“He’d take Dramamine.”
“And he was always on the beach.”
“In a hat,” Ronnie said. “And a long-sleeved shirt, and a face full of SPF fifty.” Ronnie was staring at her daughter, eyebrows drawn. “You really don’t remember?”
Sarah shook her head, imagining she could feel the ground wobble under her feet. “If he hated it here, he did a good job of hiding it.”
“He didn’t hate it.” Ronnie’s voice was patient. “But I was the one who loved the Cape, and he was willing to indulge me.” She curled her fingers around the railing, her gold wedding band catching the light of the moon. “Maybe because it was my money that paid for the place.”
Sarah felt like she’d been walking briskly down a flight of stairs where one of the steps was missing; like she’d set all her weight down on empty air instead of a solid surface. Her mother had never spoken to her about her marriage, and they’d never talked at all about money.
“Was that an issue for him?” Sarah asked, choosing her words carefully. “That you bought the house?”
Sarah expected immediate refusal. Ronnie, instead, gave her a sigh. “He was proud of me,” she said. “He was proud that I was successful. But… no, I don’t think it was easy for him, the years I was making more money.”
“Is that why you stopped writing?”
“I stopped publishing,” Ronnie said. Again, Sarah wondered at the distinction, as her mother said, “And that wasn’t the reason, but I think that maybe it did end up making things easier.”
“So Dad was jealous of you.” Sarah’s voice was flat. She could feel anger building, a tension in her chest. Lee Weinberg was dead. Couldn’t Sarah be allowed to remember him as a good man, the good father she’d loved?
“Aren’t you ever jealous of Eli?” asked her mother. Sarah began to shake her head, when a memory struck: a morning in the winter when Dexter was one and a half and Miles was a newborn. Eli had taken two weeks off for paternity leave, but as of that morning, the leave was over. He’d gotten dressed in his suit and tie and was heading off to work, leaving Sarah at home. She’d had a nanny who came five days a week, and a cleaning woman who came twice a week, and Ronnie would be there that weekend. Sarah knew she was one of the lucky ones. She was ashamed of feeling so overwhelmed. And still, she could recall being angry at Eli, who’d be able to spend his day having conversations with other adults, who wouldn’t have his bathroom breaks interrupted, who’d be able to sit down for a meal with a napkin on his lap and both hands at his disposal, who could go for as long as he wanted without anyone pawing at him or sucking at him with grasping hands and sticky fingers and surprisingly strong toothless mouths. “Marriages can survive a little resentment,” Ronnie said. “Marriages can survive a lot of things.”
What’s the worst thing your marriage survived? Sarah thought. She’d never asked her mom that kind of question, but, in the darkness, with the wind erasing their words almost as soon as they were spoken, she felt as if she could. “Anything you want to tell me, Mom?” She kept her tone light, but her mother surprised her again.
“Oh,” said Ronnie, with her lips curved into that thin, ironic smile. “Well. I guess the statute of limitations has expired.” Sarah held her breath, fighting down an urge to slap her hands over her ears as her mother said, “Once, a long time ago, there was another man.”
Sarah heard herself gasping, her mother’s words lighting her up with shamed recognition. “No.”
“Yes,” said her mother. “In New York.”
“And what happened?” Part of her wanted her mother to have virtuously walked away from the other man. The idea of her beloved father being betrayed made Sarah furious. But part of her wanted it to be more complicated; because that, she acknowledged, would assuage her own guilt.
“I gave him up,” her mother said. “Or, really, he ended things. And I decided I wanted to be with your father. I realized, in the end, it wasn’t even about the other man. It was about how he made me feel. Who I was when I was with him. I decided that I didn’t want to be that version of myself.” She smiled thinly. “I didn’t like her very much.”
Sarah swallowed hard. “Did Dad know?”
Ronnie shook her head. “I never told him.”
“And this other man…”
Ronnie raised her hands, palms open, to the sky. “We didn’t keep in touch, and I never went looking for him, even after Google.”