“What? No,” his mother said. “She took over afterward. After she took the name. Vanberg, Vanberg. It was always a Vanberg house. Everybody knows that. But Stella was no Vanberg.”
Candice couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Was she a McGee?”
“I don’t know a thing about it. Like I said, we were told to drop it,” Frank’s mother said. “That was made very clear to all of us!” She laughed.
Candice’s thoughts raced. It was impossible to know how these pieces fit together or to know if his mother had told herself a story that didn’t exist. But one thing was clear: his mother knew these songs. They took her deep into the past. They made her smile, too, so much so that they decided to leave the album with her that evening so that she could listen to it again andagain. “I love this one, Frank!” His mother cried as they said goodbye.
Frank stopped a nurse on the way out to make sure someone could flip the record over again and again for as long as she wanted. “I’m worried she’ll forget how,” he explained.
The nurse said she’d take care of it. “But I imagine with a gadget that old, like a record player, she’ll remember. She’ll always remember. It’s strange the way those older things come back to them.”
Frank gave the nurse a quizzical look, then thanked her and led Candice into the late afternoon. For a while, they stood in the sunlight, gazing out at the water. Candice felt as though they’d just witnessed something incredible. It was as though they’d watched his mother go back through time.
“I think I need a drink,” Frank said.
“Me too,” Candice agreed.
They drove to downtown Oak Bluffs, where they grabbed seats in the sunshine at a craft beer brewery. Candice ordered a cider, while Frank opted for an IPA. They could hardly speak till they’d had their first sips. Candice was incredibly aware of Frank’s body, of the way he smelled, of the way his muscles surged out of his shirt. Abstractly, she wondered if her marriage was over. She wondered who would say it was over first.
“I don’t know what to make of this,” he said. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling.”
Candice sipped her cider. “I’m feeling like my mother’s a mystery to me.”
“It’s strange how little our parents tell us about their past,” Frank said. “But this seems extreme.”
“Your mother said mine crawled out of a honky-tonk,” Candice remembered, then laughed. “Imagine my mother—Stella Vanberg—anywhere near a honky-tonk!”
“I can’t imagine it,” Frank admitted. “Your mother was always so grand and sophisticated.”
“But she sometimes had this accent,” Candice remembered, thinking of what Henry had said. “She always dismissed it, but she had her reasons for it. But Lindsey, Henry, and I remember it.”
“She couldn’t drop the accent entirely,” Frank said. “She couldn’t abandon her past completely.”
Candice sighed. “I hope we didn’t put your mother through something awful just now.”
“Are you kidding? I think she had the time of her life,” he said. “I should have been listening to music with her the entire time. It gets her going.”
“It really does.”
Candice and Frank sat in silence for a moment, regarding one another. Candice had a flashing image of what had to have been their first date—decades ago—when they’d drunk milkshakes and giggled. They’d been so nervous. What had they been nervous about? They’d had nothing to lose.
“I hope you can find out about your mother’s past,” Frank said.
“I hope your mother can keep more of her past,” Candice offered.
“It’s terrifying,” Frank said. “The idea of losing your memories.”
Candice nodded. “Truly, it is.”
“But I can’t stop thinking about how your mother wanted to get rid of her memories. She wanted to get rid of her past. She built an entirely different narrative,” Frank said.
“It was more possible back then, I guess,” Candice said.
“No internet histories. No data centers,” Frank agreed.
They laughed.
“Who would you rebrand as right now?” Candice asked.
