He answered on the first ring. “Daphne!” he cried.
“Eddie!” I said.
“I don’t want to say that I’ve been walking around with my phone in my hand, but I’ve been walking around with my phone in my hand.”
“Is your heart on your sleeve?”
“Can you see it?”
“It’s radiant.”
“All the way in Westchester. I wouldn’t have thought. Oh, Daphne, it’s so good to hear your voice.”
“I feel the same way.” Eddie had aged, as all of us had aged, but his voice was still his voice. I would have been happy listening to him read me a takeout menu from a Greek restaurant:spanakopita, tzatziki, baklava.
“I’ve been carrying around my memory of you for a long time now and still you are remarkably fresh. How long has it been again?”
I told him, forty-four years.
He whistled. “Forty-four years. Isn’t that something? Now here you are all grown up and married. Did you have a nice wedding? I meant to ask you that yesterday. Did Buddy Zabriskie walk you down the aisle?”
“It was a nice wedding, very small, but Buddy died before I got married. That’s how I met Jonathan. I met him in the hospital when Buddy was sick.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Eddie said, and I could hear it in his voice. He truly was sorry. “I wasn’t allowed to say it at the time, but I was enormously fond of your father.”
“You knew him?”
“I’m sure I didn’tknowhim, but I’d do the handoffs when he came to get you and Leda. Or I’d drive to Gloucester to pick you up. Do you remember?”
And then I did remember in a fuzzy way, the joy of Eddie coming to my father’s apartment to reclaim us, the careful suppression of that joy until we were back on the highway. “I was so afraid of hurting Buddy’s feelings,” I said. “We never wanted him to know how happy we were to be leaving.” Or how happy we were to see Eddie.
“He was such a decent man who had no business getting married, certainly no business having children. I remember as soon as we’d gotten you all strapped into the backseat he’d close the door and look at me, and his eyes would be huge and he’d give his head a little shake, like he was saying, What the hell happened?All he wanted was to be out on his boat, have a couple of beers with the guys at the end of the day. Your mother was always screaming at him to keep hats on both of you.”
“Is that why Buddy was always buying us hats?”
“He was completely flummoxed by girls. He might have done better with boys, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Did he feed you Cheetos the whole time you were there?”
“Pretty much.”
“You were always dusted with orange when you came back. Did you ever read that Mishima novel,The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea?”
I smiled. I had.
“That was your father. His nature was to be on the ocean. Your mother thought she could change him, but no one changes another person’s nature.”
“Why did she even want to try?” That was the part I’d never understood.
“Well, Buddy Zabriskie was a notably attractive man. Virile, you know? Women were on him like a flock of seagulls.” Eddie sighed. “Your poor mother. She wasn’t much for picking husbands.”
“She married a third time. That one stuck.”
“Third time’s the charm. What’s this one like?”
“Positively positive.”
“How do you mean that?”
“She married Lucas Ekker. Do you remember those books?”
