Returning to Shore (2 page)

***

After the reception Clare went upstairs in the inn with her mother to change and get her things for her trip.

“Everything was just perfect, wasn't it?” said Vera, as she hugged Clare.

“Sure Mom, it was great.”

Vera laughed a little and put her hands on Clare's shoulders. “To tell you the truth the salmon wasn't quite warm enough. And the champagne wasn't quite cold enough.”

“I'm sure you're the only one who noticed.”

“Ian noticed the champagne. He didn't say anything, but I could tell.”

“Ian didn't notice anything but you, Mom.”

Vera smiled. “You may be right, darling.” She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. “I never liked the color peach before, but I think it was just right. I think the dress worked out. What do you think, sweetheart?”

“I already told you, Mom, the dress is fine. You looked—” Clare hesitated for a moment; words spun through her head: beautiful, glamorous, elegant … “Divine,” she said. It was her wedding gift to her mother.

Vera threw her arms around Clare again. “Oh my darling,” she said, “I am so happy. I am so very, very happy.” She let go of Clare slowly, then immediately burst into action, laying out her clothes for the trip. Clare's suitcase and backpack were already in the trunk of Eva's car. Vera helped Clare with the back zipper on her dress and folded it expertly while Clare put on her jeans and T-shirt.

“I still don't see why I can't stay with friends while you are away,” she said. “Molly said I could stay at her
house, and Susannah invited me to go to Colorado with her.”

Vera turned quickly to look at her. She didn't say anything, just tilted her head, a 30-degree angle of disappointment.

Clare sighed. “I know, I know,” she said, “we've been over this a hundred times. Even so, Mom …”

“Who knows?” said Vera, after a pause, “you might actually have a good time—well, even if not a good time, at least an interesting time. You might discover something you two have in common.”

“Mom, I haven't seen him since I was a baby.”

“Three,” said Vera. “You were three.”

“Three, then,” said Clare. “And I don't remember a thing about him.”

“You'll learn about him, then. And he'll learn about you.” She smiled, and Clare had a sudden urge to smack her, smack that smile. But it was Vera's wedding day, and you couldn't smack someone on her wedding day, not to mention the fact that that someone was your mother.

“OK,” said Vera, and she shoved Clare's duffel bag to the side and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I
know this isn't easy, darling. None of it. But he does have some rights in the matter, and this was such a perfect opportunity.” She took Clare's hand and pulled her to sit beside her. “It's only three weeks. I'll be back before you know it.” She kissed the side of Clare's face, and though Clare didn't intend to, had no expectation that she would do this, she buried her face against Vera's arm and cried, quietly, but cried all the same.

If Vera had asked her why she was crying, she would have said, “I miss Peter. If you and he were still together none of this would have happened.”

But Vera did not ask.

Eva and Clare were on their way soon after the string quartet had packed up their instruments and gone off to their next gig. The musicians were four Juilliard students, and they seemed rather shrill and giddy when they left. Clare wasn't sure if it was the champagne, which they had started enjoying at the beginning of the Mozart, or if it was because Tertio had tipped them so generously (Clare had seen the hundred-dollar bills). Tertio's daughter had left long before, and his son had fallen asleep on a sofa in the lounge, a thin line of spittle dragging down the corner of his mouth.

Vera and Tertio saw Eva and Clare off, though the
newlyweds turned to go back inside the inn before Eva finished turning the car around. Clare caught a last glimpse. They had their arms linked behind their backs, the way skaters might as they circle the ice rink.

“Well,” said Eva cheerfully, as she pulled out onto the main road, “that's done. How are you feeling?”

“OK, I guess,” said Clare.

“I was trying to figure out what to get your mother for a wedding present,” said Eva, “and of course there was nothing she didn't have. And then she suggested this.” Eva took her eyes off the road longer than she should have and looked at Clare. “Not that I'm sorry to have a chance to spend a little time alone with you. This is fun for me. Though I hate driving, and I don't do bridges.”

“How are we going to get to Cape Cod, then?” Clare asked.

“Your father is going to meet us in the rest area along the canal on this side,” Eva said. “Don't worry, we have it all arranged.”

When Eva said “we” Clare knew she meant Vera, for Vera was a champion of organization, and Eva, by her own admission, was not. It hadn't always been like
this. Clare could remember a time when her mother was as casual about things as her younger sister. But Vera had become fiercely organized around the time she decided to reinvent herself: going back to law school, moving into the city, chucking Peter.

“I have to be,” she had told Eva, “it's the only way to get anything accomplished.” Now she divided up her day into ten-minute segments. “Billable” minutes, she had pointed out. Every ten minutes counted, was worth money. Where back when she was married to Peter time went by all on its own, unaccounted for. Ten minutes spilled into the next ten minutes and nobody kept track of it. Sometimes Clare missed the school bus in the morning because Vera had been oblivious about the time.

“I'm so sorry, darling,” Vera would cry out, in anguish, “I promise I won't let it happen again.” But it did happen. Not that Clare minded. When she missed the bus Peter would drive her to school—sometimes in Vera's car, sometimes on the back of his motorcycle.

“I can't believe I ever let you do that,” said Vera recently, when the subject of riding motorcycles had come up. “I must have been out of my mind.”

Time was different for Clare, too, back then. In her old elementary school everything was relaxed and she could take as long as she wanted to finish a project or the book she was reading. Now everything was scheduled from the moment she got up in the morning. At school, bells clanged at the end of every class period, and the only time she could talk with her friends was during the 45 minutes they had for lunch. She used a purple pen to mark things on her calendar, because it looked softer than red, but the calendar was still filled up. And when school was finally out this year, all of her free time had been swallowed up by preparations for her mother's wedding.

The inn where the wedding had taken place was deep in the countryside—or so it had seemed to Clare—but the highway was only ten minutes away. It was a newly widened section of road, with embankments still raw and in some sections a lurid green, where a mixture of grass seed and tinted fertilizer had been spread. When Vera had selected the place for the wedding she had liked the convenience to the highway, but had made sure, when she stood outside with Clare, that you couldn't hear the distant traffic.

“I should never have had that last cup of coffee,” said Eva. “I'm going to have to pee as soon as we get to the first rest stop. How are you doing?” she asked.

“I'm fine,” said Clare.

“I thought I should drink coffee since I'm going to be driving half the night, but there's always a price to pay.”

“Are you driving all the way back to the city after you drop me off?” asked Clare.

“No way!” said Eva. “I'm heading on to Boston, staying with friends.” Eva had friends all over the place. All over the world, in fact. “If you have friends to crash with,” she'd once advised Clare, “you'll never have to spend money on a hotel.”

“You said half the night,” said Clare.

Eva laughed and poked Clare with her elbow. “You are such a literalist,” she said.

Clare dug in her pocket and pulled out a hair elastic. She leaned forwards in her seat and gathered her hair into a ponytail and secured the elastic around it. There was still a residue of whatever hair product Vera's beautician had used that morning. She'd wash her hair as soon as she could. There would certainly be a shower
at this place she was going to. Wouldn't there be?

“What did you think of the wedding?” Eva asked after a while.

“I don't know,” said Clare, and shrugged. “What was I supposed to think of it?”

“You were watching the balloons floating away during the ceremony, and from the expression on your face it looked like you wanted to grab onto them and make your escape.”

Clare was surprised by this. She hadn't been aware that Eva had noticed her at all during the ceremony, and she hadn't been aware that her face had shown anything at all.

“I just feel bad about Peter,” she said. “That's all.”

“If you love Peter—and who wouldn't love Peter?” said Eva, “—you'll be happy for him that your mother finally pushed him out of the house and moved on to someone else. He and Vera were a disaster together. I'm just surprised they lasted as long as they did.”

“A disaster?” asked Clare.

“He was fine as a lover,” said Eva, “but as a husband … ?” She turned to look at Clare. “I'm sorry, honey, am I telling you something you never heard
before? What did Vera say to you about the reason she dumped Peter?”

“She said he wasn't serious enough, he lacked ‘gravitas,'” said Clare.

Eva laughed so hard she had to blot tears from her eyes. She dug in her pocket and extracted a well-used tissue to blow her nose before she spoke again. “I'm not laughing at you,” she told Clare, “I'm just laughing at—oh God, I can just hear Vera saying that, ‘gravitas'! Well, she acquired plenty of gravitas herself, I guess. And then she acquired Ian.”

The thought of Ian made them both silent for a while.

“Look at it this way,” said Eva. “He's dull, but he's solid. He's rich. He's smart. And he loves your mother. I'd say that's about as good as you could hope for.”

“I miss Peter,” said Clare, and she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the cold glass of the window.

“Yup,” said, Eva, and she reached across and gave Clare a one-armed hug.

“I wish I could have stayed with him now. I know he's living with someone, and he and Mom aren't
exactly talking to each other, but still …”

“You can understand how Vera wouldn't want to be dealing with Peter at this time.”

“She could have let me stay with my friends, then. She didn't have to ship me off this way.”

“She's not exactly shipping you off,” said Eva. “She's sending you to visit your father. He's been wanting to see you for years. And this—well, this worked out.”

“He's been wanting to see me for years?”

“You didn't know that?” asked Eva.

“Not really,” said Clare.

“Well, I didn't think it was any big secret. I thought you talked to him on the phone.”

“On Christmas. He calls every Christmas. But we don't really talk. He asks me what I'm doing in school and I tell him. That's about it.”

“He supports you,” said Eva. “You knew that, didn't you?”

“I guess.”

“Pays your tuition at snooty-tooty academy, pays for your oboe lessons, your tennis camp, your orthodontist, your computer, your clothes, your food. Until Ian came along he paid for a lot of Vera's stuff, too. You
can't say he hasn't been generous all these years.”

The word “generous” was not one Clare had ever heard used about her father. It made him seem more like a real person. Vera rarely talked about him much, and if she ever did, the adjective she relied on was “smart.” Clare had always assumed that the checks he sent were simply a legal obligation, not that he'd had a choice about any of it.

“Do you hate him, too?” asked Clare.

“Hate him? Nobody hates him!” said Eva.

“Mom does.”

Eva shook her head furiously. “She thought she did, once, but that was long ago.”

“Does he hate her?”

“You'll have to ask him that,” said Eva.

“He did move to the other side of the whole country.”

Eva actually seemed to think about her answer before she spoke. “He didn't do that to get away from her,” she said. “From what I understood, he wanted to be out in Silicon Valley, where things were happening in his field. And she didn't want to move. That's when marriages often fall apart,” said Eva. “One spouse
wants to move and the other doesn't.”

Clare could easily imagine her mother saying, “I don't want to move.” When Vera said something, she stuck to it. Still, that didn't explain
him
.

“He never came back to visit, not even once,” said Clare.

“California does that to people,” said Eva. “It sucks them in and frazzles their brains, and they never make it back to the right coast again.”

Clare turned in her seat so she could look at Eva straight on. “So how come he came back now?”

“I have no idea,” said Eva. “And I don't think Vera does, either. All I know is that he took some kind of early retirement and decided to move back to Cape Cod, where he owned a house, and got himself involved with something to do with reptiles.”

“Reptiles?”

“Reptiles, amphibians. One of those things, thank God, that we don't have in New York City.” Eva took her hands off the steering wheel and waggled them in the air for emphasis.

“How come he owns a house on Cape Cod?” asked Clare.

“It was his parents' place. He inherited it, and I guess he decided to hold on to it. I don't know what it is exactly. A house, a cottage. A tent.”