I parked Gigi’s car behind the panel van, climbed out and stretched my legs.
The air was different here. Somehow sweeter than Mamaroneck, even though both places were bounded by the sea. It was also milder than New York, there having been only a couple of mild snow flurries in the past couple of weeks, neither of which had settled for longer than a few hours, though heavier snow was forecast.
As I rocked on my heels to get the blood flowing through my legs, I saw Eric walking toward me. He was wearing a thick woolen jacket and holding a small hand saw.
“Busy day?” I asked.
“Winter’s the best time to prune,” he said. “You can see the tree structure better without the leaves.”
The area around the house had no lawn to speak of. Just neatly maintained areas of native trees and shrubs, the ones I remembered him pointing out being dogwood, hazelnut, black cherry, witch-hazel and pepperbush. As you’d expect, Eric could reel off the names of every single New England native, as well as an exhaustive list of non-native invasive varieties that he’d spent years encouraging his clients to eradicate.
He swapped the saw to his left hand and held out his right. Although he was the kind of guy who hugged men and women alike, we’d never got to the point where either of us felt comfortable enough to try it.
I shook his hand. “Sorry I didn’t bring the kids.”
He hadn’t yet met Alex either, of course, but Kim had taken rather a shine to Eric and the admiration went both ways. Even counting the weeks spent on her Aunt Hazel’s Arizona ranch, Kim was fast becoming a staunch city girl, but she’d still enjoyed the couple of times Eric had taken her out on jobs and shared his love of the local habitat with her.
He smiled. “Sarah’s going to be disappointed. She’s dying to meet Alex, you know.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. This wasn’t planned. Next time, though. Soon.”
“She’d like that,” he said, his tone conveying that while she really would, he wasn’t holding his breath while I made it happen. He thumbed a gesture at the house. “She’s in the kitchen.”
I nodded and stepped through the open front door, pausing to override a fleeting change of heart about my visit.
“Mom?”
She emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron.
“Sean.”
We hugged awkwardly.
“Come into the living room. I’ve got some fish pies in the oven. Eric will finish the vegetables.”
That’s something my dad would never have done. I don’t think I saw him set foot in the kitchen once.
She untied her apron, slung it over a kitchen chair then led the way through to a cozy living area. A log fire was burning in the grate. Two perfect miniature pine trees stood at either end of the mantel, each of them adorned with shiny red wooden Christmas baubles. Tiny handcrafted anchors and ships’ wheels also hung from the branches. On a varnished beech table sat a Christmas centerpiece, with snow-dusted pinecones and dried starfish.
Up here, the ocean got into everything, even Christmas.
I’d called ahead to see if my mom was around and to say that I needed to ask her a few things. I’d had to say it was about dad when she got all worried about what I needed to talk to her about, and it felt like she had asked Eric to give us space to talk uninterrupted, which meant he must have had some idea why I was here. Even me driving all the way out to talk to his wife about her first husband had zero effect on his positive mood or gracious demeanor. He was about as comfortable in his skin as it’s possible to be. I admired him for that.
We sat opposite each other, mom on a floral-patterned armchair and me on a brown leather sofa. We spent a few minutes on niceties, she asking how everyone was, about Alex in particular, chiding me for not having brought him up to see her already. I had to accept the blame sheepishly without being able to tell her what he’d been through. Then her whole body tensed up a bit and she asked, “So what did you want to ask me about regarding your dad?”
It was immediately clear she really didn’t want to talk about him, but I could see she was ready to force herself, for which I was grateful.
“I need to know more about what was going on in his life in the months and weeks leading up to… you know.”
I could see her trying to decide where to start.
She told me about how he’d become too caught up in his work, how it seemed to have taken over his life and pushed everything else aside. How his general mood had changed.
“He didn’t seem there when we were together, most of the time,” she said. “We’d be out having dinner with friends and it was like his mind was elsewhere. He’d stay at the office late, then spend hours in that damn study of his-you probably don’t remember, but he’d come down sometimes, serve himself a plate and take it back up there and eat alone. It was like he’d lose all interest in family life. It wasn’t until after that I found out he was clinically depressed.”
“Yes, tell me more about that.” While trying not to sound accusatory at all, I added, “I mean, how could you not have known? All that time?”
She shifted in her seat, her body language betraying some defensiveness. “He never talked. From time to time, when the moment was right, I’d ask, ‘Are you OK? Are you happy? Are we good?’ He’d just say ‘Yes, of course,” give me a smile and a kiss-but I knew he was just avoiding something.”
“But you never saw him take any pills, nothing like that?”
“No. He kept the diagnosis to himself.”
“But, I mean-” I caught myself and took a breath. She was going to clam up if I started accusing her. Funny how being with family makes you forget everything you’ve ever learnt about how to interview someone. Not that mom was a suspect, just that she knew so much that I didn’t. Not yet, anyway. “Sorry,” I said.
She smiled. “It’s all right. This was never going to be easy. For either of us. It’s why I’d hoped we’d never have to dig it up.”
I nodded. “So how did you finally find out?”
“It was part of the coroner’s report. The men investigating his death turned up the shrink he’d been seeing. Turns out he’d been diagnosed with clinical depression about nine months before… before he died.”
“Did you ever meet this guy?”
“Oh, yes. I went to see him. He couldn’t tell me much-you know, that ridiculous doctor-patient thing, even after death. I mean, how silly is that?” Her face relaxed with a bittersweet, faraway look. “He couldn’t tell me much. He was just very sorry about what happened.”
“Can you remember his name?”
“Oh, Lord.” She thought about it. “Something like… Orwell? No…”
I could see her trying to retrieve the name from some burial ground deep inside her memory.
“Orford? Yes, Orford. That’s was his name. I can’t recall his first name though.”
I bookmarked it.
“Had he ever suffered with it before?”
“Not that I ever knew, and the psychiatrist said he didn’t think there had been any previous history, but that there were aspects to his personality which were warning signs it could develop.”
“Like what?”
“His insularity. Always wanting to be on his own. Focused on work to the point of obsession. Never really, truly happy. I mean, do you remember him smiling or laughing with a big, hearty, honest laugh?”
I thought about this and could only think of one time. When he unwrapped a parcel from a university publisher to find his first book inside, the title of which was so obscure I didn’t remember it the next day, let alone almost thirty-five years later. His face been beaming with pride-but she was right. He wasn’t a fount of joy.
She shook her head-the memories flooding in.
“Those last months, over a year really, he couldn’t see the beauty in life and he had this broken smile… except with you. With you, I saw a different side of him. You lit him up like I never could. You made him forget about the heaviness of the world that he was immersed in. Then one day it stopped. Even you couldn’t make him happy. No wonder…”