Outside the tavern Lucy said:
‘So tomorrow’s the big day.’
‘A trip to a radiography conference in suburban Boston is hardly a trip to Paris.’
‘Still, you get to play hooky for a couple of days.’
‘And if you tell me that the time away will make things seem clearer. ’
‘Fear not. If anything you’ll just come back feeling even more conflicted because you’ve stepped away from it all for a couple of days. Such is life.’
She leaned forward and gave me a hug.
‘You know what I want more than anything?’ she said. ‘Surprise. A surprise or two would be nice.’
‘Don’t you have to be on the lookout for surprises in order to find one?’
‘You’re a philosopher, Laura.’
‘No, I am a wife and mother and radiographic technician who works nine to five forty-nine weeks a year. My life.’
‘And if I were to tell you: “It could be worse. ”’
‘I’d hate you and agree with you at the same time.’
On my drive home my cellphone began to emit the bing sound indicating that I’d just received a text. It had to be Ben. No one else texted me at this hour. I didn’t reach for it until I was parked in our driveway, simultaneously noting that all the lights in the house were off, except for the one in the downstairs hallway that we always leave on to indicate someone is home — and, more recently, to welcome back children arriving home late. On which note, I had received a text earlier tonight from Sally:
Sleeping over at Brad’s. Will come by early tomorrow for my school stuff.
‘Sleeping over’. What a clever use of an innocent, pre-college euphemism. No doubt Brad’s parents knew that my daughter would be sharing his bed tonight and that they wouldn’t be doing so as ‘just friends’. Then again, Sally turns eighteen in nine months. I was sleeping with my boyfriend when I was her age. So I can’t exactly reproach her for ‘sleeping over’ at Brad’s. But this is the first time she has been direct and open about the fact that she is sexually active — and I can’t help but figure that she decided, after all that went down tonight with her father, to be finally direct about her relationship with Brad. Or, at least, direct with me — as I doubted she texted Dan the same information. Like so many fathers he’s rather queasy about the idea that she is no longer the innocent daddy’s girl. not that she has been a daddy’s girl for some time. I texted Sally back:
Leaving about nine for Boston, so will still be here to see you. Love — Mom.
Pressing ‘send’ I watched it disappear. Then I turned my attention to Ben’s message:
Am wondering if true love really exists? Answers on a postcard to my new website: thesorrowsofyoungwertherinmaine.com. Trying to paint. Not having much luck. Don’t call tonight — going to sit in my studio all night and force myself to do something with a brush. B xxx
Ben citing Goethe. I smiled and tapped out a reply:
Hope all goes well in the studio tonight. If not will go right eventually. Important thing is to go easy on yourself — I know easier said than done, but also absolutely crucial. You have been through a difficult time. Don’t expect too much of yourself right now.
Immediately I deleted those last two sentences. ‘I know I’ve been through a difficult time,’ I could hear him saying, ‘and I always have — and always will — expect a lot of myself. so don’t tell me to short-change myself.’ It’s one of the most complex aspects of parenting — knowing when not to say something or when to sidestep the sort of advice that sounds like a bromide or a band-aid applied to a major wound. And even if, in time, Ben may look upon the loss of his first love as a necessary rite of passage, the fact is that he still remains raw and fragile in its aftermath. To tell him that, five years from now, he might consider it all much ado about nothing would be so counterproductive. So I rephrased the end of the text to read:
Do know I am always here for you whenever you need me. Love — Mom
I wanted to add something about me hoping that he could still come home next week, but again applied the brakes, thinking that he doesn’t want to feel pushed into anything right now. If I say nothing he’ll probably show up.
I checked my watch. It was almost ten p.m. — and I needed to be on the road by seven tomorrow. I went inside. Dan had cleared away the dinner plates and turned on the dishwasher and left everything tidy. I shut off the hall light and went upstairs, hoping that Dan was already asleep and wouldn’t question our daughter’s whereabouts. I too needed rest. Today had been a particularly complex day. But aren’t all days complex? Don’t they all throw something in your path that upends the momentum of things, or simply reminds you that life never goes the way you want it?
Then again, what is it that any of us truly want out of life? When asked about this rather large, frequently troubling question people often talk in headlines: happiness, someone to love, a life without fear, money, sex, freedom, nothing terrible to happen to my family, recognition for what I am. All reasonable requests. Yet show me a life where anyone really ends up getting what they want. I see this all the time with the patients awaiting results from scans. The terror and hope etched in their eyes. The sense that fate may have just short-changed them. The need to believe that there is a way out of what might be a terminal situation.
Enough.
Opening the bedroom door I saw that my husband was very much asleep — his arms clutching the pillow so tightly I couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t some sort of nocturnal life preserver keeping him afloat. Dan suddenly groaned, then let out a sharp cry — as if something had startled him. I rushed over to comfort him. But by the time I reached the bed he had turned over and was back in the unconscious world. I sat and stroked his head and thought: In the best of all possible worlds he’d sit up and take me in his arms and tell me that we were golden. No wonder we all love the fairy tales that don’t end with the princess getting eaten by the dragon. or (worse yet) finding herself sad and alone.
I get a taste of the great outdoors tomorrow. A few days away from all this. A brief flirtation with escape.
But I don’t want escape. I want.
Yet another question for which I don’t have an answer.
Dan groaned again, seizing the pillow even tighter. I suddenly felt very tired.
Lights out now. Close the door on the day. Close it tight.
Friday
One
THE ROAD. HOW I love the road. Or, at least, the idea of the road. The summer before our senior year at the University of Maine, Dan and I piled into the ancient (but still very serviceable) Chevy that he had throughout college and headed west. The car could do seventy-five miles an hour at a push. There was no air conditioning — and we were trailed by ninety-degree temperatures (at best) everywhere. We didn’t care. We had $2,000 and three months before we were due back east for the start of classes. We stayed in cheap motels. We ate largely in diners. We left highways all the time to explore two-lane blacktops. We spent four days in Rapid City, South Dakota, because we simply liked that crazy Wild West town. We broke down on a stretch of Route 111 in the Wyoming badlands and (this being the days before the cellphone) had to wait three hours until a car showed up. It was a guy in a pickup with a gun rack. We hailed him down and he brought us the forty miles to the next outpost of civilization, and the mechanic there was around seventy and never without a Lucky Strike between his teeth. He insisted on putting us up in a room over his garage for the two days it took him to perform a valve job on the engine: a huge piece of work that should have cost over $1,000, but for which he only charged us $500. Through a lot of crazy budgeting — and the fact that gas back then was just over a dollar a gallon — we were able to carry on west to San Francisco, then head back east through the desert to Santa Fe, which we both fell for.