And then the silence came back and no one would lift its smothering weight from the air. Just when I thought I would suffocate in the thick quiet my mother said, “I’ll go to the graveyard.” My mother opened the unguarded door and we followed her to her rental car. For a tense moment I wondered if she would let Sarah sit next to her in the front, but Mother didn’t react when Sarah opened the passenger door. Little grunted her way into the backseat beside me and we rode in thoughtful silence to the cemetery, the car swinging through the quiet, Sunday streets.
The graveyard was well inland, half at the bottom of a wide hill, and half atop it. We came to the black, iron gate that threw long, straight shadows across the green grass and white headstones. It was beautiful. Like a museum with rows of sculptures, the art of lives lined up for all to see. Some tall, brave spires rose from the ground, pointing eternally to the desired destination of the people below them. Others were too old to read. My mother stopped at a grave that was deep in the shadows at the base of the towering hill. I peered closer, seeing my grandmother’s name, Hazel Dorothy Dyer. Beside her rested another stone inscribed Henry Samuel Dyer. I tried to think of my grandparents but I couldn’t picture them in my mind. All I could see were their two daughters standing together for the first time in twenty years. My mother whispered “mama” so softly I barely caught the word. I took a small step forward, leaving my mother and Sarah behind me. Alone. Together.
“She’s wearing her purple blouse,” my mother said quietly. Sarah drew in a breath and her eyes filled with grateful tears, but my mother wasn’t finished. “She wore it to your recital and she liked it. It was the last thing dad ever bought her, as far as I know.” Her words continued, small and weak, but unyielding. They seemed to be escaping a dark prison, running for daylight before she could seize them again. “But it’s a silk blouse. And it gets so cold when the snow comes and I kept worrying that she would be cold,” her voice cracked. The little girl I had seen huddled at the back of her visage when she yelled at Sarah came creeping back into view. “I buried her with her wedding ring quilt. The one she made for me. And then when I married Tom I didn’t have it and I thought about it all day – that quilt. Because she made it for me and it seemed like I should have one of her blankets. But I didn’t want her to be cold,” her tears fell thick, one behind the other, impatient for their liberation.
At that moment I knew Sarah didn’t care what my mother did. She threw her arms around her baby sister and though my mother didn’t hug her back, she didn’t fight the embrace. Just crumbled beneath it. They both sunk to the ground, weeping, cradled on the warm, soft humus and brambles of their mother’s grave.
“You can have a blanket. She’s not cold. You can have it,” Sarah repeated over and over, stroking my mother’s head. It is no use pretending I wasn’t crying with them. I didn’t want to interrupt one second of their reunion so I cupped my hands over my mouth and cried with myself. And in the paroxysm of grief I felt the warm hand of victory, reaching up to grab their entwined arms, pulling them over the bitter finish line together.
When I looked up at Little, the sole human standing in that field of death with me, she met me with a stare that had seen far more than I, and bowed her head in approval.
It didn’t take long for my mother to exhaust her supply of tears. When Sarah finally released her, my mother put her forehead to the spiky grass, like a Muslim in prayer, a child hiding in her mother’s lap. She stayed there, motionless, except for a gentle caressing of her fingers against the grass until she finally emerged, face mottled, eyes red, hair disheveled.
There was a strange, anti-climactic feel to standing and leaving the graveyard and driving through the town. There seemed both too much and too little left to say. No one really tried. Little asked to be dropped off at her house. “I suppose you two can hash the rest out yuhselves and I never finished my nap.”
When we pulled up to Pilgrim’s Point she gently tugged a chunk of my hair. “You owe me a story. When you get back.” I smiled into her wizened face, and threw a troubled glance to the front seats, wondering if the peace would last without her mediations. She just patted my cheek and said, “They’ll be fine. Eventually. Our wings may be small, but then again, so are we.” And with that final word on the subject she grumbled as she pulled herself out of the car and slammed the door, like she blamed the automobile for her stiff joints.
Sarah took us back to Shelter Cove where Nathan was standing anxiously on the porch when we pulled up. “Nathan!” I said with mingled surprise and delight as I opened my door.
“You’re still here,” is all he said, his hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders falling in something that looked like relief. “I saw the car gone and I thought maybe you’d left. I thought Sarah might need …” he watched the two sisters emerge from the car. In the sunlight I saw the similarities, the small noses, the arching eyebrows, the finely shaped lips. Both certainly looked a little worse for the wear with their flushed faces, pink rimmed eyes and Sarah’s khaki pants sported a dark grass stain on one knee.
“We’re leaving early in the morning. Eight o’ clock flight. Little convinced her to stay,” I tried not to mind that he’d only come back because he was worried about Sarah. I tried to focus on the fact that he was here. Two feet away. A gift tomorrow and the days after wouldn’t bring me. “That means we can stay for lines.”
Sarah and mother drew up behind us. “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Maybe we should postpone. I need the time with Claire.”
Both of them looked eternally tired, like they would never be fully restored again. Shoulders heavy and faces drawn I couldn’t mistake this surrender from my mother as reconciliation. She held herself away from Sarah, avoiding her touch, avoiding eye contact. She might be signing the treaties, but wars leave scars. I could see years of awkward, halting attempts slowly filling in the craters left by absence and anger. Eventually, the new growth of the future would cover the decimated past and blooms of new memories would burst open like the poppies at Flanders’s field. Today, the barren landscape of the past was still muddy, brutal, strewn with victims. But quiet. Quiet. Peaceful.
“She can do them with us,” I insisted. “I need them tonight.”
“What are you talking about?” Mother asked.
“A non-game we play,” my chin dimple caved in as I smiled secretly at Sarah. She looked at me in wonder like she wasn’t used to it, like she hadn’t been doing it all day, every day, for almost a month.
“Jennifer, I think you and Nathan should do them tonight. I think I need to talk to my sister.” Sarah’s eyes rushed up to my mother’s worn face and she amended her words. “Or listen. Both.” Nathan watched them, unaware of what the last hour had brought.
“Is everyone all right?” he asked, his concerned face roaming between the three of us. Sarah put a hand on his shoulder and told him that we were all fine. “Will you meet me in the cove at seven?” he asked me, his eyes neither anxious, nor wary. Only determined. I reminded him that he needed to put the girls to bed first and he assured me that Judith could handle it for a night.
When he left mother asked about him and that kept the conversation going for almost an hour. There was a mountain of talk to climb. I don’t know if I was hungrier to speak or listen, but we kept tripping over each other, rushing ahead, jumping back, interrupting, being interrupted. For the next three hours we did nothing but talk. Even when we all unanimously agreed that we were in an advanced state of starvation we took the conversation to the kitchen, talking over the sandwiches, talking around the bites in our mouths. Not a merry discussion. Not three girlfriends joking. It was something deeper than that, word after word, like shovelful after shovelful, filling trenches so we couldn’t jump back in. We left ourselves nowhere to hide, nowhere to retreat.
Mother talked about my father, Sarah talked about the town. I shared my Smithport stories, watching my mother’s face as I spoke about the ferry, the boats, the Jacks, Darcy. Nathan I kept to myself. That story was mine. Was Little’s. I owed it to her first. But also, that story wasn’t a story yet. It was a paragraph a writer studies and stews over and waits to see if a story comes. I still didn’t know. I stowed it away carefully, wondering what our last meeting on the beach would bring.
When the clock made its journey all the way to seven, I left them still talking on the front porch, and made my way to the beach for the last time. The sun was low, but bright, and the water reflected its yellow glow, throwing everything into the still, waiting, golden light of late afternoon. It reminded me of the wheat field. I was sorry that I missed them cutting it. I wished it would still be waving at me when I got home. Nathan wasn’t there yet so I sat close to the water and watched it slide across the sand and retreat. I understood Claudia’s need to talk with Will all night. I felt the brevity of the evening. Felt too close to my last good-bye. The one that hurt the most, because it felt the most final. Sarah would be my aunt forever, always the same love, always the same relationship. But Nathan - Nathan could change. I might be nothing to him in months, maybe in days. I closed my eyes and tried to push the thought away.
He came quietly. He didn’t wear shoes. I’d tried that before but the sand was too sharp even for my tough feet. He lowered himself much closer than usual, his shoulder grazing mine. It reminded me of the jolting ride in the car that morning.
“Is everything better with Claudia?” I asked.
“It’s … okay. She’s grounded, like you heard. Can’t see Will for a couple weeks. I’m sorry I got that mad in front of you.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think you could help it. You were scared for her.” The tattered strings that hung from the frayed hems of his jeans draped onto the sand. I looked at his feet next to mine, trying to forget how far apart we would be tomorrow.
“Is Sarah all right? And your mom? I can’t believe you got her to come.”
I explained that my father probably had more to do with it than I did. I doubted that their proximity to an international airport had been a mere coincidence. I then gave him a quick sketch of the fight at Shelter Cove. He let out a ringing, light laugh in the middle and exclaimed, “She was hiding in the kitchen the entire time?”
“Would you expect any less from Little? I think she was getting back at us for this morning.” I looked at him, taking advantage of the break in the story. “Nathan, did you know about John? Being married?”
“Yeah, I knew,” he breathed out. “Only the Jacks could come up with a name he deserved. Only a real sailor can say something like that.”
“But, Sarah never met anyone else?” It was the detail that didn’t make sense to me. Her intelligence, her beauty, her talents, her kindness – surely she deserved a legitimate love.
Nathan sighed. “She tried. A few times. She loved him. She couldn’t let go. Or hold on. He got divorced a few years later and came to find her.”
“What?” I cried in shock. “But then, why didn’t …”
“She didn’t want to be a home wrecker. Didn’t want to win love at someone else’s expense. She blames herself for wrecking her own family and she didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s. John told her he had a daughter.” He stopped to let me process that. “Sarah told him to go home, make up with his wife and take care of his girl. She saw no other option.”
I dropped my head in disgust. “Sarah didn’t wreck anything. She didn’t. She shouldn’t have taken the blame.”
“They say the heart has its own reasons.”
“You would know what they say.”
“Speaking of quotes, what did you bring?” He looked down at my pockets, expecting me to pull something out.
I held out my empty hands to show him I had no notes, no papers, no book. “I only remember a few words. I don’t even know if I’ll get them right. You read it my first week here. And I don’t know who said it. It was something like, “Is it changed, or am I changed?”
“That’s Longfellow. And you said it perfectly.” His eyes stroked my face, a touch more personal than any he’d given me with his hands.
“Which one is it, Nathan? Did the entire universe change since I got here or is it just me?”
“Explain,” he asked softly.
“I don’t think I can. It’s all upside down. The things that mattered before, don’t. I have a family that didn’t exist two months ago. I have all these…,” I blushed and looked away from him. “I feel like the same person, but everything around me and inside of me is different. I can’t figure out if life changed or I did.”
“It’s not just you. Things are changing” he said, looping his arms around his bent legs and looking above the water to the space between earth and sky. I watched his fingers moving restlessly against each other and I felt a wave of cold fear wash over me. He was too preoccupied. Too nervous.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” I asked.
His shoulders rose in surprise like the same icy wave had reached him. “I’m going,” he admitted. “I can’t afford Harvard but Northeastern gave me a full ride with living expenses. They don’t even do that. One of the board members called me personally and offered to fund me. I’ll finish my bachelors this year.”
“That’s amazing. They must think you’re really special.” Why did my stomach drop at those words?
“You saw Judith today. She did … she did a good job. I’ll be four hours away but I can come home pretty often, make sure they’re doing all right.”
“They’re lucky to have you,” I told him. “When I told you to leave them alone, I didn’t mean …”
“You were just saying whatever came to your mind. I know. And you were right.”
I smiled, but it held more sadness than joy. “I don’t say everything,” I insisted.
“I know,” is all he answered.
“Nathan? What are you going to major in? How did you decide?”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “I’m going to get my Masters in special education. First. Who knows what comes after that. I figure I can give a good twenty years to at least three different things, don’t you think?”