Tonight, after the festivities, he would tell them all what he was about to do. He would answer their questions. He would explain who Stella was, and what had happened between them so many years ago when he was the age they were now. He would tell them how sorry he was, because he truly was sorry. He would tell Johanna that he loved and respected her, and that he would continue to be Phoebe’s father, just as he would continue to be the father of the triplets, though he could see that they were launched on their own mysterious lives. He wanted very much to set a tone of kindness and respect that he hoped would continue through the years of co-parenting that still awaited them. He wanted her to know that she had done nothing wrong, but also that he would not accept the role of destroyer, certainly not of willful destroyer, of their family. The harm he’d caused in his life, he had never not acknowledged it, but surely that was enough for one lifetime, and even a person who had killed two people was entitled to happiness if fate went to the effort of dropping happiness into his path.
The past years in particular had been difficult, and not just logistically. His youngest son and his younger daughter were growing up only a few miles apart, but even after the triplets left home Salo never once attempted to bring his two lives together. He went to Red Hook after work as he had done for years, and then he went home to the house on the Esplanade. He shook a rattle in Brooklyn Heights. In Red Hook, he played pirates and lions. He made love to Stella and went out for dinner with Johanna and the same three or four couples they had always gone out to dinner with. Occasionally, once the triplets were gone, he spent the night with Stella, but even then he returned early in the morning. It had all been managed far longer than he’d thought possible.
Maybe what Johanna needed more than anything else was the psychic slap of an ending. Maybe the Vineyard was actually the best of all possible places for her to absorb the impact she needed to absorb, for her own well-being. Perhaps she would opt to stay here with Phoebe for a few days or a month, or even for the mythic overwinter the islanders liked to go on about. After all, it wasn’t necessary for her to be in Brooklyn. The triplets were up and out and the baby could be a baby anywhere. Off-season on the Vineyard, with scores of folks who were very hirable to take the edge off the childcare and give Johanna time to herself … well, she’d come around to it. Or else she wouldn’t. And if she never did, if she was determined to be unhappy, then what did it matter where she was?
Our father was still at his office window when Sally arrived home with an extra person in the car, a small person who exited the Volvo from the passenger door, pulling a large red bag behind her. This fact did not overly engage him. The small person, clearly female, clearly young, might have been an additional employee from the catering staff whom Sally had fetched from Edgartown, or perhaps a local teen his wife had hired to watch Phoebe, and since these were not matters that preyed overly on his thoughts on an ordinary day, let alone on a day of such consequence, he turned away from the window and resumed his other task. This was the letter he was drafting to one of the estate specialists at Wurttemberg about the Rizzoli drawings in the warehouse which he wanted to gift to Stella in some formal way, separating them from the other art. The Rizzolis had no great value, not like some of the paintings which were now—even to him—astonishingly valuable; in fact, they hadn’t appreciated at all since that first Outsider Art Fair. But he wanted them to belong to Stella, who was in LA meeting with someone at LACMA about funding for her documentary. And while he doubted things with Johanna would deteriorate to the point that she made some claim on the pictures, he still wanted to take them out of the equation.
But it was getting dark, and he could already smell the fire down on the beach, and the distinctive suck and slap of the fridge downstairs being opened and closed. There were feet on the stairs beside his office. There were voices down in the kitchen. And the stress of the day, and the worry about later tonight, and absolutely “The Hall of the Mountain King”—all of it had worn him out. He shut the laptop down and put it into his travel bag. He would look at the letter again as soon as tonight was behind him, maybe even during the long flight tomorrow. But now he thought he had better go down and celebrate the nineteenth birthday of his oldest children, and be with them for what would likely be the final night in the life of our family, or at least this current iteration of our family. He supposed that we would all come through it, one way or another, sooner or later, though not without harm. No one ever got through without harm, and no one knew that better than himself.