Friday, March 6, 2015
Itasca, Minnesota
“I hope caramel macchiato is still your favorite,” Evan said, holding out a paper cup from Jean’s Beans to Molly. He’d come into her office reception room with a blast of frigid air, looking very East Coast in his striped scarf, heavy Burberry coat, dark jeans, and new-looking lace-up boots.
“Yes, thank you!” she said, and, though he was the primary reason she’d been losing sleep these last two weeks—their conversations about custody had been both fruitless and excruciating, and they had another planned for right now and had to get something worked out, because Evan would be driving out of town at 4 a.m. tomorrow to catch his flight out of Minneapolis—she was oddly happy to see him, and oddly glad he’d stayed as long as he had.
But then, custody arguments aside, he’d actually been helpful to have around. He’d driven Molly and Liz to the game in Duluth—an especially big help because Liz had still seemed so out of sorts, even sleeping in the back seat the whole ride home—celebrated the victory with Caden, then been at the home game two days later when Itasca was eliminated in the last round of sectionals. For Caden, hearing “there’s always next season, bud” from his dad had probably helped take the sting out of the loss more than anything Molly ever could’ve done or said, and there was no point resenting that. Evan had also helped when it was time to move Cecily over to The Pines, cheerfully loading flower arrangements into the back of Molly’s Mazda, running back and forth to Cecily’s house six times to make sure she had every particular book and pair of socks she wanted, and fending off a dozen Prayer and Action ladies who’d arrived bearing cookies and cakes and cross-stitch projects, wanting “just a peek” at Cecily “to make sure she’s all right!” If not for Evan, their good intentions might just have been the death of Cecily.
And, in the days since, he’d been spending every possible moment with their son, whenever Caden wasn’t in school: taking him out for meals, playing hours of hockey at the town rink in a pair of used skates he’d picked up at Play It Again Sports. Molly didn’t know what they talked about, but Caden, whose black eye had faded to a sickly shade of yellow, simply seemed happy to have Evan around. Plus, Evan had been keeping the walks shoveled and the lights and heat burning at Cecily’s house, which was a huge relief to Liz, and thus to Molly.
Of course, now he was leaving with his fun-parent status intact, and Molly would be left to the rest on her own, whatever came—including whatever mess he created with possibly suing her for more time with Caden. She straightened her spine. “Well, Mr. Bouchard. Shall we go into my office?”
He nodded, and she led him into the talk therapy room. He looked around at the arrangement—a comfortable love seat, two Danish Modern armchairs, her clean, light wood desk, a pair of tall bamboo plants, colorful art on the walls—and said, “Nice.”
“Thanks.” She sat down behind her desk—she never sat here when she was with a client, but she needed some barrier in place right now—and took one blissful sip of macchiato. Evan, removing his coat and scarf, settled into the chair across from her and gave her a look she almost remembered—a mix of a question and a statement, neither of which she’d ever truly been able to decipher. He sipped his coffee. A cinnamon cappuccino, she’d bet anything.
Then, he said, “I’m just wondering what we’re really going to do here, Moll.”
Ah, so the macchiato had been meant to weaken her. “Evan, as I’ve said. He loves it here, and he’s on track to be a starter next year in hockey, on a team with a great chance at the state championship. You can’t uproot him. At age fourteen? Take him away from his friends, his classes, his team? He probably barely remembers his old friends, and I know the hockey program in Newport isn’t nearly as good as this one. You’d be sabotaging him.” She’d been saying pretty much the same thing since their first conversation, almost two weeks ago.
Evan sipped his coffee. “Hockey’s important—”
“Yes, what about the Olympics? Staying here is his best shot at that, if you’re serious.”
“But family’s more important.”
“Well, then, he should stay here for that, too!”
Evan cocked his head with a look as if to say, Bullshit. His parents were in Maine, his sister and her kids in Seattle. Himself in Newport.
“Look,” he said. “I’m not an idiot, contrary to your opinion. I know the Olympics is basically a pipe dream. What I also know is that he needs me. He’s mine as much as he’s yours, Moll. And he needs his dad. I’m just not going to let a long absence like the last one happen again. That was a real fuckup on my part, and I’m not going stand for it again. Not from me, and not from you. So, I don’t know. Maybe he lives with you for the hockey season, and me for the rest of the school year.”
“Are you insane? Break apart his school year every year? Just from that idea alone, it’s clear you don’t have his best interests at heart. Anyway, you don’t even know what it takes to be solely responsible for him at this stage.”
Evan let out a breath of frustration. “You’ve got to at least consent to July and August for now. I told you, my parents want me to bring him up to Maine, and I want to get him back out surfing, before he forgets how. I’m trying to be reasonable here, Moll. Maybe we can talk about the school year later.”
“July and August was not our agreement at all. And I’ve already paid for him to go to hockey camp in Brainerd for two weeks at the end of July. He wants to go.”
“But the agreement we had in place hasn’t been—”
He stopped himself. Took another sip of his coffee. When he lowered the cup, his mouth was thin. “Molly Bouchard, this is fucking ridiculous, and you know it.” His eyes flashed to her, and in them was a look she didn’t recognize at all.
She set down her coffee, stomach whirling. She tried to remember the principles of Nonviolent Communication, but, under the weight of his gaze, she was coming up blank. “Okay, maybe we should take a step back—”
“No, I’m being serious. How did we get here, anyway? Here, arguing about our son?”
She swallowed and sat back. She did not want to revisit the pain. Not the old pain, nor the pain of the present moment. “You know how we got here,” she said quietly.
“I refuse to accept that. Your father died, and you freaked out. I don’t think I did anything wrong at all. But I got defensive and hurt and stuck in one way of thinking, and I just stopped fighting you, and you left, and you took me to court and took my son.”
She swallowed again. “That is not how I recall it.”
Evan set down his coffee. “Have you grieved your father, Molly? Or helped your mother? Really?”
She looked at him. Damn it. How was it still true that he knew her better than anyone? She’d shown up here in Itasca two years ago thinking she’d grieve with her mother; instead, she’d ended up buttoning herself up just as tightly as Liz herself was. They’d never talked about Dean. Not two words.
“Your father wouldn’t want this for us, Moll,” Evan said. “This . . . split. This arguing.”
That was true, too: Dean had been a believer in happy families. That was his stake in the ground, his number one priority. He’d been the most successful residential real estate agent Itasca had ever known, not because he cared about properties or profits, but because he cared about families and happy homes. And, as buttoned up as Liz was around everyone else, with Dean she’d let her hair down. In Molly’s memories of her parents together, they were always laughing, joking, having a grand time, even just day-to-day with the small, inane details of life.
She and Evan had lost that, somewhere along the way.
“You’ve been threatening to get a lawyer,” she said.
“I’m not talking about that now. I’m talking about you. About our son.”
“What do you want me to do, Evan? I’m not going to let him go back to live in Newport without me. And I’m not leaving Itasca. My practice is thriving. I’m doing some good here. And my grandma and my mom need me. I do help them. Just by being here, I do.”
“Well, I can’t leave Newport. I own the brewery, which we’re just in the process of expanding, not that you care, and I own the house, which, I’ll remind you, we love—”
“Believe me, I know all about how you’ve built your empire. All the effort you’ve put in. And I remember the house.” A tiny antique Cape in the oldest part of town, built before 1800, which they’d gently restored, room by room, together. “It was mine, too, you know.” It was odd to think, but, though she’d lived in Maine for college, and for a short while in Boston afterward, Newport was really the only place, other than Itasca, where Molly had ever felt at home.
Evan looked at her for a long moment, then his eyes softened, for no discernible reason. “Moll, listen,” he said. “I know you never believe this. But I lost our babies, too. It wasn’t just you. We should’ve been able to grieve together. Not let it divide us the way it did.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. His tender gaze was cracking through every inch of protective shell she had. “How,” she managed, “how, how do you expect we would’ve managed that?”
“I don’t know, Moll, but we’re adults. We should’ve tried harder.” He swallowed visibly. “We have a living son we should’ve tried harder for.”
She’d never felt so accused. Worse, she didn’t even disagree. “It’s all done now, Evan,” she said, even as her entire body was reverberating with dismay—that this was how he saw things. Saw her. “We can’t change it. Even if we’re sorry. Even if we regret everything. We can’t change it.”
“Are you sorry, Moll? You took my son away from me. I don’t want to live fifteen hundred miles from him anymore. I’ve had enough.”
Molly wiped away a tear with her fingertip. Swallowed again. She truly hated this. How did we get here? “What does that mean, Evan?”
His jaw hardened. “It means I think we really messed this up, Moll. You did. This was a bad, bad mistake. And you need to fix it.”
Liz was sitting next to Cecily’s bedside, flipping through an old copy of House Beautiful without registering what she was seeing. Cecily’s eyes were closed, an issue of People sprawled open across her lap. Liz had grabbed the magazines from The Pines’ library for diversion when Cecily had said she didn’t feel “up to” reading books. Nor had she felt “up to” seeing anyone except family, the last few days. Unmistakably bad signs—though her therapists had reported that rehab was going “just fine, considering her age.”
Not incredibly reassuring, after all, but Liz would take what she could get.
Her cell phone rang. She flinched when she saw the local number, but quickly hid her nerves. “Excuse me, Mom,” she said, and Cecily gave a wan smile before letting her eyes drift closed again. Another decidedly not good sign.
Liz clicked to answer the phone as she walked out to the hallway. “Hello?”
“Hi, Liz,” said Dr. Hokannen, and she couldn’t read his tone to know if the news was bad or good. After a few brief pleasantries, he said, “Listen, I’m not going to beat around the bush, okay? Your biopsy shows it’s cancer.”
Liz felt as if all her blood dropped to her feet. She was suddenly dizzy, cold.
“The good thing is we caught it early. Why don’t you come in on Monday and we’ll talk about your options, okay?”
She hugged herself tight with her free arm, but that did little to help steady her. It was Friday today; she’d have to wait out the weekend. But what was there to say? “Okay,” she managed, and they set the time.
Liz didn’t look quite right when she came back in after her phone call, Cecily noticed. A little unsteady and pale. Cecily worked her mouth—every part of her was just so tired—then managed, “Everything all right, hon?”
Liz blinked. Gave a sudden, weak smile. “Fine, Mom.”
Cecily sat up slightly, made her voice stronger than she felt. “Now, don’t start trying to shelter me from things. Did something happen?”
“No, Mom. Everything’s fine.” Liz picked up House Beautiful and flipped it open again.
Cecily sighed and sank back into her pillows. It was a strange thing about getting old: everyone imagined you knew nothing about anything, or that you couldn’t “handle” it—as if you hadn’t handled a thousand things they had no idea about before they were even born. She imagined Sam would say she ought to just relax and enjoy that other people were taking care of her, for once, instead of the other way around, but she was not of a mind to enjoy it. Not one bit. In pain and exhausted as she was, she was itching to get back to work, to bake a fifteen-layer cake and sit down with it and a cup of black coffee across her kitchen table from Molly. The poor girl was a wreck at the thought of losing Caden for even a few weeks a year, and Cecily had a few things she could tell her about that.
About luck. About loss.
But. Would Cecily ever have the chance to sit at her kitchen table with Molly again? Or do anything halfway normal? Was she going to make it out of this “rehab” place alive?
She knit her hands together over the blanket. Another perky therapist would be coming along soon to make her get out of bed and walk, and God knew it felt like too much to Cecily, having to learn to walk again, this far (nearly ninety-five years!) into life.
God knew, in a way, she’d been through enough to make up the entirety of a life.
Finito, as Isabelle would’ve said. Capiche?
But Isabelle also would’ve said, A person has to make her own luck, and so Cecily repeated these words out loud to her daughter, and Liz looked up from House Beautiful to give her a cock-eyed look.
With effort, Cecily smiled. Sudden tears filled Liz’s eyes. “Oh, honey,” Cecily said. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be all right.”
But Liz, typically so unflappable, looked suddenly—this was without precedent!—on the verge of becoming unhinged. Cecily wondered with a start if she’d been found out. Had Liz learned the truth?
But how? No one knew.
Unless Cecily herself had let something slip when she’d been drugged or not in her right mind, these last couple of weeks? Oh, she hoped not—that would be an awful way for Liz to find out. The worst. In fact, maybe part of the reason why Cecily had started declining visits from everyone except family was out of fear she might inadvertently divulge something to the wrong person and, within hours, that same something would be all over town. It wasn’t easy to keep secrets in Itasca, and it certainly hadn’t been easy to never once speak the truth out loud in almost seventy years.
What would everyone think? The Prayer and Action ladies? The book clubs and committees?
But, most of all, Liz. Liz and Molly. What they thought was all that would matter to Cecily, in the end.
Cecily had always told herself that she was sparing Liz from knowing painful things; that she was protecting her out of pure love. But now, Cecily felt a pang of regret that she’d kept so much from her.
But for Liz to learn the truth was unthinkable. She would be so angry. Molly, too.
Cecily could die hated by those she loved most.
But it was cowardly, wasn’t it, not to tell them?
Cecily hadn’t felt afraid of anything in a long time, but she was afraid now. Of the truth itself?
Or was it of the possibility—she felt it edging ever closer—that she would leave the earth with no one remaining who knew her whole story, or about the dreams she’d once had?