The Life You Longed For (32 page)

A
t any given moment, three percent of the Earth is covered in the frothy white foam of waves. Fourteen thousand waves break upon a single patch of beach each day. The seventh wave is always slightly larger than the others. Grace couldn't remember where she'd learned this or why anyone would bother trying to figure it out. It was like attempting to understand grief, she thought, thinking of the stack of books still sitting by her bed:
A Grief Observed, The Dynamics of Grief, The Grief Recovery Plan
. Maybe she hoped that the words in those books would become like the waves, crashing upon the shore—what was it? every five seconds—each time taking a few grains of sand. In a year's time, as much as nine inches of the Cape May shoreline would have eroded. Maybe, she thought, sadness was like sand. Can loss be washed away a grain at a time?

She stood at the water's edge, her shoes dangling from her hand. Her sundress, damp with sweat, stuck to her back. Noah had been on the Hawk Watch platform with a group of birders when she arrived, the parking lot packed with cars. She'd go back up in a little while, she told herself, though a part of her wanted to stand right where she was, unmoving, forever.

Fragments of conversations floated by as people strolled: A couple arguing.
I thought you said…why are we…
Women gossiping.
I don't know what he sees in…Are you kidding?
They called after their kids:
Stop running, you're kicking up sand! I told you…
From behind her came the whack of paddleballs and the shrieks of kids. Sweat trickled down her nose and collarbone. A few feet away, a cluster of teenage girls laughed, squealing with hilarity.
Oh my God…No way! Wait…Tell me again…

Grace stood still, half listening, her face tilted toward the sun, her eyes closed.

What did you do? But you don't mean…No!

More laughter. A lifeguard's whistle pierced the air. Another wave crashed forward, soaking the bottom of her dress.

Do you think you'll…But what about
…

The sunlight glowed bright orange beneath her eyelids. She thought of all the choices these girls would make, all the choices she had made before even graduating from high school, without fully understanding that every choice eliminated hundreds—thousands—of others. And all the choices not made, all the chances not taken, maybe these were the things that actually determined the shape each life held.

“Grace!”

She spun to face him, her heart pounding so forcefully she could feel it in her throat. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the shimmering brightness.

He was leaning over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Sweat dripped from his chin and forehead. “Do you…” He inhaled sharply. “Have any…” He took another breath. “…idea…what you…just did to me?”

“Oh God, I'm sorry.” She shaded her eyes with one hand. He looked heavier and tanned. His nose was peeling.

“I don't think I've run that fast in twenty years,” he panted. “I couldn't believe it when I saw your car.” He wiped his face with the bottom edge of his T-shirt and straightened. “And then when I saw Jack's car seat, God, I was relieved.” He took another breath. “I had called Children's the day after that hearing you were supposed to have, and when they said there was no Jack Connolly on the patient list—Jesus, I was relieved.”

She felt the corners of her mouth go numb, her smile frozen. She couldn't look at him.

“Grace? You took him home right? You got him back, didn't you?”

She couldn't speak, couldn't look at him, couldn't bear to say it.

“Grace? Everything's—I mean, his seat's still there, so…?”

Her mouth quivered. She pretended to focus on something up the beach. “I'm not ready to take his car seat out yet,” she said. Her voice was flat. She kept staring past him. “He—he—” She still couldn't say it.
He died before we could take him home. I wasn't with my child for most of the last two weeks of his life
. If she looked at Noah she would break into a million pieces.

But she didn't need to speak. A low wail erupted out of him. “No,” he cried. “No.” And then, “Can I hold you for a minute?” he asked.

She nodded, still without looking at him, still without moving.

He held her so tightly, it hurt to breathe. She could feel his heart. The back of his T-shirt was damp with sweat, and the skin of his neck smelled of the beach, salty and clean. “I missed you so much,” she whispered, and he squeezed her even tighter. Minutes passed before he let her go and stepped back, his hands on either side of her face, seemingly memorizing her. “You're beautiful in gray,” he said.

She glanced down at her pale blue dress, then realized he was talking about her hair. She lifted her hand to it. “I just haven't…I don't know. I think I'm just going to let it grow out this way.”

 

They walked, weaving in out of the Memorial Day crowds, to the sunken concrete ship and back. She told him about the last four months: about the book she made for Jack and being frisked by the hospital security guard, and about that first god-awful visit. And then Jack's dying, the funeral, Stephen's leaving. Her voice was flat.

“Five days after you bury your child and he walks out? Jesus.”

“Don't,” Grace said. “He lost his child too. You don't know what he feels.” They were sitting in the sand now, shadows from the dunes encroaching farther down the beach as the sun began to set. Low tide, the waves and wet sand shimmering gold as if someone had poured glitter into the ocean. A bird lifted off and she pointed. “What kind was that?”

“Forster's tern.”

“And that?” She pointed again.

He glanced at her. “How's Max?”

“He's unreachable.” She shook her head. “Getting perfect grades. His room is immaculate. I feel like I've lost him too.”

“Did he know about us?”

“I don't think so.” She clasped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them. “I love you,” she said quietly, and in that moment she did, though it wasn't at all what she had thought she would say. But all she'd had to do was show up on the beach, and there he was, stampeding towards her, arms outstretched, energy and joy buzzing around him like an electrical field. She didn't have to do anything; she didn't have to be anything.

Loss on top of loss toppled inside her. Jack had made her feel this way. The center of his world. The minute she opened his door in the mornings or after his nap, he was madly scrambling to his feet in his crib, arms outstretched, calling out with delight as if she were the best surprise in the world. “Mama! You come to get me!” That wild rooster hair, his PJs all bedraggled.

Noah bent to kiss her, brushing a strand of her hair out of the way. His fingers were callused—she'd forgotten this—and his lips were salty. “I love you too,” he said.

They sat for a while without talking, Noah leaning back on his elbows, feet stretched in front of him. She closed her eyes, nearly falling asleep, her head on her knees, the sun like a warm hand at the back of her neck. At seven, the lifeguards up and down the beach stood on their chairs and blew their whistles, signaling that they were now off duty. The sun fell back toward the dunes.

“Would you be here if Stephen hadn't left you?” he asked after a while, and she knew he'd been waiting to ask this all afternoon.

She glanced at him without lifting her head. “Probably not.”

He was staring up at the sky, eyes squinted, a muscle jumping along his jaw. It was such a familiar posture, she thought. Always, he would look up when he stepped outside or stood in front of a window. A kind of waiting. And it occurred to her that this was the posture of loss, and that it was familiar in part because it was a posture she herself had adopted, always glancing up at night, trying to locate the moon.

“Would you have at least gotten in touch with me?” His voice was edged with hurt, uncertainty, confusion maybe.

She shook her head. “I'm not sure.”

He nodded, his jaw clenched.

She picked up a broken shell, its inside the bluish-pink of a dying heart, and using it like a shovel lifted a small pile of sand, then poured it over her ankles. Again and again, the sand cool against her feet. How was it that she had never understood until now how much the ocean was a landscape of loss: constantly breaking waves, emptied shells, land carried out to sea a little bit each year. She glanced up at Noah, but he looked far away. She touched his arm. “Hey.”

“Why didn't you tell me about Jack's—about Jack before now?” he asked, still staring ahead. She followed his gaze to the pale outline of a ship along the horizon line, and thought of how the horizon wasn't a real place, wasn't somewhere you could ever truly reach because it didn't exist except in the imagination.

She kept her hand on his arm, fingertips at his pulse. “I just couldn't.”

“Not even an e-mail?” He looked at her, hurt coloring his eyes a darker blue. “I'm just trying to—did you simply not think to tell me or did you want to and I don't know, it was some kind of guilt thing or—or—I don't understand.”

How could she tell him,
I didn't think of you at all
. Her shoulders dropped. “Oh Noah, I was just getting through the days, starting over, getting through another.” She paused. “I wasn't trying to hurt you.” It was a phrase she had repeated over and over in the past few months. To Stephen and her parents and Max and Erin. And to Jack. Especially to Jack. Every night.
I'm sorry, Goose
. Staring up at the moon.

“So what made you decide to come here now?”

“I missed you.” The words were like waves, rushing forward onto the sand, then pulling themselves back.

“Just like that?” His voice was gentle. “After four months?”

She dropped her hand from his arm, told him about the bumper sticker.

“So if you hadn't been behind that car…”

“But I was.” She looked at him. “I don't know what you want me to say.”

“I'm just trying to—it all seems so…so…random.”

Tears filled her eyes. It was. He was right. And she understood that no matter how much she loved this man—and she did—it wasn't enough to make her want to do all the things she would have to if she truly wanted a life with him.

“You came to say good-bye, didn't you?” He held her gaze.

Words lifted in her—denials, equivocations,
I'm not sure
;
maybe.
Words like bright fish leaping to the surface of a silver pond, then slipping away. There were so many things she wanted to explain—
I wasn't planning this, I didn't know
—but in the end, she just nodded.

Wordlessly, he got up and walked the fifty feet or so to the water, where he stood, arms on his hips, head bowed. Orange sunlight hammered the ocean into a flat glossy surface. Down the beach, a group of guys had set up a volleyball net. Grace focused on the whack of the ball going back and forth. She was playing with the sand again, lifting it onto a shell, pouring it back out. When she looked up, she expected Noah to be gone, but instead, he was walking back towards her.

“Hey, you.”

Hey, you.
The first words he'd ever spoken to her.

Now, he held out a hand and she took it and he pulled her up. All he said was, “Do you have to rush back tonight or can you stay a while?”

She told him she could stay.

 

They sat on plastic deck chairs on Noah's balcony, the dark bay like an upside-down sky, lights from the various boats scattered like stars. He'd made a pitcher of rum daiquiris and they passed a can of honey-roasted cashews back and forth, their clothes growing damp in the moisture-filled air.

“Tell me about Jack,” he said during a lull in the conversation.

Grace set down her drink without taking a sip. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything.” He shrugged. “Just some little thing you remember.”

But she remembered everything. It's what mothers did. Hoarded every detail they could about their child: the colored balls of his socks in the top drawer of his dresser; the yeasty smell of his skin after a nap; the first time he said “Mama,” or went out in the snow or saw the ocean, toddling straight into the crashing waves before Grace could grab him back. She thought of Jack constantly, anything—everything—a reminder: a box of graham crackers, a child with reddish or curly hair. Passing a truck on the interstate—
Honk him, Mama!
Making a salad for dinner…

Noah laid his palm on her bare knee. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

She lifted his hand and laced her fingers through his. “Jack was a little scientist,” she said quietly. “Fifty percent of his conversation was the word
why
.” Her voice was scratchy. “He'd ask where Stephen was, and I'd say, ‘at the gym,' and Jack would ask why. So I'd say, ‘because he goes swimming there,' and Jack would ask why he went swimming.” The wind lifted her words, flinging them up like the scraps of stale bread she and Stephen and a toddling Max had once tossed to the gulls. She glanced at Noah. “So
,
I'd tell him Stephen liked swimming and
of course
, Jack wanted to know
why
he liked it. Once, I was tired or distracted and I told Jack, ‘If you say
why
one more time, I'm going to scream,' and of course—” She laughed.