I came back here to live after my father sent me away to an unwed mothers’ home. He had always planned that I’d return to his care, in his new church in Texas, but I flat out refused. I asked Beryl to help me make a case for emancipation, and she gladly dived in and offered me shelter.
So I spent the final two and a half years of high school in this bedroom. The first year was painful and full of grief, but the second I began to really heal. Beryl and Phoebe loved me back to life, along with a series of parts in the school theater department.
Where would my life have ended up if not for Beryl? I can’t even imagine.
A familiar sense of well-being fills me now. I can’t remember the last time I felt so safe, at peace. The house is silent, and Yul Brynner is nowhere in sight. I slide a hand out of the covers, but he’s not on the bed. Phoebe must have let him out of the room. I can tell I’ve had a good sleep when I stand and stretch. How long has it been since I slept like that?
Years. Literally. The attack made it worse, but I haven’t been able to sleep in ages. It started after Dmitri died. We never lived together, although we often slept at each other’s houses, but we’d been together almost two decades by the time he fell ill. The world lost its sheen, and the hours of night were extra dark, and even when the most acute stage of my grieving was over, I couldn’t find a way back to effortless sleep. As soon as I slid into bed, my brain would start throwing out all kinds of things—memories and problems and what I should eat for lunch the next day. Important things and stupid ones. After the beating, I found myself waking up with panic attacks, gasping and sweating, which made even the prospect of sleep terrifying.
It’s been slowly improving, and I hope that being in Blue Cove will settle my nerves, help me heal.
What a way to start! Of course I slept with the safety of Phoebe close by, and the comfort of knowing I wasn’t alone. The realization makes me a little misty.
Downstairs, Yul Brynner sits on the dining room windowsill, his tail swishing as he squeaks at a bird outside. He doesn’t even look at me. He’s happy here, too.
Phoebe left me a note on the counter. For a moment, I’m afraid to pick it up, afraid she’s left so she doesn’t have to tell me in person to go home.
But when I pick it up, it says only, Went to the studio. Eat something, then join us.
Some of the cranberry bread from yesterday and a bowl of apples sit beside the kettle, and she’s left out an array of teas. Peach oolong. Green Dragon black tea. Earl Grey, never my favorite. I don’t love that smoky flavor. I choose the peach and turn on the kettle.
It’s only then that I realize it’s ten thirty. Holy cow. How could I have slept so long? I’m a morning person!
I guess I’ve been more exhausted than I thought.
Anxious to get to the studio before they come back and I lose my chance, I make a cup of tea in a go-cup, then grab an apple and a slice of bread and hurry out the back door, on the path beneath the dripping pines. The sun makes everything glitter, and I find myself slowing to look at it, noticing the birds trading notes in the tree branches, and the rich, earthy scent of the forest floor. A sudden memory of Joel bolts through me—the bend of his neck smelled just like this, hummus and needles and pines.
Have I ever loved anyone like that, fully and without reservation? I loved Dmitri, deeply, and we had a strong, sexy, tender relationship, but I’m not sure I ever dropped my guard completely. Maybe it isn’t even possible to feel the power of a first love ever again. Maybe nobody would even enjoy it.
I knock at the door and Phoebe yells, “Come in, you dork!”
Laughing, I push open the hobbit door in time to hear Jasmine say, “Nana! That’s not very nice.”
Phoebe is wrapped in her paint-spattered red sweater and a bibbed apron. A thin streak of yellow marks her left cheek, and I can see she’s been painting with her fingers, once her favorite thing. “She knows better than to knock.”
The smell of paint and time and lingering hints of the Nag Champa incense Beryl burned adds a layer of almost instinctive calm to the sense of well-being from the long sleep. I feel her presence, almost hear the songs she would sing under her breath, the easy way she talked about life and nature and human traits and God and prayer and faith, the latter three in ways that my father might have called heretical.
She came to his church a few times. It surprised and thrilled me to see her there. She didn’t dress up as much as some of the women, but she wore a skirt and blouse, and wove her hair into a tidy braid. It didn’t change the tan she always sported, especially rare in coastal Oregon, but she spent so much time outside, studying nature, seeing to her flower farm, communing with the hawks and finches and starfish that she was always deeply tan. The memory of her in the pew, giving me a wink, reminds me how much I was loved.