Chương 5
Eli gripped the edge of the doorframe. He wanted to say he was not satisfied. He wanted to say he had never been satisfied by anything in his life, not really. He wanted to ask whether the baby had suffered and whether Celia had cried and why she had kept buying clothes for someone who was gone.
What came out was, “You were going to make me pretend.”
Celia’s eyes filled, though no tears fell.
She left without answering.
The front door closed. Through the window, they watched the driver place her suitcase in the trunk. Celia entered the rear seat, still holding the garment bag.
The car disappeared beyond the stone gate.
That evening, nobody ate dinner at the dining table.
Mrs. Donnelly left covered plates in the warming drawer and went home at seven. Mara stayed. She poured herself a glass of wine, forgot where she had placed it, and poured another. Graham found the first glass on the piano.
Eli sat on the floor of his bedroom with his back against the bed. The house sounded different without Celia. No hair dryer hummed behind the guest-suite door. No music came from the bathroom. No one crossed the hall in soft slippers or called down to ask whether a package had arrived.
Her absence did not feel like relief. It felt like a tooth missing from the front of his mouth, a space his tongue kept testing.
On his desk stood the wooden model sailboat Celia had bought him in Maine. One mast leaned slightly because Eli had dropped it. Celia had repaired it with clear glue and held the pieces together for twenty minutes while he read aloud from a book about shipwrecks. She had not complained.
He turned the boat to face the wall.
At nine, Graham knocked.
“You can come in,” Eli said.
His father entered carrying two bowls of vanilla ice cream. The gesture was so predictable that Eli almost laughed.
“I’m not hungry.”
“That has never stopped a person from eating ice cream.”
“Aunt Mara said that about water.”
“She stole it from me.”
Graham placed one bowl on the desk and sat on the edge of the bed. He had changed into a gray T-shirt and dark pants. He looked less like the man who negotiated hotel deals and more like the father who sometimes fell asleep on the sofa during baseball games.
“Celia sent medical records,” he said.
Eli waited.
“She was pregnant. The records show a miscarriage on May twenty-third.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How did it happen?”
“Sometimes there isn’t a reason anyone can identify.”
“Did she do something?”
“No.”
“Did I?”
Graham’s head lifted sharply. “No.”
“I didn’t want the baby.”
“That did not cause anything.”
“I said I wished it would go away.”
“When?”
“At the Cape. In my head.”
Graham set his bowl on the floor. “Thoughts do not cause miscarriages.”
“You don’t know what I thought.”
“I don’t need to.”
“I thought if there was a baby, you would forget Mom.”
Graham’s face tightened.
Eli looked at the sailboat facing the wall. “Celia said the nursery could have Mom’s old rocking chair. She said it would make the room feel like it had always been part of the family. I didn’t want the baby sitting in Mom’s chair.”
“Your mother never sat in that chair.”
“She bought it.”
“She bought it at an estate sale and said it was uncomfortable.”
“It was still hers.”
“Yes.”
“I wished the baby would disappear.”
Graham leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “You are allowed to have ugly thoughts.”
“That sounds bad.”
“Most honest things do.”
“Did you have ugly thoughts?”
“Yes.”
“About me?”
“Sometimes.”
Eli looked at him.
“When you were a baby, you screamed every night for four months,” Graham said. “Your mother could sleep through it. I couldn’t. One night I stood in the kitchen holding you while you screamed, and I thought about putting you in the pantry and shutting the door.”
“Did you?”
“No. There were cans in the way.”
Eli stared at him.
Graham’s mouth moved slightly. “That was a joke.”
“It wasn’t good.”
“No.”
A small, unwilling laugh escaped Eli. It disappeared quickly.
Graham looked down at his hands. “Wanting something terrible does not make it happen. Celia’s miscarriage was not your fault.”
“Then why did she keep pretending?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You asked her?”
“She says she panicked. Then every day made telling the truth harder.”
“That doesn’t explain the fake stomach.”
“No.”
“Or the socks.”
“No.”
“Or telling Grandma it kicked.”
Graham’s eyes closed.
Eli had heard that lie two Sundays before. Celia sat on the terrace beside Graham’s mother, holding the older woman’s hand against the yellow fabric. After several seconds, Grandmother Vale gasped and smiled. Eli, watching from the doorway, saw Celia press her own fingers beneath the dress.
He had told his father later.
Graham had said the movement might have been too subtle for Eli to see.
“Did Grandma feel anything?” Eli asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She said she did.”
“People sometimes feel what they expect.”
“Like you?”
Graham took a breath. “Yes.”
Eli reached for the bowl on the desk. The ice cream had softened around the edges.
“Are you still marrying her?”
“I don’t know.”
“That means maybe.”
“It means I will not make that decision tonight.”
“The wedding is in eleven days.”
“I am aware.”
“You keep saying you don’t know.”
“Because I don’t.”
“What do you know?”
May you like
Graham looked around the room. His gaze rested on the sailboat, the cello case, the stack of clothes Eli had been told to fold three days earlier.
“I know I should have listened to you without deciding what your reasons meant about the facts,” he said. “I know you were wrong to pull the tab. I know Celia was wrong to lie. I know she lost a child she wanted. And I know I am not going to ask you to act as if today didn’t happen.”
