“Can we talk?” he said.
They sat on the couch by the woodstove. He must have bought a bottle of wine on his way home. He poured her a glass, then one for himself. Always, in the past, on those occasions when they’d bought wine, she’d set the cork aside, for cork people. This time, she just studied it, unable to imagine where any of them would be when the snow melted.
“You know, this doesn’t have to be a tragedy,” he said to her. “We have so much to be grateful for. Three wonderful children.”
She took a sip of her wine and looked into his eyes, trying to understand what he was saying.
“If I had it all to do over, I’d marry you again,” he said. “You’ve been a wonderful mother to our children.”
That was it? Her face must have betrayed how she took in what he said, because now he amended it.
“And so much more.”
Eleanor still just sat there, unable to speak.
“The important part is that we stay friends,” he said. “I know we can do that. I have nothing but respect for you, El.”
This would have been the moment she’d say the same thing back to him, only she couldn’t.
“Let’s promise each other we’ll never speak unlovingly of each other to the children,” he said. “If we can do that, I think they’re all going to be fine.”
She brought the wineglass to her lips and sipped deeply. She studied his face. Even now it still struck her by surprise sometimes what a handsome man he was, but for the first time she took in the fact that maybe he was no longer quite as handsome as he had been. His skin looked pale. He needed a haircut.
“Sure,” she said. “That makes sense.”
The next week, Eleanor announced a family meeting. She fixed the most comforting meal she knew, mac and cheese, and told the children they didn’t have to finish their broccoli to get dessert. She made brownies, their favorite.
Watching the three of them around the table as they ate their meal (and first, as they sang grace, always the same song, “Simple Gifts”), she studied their faces, memorizing the sight of them. Hard events had taken place before this, and—less than a year earlier—a truly terrible one. But always before, their family had weathered them together. This was the last night their world would be intact.
They had recently lived through a national disaster, of course: they had witnessed the spacecraft bearing their hero as it broke into a million pieces in front of their eyes. They had survived their brother’s accident and the long, sad chill that set in after, registered the tension between their parents—even noted, perhaps, that their parents seldom touched each other anymore, or met each other’s eyes, even.
For all of this, they would still have said (or not even said it, because this was simply a fact of their lives, as real as the seasons—real as the earth under their feet or the fact that they would always live together at the end of this dead-end road) that they had two parents who loved each other. Maybe Ursula—the self-designated rescuer, their tireless cheerleader and mascot—worried about whether they were happy, and what to do if they weren’t. But eventheir parents’ increasingly apparent irritation with each other (their mother’s with their father, at least) was acceptable, so long as they were together.
Their family—the circle made by the five of them as they held hands, singing grace around the table or touching fingers around Old Ashworthy—was the thing they had always believed they could count on forever. When they sat down to dinner that night, this was as much a fact of their lives as the air they breathed. By the time they went to bed all that would have changed.
After the brownies, they cleared away the dishes together, folded the napkins, and carried the trash to the compost pile under the beam of Al’s high-powered flashlight. For the first time since theChallengerexplosion, Ursula was talking about future plans—tryouts for the talent show, her book report onBetsy and Tacy Go Downtown,a new girl who’d just joined their class.
“They used to live in San Diego but her dad decided to leave his old job but maybe what actually happened, according to her, is he got fired on account of he drinks too much, and they couldn’t bring her dog because they don’t allow dogs at her apartment building but she’s hoping they can get a hamster,” Ursula was saying. Listening to her younger daughter tell the story, Eleanor thought about film footage they’d all watched a hundred times now, of the astronauts, smiling and waving as they headed toward the space shuttle that morning. No clue what was coming.
She felt like a sniper. About to pick off an unsuspecting pedestrian, out walking her dog.
“I was telling Juniper”—this was the new girl; she had hippie parents, evidently, perhaps fellow devotees ofSpiritual Midwifery—“about the fort Al and me are going to build,” she said. “I was thinking we could invite her over and maybe have a sleepover.” There was also a fundraiser coming up at their school next Saturday with a three-legged race. The parents against the kids.
Ursula actually looked happy again. Like her old self, almost.
Eleanor shot a look in Cam’s direction. They could still change their minds. Maybe they didn’t have to go through with this after all. For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine an alternative tothe scenario she’d been dreading. What if, even as they stood here on the precipice, about to jump, they might choose instead to turn back, descend the mountain, and make camp by some quiet stream? Begin again. Do better this time.
Only they couldn’t. From the set of Cam’s jaw, the cool, even way he took his seat in the rocker by the fireplace, she knew he was resolved in his choice. This was Cam: a man who, once he made a decision, never looked back.
At this very moment, maybe, he might be thinking about Coco. (And how, later, after their family meeting was over, he’d go out to his shop and call her. “I might not be able to see you for a while,” he’d tell her. “Till things settle down.”) He would have explained to Coco that this was the night they were telling the kids, and he’d be needing to give them a lot of extra attention in the days ahead.
A picture came to Eleanor of Coco, off in her dorm room in Vermont—her long, beautiful legs folded under her, her beautiful long hair falling down her shoulders. A look of concern on her face. “How did the kids take it?” she’d ask.
“Of course it was rough,” Cam would say. “But you know my kids. They’ll be okay. They love their mother. But they love you, too.”
Eleanor imagined the next line. Cam’s voice, whispering low.Not as much as I do, of course.
“The children will be fine. All they want is for us to be happy.”
