LATER IN JULY Martha invited us to join her, Vijay, and Zal, at a summer rental on Chappaquiddick Island. I immediately said “yes.” Spencer and I packed our bathing suits and sandals and headed for Martha’s Vineyard. The “Casa Kumar” turned out to be an old fisherman’s camp. We drove to the end of a long dirt road, took a treacherous drive along a lumpy beach, and followed one more dirt drive to the house, which sat at the water’s edge. It was stripped down and ramshackle in a poetic seaside way, and we loved it. Meals were shared at a big table in the window-filled kitchen. We all cleaned up together. Spencer and I shared a room, but bedrooms were really just bunk areas divided by partitions. At night we could all talk to one another across them. The windows were open, the breezes blowing through.
In the mornings Spencer would don some goggles and grab his plastic bucket; I would slather him with sunblock, and off we’d go in search of what he called “nature.” The water was knee deep for him. We stopped every few feet as he reached down for a rock or a shell. Sometimes when something he was after would suddenly move, he’d jump into my arms. “Mom, are there sea monsters up here?”
“No, honey, don’t worry. Maybe some crabs and fish, but no monsters.”
At Chappaquiddick, Spencer’s world expanded beyond just our usual twosome. Sometimes he’d go off on a hike with his much older cousin, which, as he told me, made him feel “all grown up.” As a family we cooked and ate lobsters. We played games, sat at the table, and talked. We listened to music and danced on the beach. Spencer put his little feet on the tops of mine and I waltzed him in the sand. It was altogether lovely. The mosquitoes, of which there were many, couldn’t spoil that.
At night before his bedtime Spencer and I would sit outside and look for the brightest stars. I put my arm around him and we’d snuggle.
“Mommy, is Daddy up there or is he here?”
“What do you mean, sweetie?”
“Well, you said he’s watching over me all the time but he’s a spirit. I just wondered if he was up there on a star or down here with us.”
“Where would you like him to be?”
“Here with us.”
“That’s where he is.”
“Good.”
Spencer’s childish interpretation of death was endearing, a balance to my own acceptance of the hard reality: Howard was completely gone. He was a life form that had vanished. I had no idea when Spencer would come to terms with that view. Over time he did, but for the longest time he looked up and believed his daddy was there, in heaven, keeping an eye on things. Who would want to rob a child of that hopeful notion?
MY FATHER WAS seventy-nine years old and in failing health. He suffered from diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. When my brother David called to say Dad had been admitted to the hospital with a heart problem, Spencer and I raced to his bedside in rural Virginia. My other brother, Robert, who lived near my father, was there when we arrived. David had made it sound like the bell was tolling but when we arrived the doctors said that while Dad was in rough shape, it was not his time. I treasured my visit and gave him loving assurances and kisses, but afterward I told Robert, “You and David have to handle this. I’m tapped out. I can come see him, I can spend time with him, but I can’t handle the heavy stuff. There’s no more of me left to pass around.” And there wasn’t. He died within the year and was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery, where I read the eulogy. Spencer and I, with my brothers, walked behind the horse-drawn caisson to his grave.
While seeing his grandfather was fun for Spencer, seeing him in a hospital brought up too many memories of his father. As we walked out into the fine summer day I asked, “Would you like to hike a mountain stream?” The hospital’s location was close to the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a weekend. We had time. Spencer beamed.
We drove up, up, and up a twisting mountain road in the Shenandoah National Park and parked near a familiar trail. I’d been there years before and recalled it as tame enough for urban folk. We looked for “nature” and right away we found it in the form of a snake. It was gray with white stripes and we decided it had to be poisonous. “Mommy, you’re not the one who knows how to kill snakes. That’s Daddy, and he’s not here. We shouldn’t be around a snake without Daddy.” He pulled me away.
We held hands and walked deeper into the woods, away from the snake. I held him over a stream so he could drink from the clear mountain water. This he declared “cool.” Later, at a roadside country store, he wore down my resistance and I bought him a plastic Davy Crockett rifle. He cradled it in his lap. “I’m a real mountain man,” he beamed. On the highway, headed home, Spencer stared out the window for quite a while then turned to me and asked, “Mommy, if you marry again will you tell me if it’s an alien?” I promised him that I would.