CHAPTER 22
The theater, tucked into a corner in the museum, was practically empty. An older couple sat in the second row and a young guy, maybe just out of college, a few seats away. When the door opened behind us, I turned and felt my heartbeat leap. But it was only an older man who nodded to us as he walked toward the front. I settled back into my seat. I hadn’t realized until then that I was waiting for Lee. I didn’t know if I was happy or sad that she wasn’t here.
Last night I’d opened her letter when I got home.
Hi Clare,
Hope you and Ben are well. Things here are good. I got married last year, I’m not sure if you know that or not. Wallace and I met when I got back from Thailand. He’s a wonderful guy and I’m very happy.
It’s been so long since we last spoke. I feel terrible about how out of touch we are. And so I’m writing for two reasons. First, I want to tell you that I’ve learned things over the last year that have given me some peace about all that happened, and I thought it might be helpful to you to hear about it. Second, I have a favor to ask. I need your help with something. Do you think we might be able to get together to talk? I’m not interested in blaming or yelling or anything like that. I just want to talk. I can drive up to see you or maybe we could meet halfway?
I’m sorry, again, about your mom. I hope you’re okay. Did you get the card I sent after she died?
It’s been so long and I miss the good things about us. Please write back or call. This is really important for both of us.
Lee
For God’s sake, what favor did she want to ask? What could I possibly do to help her? Surely she hadn’t forgotten what I’d done. Just thinking about this again—which I tried so hard not to do anymore—caused sharp, hot stings to break out across the back of my neck. And what peace had she found?
“This is quite something.” My dad leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Not many people get to make movies and have them actually shown in a real theater.”
“I know.”
“Your mother and I liked her quite a bit,” he said.
“I know.”
My parents met Lee when she visited the Vineyard for a weekend after freshman year. My mother hadn’t wanted overnight guests. She was revising her new book and kept a strict schedule. But I’d talked so much about Lee that she and my dad were intrigued, especially when I said that there might not be another opportunity for her to visit (her aunt had a conference in Boston and Lee was driving out with her). And so it was agreed.
I met Lee in Boston and we took the ferry to the Vineyard. By the time we got to our house, my parents were asleep. The next morning, I woke late and the twin bed next to me was empty. I checked the house but couldn’t find Lee. I looked out the window and saw my mother at the picnic table, her typewriter in front of her. When Lee came around the corner of the house and stood next to her, I hurried out.
“Lee was telling me about her farm.” My mother kept her eyes on Lee as she spoke. Her opinions, her mood, her well-being, her reason for living, the affection she had for others—even Betsy, the woman in Oak Bluffs who cut her hair—depended on one thing. How she felt about her writing. And it had been a rough summer.
“Did you get some coffee, Lee?” I nodded toward the kitchen.
Lee, dressed in her Army fatigue cutoffs and white T-shirt, with a red bandana tied pirate style around her head, said, “Not yet.”
My mother frowned as she looked Lee up and down, and I felt the obvious snub rip through me. I imagined what happened. Lee interrupted her and now my mother would make her pay, make me pay, for this infraction. How unfair.
“We’re going to the beach.” I spit the words.
“I’ll change,” Lee said. My mother glanced at Lee’s shorts as she passed by the table on her way into the house.
“I told you, she doesn’t have much money,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“Ah, yes, of course.” She nodded slightly.
“Don’t be so judgmental! God!” I stomped into the house.
After I changed and we packed a lunch, we walked by my mother on our way to the car. It was sunny and hot and the crushed stones on the driveway crunched beneath our flip-flops. I was still angry but Lee hadn’t seemed to let my mother’s condescension bother her. Nor did she seem intimidated. She’d talked nonstop as we made sandwiches. You have so many flowers in your garden. It’s so beautiful here! I’ve never seen anywhere like this. Why don’t people paint their houses? Where did all of the stone walls come from? How many people live here year-round?
As we put our cooler and towels into the trunk, my mother called to us. “The Donahues are coming for dinner tonight. Will you be joining us?”
No way. But Lee slowly smiled and nodded at me. I’d told her about the crazy novels that Mr. Donahue wrote, and that his wife was a painter, and of course she remembered. Of course she was intrigued.
“I thought we’d get lobsters.” Was my mother offering an apology? Because certainly she remembered that lobsters were my favorite.
“I’ve never had lobster,” Lee said.
“You’re joking,” she said. Lee shook her head. “They’ll be here at seven.”
“We’ll be back by then, right?” Lee looked at me and then at my mother. “Maybe I could help with the lobsters. You know, see how you make them.”
Not since I was little had anyone been excited to make lobsters with my mother. She kept her head tilted as she stared at Lee and then she nodded. Was she thawing? As we drove away, I wanted to stay angry. But as I watched her slump over her typewriter, her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, I felt that familiar pull toward her. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to write today. She could work in the garden or go into town. No one would take away her legacy. No one would be angry if she took another two years to finish her new novel.
We were back from the beach by five, and when we walked into the kitchen my mother, standing at the counter, turned and smiled. She’d had a good writing day, I could tell, and that meant we might have a nice evening.
I was right. The lobsters were great—Lee had watched dutifully as my mother explained how to cook them—and we talked at the table for hours. My dad kept opening bottles of wine and my mother kept insisting that the Donahues stay. Lee didn’t want to leave, either. She loved the lobster. She loved the salad. She said that she hadn’t ever had that kind of wine but she loved that, too. We all felt her excitement, even my mother although she wasn’t quite won over yet.
“But don’t cornfields have their own sense of beauty?” my mother asked. We’d been talking about the stone walls along Middle Road, and Lee said it was the most beautiful stretch of road she’d ever seen. In my entire life.
Lee put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Maybe when you grow up with something, when you’re around it every day, you don’t see it anymore.”
“Maybe you never really see it to begin with,” Mr. Donahue said. He was a lawyer who wrote crime novels on the side and was probably my dad’s closest friend. Mrs. Donahue, a landscape painter, sat across from him. She was nice but never said much, which was part of the reason why I thought my mother liked her.
“How can you not see something right in front of you?” Dad asked.
“It happens to people who aren’t paying attention,” my mother said.
“Maybe it takes something really unusual in your everyday life to get your attention,” Lee said. “I remember one time last year when the sun was going down and I looked across the cornfields and the sky was the most unusual red that I’d ever seen. It was so beautiful that it hurt to look at it. It hurt everywhere. I almost couldn’t breathe. I started to cry. I just sat there and kept crying.”
“Our natural world can do that to a person, can’t it?” Mrs. Donahue asked.
I knew for certain that I’d never felt pain or was unable to breathe when I looked at the sky or the stone walls on Middle Road or really anything in nature. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to feel that way. But then looking at the smile on Lee’s face and the way everyone was nodding, I felt as if I were missing something.
“A beautiful sunset or stone wall should make you feel good, happy. Isn’t there enough pain in our world?” I asked.
“She’s got a point.” My dad grinned. “Practical Clare!”
Everyone laughed except my mother. She stared at Lee as if trying to decide something about her. I sucked in a breath and held it.
“The question is,” my mother said to Lee as everyone turned to her, “what do you do with all that raw emotion you experienced watching the sunset?”
I looked at my mother. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her utter the words “raw” or “emotion” and certainly never in the same sentence.
“You soak it in, the good and bad, and feel it, I guess,” Lee said. “Eventually you use it in your work. Think about what you did in ‘The Confidences.’ Lieutenant McCalister and the others in the trench are great characters. They try to be brave but underneath they’re terrified of death. Right? That’s using raw emotion.”
I expected my mother to recoil at this, but instead, she sat back in her chair and nodded slightly. Maybe this was because most people didn’t talk to her about her short story, published in a literary magazine not long after Listen came out. Most people wanted to talk about her novel and how they had family members who had returned damaged from war. Or they wanted to tell her that they, too, had loved ones who had killed themselves.
I was proud, suddenly, that Lee could talk to these adults about things like raw emotion and documentaries and that we were so close. My high school friends had always been so weird around my mother. Shy. Intimidated. Or overly aggressive as they tried to impress her. Lee was none of these. She was unique and independent, the type of person people looked up to. And out of all the girls in our dorm, and at our school, she’d chosen me for a friend. Me! And this was before she even knew who my mother was. I blurted, grinning, “Lee’s going to be a filmmaker.”
“A filmmaker!” Mr. Donahue said. “Off to Hollywood, I imagine.”
Lee shook her head. “I don’t want to go to California because I don’t want to make those kinds of movies.”
I tried not to smile. If ever there was a way to get on my mother’s good side, it was to be anti-Hollywood although Lee didn’t know this.
My mother was still staring at Lee but she no longer looked as if she wanted to skewer her. She asked, “What kinds of films do you like?”
“All kinds,” she said. “Sometimes my aunt and I spend weekends watching the same movie, over and over. But I want to make documentaries. Because I think it’s interesting to try to get at the real truth behind actual people and events.”
“You don’t think a Hollywood film can get at real truth?” my mother asked.
“Maybe,” Lee said. “But I think those kinds of films try to be entertaining more than anything else.”
My mother licked her bottom lip and nodded slightly and I could tell that she was thinking about this, not dismissing it as she so easily did with information she didn’t believe or care about. I grinned at Lee—wasn’t this terrific?—because I liked that she wasn’t intimidated. I liked that my mother was intrigued.
“So, where are you going to do this filmmaking?” Mr. Donahue asked.
“Well, this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” Lee sat up, her voice high-pitched and excited. The wine and reflection from the candles had turned her cheeks shiny and red. “I can hardly take my eyes off everything, all these stone walls and the ocean. And the houses are so old. It has such a great feel! But I want to move to New York. I just think that’s the place for me. I have to do this.”
“Your joie de vivre is infectious.” My mother chuckled.
“Amen,” my dad said.
Lee grinned although I didn’t think she had any idea what my mother meant. I raised my glass to her and we both took long drinks from our wine.
After that my mother was looser, laughing at Dad’s description of the old whaling boat and Mr. Donahue’s story about his law partner. I hadn’t seen her like this in a long time and wouldn’t see her like this again for a while. It was Lee, the wine, her writing day. I wasn’t sure what else.
“Eleanor, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Mr. Donahue said. “Did you ever read that article I left for you? The interview with the South American writer?”
My mother began nodding vigorously. “Yes, yes, very interesting.”
Mr. Donahue leaned forward as he glanced around the table. “This article was about a very successful writer although I’d never read anything by her. Anyway, she told the interviewer that her ‘well of creativity’ had dried up. All gone. Vanished. Vamoose! She blamed it on her eight years in psychoanalysis.”
“Can the well really dry up or does it just go into hiding?” Dad asked.
“What happened?” Mrs. Donahue asked. “She conquered her demons?”
“That’s nonsense,” my mother said. “I never found therapy particularly helpful. The drugs they put me on made me an automaton. And what was the point of unearthing the mundane and the miserable? Wasn’t it bad enough experiencing them the first time?”
Everyone laughed. Mr. Donahue kept nodding.
My mother didn’t talk much about her childhood. The only miserable things she’d ever told me about happened to her parents and grandparents, not to her. For example, before she was born, her parents—stoic, no-nonsense New Englanders—had had a three-month-old girl who’d died in her crib, and they never spoke about it. And my mother’s grandfather had killed himself behind his barn in Vermont, of course. To this day, I still didn’t know what she meant by miserable.
I glanced at Lee, who seemed to be sitting on the edge of her seat, listening. And then she said, “Speaking of writing, can you talk about your new book?”
My mother waved her hand and laughed. She was a little drunk. “Let’s just say that I’m in Saigon tackling issues associated with the South Vietnamese in the days before the fall. It’s a bit of a love story but mostly a tragedy. My honorable American corporal has suffered greatly in the jungle. And that’s all I care to say.”
“Bravo!” Mrs. Donahue said.
“Your fans will expect a war story, to be sure,” Mr. Donahue said. “It’s an important subject, that troops coming home often suffer emotionally. You were the first to write about this.”
“No,” my mother said. “Crane and Vonnegut, among others, wrote about this.”
“Maugham, too,” Mrs. Donahue said.
“But you really highlight, in a different way, what happens to loved ones,” Dad said. “Because families always suffer, too.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get away from writing about war?” Lee asked.
The candles flickered and outside, I heard the steady groan of the bullfrog from the Hendersons’ pond. No one dared look at my mother except Lee, who had no idea what she’d just asked. Finally, I snuck a look. My mother was frowning, her eyebrows arched in severe half circles above her eyes. I felt a rush of heat to my cheeks and opened my mouth to say something.
“Not until our government stops meddling in places we don’t belong!” My dad pounded the table with his fist and everyone jumped. Mrs. Donahue’s wineglass teetered and would have fallen if Lee hadn’t reached for it. “It’s too important of a subject. Sorry, Lee. We get carried away by politics here.”
My dad smiled at Lee and then everyone laughed, including my mother, who raised her wineglass and said, “To Lee, the budding filmmaker, and her first time in New England. And to Clare, who’s made such an interesting friend.”
Everyone cheered with raised glasses.
Later, after the Donahues had gone and my parents were in bed, Lee and I cleaned up the kitchen. By this time, I was fairly sober although Lee was a little drunk. She must have told me a dozen times how much fun she’d had. “It was so great, you know, sitting at the table and talking about everything. Mr. and Mrs. Donahue were so nice and smart. Everyone is so smart here.”
Finally, I said, “I’m sure your parents do that when their friends are over.”
“My parents don’t have friends over.”
“Not ever?” I asked. She shook her head. “Not even for dinner?”
“My parents don’t have friends. And they don’t talk about politics or books or movies or emotions. My mom doesn’t have a job. She isn’t cool like your mom.”
This was a year before I visited her farm and realized how different our backgrounds truly were. Still, I remembered feeling a little annoyed. “My mom isn’t always like what you saw tonight. Most of the time she’s really moody.”
I handed Lee a wineglass that she dried and placed on the shelf. And then she put one hand on her hip and the other on the counter and said, “Yeah, I guess it’d be really hard living with someone who was that dedicated to her work.”
And I remembered turning to her as she concentrated on drying another wineglass and feeling as if that had been the perfect thing to say. Not how great my mother was or how famous or that she was a good writer. Those were all things junior high and high school friends had said to me over the years.
Would Lee have had the perfect thing to say if I’d called while my mother was dying? Her sympathy card to me afterward was short and to the point. I’m sorry for your loss. Your mom was always so nice to me. I hope you’re okay. No traces of anger. No asking for favors. She’d been busy, I knew now. She was making a film.
I glanced at my dad as the theater lights dimmed. He nodded and said, “Good. Here we go.”
I sat forward in my seat. We were in the dark until a faint light appeared on the screen. Slowly the scene came into view as the camera passed over a vast field with stunted, brittle cornstalks and swirls of snow. I gripped the seat in front of me with both hands. I remembered that weekend when we visited her farm and how everything looked so bleak, just like this.
I was suddenly hungry for something familiar, a snapshot of her farm, her house, the bar where we met her aunt, the long driveway with the fields on both sides. I scooted forward until my knees touched the empty seat in front of me. The camera panned to railroad tracks, and I realized that these were Lee’s tracks, where she’d taken me that day the goose was run over. There was the clump of trees. And the ridge above the river. This was it! Then her voice filled the room—“There’s a particular sound a train whistle makes on cold winter mornings . . .”
I startled—actually, it was more like a slap across the face, so sudden and sharp—and in my mind I saw her smile and how we sat in her theater in Bloomington on Sunday afternoons, our feet on the chairs in front of us, eating stale popcorn while watching whatever was showing. But this was her movie, the one we should have been talking about all these years, and yet we hadn’t. Because I didn’t have the courage to write back. Because I had ended our friendship.
What favor did she want to ask? What peace? I miss all of the good things about us. Oh, God, I missed that, too.
I saw images on the screen. People talking. Cornfields. Empty parking lots. And suddenly the movie was over. I had no idea how much time had passed. As the credits rolled, people around us began to leave but I watched until the screen went blank and the lights turned on.
“That was awfully short but good,” my dad said. “Timely, too. The disappearance of small-town America is happening everywhere. Logan and I were talking about this yesterday. He’s quite a capitalist these days. I think we’ve lost him to the Republicans. Did you like it?”
“Yes,” I said, still staring at the screen. But I’d have a hard time telling anyone what I just saw. I needed to go home and think about it.
That night Ben was home early—around eight—and we ate dinner on the tiny back porch of our condo. We’d bought this place last year. On the top floor of a four-story brownstone in Brookline, it was bright and spacious with two large bedrooms, a new kitchen, and a living room with a fireplace. It was close to the T and my dad and so new to us that we were still a little giddy that it was ours.
“So, tell me about it,” Ben said as he scooted to the table. He’d changed into shorts and a Red Sox T-shirt but he still had that disheveled look I always associated with work. Maybe it was because his hair, longer now than in college, was sticking out haphazardly on his head, as if he’d literally been pulling it out all day. I stood at the table, holding bowls of a new recipe, coq au vin, and then put one in front of him. Ben pushed the frame of his wire-rimmed glasses higher on his nose and dug his fork into his bowl before I’d even pulled out my chair.
“Well, it was good.” I sat and cradled my wineglass in my hands.
“Come on, give me details,” he said, his mouth full.
I put down my glass and took a bite. The chicken practically melted in my mouth and the sauce was both sweet and rich. I’d been right to make this last night and let it sit in the refrigerator for twenty-four hours. Ben nodded as he ate, his eyes glossed over in gastronomical ecstasy. It was still such a joy to watch him eat.
I took another bite and then a long drink of wine. Because I still didn’t know what to think about Lee’s film. Had I not been paying attention? Maybe it was just that I didn’t like talking to Ben about Lee. I still hadn’t told him what happened between us, not any of it, and now this omission—these lies—seemed almost bigger than the original sin. I cringed. Had I committed a sin?
“It was about a factory closing in Indiana near her hometown and the damage that did to people,” I said, finally. She’d interviewed a man in overalls with a John Deere cap and a shoe store owner who went out of business. Now I remembered.
“Was it any good?” he asked. I nodded. “Maybe you should call or something. Tell her that you saw it. It might be a good way to break the ice between you.”
I looked away because I hadn’t told him about Lee’s letter, either, and what she’d said. I hadn’t told him about any of the letters. I felt this wedge between us and I imagined, suddenly, sitting on broken pieces of ice and drifting away from each other. Married couples shouldn’t have secrets from each other. I had an ocean full.
But this wasn’t completely true. Years ago I’d confessed to not loving tutoring and that I didn’t want to go for a PhD. He knew I didn’t want to teach fourth grade for the rest of my life, either. I’d told him these things. I’d fessed up and it hadn’t been a disaster. He’d been only mildly disappointed.
“You know, if you call her, you don’t have to talk about what happened in Florida,” he said. “She probably doesn’t want to be reminded of that, either. Just talk about regular stuff. Talk about her film. You know?”
Let her go, I’ll stay.
I took another long drink of wine. Maybe Lee wanted help piecing together the events of that night in Florida. Maybe she wanted to press charges against those guys. It was one thing to tell Ben that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. But this was different. What was it that my dad said about Watergate? The cover-up was worse than the crime. He and Ben were talking about this the other night.
“How was work?” My throat felt tight, constricted.
“Pretty intense right now.” Ben’s voice sped up. “Now that Patrick wants me to argue part of the McDougal case, he’s got me working all aspects of it. I found some hilarious laws, though, when looking through the New York state books. Did you know that it’s against the law to throw a ball at someone’s head? And that a person can’t walk around on Sundays with an ice-cream cone in his pocket?”
Ben laughed, took a drink from his wine, and continued.
I stared at my wineglass. How did Lee get those bumpy opening shots of the cornfield and the snow? Maybe she hung out the window of a car. Did her husband help? How did she meet him? Were they thinking about having children, too?
“Hey.” Ben nudged my arm, and I startled and looked at him.
“You’re not listening. But I get it. I’m pretty swallowed up in the minutia.” He chuckled.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m a little distracted.” I smiled at him. Ben wanted to make partner someday, and he was doing everything possible to make this happen. The least I could do was be supportive. “Go on.”
“Nah, forget it.” He grinned and sat up. “Hey, I got two tickets for the last regular season game at Fenway. I thought I’d take your dad.”
Ben would much rather go to the game with Tommy, a friend from law school who’d moved here last year, or with one of his three brothers who all still lived where they’d grown up, near Baltimore, and would fly up in a moment. I felt the goodness of this—it would help my dad and me—settle heavy in my chest. “That’s so nice.”
“Hard to believe he wasn’t a baseball fan until I moved up here.” He smiled, proud that he’d converted my dad, who’d never watched an entire game in his life.
“It was such an escape for him last summer and fall,” I said, recovering a bit.
Ben dropped his eyes as he mopped up the last of his dinner with a huge hunk of bread. Over the last year, he’d been so helpful with things like setting up the hospital bed and taking their cars for oil changes. He fixed their downspout, which sent water into the basement every time it rained, and went to the lawyer with my dad to straighten out their trust. So, who could blame him if he couldn’t be in the same room with my mother, that her pain and paranoia made him petrified and mute? Who could blame him if he could barely stand to listen to me fumble with the grief and confusion I felt when she died? Ben had many strengths. Sitting with extreme emotions wasn’t one of them.
I stood and began stacking dishes. I hoped Sophie and Talia were having a sleepover tonight. I wondered how Paolo, who hadn’t found his mitt, would deal with the wrath of his dad. And I thought of Lee, maybe having dinner with her husband tonight, too, and wondering if I’d write back. I felt a sob start up my throat.
Ben reached for my arm, put the dishes back on the table, and then lowered me into his lap. I wrapped my hands around his neck and buried my face into his shoulder. He felt warm and smelled faintly like coffee and a bit like he’d soon need a shower. He whispered, “What?”
“I don’t know!” I sobbed. But oh, I certainly did. I knew.
“Are you thinking about your mom?” he asked.
I shrugged and kept my face against his shoulder.
“Know what I was thinking?” He nudged my head so that I sat up and looked at him. He had a tiny piece of chicken between his two front teeth and a cold sore in the corner of his mouth. I ran my finger over his bumpy dimple and then tightened my hands around his neck. “Maybe we should start trying again. It’s been a rough year with your mom and my job but that’s behind us now. Well, not my job. But anyway, what do you say? You ready to go at it again?”
He was talking about a baby. Before my mother died, we’d tried for a few months but stopped when she took a turn and had needed so much. He was right. That was behind us. But I didn’t know if now was the right time. I didn’t seem to know much about anything except that being a mother sounded terrifying. I didn’t know how to take care of a baby. What if I made a mistake? But I nodded because I didn’t want Ben to worry, and I needed time to think about this.
* * *
The next morning, Ben got up early, went for a run in the drizzle, and as he showered, promised that tomorrow morning he wouldn’t go in to work until ten. I was still in my pajamas, a cup of coffee in my hand, as I sat on the side of the tub. It was a perfect rainy Saturday to stay in.
“Are you always going to work weekends?” I asked.
“No, of course not,” he said, his wet dirty blond hair shiny under the bathroom lights. “This is just because of what’s going on now.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” He toweled off and combed his hair and then I followed him back into the bedroom. He kissed me on my lips and yanked a polo shirt over his head. “I won’t be late. Promise. Wanna do something tonight?”
“Sure.”
As I listened to him in the kitchen pouring cereal into a bowl, I imagined him standing at the counter, eating quickly, his mind already on the tasks for today. I thought about Kitty yesterday, surprised that Ben worked so many hours. But I’d met the spouses of many of the lawyers in his firm, and their husbands and a few wives worked just as much as Ben. Besides, I was used to it. This was how my mother worked, obsessively, continuously, until two months before she died.
I watched the rain flow in parallel tracks down the window. Had Lee and I passed the automobile plastics factory when we visited her farm? I couldn’t remember what she said in the film about why it closed. Or what the unemployment and poverty rates were. But I remembered how she pronounced Chicago with that sharp emphasis on the first syllable and how her voice climbed, in that familiar way, to emphasize a point.
I hadn’t paid enough attention to the film. Maybe if I saw it again, I’d be able to answer these questions. I put down my coffee and headed for the shower.
Two hours later, I sat in the empty theater. This time when the lights dimmed and the scene opened on the cornfield and snow and I heard Lee’s voice, I tried to concentrate on what she said. The automotive plastics factory had employed 347 people, making it the largest employer within fifty miles. The closing affected every business in the county. The poverty rate doubled. Unemployment skyrocketed.
Why had Lee chosen this topic? How long did it take her to make? Did it consume her? If so, who did the laundry? The shopping? Who made dinner?
When the film was over, I felt as unsettled as I had yesterday.
The next morning after Ben ran, showered, and ate his cereal standing at the counter, I told myself that I wouldn’t go back to the theater. With school in session all week, I should spend today getting things in order for the memorial service next weekend. I needed to pick out an outfit and plan Friday night’s dinner. Logan had called to say that he and Beth would arrive on the four o’clock ferry, earlier than planned. Oliver would be there for dinner as well.
Maybe I’d look through the recipes I’d started to collect. Or, while shopping for a new outfit, I’d stop at the bookstore and look through cookbooks. Would the Vineyard farms still have produce available? Should I bake a few loaves of bread? See, these were the things I needed to figure out.
Instead, I showered and took the T back to the MFA. Because I needed to be critical. This time, I’d critique it as I would a novel. I’d been good at this as a student. It was the creative part that always stumped me. What kind of interesting, original point did I want to make about a text? I couldn’t ever come up with anything.
At the theater, I took my regular seat in the second row. When the door opened and an older woman walked in, I frowned. But I had no claims on this film. When it started and Lee’s voice filled the theater, I began to pick it apart. The music was too depressing. The man complaining about the food in the soup kitchen was too predictable. And wasn’t it self-indulgent to think anyone would care about a small town in Indiana? How ironic that she’d returned to her hometown for her first professional film after she’d spent so much time plotting to leave.
But as the poor woman who’d lost everything talked into the camera, I felt myself sucked into the narrative. Just look at her! She lost her job, her house, and then her husband died of heart disease. Lee had done a noble service, calling attention to this. And she’d lived her dream.
When the film was over, I stayed seated while the woman left and the credits rolled. I didn’t move when the lights came on, either. Because this was it. All next week, I’d be in school when this was shown, and the following weekend, I’d be on the Vineyard. I rubbed my temples. It was time to go.
I took the T back to Brookline, stopped at the market, and picked up a few groceries for my dad. On my way to his house, I saw a girl on the sidewalk in front of me, her long black hair shimmering in the sunlight. I sucked in a quick breath and stopped walking. When she turned, I saw that she wasn’t Lee. But I’d been looking for her. Maybe that was why I’d gone back to the theater. Maybe I was looking for her so she could explain what favor she wanted from me.