Ruth was a morning person, and yet for close to a year, she hadn’t had a reason to be up and out of the house. And so when Amelia sent the e-mail saying the mosaic class started at eight a.m. at Herring Cove, Ruth was delighted with her decision to join the group.
She spotted Amelia, Molly the dog, and half a dozen women near the edge of the ocean. An extremely large seagull walked brazenly close and seemed intent on following her to the sand.
“Ruth! Welcome! We were just introducing ourselves.”
The group stood clustered around Amelia. Ruth was surprised to see Elise Douglas among them. After they’d all shared their names, Amelia held up a handful of shells.
“The beauty—and challenge—of mosaics is taking a lot of random and disconnected pieces and putting them together to make a visually satisfying design,” Amelia said. “You can make a mosaic out of virtually anything. You can take something broken and turn it into something whole. There’s a story in my family about a famous argument between my great-grandparents back in Lisbon during which, well, let’s just say the dinner plates didn’t survive. Two weeks later, there was a new frame around the mirror hanging in the front hallway.”
Everyone laughed, and one of the women turned and made a comment to the woman next to her.
“Don’t believe me? I have the mirror on display at the inn. Now, fortunately, most mosaics do not require a domestic dispute. When we go to my studio, I’ll show you tiles, beads, buttons…the options for color and texture are vast. But I find the most satisfying works include some pieces that have personal meaning. That’s why we’re here this morning. For the next hour, I want everyone to walk up and down the beach looking for shells, stones, sea glass—anything that catches your eye. In your final mosaic, you might use everything you find or just one symbolic piece.”
Amelia handed everyone a mesh bag with narrow netting. Ruth adjusted her sun hat and followed the group as it marched forward. A few of the women, clearly friends to begin with, broke off in pairs and slowed down. Ruth passed the rest of the group and found herself walking alone until Amelia and Molly appeared by her side.
“She likes the beach?” Ruth said.
“Well,” Amelia said, patting Molly’s head, “she prefers to laze around the living room. But I force her to get moving—just like I force myself.”
Ruth nodded. “I have to admit I haven’t been out this early in a while. It feels good.”
Amelia smiled at her. “Ruth, I know you’re stuck in the middle of this situation with the baby and I just wanted to say thank you. It’s a complicated issue, and every bit of support helps.”
“Well, I’m not exactly in the middle of it,” Ruth said. In fact, she considered herself officially out of it.
“Rachel is watching her at the moment. But it’s nice to know we have another set of hands if we need it.” Amelia winked at her.
What? Ruth had no interest in becoming a regular in the baby-watching rotation. One day was fine; it was a small contribution. She would admit that it had even been a little rewarding. But this was not going to be a summer of caretaking. Ruth was not a good caretaker. She didn’t even own a houseplant.
“Actually,” Ruth said, to change the subject and to make it clear she had her own life, “my daughter might be visiting soon.” It felt like a lie, but incredibly, it wasn’t. She had invited Olivia, so there was always the chance—the very remote, very unlikely chance—that she would say yes.
“Oh, that’s good news. I remember you mentioning her that first morning at the inn but you said she wasn’t coming to visit. How wonderful she changed her mind.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s changed yet. But I’m doing my best.” And then, before she could think twice about it, Ruth blurted out, “But I lied to her.”
“Oh?”
“It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It was more of a…half-truth. But I wanted to get her to come out here.” This was what happened when you quit therapy cold turkey after twenty years. You started unloading on strangers.
Late last year, upon discovering that her nail polish had been discontinued, Ruth had called her psychiatrist for an emergency session. “I need to make a change,” she’d said. “But I don’t know where to go.”
“Where were you most happy in life?” Dr. Bellow asked.
Ruth ran through a mental catalog: Growing up in suburban Philadelphia. College in Illinois. Her married years in New Jersey. Her business travel to Europe and California.
“Provincetown,” she said.
It had been the summer before she started Northwestern. Her father’s architecture firm had spent the previous six months working on a big project in Truro, Massachusetts, and he’d rented a cottage in Provincetown and brought Ruth and her mother out for the summer.
Funny that the happiest she’d been in her entire life was before her life really began.
With this revelation, Ruth realized that she had to have a Provincetown home of her own. Facing the milestone of retirement, she now had to figure out the rest of her life. And she realized that she wanted to spend it in P’town. The rest was just logistics.
So, yes—she was getting her affairs in order.
“You don’t have to explain to me,” Amelia said. “I was estranged from my daughter for twenty years. If there was something I could have said to get her to come home—half lie, whole lie, the whole world of lies—I would have said it.”
Ruth looked at her. “Did she ever come back?”
Amelia nodded. “She did. Three years ago.”
“Is she here now?”
“Not at the moment. She lives in Italy.”
“Is this Rachel’s mother?”
“No, Rachel is my son’s daughter. But my son never knew her. We lost him a long time ago.”
“Oh! I’m sorry.”
Amelia stopped walking. “Don’t feel bad, Ruth. Our relationship with our children is the most precious thing we have. Do whatever it takes to set that right. Oh, look! That’s a beauty.” She picked up a cloudy blue stone. “Sea glass,” she said.
She handed it to Ruth, who marveled over its deep color and smooth surface.
“It takes decades of tumbling around in the sea for glass to reach this texture and frosted appearance. Some sea glass is a hundred years old.”
“I guess some things do get better with age,” Ruth said.
“Oh, my dear—don’t we all? I’m going to show this to the others.” She touched Ruth’s shoulder. “Think about what I said.”
As if she would be able to think about anything else.
She kept her eyes down, scanning the beach for appealing shells. Something lavender poked out of the wet sand, and she reached for it.
“I used to have a bowl of those in the bedroom at Shell Haven,” said a voice behind her.
Ruth straightened and turned to find Elise Douglas. “I’m surprised to see you here,” Ruth said, dropping the shell in her mesh bag, “given the situation. I guess you and Fern worked everything out. That’s great.”
Elise bit her lip. “Well, not everything is worked out. I was going to talk to you later, but since you’re here…”
Whatever calm and relaxation had settled over Ruth while she walked in the sand and breathed in the ocean air instantly dissipated. Elise was clearly gearing up to say something Ruth didn’t want to hear.
Elise stepped closer to her. “We need to move back into the house for a few weeks.”
Surely the breeze had kept her from hearing that correctly. “I’m sorry—for a second it sounded like you’d said you need to move back into the house.”
“We need the extra space. There’s no room above the tea shop.”
Behind them, Amelia directed the class to keep walking. Elise and Ruth didn’t move, allowing the group to pass them.
“Elise, I am trying to be empathetic, I am. But this is going too far. I paid for this house. We have a contract.”
“We’ll reimburse you for the few weeks we’re there.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“Oh no—you’ve misunderstood. You can stay. It’s just…we need to be there too.”
This was unbelievable. “No, you misunderstand. I am here to start a new chapter. A chapter that does not include roommates and a crying baby!”
Elise nodded. “I get it. I do. But can the new chapter start in July?”
Of course Olivia would tell her father about the conversation. Her mother’s words needed to be parsed, examined, turned inside out. The only question was whether Olivia should call him or drive out to New Jersey to talk to him in person.
Getting my affairs in order.
She’d talk to him in person.
Six months ago, after three decades at Penn Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania’s medical center, her father had retired. Olivia had been relieved to see him slow down. Unlike her mother, her father had worked to live, not the other way around. It was nice that he’d finally have time to enjoy himself, though he hadn’t made any dramatic changes to his life yet. No big trips, no plans to move. He seemed content just to wake up every morning and read the paper at the local diner, play cards with friends, and spend way too much time worrying about her.
As for her own schedule, it was not an ideal time to miss work, not after losing a huge client. Olivia’s boss, Peter Asgaard, who’d spent twenty years at a big Hollywood talent agency before launching HotFeed, had not been happy. Still, he conceded, “Mistakes happen. This was not good, Olivia, but it was your first mistake in eight years of solid work.” Just thinking about the conversation in his office made her stomach churn.
When she finally turned into the driveway of the red-brick Colonial of her childhood, a calm came over her.
The Cherry Hill house never changed. It was a time capsule from the mid-1990s. After her mother left, her father hadn’t bothered to redecorate or even change the family photographs on the fireplace mantel. Yes, the old TVs had been replaced with flat-screens, the ficus plant hadn’t made it into the new millennium, and the clunky stereo system in the living room had given way to a sleek digital setup. But it felt exactly the way it had growing up. As much as Olivia prided herself on her independent life, on moving on, there was undeniable comfort in this.
And yet, every time she visited, she said, “Maybe if you sold this house, you could move closer to the city. Or even move into the city. And then maybe you would meet someone…”
Her father always gave the same response: “When your mother and I bought this place thirty years ago, I knew I’d never want to leave.”
Olivia was thankful her father was so steady, but sometimes, for his own sake, she wished he’d be a little less so.
“I brought your favorite bagels,” she said, kissing him on the cheek and handing him the bag from H & H.
“Coffee’s on,” he said.
Above the stove, there was a crudely carved wooden sign she’d made in camp arts and crafts when she was twelve that read RUTH’S KITCHEN. Why she’d felt compelled to make that, considering her mother never cooked, was beyond her. Why her father still kept it hanging was even more baffling.
“Why do you keep that thing?” she’d asked years ago.
“Because you made it.”
So there she stood, in Ruth’s Kitchen, agonizing over the phone call from Ruth.
“What, exactly, did she say?” her father asked.
“She asked me to come visit for the weekend, I said I couldn’t deal with the Jersey Turnpike traffic over a holiday weekend, and she said she wasn’t in Philly, she was in Provincetown.”
“Provincetown?” he said. “Are you sure?”
Olivia nodded. “And get this: She’s not there for the weekend. She’s moved there.”
Her father leaned forward, started to say something, then stopped himself.
“What?” Olivia said.
“Do you want me to call her?”
“No! I feel bad enough involving you as it is.” Were her parents in touch? she wondered. “I just don’t get it, do you? Why Provincetown? I mean, how did she make that decision? Blindfolded and throwing darts at a map?”
Her father turned away and busied himself straightening up the counter. Olivia felt a pang of guilt for involving him in this. It wasn’t his job to deal with the vagaries of his ex-wife.
“Did you ask her?” he said.
“Of course. I said, ‘What are you doing there?’ And she said, ‘I’m getting my affairs in order.’ Just like that: ‘I’m getting my affairs in order.’ What do you think that means?”
Her father faced her again, his brow furrowed. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound good.”
Olivia knew they were both thinking the same thing. A few years ago, Ruth’s older sister, Cece, had battled breast cancer. Her treatment was successful, but it was scary. And yet her mother had somehow found a way to spin even that into gold. By the time Cece finished her last round of chemo, Ruth had launched a new nail-polish line called Liv Free: no formaldehyde, toluene, or dibutyl phthalate. With the rising call for nontoxic products, Liv Free took her mother’s company into the stratosphere. That’s when Revlon and Estée Lauder and the other big cosmetic conglomerates had come calling. Her mother had held out until just a year ago, then quietly sold the company for what Olivia could only assume was a fortune. Her mother never discussed the sale, not before or after. Olivia had read about it in the Wall Street Journal.
“Do you really think Mom is sick?” Olivia said.
“I just don’t know. But you have to find out.”
“You think I should go to Provincetown?”
“Olivia, she’s your mother.”