He leaned back and rubbed his lower back, wincing. “Okay, well, you know it.” He said to Sarah, “You’ll be sick of it. But I’m saying it anyway.” He turned to me. “Every New England child has to recite this one in school at some point. It won Frost the Pulitzer, called Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
He kept his eyes steadily averted while he read but when he came to the last two lines his gaze fell on me. He said it like he meant me to understand something.
“So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
I met his stare, frozen by the new intensity in his voice, and tried to find the meaning in the slope of his searching eyes.
“So we’ve gone from ‘enjoy the moment’ to ‘accept that the moment can’t last’,” Sarah stated.
“That’s the problem with great truths,” Nathan said in frustration as he turned away from me. “There’s always a contradictory great truth. How can that be?”
“I don’t think they contradict at all,” I offered. “One says that nothing good lasts forever. The other one says to put our griefs away and appreciate our happiness. They go together. Maybe we appreciate joy …”
“
Because
it is finite.” Nathan finished.
“Exactly.” My soul expanded and settled into a quiet smile on my lips. He finished my sentence. He finished my thought. I took it for a sign. I can’t say a sign for what, precisely, but a good sign, nonetheless.
“That kind of sucks,” he groaned.
“Beautifully and artfully put,” Sarah admonished with a twist of her eyebrow.
“Sorry. I find that to be a frustrating and unsatisfying concept,” he didn’t mask his sarcasm, but Sarah ignored it.
“Better,” She approved.
“Lots of things last,” I said. They’re not all finite. Some things really are enduring.” Sarah looked at me with encouragement in her bright eyes.
Nathan’s frown turned from surly to thoughtful. “But the poem,” he said, “did you notice in the poem that nothing
gold
can stay. Nothing of real value. It’s the good things that leave you. Doesn’t that upset you?”
“A frog can’t complain he’s green, Nathan,” Sarah interjected. “We’re mortal. Life passes. Things go. Happy people make peace with that.”
“I never claimed to be a happy person,” he muttered. He looked at me and I remembered his mouth on mine. He had been happy in that instant. I tasted it on his lips. I breathed it in the air. Whatever emotions followed, I knew he acted effortlessly when he kissed me. Seeing that moment in my head and then looking back to his serious face overwhelmed me with embarrassment.
“What did you bring tonight?” he asked me.
My heart on my sleeve. A million questions. The need to touch you.
“A poem by Thomas Moore,” I said. I found my page and read.
“Oh! think not my spirits are always as light,
And as free from a pang as they seem to you now,
Nor expect that the heart-beaming smile of to-night
Will return with to-morrow to brighten my brow.”
Nathan opened his mouth and I held up my hand, beating him to it, “I chose that one tonight because I was thinking of things that don’t last.” All three of us laughed together.
“Must be something in the water,” Sarah said.
“One track minds,” I agreed.
“So
I
was thinking of saying goodbye to Jennifer. What brought it on for you two?” Sarah looked to us, her wide hazel eyes innocent of the position she put us in.
“Saying good-bye,” I repeated softly.
Nathan shook his head. “Don’t know,” he mumbled.
“Come on, Nathan. Nothing Gold Can Stay? That’s elementary stuff for you. Something made you read it tonight,” Sarah pushed.
“Sometimes there’s no reason,” I interjected. As nice as it would be to hear his true feelings, I couldn’t bear the trapped look on his face.
Nathan nodded in deference to me as if saying “see, there!” to Sarah.
“If you say so,” she relented.
“Saying good-bye and something else,” I returned to my first answer, mustering my courage. “The way people change. The way everything seems fine one day and entirely different the next.”
Nathan cleared his throat. When we looked at him he stood hastily and cut off my words. “I’m gonna get going now.”
“What? Already?” Sarah asked. “We were just getting started.”
I looked at him, baffled. He turned away from both of us. “Yeah, sore back. I filled in rock beds today. I’m beat.”
“Well, take it easy, then, I guess. Good night,” Sarah said reluctantly.
“Yeah, no problem. ‘Night.” He smiled at me, but the grin didn’t reach his eyes.
I watched him turn, a panic rising to my throat. I’d collected nothing. Nothing comforting to remember as I fell asleep. Nothing to add to my memories of him. He stepped down the stairs and walked away. I don’t recall deciding to stand. My legs rose of their own accord. And then I was following him, catching him at the side of the house. “I’ll walk you home,” I told him as he halted.
“No. Don’t worry about it,” his eyes shied away from me.
“Why?” I whispered, so Sarah wouldn’t hear. I looked toward the porch and he did the same thing. He took my arm and pulled me firmly, but gently into the backyard.
“I’m really sorry about last night.” he said in a voice I had to strain to hear.
“Sorry?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. It was crazy. Stupid.”
“That’s … insulting. A person has to be crazy and stupid to kiss me?” There was no anger in the words – just confusion.
“No,” he said, directing me even farther from the house. “Did you tell Sarah?” he asked in a fervent whisper.
“Of course not! Why?”
“Her line. It seemed like she knew something,” he looked behind us like he expected her to materialize in thin air.
I dodged into his line of vision, forcing him to look at me. “What is there to know, Nathan?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing to know, except that I was rude. I don’t just run around kissing people. It was late and I was cold and you were being nice and I might have been experiencing mild hypothermia …” he babbled on with dogged determination.
“So you wish it didn’t happen?” The words came out crooked and strange.
His head tilted, his mouth paused, open. “Well, I wish I hadn’t been so impulsive. Not that kissing you isn’t nice,” a mortified expression crossed his face, “but I imagine you only want that from someone interested in…” his bumbling words started tripping, falling in unexpected place. “Well, in
you
.”
The blow of his last word sent my mind reeling. I nearly reached out to him to steady myself and caught my mistake just in time, pulling my hand back to my side. “So you’re …not?” I didn’t recognize my voice.
“I’m sure it’s mutual,” he said graciously. “We live so far apart. We’re practically cousins, since Sarah’s like family to me and . . . I just didn’t want to offend you by being so stupid. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve done,” He lifted one side of his mouth in a guilty grin. If he meant it to reassure me he failed miserably. I looked down at my shirt, nonplussed to see how solid the fabric looked. I’d been sure he could see my wrenched heart through an open window in my chest. I cannot imagine what my face looked like. I cannot even say what I felt like. Every nerve froze. Waited. Swallowed the poisonous words. “I guess I should get home now,” he finished. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I felt my feet on the sandy earth, rocked back on my heels.
Do I smile? Do I agree?
I was so far beyond dignity, so far beyond salvaging the moment that I just turned and walked. I don’t remember getting back inside my bedroom. Don’t remember what I said to Sarah. I just remember the cool, brass knob under my hand as I shut my bedroom door firmly.
“I’m not your cousin,” I choked to the empty room. And then came the tears. Hot tears that washed the numb away. The numb I would give anything to get back.
I lost the next day. When I took too long coming down to breakfast Sarah tapped on my door and asked if I was feeling all right. I didn’t have the mental strength to conjure up an explanation so I seized on her excuse. I told her I felt sick and fell immediately back into a dreamless sleep. By lunchtime I was still wretched and I looked repulsive but I was also starving and bored. I made my way downstairs, keeping the quilt wrapped around me. Something about it comforted me. I liked studying the tiny squares, imagining my grandmother’s sharp needle stabbing in and out of the fabric, deliberately, undaunted by the mountainous task. I would have ended up with a potholder.
Sarah jumped up from the couch, her face full of concern, bordering on fear. “You’re awake! Are you cold? Are you getting a fever?” She put her hand on my forehead. “You feel cool,” she searched me over, looking for a visible symptom. “You don’t look well, Jennifer. I thought you might be coming down with something last night. Does anything hurt?”
More than I ever knew I
could
hurt. I kept my symptoms vague, saying I felt tired and achy. Sarah said that she would call Claude and cancel our lunch plans and let Nathan know we weren’t doing lines. When she looked back to me, her panic rose again. “You are so pale. And your eyes are watering! What can I do?”
“I’m hungry,” I told her weakly, swiping my tears before they could fall. That excited her. I think she knew it couldn’t be anything too terrible if I still had my appetite. She asked if she should make some Jello or start a crock of soup. I shook my head and told her I would warm up some leftovers. Only after I finished a plate of Hawaiian chicken and sweet potato casserole and chocolate cake did my hunger subside.
“You weren’t kidding!” she said after she watched me finish my second large glass of apple juice. “You must be trying to get your strength back.”
“I suppose. I’m getting tired again.”
“I should call my doctor,” she said, her fingers flitting nervously, looking for something to do. “So help me, Jennifer, if anything happens to you here. Claire …” The scenario was too dreadful to elaborate.
“Don’t worry. Just a bug. It’s not that bad. Maybe I got sea sick yesterday.”
“
After
the boat?” Sarah tilted her head in doubt.
I shrugged and told her I would camp on the couch and watch television. It was a mindless day. When night came I felt nothing but relief. I laid in the darkness and thought of flights home. I could leave immediately. Surprise my mother. Get far away. And as tempting as it was to run, to put a thousand country miles between myself and this pain, I knew the truth – I couldn’t outrun my own chest. The hurt would pace me, stalk me. And when I got back to Nebraska I would lie down in my bed and be a thousand miles from him. I turned onto my stomach and groaned into my pillow.
If I scream could he hear me?
Now the question distorted in my mind, sneered caustically,
if he heard you, would he care?
I fell into a troubled sleep.
The next day I made myself shower and dress. In the early morning hours Little’s face crossed my fitful dreams. I longed for a dose of her gruffness, her toughness. Maybe it would rub off on me. I managed to escape Sarah’s scrupulous care by saying I wanted to take a walk to get some fresh air. I made a rush for Pilgrim’s Point as soon as I was out of the backyard. The closer I came to her tiny house the more my hands started to shake. What would I say? What excuse could I give for being there in the first place? How could I explain the sudden tears that welled up for no reason, with no warning?
I stopped in her backyard, bent over the stitch in my side, and tried to breathe deep to deter the sob that wanted to break free. I probably looked like I’d just run a marathon instead of jogging across the cove.
Several ragged breaths later Little yelled out from her back door. “What happened to you?”
I brought my head up, looked at her, and then dropped it again. “Nothing,” was the brilliant reply I finally gave.
“You want some baklava?” She asked.
“What?”
“I got some baklava, if you want some. My Nephew sent it. He gets my birthday wrong every year, poor idiot!”
I shook my head, feeling half asleep. Seeing her in her blue house dress, waving a butter knife, made me feel like I was wandering around in one of those dreams where any character could say anything and it would still make sense. Somehow.
“Bakla-what?” I asked as I straightened.
“Baklava. Cake from …who knows? Who cares? Somewhere.”
The next thing I knew, I was seated at the kitchen table, stabbing my fork into a stiff, sticky slice of something. After one timid bite I started putting it away in earnest. It was perhaps the best thing I’d ever tasted. But then, I was starting to realize that food is exceptionally improved by depression. Little sloshed a glass of milk in front of me, causing several drops to jump onto the dark, wooden table. She stared hard at my ducked head as I shoveled in another bite. “I used to eat like that,” she said as she looked at my disappearing slice. “After I slept with somebody.”
I choked, the milk flying in a high arch and splattering onto my plate. “Little!”
“You still too young to hear ‘bout that, I reckon, and I’m too old to want to remember it,” she mumbled. “What’d you come over here for anyway?”
I dodged her stare and let my eyes glide across the yellow linoleum. “I was taking a walk.”
She frowned and looked at my empty plate. “Let’s walk then.” I finished my milk, and waited while Little meticulously straightened her laces and tied her shoes. She led the way out her front door and headed for the road instead of the beach.
“I’ve only known a girl to go out walking for one reason.”
“That so?” I said in flat voice that sounded more like
I don’t care
.
She puckered her lips and changed tactics. “You tell your mama to come?”
“Yeah, I told her,” I sighed.
“Well, I owe you somethin’ then, don’t I? Whatta you wanna know?”
I stopped on the rough shoulder of the road and turned toward the old woman, feeling infinitely more ancient. “Little, I don’t want to play anymore. I don’t think I even care anymore. I just want to go home. I want to get away from here.”