bubbles. As the tub filled, I sat beside it. “Now, I'm going to help you take off your things.” My daughter undressed me, dropping my pajamas into the hamper, helping me slip my panties off. When I stood naked in front of her, Jade took me by the arm, easing me into the tub. Then Jade sat at the side of the tub with a glass of ice water and a sponge.

The ice water she made me sip was so cold and the bath so hot.

The blood coursed through my body again. As I lay there, I saw Jade go into my room, rip the sheets off the bed, bundle them up, put fresh ones on. I heard her fluffing pillows, shaking out comforters. Then she came back and knelt beside me. With a sponge she had me bend forward as she rubbed my back, my neck. She ran the sponge across my breasts, over my belly, down my thighs. She put shampoo on her hands, scrubbed my head. I was docile as a baby in her hands as my daughter made me sparkling clean.

“Now, let's get out of the bath,” she said. I rose up naked, dripping wet, and Jade wrapped me in a towel, white and fluffy. The towel was warm and I knew she had just gotten it from the dryer. It felt so good to be wrapped in that warm towel. As I sat on the lid of the toilet, Jade combed and blew my hair dry. Then she helped me into fresh pajamas. “When did you have the time to do all this wash?”

“Betsy did it,” Jade said.

“Betsy?” I asked.

“She cleaned your whole house, Mom.”

When I was spruced up and dry, she put me back into the bed of fresh sheets and I slept again. When I woke, it was still dark and I was ravenous, ready for something to eat. Suddenly I wanted soup, a big pot of lentil soup, and I wanted to make it myself from scratch, never mind that it would take hours to cook. I had a good recipe somewhere in a drawer and I tiptoed into the kitchen to find it.

The kitchen floor was cold and I was barefoot as I stood rifling through the drawer where I kept all my recipes in a folder. I pulled out the folder and on top of it lay the envelope that contained the things Margaret gave me the last time I saw her. I took everything out, dumped it on the counter. Once again I gazed at the clipping of the man who had killed himself forty years before.

I stood in the breakfast nook staring at it, as I had several times before. Then for some reason I thought of the clipping of Margaret's death that I had taken from Vicky's copy of the
Winonah Weekly.
Digging into my errand bag, I found my wallet and inside was the article, still neatly folded where it had been since I put it there on the day of the funeral.

Now I was less hungry than I'd been. Forgetting my plans to make soup from scratch, I lay the two pieces of paper side by side. I looked from one clipping to the next. I knew that there was something in these two articles, written some forty years apart, some clue I'd overlooked. No names were the same, no details of the two suicides, yet I kept going from one article to the next.

It was a puzzle I was trying to solve and suddenly it became clear to me. I remember when the children had these activity books they did in the car—find the telephone in the tree, find the tiger in the closet. You scan the picture until you see, hidden in the intricate, leafy branches, the telephone, or in the clutter of an unkempt closet, a tiger. And of course once you've seen it you wonder what took you so long and you will always see it each time you look at that picture again.

I went over each detail in the two clippings. The places were different, as were the names. The years were different. Nothing appeared to be the same. There seemed to be no overlaps, but then I saw the dates of both deaths—October 12—and realized that Margaret had killed herself on the same day as this man, whose name I now noticed was Martin Burton. He had her initials and they had both died at the age of forty-nine. I sat thinking about what this meant.

I don't know why it had eluded me for so long, but at last I understood. The sun was rising as I gazed out across the Pacific, looking through my favorite grove of trees. Margaret wanted me to have this clipping. She knew I kept things. That was why she had given it to me.

It struck me with a clarity that stunned me and never would have occurred to me otherwise. She had planned it. She had planned it all along. And, the meaning of her note now made explicit, she had waited as long as she could. Margaret had known for years what she was going to do. And when and where.

*   *   *

I made my way back to bed, crawled into the sheets, and slept until late morning. When I woke the room was filled with light and Jade had a fresh pot of coffee brewing. She also had a pile of a week's worth of mail. Catalogs, junk, bills. On the machine, solicitations, messages from Shana, from Ted and Jade. I was tossing most of the mail away, but Jade retrieved the letter from the trash. Buried somewhere at the bottom of the pile of mail she found the letter from the National Registry of Historic Houses.

Jade opened the letter and informed me that my house had qualified, which meant I couldn't change the outside and that it had to have all the proper protections for historic houses under the law of the United States.

The first phone call I made with this news was to John Martelli. He was cool with me on the phone, but he said he'd look into the status of my policy, and a week later he wrote to say that all pertinent riders, including the act-of-God rider, had come through and that as a national monument my house, henceforth, would be fully insured.

“Thank you, John, thank you for all your help.”

“It was my pleasure, Tess. I wanted to help you.”

I hesitated, but then I said, “Perhaps you'd like to have coffee sometime?” It wasn't that I imagined anything would happen between me and John Martelli, but it seemed like a step back into the world.

“Yes,” he said, “I'd like that.”

I'd never expected they'd give it to me, but there it was. The premium was higher than I would have liked, but not beyond what I could afford, and I decided to open my bed-and-breakfast. I applied for a loan at the bank and, with Shana's underwriting, I got the money I needed to buy the fluffy green towels, the little bars of soap. I bought nightstands and fake little Tiffany lamps with green glass shades, cozy hassocks. I had the original poems of Francis Eagger, which Bruno had given me, framed. On the walls I hung photographs Francis Eagger had taken of the cliffs he loved so well.

In the library I made out a special place on the shelves for his work. I had a sign made that read
THE EAGGER HOUSE BED-AND-BREAKFAST; GUESTS WELCOME
. And a brochure printed up that Bruno helped me write:

Come stay in the home that the inspirational poet, Francis Cantwell Eagger, built stone by stone. Experience the house and read his poems. Walk the cliffs, enjoy the marine life below. Make this your weekend getaway or your stop as you head somewhere else.

Come walk with me and I will take you to the path we have carved for ourselves along the sea.—
“Desire Paths”

Bruno, who understood now that this was the only way to keep my house, came and helped. I was surprised that he was good with his hands. He nailed up shelves, helped me repaper Jade's room. Jade was glum about all of this, but with a little work we fixed up the old woodshed and it became a perfect getaway room for her and she actually grew to like it. Ted helped convert the room over the garage into an extra bedroom and he said he'd live there when there were no guests.

Jade and Bruno would sit up late after a day spent working on the house. I'd hear their voices reading poems of the windswept shores, the rocky coasts, poems of trees and animals. Sometimes they'd whisper down below and I wondered what they were doing, but I stayed in my room. One night I heard Jade's door close and it did not open again.

In the morning Bruno was sitting at my spot in the breakfast nook, in his workshirt without his glasses, a sheepish grin on his face, poring over the morning paper. “Good morning, Tess,” he said. “Would you like some coffee?”

Slipping into the breakfast nook, I said, “Yes, thank you, Bruno, I would.”

In silence Bruno poured me a coffee. “How do you take it?”

“A little milk.”

He poured a little milk for me. The coffee was strong but very good. A few moments later Jade came in, showered, her hair damp. She wore a baggy shirt, jeans, but there was a freshness to her face I hadn't seen in a long time. I wanted to reach out and hug her. They both looked hungry to me so I said, “Would you guys like me to scramble you some eggs?”

They nodded and I cracked into a bowl a half-dozen eggs, sprinkled in some cheese and herbs. Diced tomato and onion. I heated olive oil in the skillet and stir-fried the vegetables, poured in the eggs. I made a hearty omelette. I hadn't eaten an omelette like that in years. I watched them gobble it down, their intimacy barely hidden in their silence. “So why don't we all have dinner tonight?” I said. “Help me map out the future.”

That night over dinner, Jade made the decision that she would bake for me. She found an interesting recipe for muffins with coconut and chocolate chips and cranberries that sounded terrible, but turned out quite delicious, and these we named Cantwell muffins; she baked scones and coffee cakes and we bought an espresso machine. The house was now filled with the smells of cooking and the sound of young people, but I was haunted by something I could not quite name.

I kept thinking Nick would call. That he would seek me out. How could he not want me when at last he could have me? Or perhaps that was just the point and I'd missed it all along. Perhaps that was what made him stay with Margaret all those years. The fact that he could not have her. No one could.

*   *   *

A few nights later I invited the children out to dinner. I felt there was a reason to celebrate, though I wasn't quite sure what it was. The end of something; the beginning of something else. We went to a trendy new place with lots of hanging plants and polyurethaned tables that was supposed to serve good burgers and vegetarian dishes. Bruno joined us and, just after we ordered, I noticed a family that came in.

They were a fairly large group, at least six or seven of them, and they were seated at the round table next to ours. They were rowdy, laughing, having a good time, but the odd part was I recognized them all. I knew them from somewhere. Even as we ordered and had our drinks, I couldn't help staring. I had seen them all somewhere before.

Even as the kids talked on and went up to the salad bar, I was still trying to decide who these people were. Were my kids friends with their kids? Had I rented them a house? Then I knew. I realized they were the other Winterstones. The family whose pictures I had inadvertently picked up when I went to get the photos of the reunion. I could still see the pictures of the empty room, the Formica table, the chairs, the open suitcase. Pictures of them moving into a simple apartment, laughing around a table with beers and Chinese food. And now here they were intact, eating dinner beside us, ordering hamburgers and onion rings.

I had to resist the urge to go up to them. To say, “I'm also a Winterstone. I'm the person who took your pictures once accidentally. I know something about you that you don't know. I know that you are happy; that you are whole.”

But I didn't begrudge them a thing. Instead I joked with Ted about the company he was starting to form and listened as Bruno told Jade in detail about his discovery of the “Desire Paths” poem. As I sat there with Ted, Jade, and Bruno, his hand lightly resting on Jade's knee, surrounded by my children, I thought, This is my family, not the one I was born into, but they are what I have now. The family I have made.

42

It's an odd thing because
I live so far away from where it all began and think there are a million things I could have done differently—we all could have done differently—and then maybe we could have saved somebody's life. But whose life would we have saved? That dour child who lives in a big house by the lake alone with her father now, or the child her mother once was who spun with me in the rain?