So, was I waiting, like Margo, just waiting for the right time? Did Jack’s phone call open a window that I couldn’t shut again? And if so, what now? Is it possible to live in the moment of today’s Bay Bluff, when the place is overrun by the past?
Chapter 19
The dilemma continues to haunt me as we ready for another dining room dinner, this time plus one. Ignoring the rain, Joy has gone out for fresh flowers to augment yesterday’s arrangements. She enjoys working in the garden, enjoys doing what her grandmother did before her. I feel guilty having kept her from this. But I wasn’t ready to be here.
I’m not sure I am now. All three of us? With Dad? And more questions than ever? And Anne not her usual sunny self and Margo not her usual confident self? And Billy Houseman? And rain enough to frizz all of our hair?
Oh yeah. The hair. Even if we didn’t all have Mom’s green eyes and more-or-less heart-shaped faces; even if we weren’t all roughly the same size and build, the hair would give us away. Anne may have her burgundy streak, Joy her neon scrunchie, Margo a Swarovski comb at her crown, and me a tortoiseshell clasp on the right. To a one our faces are haloed by frizz.
Anne has brought in Italian from the restaurant of a friend in Westerly. Antipasto, rigatoni bolognese, charred cauliflower, pappardelle, with a separate side of penne and white sauce for Joy—it’s a divine spread for a precarious gathering. Although we work together putting the food on platters, there are so many elephants in the kitchen with us that it’s an overcrowded place. When we’re together in New York, we focus on noncommittal subjects like books, movies, and UGGs. Here, Anne prattles on with local trivia—a film club forming in Bay Bluff, a tapas place opening in Weekapaug, an independent bookstore thriving in Mystic. It would be sweet and upbeat, if there wasn’t an undercurrent of desperation to it. There is no mention of accusations against Dad, no mention of Mom’s relationship with Elizabeth. Alzheimer’s disease is off the table, and, given the risk of it spilling into dinner with Dad, I’m not raising the issue of my own parentage. A baby would have been something to discuss, if neither of the men were there.
There isn’t talk of Billy either. Anne dares Margo with a defiant look—just dares her to challenge his presence. But Margo is in the same state of uncertainty as when she first arrived that morning.Why am I here?Even after the words she wrote, I hear her thoughts. Hell, they’re my own.Is this supposed to fill the hole in my life? Is this me?
I try to break the ice. That’s my job in this family, though whether tied to DNA or life experience, I do not know—and doesn’t that issue give me pause?
Dad is something else. With the table even fuller tonight than last, he sits at its head looking from face to face, unaware that his pleasant expression is both out of character and blank. He’s going through motions that, in this particular moment, he doesn’t fully understand. When Anne raises her wine glass to toast our reunion, he raises his. “My daughters,” he says, echoing her words, but if he feels nostalgia, it doesn’t show. When Anne rounds the table, blaming his casted wrist for a missed buttonhole on his shirt, he docilely lets her fix it. Other than using a spoon where a fork is called for, he has little trouble eating. He nods when someone else nods and murmurs ayeshere or there. But he doesn’t take part in the conversation, and his enjoyment seems superficial. As the meal goes on, his salty brows lower, his thin mouth thins more.
I have Alzheimer’s disease,he told Margo this morning, and everything about him now suggests he is thinking of that. Deep down, in whatever pockets of clarity he finds, he is not happy.
Nor, despite her chatter, is Anne. She doesn’t do more than touch her lips to the wine. When Bill asks her about it, she draws in a breath and rolls her eyes to blame this big family situation for her lack of appetite.
Joy saves the meal. Seeming armed with an endless supply of questions, she asks Bill about prison food, asks Margo whether her cousins are going to summer camp in July and, if not, whether they can come here. Before I can remind her that she won’t be here in July, she asks Anne about a funny-looking purple plant in the front shrub bed. She asks Dad whether he likes sushi and, undaunted when he eyes her blankly, tells him of the time we made it. She asks Bill whether he wants another tattoo, then quickly changes the subject before anyone can mention her birthmark.
What I hear is curiosity and nervousness. She doesn’t know the things I’ve discussed with my sisters, but she does know something’s up.
Then, innocently enough, Margo sets her fork on her plate and asks Anne about the shop. “You were doing a great business this morning. Is it like that every day?”
Anne lights up. “Summers, yes. I’m closed Mondays and Tuesdays November through April, but the locals all know that, and they’re mostly who’s around. I feel bad doing it, because they’resoloyal, but it’s nice to be able to sleep in during the off-season.”
“So, times like now you’re there every day?” Margo asks.
I hear surprise. Anne hears criticism.
She cools. “Who else would be there?”
I’m guessing she’ll need to rethink that in seven months, when Margo suggests, “A partner? A manager?”
“There’s no partner, just me, and I’m the manager. It isn’t a big place, Margo.”
“Assistant manager, then, to fill in when you can’t be there? How many others?”
“There are four of us full-time—including two in the kitchen—and another two part-time. And a bookkeeper off-site.”
“Who does the ordering—food and supplies?”
“Me.”
“Marketing? Social media?”
“Me.”
“Really,” Margo says.
I hear awe. Anne hears doubt.
Wanting to soften the look on her face, I say, “She admires you, Annie. So do I. You’re the businesswoman of us three. Who’d have known it when we were kids?”
“You mean, because I wasn’t as good a student as either of you?”
