I brought my elbows down to the table, sure to reveal my cleavage this time. (I’ve seen you employ this trick yourself from time to time, my dear!) I wanted to keep it light, and sexy, but I still wanted to know more about him. I had never before felt a boundary so palpable in another man. Silas was so excruciatingly hard to please. He just looked back into my eyes, not even for a moment looking down at my chest. It was impressive.
He confirmed that he wasn’t going to go any further than nice. He told me the woods and the lake and the solitude were nice.
That word, solitude, was my chance to probe. I asked him if he had a young woman to keep him company.
His eyes dimmed and his shoulders slunk a bit, although I could tell he would have been very upset to know that I noticed. There was a sense that trying to get at Silas’s story would be a violation of everything he stood for. He was a man so deeply in possession of his truth. He held it close and it was for no one else to see.
There was a moment of thick silence.
And then I just leaned over the table, spilling the remainder of Silas’s beer, and pressed my lips as fast and as decidedly as I could into his lips. And, before I realized I had said anything at all, I had invited Silas to my hotel room.
This is how your story begins.
I’m sorry if it made a mess of things,
Mom.
12
As Jane read Susie’s words, her insides twirled. Susie’s story was different from her own, but the feelings behind them were so similar. The outcome was so similar. Perhaps Susie was right that all mothers’ stories were the same in one way or another. Jane felt an urge to place her own words, her own stories, right next to Susie’s. She didn’t think too much about why; she just followed the feeling to write. She had no idea if Hazel would ever see these words, these thoughts, but she knew she wanted to write them down for her. And with that, Jane took her journal and pen and wrote:
Letter 1
Meeting your father
Jane
Dear Hazel,
The first thing I noticed about your father was his green, alchemic eyes. It reminded me of the very first bead I ever wanted to use to make a necklace out of. I noticed him at the market up in Grandor where I lived for a summer. It was closing and everyone had already started to take down their tents. There was always a sense of slowing down at this time of the day at the markets. Each artisan tucked their products away into bags and cases and boxes, occasionally slowing to a stop to inspect their own tapestry or necklace or candle or woven scarf. A trace of a smile would usually emerge before the thing was packed away until the next sunrise. Another chance to place their handmade things into the hands of a passerby.
Someone would tell me that whatever they were dangling in front of their eyes would look fabulous on me.
There would be trying the thing on, a mirror held up, and then usually a “thank you, but no thank you, I’ll be back again later.”
For me, the goal of coming up to Grandor was to escape with my things rather than to connect other people to them. I was determined to waste what was meant to be my premed education money on the experience of living on the great and moody lake of Grandor, Maine. There were many things a straight and well-paved path could lead you to. It could lead you to the love of your life seated next to you on the first day of medical school. (That was your great-grandparents, Hazel.) It could lead you to a nice home in Placer with a daughter you loved. (That was your grandparents.) It could lead that daughter to set out to pursue a medical degree of her own. (This was me.) And for the first five semesters this was true for me, if you can believe it. But that straight and well-paved path couldn’t prevent a patch of black ice one early spring day from sending a car into a tailspin. It couldn’t prevent the front of the car from meeting a thick and strong tree. And it didn’t prevent me from becoming an orphan when I was twenty-one.
(I so wish you’d gotten to meet your grandparents. You would have loved them. They would have loved you.)
The medical degree didn’t seem as important to me anymore now that I was on my own. What called to me was a great and moody lake that I stumbled on, in a small and quiet town in northwestern Maine, where nobody’s eyes looked downward when they saw me walk by. I was so sick of people saying, “How are you feeling, Jane?” with an empathetic tilt of their head and pout of the lips.
The hefty sum of my parents’ savings accounts appeared in my bank account within days of the funeral. It was more than enough to have all the things one needed in a lifetime, I thought. But I was numb to what “having a life” could mean without my parents, your grandparents. Their money manager called me to confirm the transfer as I was walking down the street in my hometown of Placer. I happened to be next to a bead shop at the time, and I walked in, determined to spend as much money as one could at a bead shop. The transactions of a normal life seemed meaningless now.
I was surprised to find that there was something cathartic about rolling the tiny beads around between my fingers. The way the colors swirled into one another in such a small little orb. The way the light hit the glass. The differences in texture, or patina, or shine, or color. It was subtle, and I found the things that drew me to a given bead were arbitrary. I rested my favorites one by one in my left palm and imagined myself arranging them into delicate glimmering strings for necklaces. I imagined my hands occupied and productive while the rest of my body and mind and heart was a grieving mess. It seemed very appealing in that moment.
So I bought a large pile of beads and clasps and strings and wires and tweezers and pliers, found a place on a map with a stall where I could sell my yet-to-be-made jewelry. And then I packed up everything in my college apartment, sent in my notice of leave to the registrar at school, and went to that place on the map.
And soon after, I found myself on an uncomfortable wooden chair, behind a collapsible table full of jewelry that no one bought. I didn’t mind, though.
While people walked past my tent, usually without a second look, I spent most of the day in the tent reading and decoding poetry. I had always been drawn to poetry in theory, but my life in pursuit of an MD wouldn’t have allowed for such indulgences. But now, on my new path, in my new life resembling none of the old one, poetry could abound. I indulged in it as the cool spring turned into the summer heat next to my beads.
On a particularly hot Tuesday midmorning, I looked up from a collection of Emily Dickinson’s greatest poems, peered over the spine and found myself intrigued by the green, alchemic eyes of the furniture designer across the way.
I shared that I liked his stuff and then pulled my fingertips along the edge of the wood. I had honestly just intended to start a conversation, but the wood felt smooth and strong. Like it was in the shape it was always meant to be in.
Your father descended from the black pickup truck into which he was loading handcrafted chairs and tables and desks and bureaus.