“For beautiful Anna,” he says. “We hail to Thee, blithe spirit.” And he begins.
“I just don’t believe in psychiatry.” My mother holds forth to the last of her guests.
“That’s because you’re afraid you’ll be sent to the nuthouse,” Peter says from the sofa.
“As far as I can tell, the only thing it’s good for is making children blame their parents for everything that’s ever gone wrong in their lives.”
“The only thing I blame you for is making me take sailing lessons,” I say, and everyone laughs, forgetting. Everyone but Jonas.
“Watch. Now she’s going to say she wasn’t given enough love from me as a child,” Mum says, getting up from the table and heading into the kitchen to start on the dishes. “Of course she’s absolutely right.”
“Not everything is about you, Mum,” I say.
Jonas stares at me, his eyes burning.
I get up from the table and go out the back door into the dark night. Then I lean against the cold cement-block wall and wait, for what feels like a lifetime.
Book Five
◆
TODAY
6:30 P.M.–6:30 A.M.
32
Today. August 1, the Back Woods.
6:30 P.M.
I strip out of my damp bathing suit, leave it on the cabin floor, and lie down on the bed. From the Big House, I hear Peter’s deep laugh, my mother calling to the kids to stop playing Parcheesi and get ready for the barbecue. The ceiling of our cabin is crawling with carpenter ants, brought out by the heat, the impending storm. A dusting of cardboard covers Peter’s bedside lampshade. I stare up through the skylight at the evening sunlight breaking through the trees, the dappled twigginess of the branches. Nimbus clouds float past, pregnant with rain.
When Anna and I were very young, our father planted a delicate birch sapling outside our cabin, its trunk as thin as a pussy willow. A tree planted in a forest. He said it would grow up with us, grow tall with us. Back then, before it reached beyond the roof line, the skylight above my bed was an uninterrupted rectangle of blue. I loved to lie there, staring up at the open sky, watch gulls flying the wind shear. After Conrad died, I prayed to that open sky—not for forgiveness, but for guidance, a way to move beyond the past, a clear path forward. By then, the split ends of birch branches had begun to appear in the corner of the skylight—tiny sharp strands that poked at the air. Inch by inch, year by year, the birch’s unruly mane grew into frame until it covered the windowpane, blocked out the sky. I had begged for answers, for the clarity of glass. But the passage of time brought only a messy tangle of branches marking my failure to heal.
“It’s a window,” Jonas had said, that long-ago day by the stream. And I had said, “I know.”
Last night I stared at him across the crowded table, his green eyes darkening beyond the candlelight. He stared straight back. No one flinched. Finally his lips curved into that ironic smile—relief, regret, the absurd, sad inevitabilities. We were always meant to be together. Marriage, children—nothing has changed this essential truth. If I could take back what I have done, I would do it. Every bad decision when the road forked. Every terrible choice that led me away from him. Every terrible choice that led me away from Peter. Not just fucking Jonas last night, or what we did today, what I can’t stop thinking about, what I want to do tomorrow, but Conrad—that day, that bright choppy day, when the winds turned. The truth I have kept from Peter. The lie I carried into our marriage. I picture Rosemary, her prim, bland living room, her moist cake, the rage behind her eyes. The way she thanked me for saving her life. I have never thanked Jonas for saving mine. Only blamed him. Blamed myself. Kept Peter at arm’s length, punishing him for my own sin. Built my entire life on a fault line. If I had told Peter about Conrad, about that day on the boat, I know he would have forgiven me. And that is why I couldn’t tell him. Because I did not want to be forgiven.
And the choice Jonas is asking me to make now. To leave my wonderful husband. To cause my children pain. Peter is not vindictive—whatever happens, he would never take them away from me, never create a rift between me and them. He loves us all too much for that. He is a man with backbone. It is his gravity that holds my orbit steady when I falter. I am in love with Jonas. I always have been. I cannot live without him, cannot give him up now, after waiting for so long. But I’m in love with Peter, too. I have two choices. One I can’t have. One I don’t deserve to have.
I get up off the bed. I need a hot shower and too many Advil. My body is sore. My head hurts from trying to think, going around and around in circles. Does letting go mean losing everything you have, or does it mean gaining everything you never had? I wrap myself in a towel. I should go to Dixon’s. Be with Peter, with my children.