Another hand, on her back, a woman introducing herself.
“You’re the spitting image,” she says, and explains that she is a friend of Sebastian from some online forum. “I loved your mother,” she begins, and explains how much she connected with her mother’s character onLife and Times, how she helped her support a friend through addiction and recovery, how when Susan died, she cried alone in her house, she couldn’t explain it to anyone.
Can she see it, all the empty space inside her where there ought to be a person and is nothing? A force in her wants to resist: to refuse to become a receptacle for all of the feeling in the room, all the old, homeless grief. But she says “Thank you” and holds it close to her, the woman’s small offering, receives a mighty embrace.
Maybe it’s all equally important, all the people who felt anything about you. That’s the problem with belonging to everyone. But maybe it is the blessing too.
She gravitates to Sadie, who has lost weight, and also—it seems to Viola—height. She had always thought of her aunt as an overwhelming presence but now, it seems as though she has become a child again. She stands effortfully when Viola comes over.
“Sit, Sadie, you’ll tire yourself out,” Sebastian instructs.
They lower themselves onto some plastic chairs and Sadie begs for Viola’s phone, her photos of Dublin.
Beautiful, Sadie says time after time.Beautiful.It was, they can agree, even in miniature captured on the phone of an unskilled photographer; clouds over the Liffey, a man papering up a poster, the sun setting on cobbled streets that have belonged to millions before and will belong to millions after.
“It doesn’t really capture it,” Viola says.
“Well, you can’t do that,” says Sadie.
Tentatively, her father approaches the two of them, and she rises to hug him, her body tense, resisting regression, refusing the teenage self who was so blinded by the gospel of Al. He turns, now, to Sadie, his old enemy.Readying himself for combat, Viola thinks,using me as a shield. But he only smiles shyly and says: “Nice to have this one home.”
“Isn’t it! Jesus, she looks like Susie.”
“I know. More and more like Susie.”
His sincerity catches her off guard. His white hair. They are both staring at her, and it’s palpable how much they need to feel it. How desperate they are to say her name to each other.
“Your brain, though,” Sadie says.
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do. And thank God for that.”
They both laugh a bit in discomfort and Viola hardly believes in it, the gentleness. Did it take them this long, just to grow up?
Al rubs the balding spot at the back of his head, turns to Sebastian. “Well, this kid has your creative streak.”
On the wall, Sebastian is projecting some video, decades old, of their mother performing in a school play. They watch her for a little while, a woman of movement and joy. She’s funny, she makes them laugh. She flubs a line. She is just a girl like any other girl. Viola takes in her corny gestures, meets her backstage as she giggles, as she receives flowers and blushes at praise for her performance. She introduces all of her castmates as though each one is a name they ought to remember. She is unapologetically herself.
The clip switches to an early family video. Her mother must be her own age, or near enough. Viola watches as she picks her up, a little girl, her feet dangling in the air, her curls downy on her tiny scalp, and they smile at each other the same smile, and she can hear her father’s voice under the music that is playing saying:Let’s see a spin!and her mother is lifting her high in the air with strong arms and looking into her face and saying:Look at you go!
“In some ways, it made it harder,” he says. “Having had that time together. Feeling what it might have been like, to be a real family.”
“We were always a real family.”
Viola’s anger is growing, alarming and righteous. It’s his fault they didn’t have more time with her. His fault that they grew up without the full picture. His fault that she doesn’t remember her. But how can she hold all of this stupid, directionless rage when all she wants to do is slip back into the easy comfort of their relationship? What she wants is not to hurt him, but to tell him about her thesis and receive his praise, to go home and sit on the couch and watch detective shows. To cook for him. To talk to him like this, as two adults. To think about his time with her mother as a circumstance that arose between two people who probably loved and hated each other, who fought and made up and were similar and different. Who needed each other and didn’t need each other. Here he is again on the screen, just a man, waving the camera away, not wanting to be seen.
“You know, I still feel sorry that I never asked her what she wanted. Afterward, I mean, for the funeral. I had so much time and I just. It felt like asking would have made it come true.”
Viola places a hand on her father’s back.
The great sadness of her death had made it so easy to sweep away the smaller, more preventable sadnesses. She wonders if the greater tragedy was the one they might have affected.
“You were young,” she says to him.
Her father holds her hand.Maybe we are done, as a family, leaving things unsaid.Or maybe this is just a moment in time.
“How is that mystery gentleman you were seeing?” he asks.
