THE NEXT MORNING when the phone woke her up, Theresa assumed it was Rick. They had left unresolved emotion hanging like laundry waiting for the sun. Still hoping for an answer that would satisfy them both, neither could quite say goodbye.
“Hi, Theresa, are you available for a beach picnic with the girls and me today? I thought we’d drive over to the site of Marconi’s first telegraph.”
Theresa laughed. Relief, reprieve. She took a deep breath and realized she didn’t have to start the day where night left off.
“Am I calling too early? I didn’t want to miss you.”
“No, Jeff, it’s fine. How are you? How are the girls?”
“We’re doing great, thanks. Summer school and day camp start for us in a couple of weeks, but this vacation on the Cape has been like make-believe, just pure pleasure.”
Theresa wondered why reality had to be separate from “pure pleasure” and what it takes to pull the two together. Her life seemed to be coming in boxed segments that didn’t spill over. She pictured Kevin and Rick and Jeff in large plastic containers, each looking at her through clear walls that held them silent and apart.
“Jeff, I … I don’t think I can make it. I’m leaving in a day or so, and I have so much to do.”
She didn’t sound convincing even to herself.
“Are you sure? Katie and Liz will be so disappointed.” Then he added, “We’ve all looked forward to seeing you again.”
Theresa felt a tug at her heart from the two little girls who so effortlessly showed her their affection. She remembered their trusting hands in hers, the ease with which she held them and they had come to help her. She yearned to be part of a family, to be needed by children. She ached for what was not possible with her own husband, yet available with someone else’s.
“Jeff, I can’t. I just can’t.”
She knew she was afraid, afraid of false signals and pretending, of wanting fantasy and the mirage of a borrowed life. But just as the distant silhouette of a person gets larger as one approaches it, so the truth was gradually becoming clearer to Theresa. Running away brought her closer to herself. She was ready to go home.
Jeff accepted the finality of her response, and she thanked him for all his help, wishing him well with his own family situation. Then she dialed Kevin. He was just getting into the office.
“Hi, counselor! I need a good lawyer. Got any recommendations?”
Kevin paused, probably unsure where this line of inquiry was headed. Before he could answer, she continued. “I’m just teasing, testing your morning reactions. We’re coming home tomorrow, and I’m bringing these gorgeous roses with me. Thank you, Kevin. And I mean it. Will I be in time for the blue moon?”
Gypsy nuzzled her, trying to coax Theresa out of bed. A new day awaited, and there would be fresh smells in the yard to investigate. Exploration and breakfast were the first priority.
“It’s been a perfect few weeks. Gypsy has adjusted well here, and she won’t like to have her routine interrupted. I think this dog is really your offspring!” Theresa laughed at herself and then added, “Are you ready for us back?”
“Tomorrow? That’s a quick exit. Are you running from something?”
She hesitated, readying to twist the words that harbored a lie. Theresa would be bringing home a secret of her own making. “No, there’s no running. I came in search of answers, and many questions have been resolved for me. Kevin, I want us to try harder, to have that fresh start. I want us to find the missing link that brought us together. I do miss you.”
“I’m liking Whimsy Towers more and more,” he joked.
“It’s given me a chance to step outside my world and look back on it with clearer eyes. I don’t want to lose what we’ve had. I want us to expand the common ground beneath our feet and not head off in separate directions just to avoid the effort of understanding each other. Love is work and fun and discovery and listening. Can we move our marriage away from indifference?”
Kevin became serious. “I’m willing to try. I want to do better at listening and having fun—really, I do. When you’re back, I’m taking a few weeks off to unplug work and focus on what we need to do. Without you, I’d be swallowed by the curse of boredom and monotony.” And then he added, “Theresa, could we talk about adoption?”
She felt a fresh start had begun for them both.
• • •
A gentle rain began at mid morning, at first cleaning infant leaves and cleansing the air, depriving dust of a place to settle. Gradually the drops grew heavy and pounded on the roof like insistent callers. Theresa carefully closed all the windows and spent her last day on Cape Cod locked in a house of memories brought to light. She tried to remember her first impressions of Whimsy Towers, the shadowy rooms and odd feeling of trespassing.
In a few hours Stormy would be coming to dinner. The rainy day provided plenty of time to pack up things for the trip back to Virginia and to poach a fish Stormy had given her. Venturing quickly down the porch steps, she picked several wet sprigs of parsley from her herb pot. The rain tickled her bare arms. She decided she would leave the pot behind. Part of her was returning home, and part was already home.
Stormy arrived promptly at 7:00. “This is a sad supper in many ways, Theresa. You’ve left here before, and it’s painful all over again.”
Theresa hugged the old man, feeling him fragile for the first time. “I’ll be back. I promise I’ll be back.”
Something in his eyes made her wonder whether he was saying goodbye. He had lived to see the return of Emily’s baby, the link to the past that guaranteed the future. Theodosia’s legacy was secure for now.
They carried trays of steaming fish and fresh summer green salad up the stairs to the garden room. The large skylight was blanketed with gray. Blotches of rain trickled down the curved glass in eerie designs that disappeared onto the roof. The pounding had lessened, but the storm hung on, leaving the window to the sky unable to provide a view of the declining sun or rising moon.
Around the edges of the skylight, dangling crystal stars caught the light of the room and bounced it among themselves like a secret. Candles flickered.
“I love this room,” sighed Theresa, perched happily on a lounge chair with her tray.
“I think it was your grandmother’s favorite, too,” Stormy replied. “She used to feed the birds right on the window sill and let them fly in to the bird bath. Sometimes your father would be tryin’ to write, and somethin’ feathery would pass across his face. He’d mumble and shift in his chair, and Emily would laugh so hard he couldn’t be upset. The birds especially loved the fountain, and there was no point sittin’ in their path. They got real gutsy about it. Territorial.”
“Stormy, why the name Whimsy Towers?”
“Do you really have to ask?” He laughed, trying to swallow before getting into another story. “Got a dictionary? This house represented ‘out of the ordinary’ and ‘subject to sudden change.’ Those are definitions of whimsical. Its owner was full of fanciful ideas and whims, unpredictable as could be, full of curiosity and fun. She used to laugh that ‘whimsy’ came between ‘whimper’ and ‘whim-wham’ in the dictionary, between whining and the jitters. ‘Give me whimsy!’ she’d holler, with the fervor of Patrick Henry.”
“And the towers? Did she build them?”
“Yes and no. She added the one over her bedroom to match the other side. Nobody knows why the first one was built. Perhaps it was a variation of a ‘widow’s walk,’ an expression Theodosia would not allow. She preferred to think of them as lookouts, not the waiting post for disaster. Hundreds of seamen through history have not returned to anxious loved ones that searched troubled waters for them, and the rooftop widows’ walks were well named. The ocean takes what it wants.
“In the days after Emily’s accident, your grandmother did stand on her balcony for hours, hoping against the odds. Fixed as stone, staring. But I prefer to remember the years of waving and smiling and throwin’ kisses.”
“And the colors?”
“You’re not a sailor, Theresa! The towers were painted for me—by the Queen of Whimsy. ‘Red right return’ is the nautical expression. In a harbor the buoy lights are green and red; they guide the captain in. Can you picture which color the right tower is from the water?”
“The red one,” answered Theresa, repeating the nautical words to herself.
“Yup. It was your grandmother’s way of bringing me back to her, of leading me home. ‘Red right return.’ Her welcome mat from the water side! When those two towers were lit up on a clear night, I could almost feel her arms reachin’ out to me in the beams.”
He laughed. “The Coast Guard tried a couple of times to shut her down, but she persisted that she was not manning lighthouses, that they were colored lights on her house for safety. It was not easy to argue with Theodosia! Several times lost sailors did find their way to shore because of her lights, and she’d feed them and let them stay in the boathouse.”
“Would you like to live here now, Stormy?” Theresa asked gently.
He closed his eyes but did not speak.
She continued, “You lived here for so long, and I don’t know what my plans will be. I think you belong at Whimsy Towers, no matter what happens. I’d like to keep Theodosia’s family together.”
“She would like that.” He smiled, reaching over to put a rough brown hand on her arm. “I’d love to come around when you are here, Theresa. I’d like to meet your husband and see your children run through these rooms, but I could not stay here alone. It’s easier to be alone with memories when the walls don’t share them.”
She did not press him. They finished their dinner in the abandoned garden room and finally said a tearful good night that gathered all the lost years into their embrace.
Before going to bed, Theresa dialed a familiar number. She struggled to speak when the voice answered.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” came the reply.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I’ve been expecting this call. I’m trying to understand all this, Theresa, and I didn’t want to influence you. I want you to be happy, to live happy. You’ve reawakened that for me, but I know I cannot hold on to you.” He paused. “Good intentions can breed regrettable actions.”
“Do you regret our being together?”
“Can I plead the Fifth Amendment? Let’s just say I wouldn’t change it. But we’ll have to leave our behavior on the crowded altar of conscience. Emotions do not always survive, but you’ve stirred something in me that doesn’t want to retreat.”
“The right relationship will come,” she said, hoping she meant for both of them.
“I … ” he hesitated. “I’ve taken off my wedding ring. It’s the first step in acknowledging the future, that I do have a future. I can still value the past without guilt for feelings I have now, or may have. I thank you for that, Theresa.”
“Rick, there is only good in store for you. You’re a wonderful man.”
The phone was quiet. There was nothing more to be said.
“Will you still look after things for me at the house?” she asked.
“It’ll be my pleasure. You know I love it there.”
“Thanks, Rick.”
“Goodbye.”
Theresa settled back into the pillows on her grandmother’s bed, but sleep would not come. She tried to see the shapes of furniture and paintings, to find the outlines of her now-familiar surroundings, but the room was too dark on the moonless night. The rain had stopped. Nature was still, but she was restless, struggling with shadows of her own making.
“Hey, Gypsy,” she called to the dog as she got up and reached for her robe, flipping the switch near her bed. “Let’s take a walk.”
The startled dog roused quickly, obediently following her mistress down the stairs.
Theresa grabbed a bag of lemon cookies and a rawhide chew toy and headed out the door. The grass was slippery and cold on her bare feet, but the air was warm and moist, clinging to her with the same insistence that opened tiny buds and made spider webs glisten. Water could draw life slowly into view as well as snatch it cruelly away.
Whimsy Towers had stood its guard, a safe haven for Theodosia, a challenge to the wild for Emily. It brought hope to Theresa and a deep breath of new beginnings. She thought of Stormy and his devotion, of Ana with her gentleness and dedicated caring. And sweet Claude, with his curly hair and flair for poetry. She realized that her father, too, had been tempted in this place by the passion of a lonely moment. New life sprang from weakness as well as love. A silent voice told her she had a brother, a secret locked in the history of a shattered family.
For a long while, the two companions sat on the dock munching their snacks. Without a hint of stars or the trickery of moonlight, the thick gray sky wrapped them in hushed belonging. They lingered in the night until the brightness of two colored beams drew them back to the porch, where they slept a deep and peaceful sleep.