It has been a perfect few days. We have managed to spend time together and time doing our own thing. Even though three adults and a teenager should be overcrowded in a house as small as this, somehow it works.
Yesterday, a letter was pushed through the door. I took it into the kitchen and leaned against the counter to read it. It brought me to tears.
Cat, writes Ellie, I wanted you to know that I am sorry. For how unfriendly and unwelcoming I have always been toward you; for how I never gave you a chance.
I had no idea the girls were seeing each other before I ran into you at the Galley, and then I wanted to keep the girls apart to punish you. But seeing Annie and Trudy together, the instinctive connection they have, it’s quite clear to me that they are family; that you and I are family, however much I didn’t want to accept it. And despite my trying to keep them apart, there is an extraordinary bond between them. A bond I never allowed us to have. It isn’t easy to admit this, but I was wrong. And I am sorry. It took a lot of changes in my life, a lot of humbling experiences, for me to realize that.
I have learned many things recently, not least that nothing is as important as kindness. I have lost everything I thought was important in my life, only to realize that none of it was important; that the kindness of people is the only thing that has allowed me to get through. I know you’re going home, but I would like us to try to have a relationship. I would like us to try to get past this, maybe even find a sisterly friendship in there. God knows at this time in my life I need family more than I ever have before.
I am sending you my gratitude, and thanks, Cat. I would like to see you before you leave. Perhaps we can go for a walk? Ellie.
I exhaled as I put the letter down, overwhelmed by these words of warmth, of something even possibly akin to love; words I would never have expected to hear from Ellie.
This morning, I called her. We went for that walk. We met at the Hub and walked around the harbor, coffees in hand. It was easier to walk side by side, to talk about things, without having to look each other in the eye. She wasn’t warm, particularly, but nor was she cold. I think she was mostly embarrassed. She was honest enough to admit her bitterness toward me, that she had always felt she never got enough of her father, had to fight for any attention, and my appearance was one more thing to take her father further away from her.
I understood, and told her a little bit about my own father. She had never been interested in hearing my story all those years ago, had never been interested in me. Today she listened, not saying much, but nodding in the right places.
I made my amends. We didn’t fall into each other’s arms as long-lost sisters, but we agreed to see how it goes. More important, Ellie agreed to foster this precious relationship between our daughters, this bond that is already so clear to both of us.
“I’m sorry for how I treated you,” says Ellie when we are about to leave, and even though I’m still not experiencing waves of warmth, I go to put my arms around her, and she hugs me back.
“I’m sorry for how I treated all of you,” I say. And I know that even if we will never be friends, we can now be friendly. And the girls can be the cousins they are so desperate to be.
These past afternoons Jason has been taking Annie to see Trudy at Ellie’s house. The girls spend several hours together every day, and when Trudy starts to get tired, Jason picks Annie up and brings her to wherever we are, usually at the beach.
Eddie joins us from time to time, while Brad Pitt frolics in the water, and yes, I will admit it, I still salivate over Eddie’s extraordinary body. Of course he’s gay, I think to myself drolly. What straight men do I know with bodies like that? I know I’m never going to have him, but what a delightful sight to brighten up a girl’s day, particularly when her loins have been reawakened after the desert of the last few years.
I go to my meetings every morning, and Jason goes to his own, later in the day at the First Congregational Church. Abigail and I meet for tea, and I tell her that her son is adorable but there’s no chemistry between us, so although I am thankful for her introduction, a romance between us is not on the cards.
“Pffft,” she says. “Who needs chemistry? Well, it’s nice to see he’s made a new friend in your friend Sam.”
Indeed.
* * *
Suddenly, unbearably, we are two days from the end, and I realize I don’t have nearly enough information about Nantucket for my piece. I leave Annie in the care of Jason and Sam and whirl around the island going to the lighthouse at Sankaty, the whaling museum, the Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum, in order to fill my article with things to do on this island.
Although frankly, I’m sure the Daily Gazette readers would be just as happy doing what we have done, exploring the restaurants and spending all day on the beach.
Tomorrow is our last night, and I have booked Corazon del Mar, thinking that tonight I will cook a family dinner here at home. I have lobsters in the fridge, their claws surrounded by rubber bands. Although I love lobster, I’ve never cooked them before. I didn’t know, London girl that I have become, I didn’t know until I went to buy lobsters, that you have to plunge them into boiling water while they’re still alive. It is too late to change my mind, even though I’m not at all sure I’m going to be able to go through with it.
I have made potato salad, and coleslaw, and shrimp cakes to start, with a cilantro lime mayonnaise. I made a simple peach tarte tatin and have a tub of homemade (not by me) vanilla ice cream in the freezer, and a vase stuffed with blue hydrangeas, clipped from our own garden, in the middle of the table.
The table has been set for four, with Sam’s hurricanes lit in the center. It looks beautiful. I’m excited we’re going to be home, not least because this, more than anything, is what it used to be like. At least when things were good. Me cooking, setting the table, Jason, Annie, and me sitting down to something homemade. Jason loved my cooking, even though he was no slouch when it came to the kitchen, but he said being cooked for, by me, always made him feel taken care of, made him feel safe. He always said he could taste the love in my food.
Obviously there’s no love in the lobsters, but I poured my heart and soul into the shrimp cakes, into the cilantro and garlic, lovingly minced by hand and a very sharp knife before being stirred into the mayonnaise. There was love in the tarte tatin, which has always been Jason’s most favorite dessert, served, as it will be tonight, with ice cream fragrant with dozens of tiny black vanilla pods.
I am in the shower when I hear Jason come home, and surprised when, a few moments later, there is a knock on the bathroom door.
“Hang on,” I yell, grabbing a towel and opening the door to find Jason there, embarrassed to be exposing quite so much skin, for the towel really doesn’t meet properly and I’m clutching it closed, even though it’s not like he hasn’t seen it all before.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I just see that you’ll be cooking dinner, and I’m about to go and pick up Annie from Trudy’s. I thought it might be nice to invite Trudy tonight. She and Annie are so close, I don’t know what they’re going to do without each other.”
“Of course. That’s a great idea. If Trudy is up to going out. Absolutely. Why not invite Ellie as well?” I am about to say Julia, but the memory of Jason and Julia laughing over their iced tea still feels uncomfortable to me, even though we are leaving, even though I am probably being ridiculous.
“Sure. What about Julia?”
I look at him sharply, but there is nothing in his voice, nothing in his face, that would indicate that he particularly wants Julia there.
How do I say no? How could I be childish enough to not invite my own half sibling because I think my ex-husband may find her attractive? How sixteen-year-old. How puerile. I am better than this. “Of course invite Julia. Great idea,” I say, turning so he doesn’t see the lie in my eyes. “Pick up another three lobsters, though, okay?”
He leans forward and kisses me on the cheek, and I stand there long after he’s gone back down the stairs, wondering why he suggested we have her here, and whether, despite his protestations the other day, despite denying he finds her attractive, how could he not? She looks exactly like me.
And what the hell could all this possibly mean?