The Echo of Old Books(25)

Maybe Ethan was right. Maybe the whole thing was ridiculous and she should let it go before she became any more distracted. The books were already taking up hours that would be better spent in the bindery. But even as she acknowledged the wisdom of abandoning this strange new obsession, she felt the pull of it. Of them—whoever they were—and their unfinished story, beckoning her to read on.





Forever, and Other Lies

(pgs. 11–28)

September 5, 1941

Water Mill, New York

I arrive at the farm two hours early and pull up to the courtyard behind the stables. I’m early on purpose, to get myself planted and remind myself that today we’ll be on my turf—and that I’ll not let you have the upper hand. I was caught off guard last night, surprised to find you milling about the Whittiers’ drawing room with your aging amour glued to your side. But I’m prepared now for whatever game you might be playing. Forewarned, as they say, is forearmed.

I check my watch for what must be the hundredth time, regretting last night’s rashness with every fiber of my being and wishing I’d had the sense to make some excuse when you invited yourself. At least I summoned the wits to refuse your offer that we drive out together, opting instead to borrow one of my father’s cars. No one asked where I was going when I left the house, and I didn’t volunteer. I’m lucky in that way. When no one cares about you, they don’t wonder where you are or when you’ll be back.

Another look at my watch. I’m edgy after the long drive from the city, still questioning my decision to come at all. I could have phoned you this morning and begged off, blamed it on the weather or a forgotten appointment. Goldie’s number would have been easy enough to track down, and she would almost certainly know how to reach you. But it would have felt like surrendering, and I find I’ve surrendered quite enough of myself lately. To my father, my sister, Teddy. I refuse to add you to the list. And so I’m here, waiting under the eaves, watching the rain fall, and waiting for the crunch of tires on the gravel drive.

I’ve always loved Rose Hollow, even on rainy days. I love the wide-open feel of it and the clean blue sky, the sprawling house of weathered gray stone with its chimneys and dormers and climbing roses. And farther out, past the stable and the apple trees, the rolling green ground where it rises up and then falls away, creating the shallow bowl where my mother used to take me sledding when I was little.

She used to love it here, too, away from the noise and the grit of the city. I’m like her in that way. In many ways, really. More than I knew back then and more than makes my father and sister comfortable. But it does me good to come, especially now that no one else does. It belongs to me now, by default if not by deed, though being here sometimes makes me sad. Perhaps that’s why my father stopped coming. Memories he can’t bear to own—of the days before he sent my mother away. I remember, though. Even if he wishes I didn’t.

I remember Helene—Maman, as I called her when we were alone. How she smelled of lilies and rainwater and spoke like a duchess with her soft French lilt. How her eyes—amber-brown like my own and always so sad—would close when she prayed. Strange prayers she taught me to say, too, with strange words that felt too big for my mouth. How she would thumb through the album of old photos she kept hidden under her mattress, the stories she would tell, stories meant only for us. And I remember how she was punished for all of it when my father found out—and how it eventually broke her.

Even now, my throat aches with her memory. She was too tender for a man like my father, too fragile for the kind of life he expected her to live. Shut off from her family in France and isolated from her friends in the States, she’d been left to flounder alone after the births of each of her children, mired in loneliness and depression. And the guilty abyss after the brother I never knew wandered away during luncheon at a friend’s home and stumbled into a pond. Ernest, dead at age four.

All of it had left her brittle, prone to weepy, sometimes debilitating bouts of melancholia, a character flaw my father had been unable to forgive. Tears are a waste of time, he used to say. A sign of weakness, of failure. He meant it, too, as I learned firsthand when I turned on the tears in response to his edict that I get myself engaged by year’s end.

He’s happy enough now, I suppose. Now that I’ve finally agreed to marry Teddy. I fought it as long as I could, but my father eventually won the day, as he always knew he would. I, however, am not happy—as you have somehow guessed.

I have no wish to become a shadow, which is what women in families like mine become: obedient, hollowed-out things who fade into the background the moment their usefulness as a bargaining chip is at an end. We see to the menus, raise the children, keep up with the latest fashions, grace our husband’s table when he entertains, and look the other way when a pretty young face turns his head. But I’ve always wanted more for myself. I imagined a life that actually counted for something, left something worthy in its wake. I have no idea what form that life might have taken. Something to do with the arts, perhaps, or maybe a teacher, but now, as Teddy’s wife, I’ll never know.

For an instant, I’m astonished to find my thoughts wandering almost wistfully to your Goldie with her newspaper empire and her unapologetic life. What might that be like? To captain your own ship and command your own fortune, to live unfettered by the opinions of others.

I’ll never know that either.