Forgive me if you can,
Papa
Chapter Forty-Four
Maya
It’s a bright October morning when we gather on the beach below Belle l’été. There are only five of us here, all barefoot as we carry the ashes down to the sea. Meadow, dressed in a flowing gossamer dress, her hair loose, leads. She carries the urn in two hands. Behind her is Rory, wearing shorts and a white peasant blouse with a flower wreath in her hair. Then Norah, in a turquoise T-shirt dress that lights up her skin and hair. She lives with me now, and is working on a dissertation about women in the organic-food movement, tracing their influence on the modern restaurant world. Meadow is included, but she isn’t the whole story. They’ve become friendly, Meadow and Norah. Not besties, never that, but mutually admiring. Kara walks beside them.
I bring up the rear along with the dogs, Nemo and Elvis and little Cosmo, whom I’ve adopted after all. He’s an exuberant ball of fluff who makes me laugh every single day.
Meadow has taken over Peaches and Pork, sinking some of her considerable fortune into reviving the tired decor and menu. At first, it didn’t seem as if Kara would stay—she was so broken up over the loss of Augustus that she couldn’t see her way forward into the new version, but when Meadow suggested they switch the name to Pork and Peaches, she laughed heartily and committed to the new vision.
As I walk into the water, my belly sways, full of a baby who is vigorous and healthy by all measures we can use now. I’ve stayed sober after the relapse incident. The doctor was dismayed, but thanked me for my honesty. All we can do now is wait.
I am not currently working. It turned out that Augustus had paid off the house with a loan he took out on Peaches and Pork, not the other way around, and in a letter he left with Meadow, he explained how to deal with every possible problem in the house. He left me a file of tradespeople’s numbers on his computer, and a substantial fund to care for it. “It was always going to be your house, Maya. Take time to heal. I love you so much.”
After my freak-out and relapse—“A one-hour relapse is pretty good,” Deborah said—I realized how shaky my sobriety could be, and with regret, I told Ayaz I couldn’t see him. Not even as a friend, because we saw how that went. I had to take the full year to do the work, find out who I am, and grow a baby. He took it with both grace and disappointment. He sold the house down the road, and we keep in touch via email, writing letters as if we’re conducting an old-world love affair. We talk about everything, sometimes at length, about our lives and our hopes and our disappointments. He’s taking his boards in California, living in a more modest house in town.
“Are you all ready?” Meadow calls.
“Ready!” Rory is carrying a small speaker attached to the phone in her pocket, and she holds it up.
“Grab handfuls, everybody.” Meadow tilts the urn so we can reach in and grab handfuls of the bones and ashes of the man we all loved. I fill my hands and pause while she starts to pour it out. “We love you, Augustus,” she cries, and we fling him into the Pacific.
Rory starts the music, slow strumming strings that pluck all our hearts. Slow, slow, anticipation building. “Zorba’s Dance,” the only possible eulogy song for my father.
The sea is cold and the sun is warm. We fling his ashes into the air and spin around, faster and faster and faster, swinging each other around by the elbow, dancing.
Alive. Grateful.
Epilogue
Maya
One year later
I’m nursing Gus, my greedy little boy, when the doorbell rings. Cosmo, all seventy-five pounds of him, leaps to his feet and barks impressively.
“Norah? Can you see who that is?”
No answer. “Norah?”
I debate whether to ignore it. No one ever comes to the front door. It’s probably a salesman. But Gus detaches and sits up, curious as ever, and I pull myself together to go answer it. Cosmo trots along beside me, serious about his job as Gus’s eternal, ever-present companion and protector. I spy Norah at the desk in the study with her noise-canceling headphones on, and grin to myself. She waves distractedly, and that’s a good sign—her book is almost done, and although I’m not expert, I think it’s really good.
“Shall we see who it is, little one?”
He grins, clapping his hands, and I kiss his little nose. As far as we can see, he is completely unaffected by the alcohol early in my pregnancy. He’s a round-faced, black-eyed child with thick black curls just like mine. He’s definitely not Josh’s baby, but whoever his father was, he was a good-looking guy. My boy is so beautiful people stop and coo over him in the street. Meadow says we have to teach him not to take himself too seriously.