In the next moment, a great sadness washes over me, as I think of Max and me sitting at the kitchen table on weekend mornings, eating pancakes and reading the paper. Bits of conversation would bubble up now and then, but there was no need for talk. We felt that comfort of being together, of knowing that nothing more needed to be said. I can hear the rustling of the newspaper and Max clearing his throat. I miss those times, and they come flooding back to me as I sit here with Miles.
"Are you all right?" he asks. He sets down his coffee cup.
"Oh yes," I say, standing up. "More pancakes?"
Miles pats his stomach. "Since I'm the doctor, I'd better listen to my own advice."
"You're as slim as the day I met you," I tell him.
Max had introduced me to Miles after they'd started playing tennis together. He brought Miles home to the small one-bedroom house we rented when we first arrived in Daring. I remember how the vase Max's mother had given us as a wedding present had intrigued Miles so that he reached out to examine it and it tipped toward the edge of the mantel. I already imagined it shattering on the hearth, all our good fortune gone, when with lightning reflexes he reached out and caught it. He was quick and agile — the signs of a good tennis player.
Miles laughs. "I have to work at it," he says, "not like you. You're naturally fit."
I turn toward the stove, blushing to think that he has actually paid attention to my body. But then he's a doctor, and doctors notice such things. "More coffee?" I reach for the pot.
He drinks down the last bit in his mug. "No, I'd better get going. I've got patients to see at the clinic." He stands up and puts on his jacket.
"So when do you rest?" I ask.
"I don't," he says. He looks over at me and smiles. "You know, there's the Annual Daring Health Clinic fund-raising dinner next Saturday night, maybe you'd be interested in going with me?"
I pour myself another cup of coffee, my heart suddenly beating faster. Get a grip, I say to myself. You've known Miles Truman forever. He's like your brother. There's nothing wrong with going to a fundraiser with your brother. Miles was the first friend here the evening Max died. I called an ambulance and then Miles, who arrived only slightly behind the shrieking siren. But I didn't need a doctor to tell me that Max was gone. Long after Hana was asleep, after Lily and other friends had left, Miles stayed on. I knew that I needed him to stay. I wanted someone there who knew Max well — so that somehow, between our shared history of him — Max would still be there with me for a while longer.
Now I look up at Miles, with his graying hair and calm patience, and feel such gratitude for all he's done for us over the years.
"Of course." He smiles. "I'll come by and see how she's doing in a couple of days."
I lean forward against a chair. A burst of music comes from the television. "Thank you. Miles," I say, trying to keep everything light, even as Hana's words come back to me. Dad will understand.
"Tell her to stay off her feet if she can. No dancing for another week."
I laugh. "I'll tell her."
After Miles leaves, the kitchen feels strangely empty. Sunlight streams through the window, setting everything aglow. I walk around the table picking up dishes and cups, taking them to the sink, and rinsing them to put in the dishwasher. Everyday chores that I do without thinking, only this morning I hold on to the mug Miles drank from for just a little bit longer.
HANA
Bishop's Orchard
When we first step out the door, I lose my balance, but Laura's arms go around me before I can have another accident — one that could have severe consequences, my bones snapping like brittle twigs. From that moment on, she doesn't let go. I lean into her embrace like an elderly grandmother, and we walk slowly to the car.
"What will people think?" I laugh.
"That the girls are back together again," she says. She helps me into the passenger seat, the polished, new car smell making me dizzy.
The last time I was in a car driven by Laura, it was a very different story. I was still living and studying in Berkeley, and Laura was driving us to the library when I offhandedly glanced out the window and saw my reflection in the glass, highlighted by the revealing sunlight. And in that moment, I detected the first signs of Werner on my face. It wasn't just the glint of gray in my hair but how the skin on my face had taken on an almost transparent pallor. My eyesight was also giving me trouble, but in the bright light I could see the fine lines that had formed around the thickened edges of my eyes, along with the darkening pockets below. Werner had been a shadow hovering over me for so long. They were all the overt signs that Dr. Truman had told me about, yet even so, I felt physically ill when I actually realized I was growing old. Like in some silly sci-fi movie, I felt as if I was changing right before my eyes.
"Please take me home," I mumbled to Laura, feeling nauseated.
"What's wrong?" she asked, glancing wide-eyed in my direction. "I want to go home," I said louder, growing more anxious with each breath.
Poor Laura didn't know what was happening. She wanted to take me to the hospital, thinking I was in great pain. Which I suppose I was. I buried my face in my hands and just began to cry.
"Hana, are you okay?" she asked over and over, reaching across and stroking my arm.
"I just want to go home," I insisted.
Laura turned the car around and drove me back to the apartment, never realizing that what I wanted was to return home to Daring.
"Let's go to Bishop's Orchard," Laura says now when she gets into the car beside me. "Remember?" she asks.
I nod.
How could I forget? When Laura and I were sixteen, we dreamed of moving away from Daring to a big city where no one would know us. We'd live in skyscrapers and shop at quaint boutiques. Having lived all our lives in a small town, we wanted adventure and anonymity. Our favorite place was Bishop's Orchard, where we sat hidden among the pear trees under a tree we named Big Betsy. There, we told each other our deepest, darkest secrets, studied fashion magazines, and discussed whom we wanted to marry and what we'd wear at our weddings. I forgot about being sick during those afternoons, when it seemed too far away to be really true.
What we liked about the orchard was the way Mr. Bishop, an amateur orchardist, had gone crazy grafting different species of pear trees together. "You've got to admit, he really had some imagination," Laura said. Planted on a southern slope to protect the early bloom from frost, the trees in Mr. Bishop's orchard were as different as faces in a crowd. Some tall European varieties loomed two stories high, while others, grafted onto dwarf understock, seemed small and friendly. What they had in common was that each tree had been grafted with cuttings from several varieties. When their branches leafed out, they merged as one. Like me, they were of mixed origins. This mixture always turned the orchard into a crazy quilt of blossoms in the spring and a symphony of flavors during harvest time, which stretched from July through October. First came juicy Flordahomes and Moonglow pears, followed by the small, spicy Seckels. My favorites were the later Max-Reds (for their flavor and color, as much as their name), then the Anjous and Cornice. But best of all were the big round Asian pears, which didn't need to ripen in cold storage like the others but could be eaten out of hand, crisp and golden, in the waning days of August, while Laura and I lay on our backs in sundrenched silence.
Under the tree we called Big Betsy, we looked up one day to see the wide expanse of blue overhead, dotted with clouds that seemed to carry us along. Laura had closed her eyes, and I knew she was dreaming of all the places she would someday go. Places I might never get to see. I felt a bitterness rise inside me, but I quickly swallowed it back down. Sometimes, I thought, you saw too much in the daylight. It was beautiful, but I preferred the night sky. Heaven's blackboard, my grandfather Henry used to say, lit by the moon and the stars.
Laura turns down Pine Street, then makes a right on Spruce, slowing down here and there to point something out. We pass by our old elementary school, the library, the c
orner drugstore. All our old haunts. "What happened to that huge oak tree?" She slows down and points to the park across the street.
"They had to take it down several years ago. Some kind of disease had gotten to it," I explain.
She makes a clicking sound with her tongue and steps on the gas. "I don't remember so many houses," she says to herself.
I wonder if Laura is looking for the Daring of her youth, somehow frozen in time. She seems disappointed that it isn't the same small town she couldn't wait to leave.
"So, are you going to tell me about John?" I ask. My right hand begins to tremble, and I press it against my thigh.
Laura turns to me for a moment, then looks back at the road. "I don't really know what happened to us. In the beginning of our marriage, we couldn't stand to be away from each other. But in the past few years, there were days we barely exchanged more than ten words."
"When did he leave?" I can't believe anyone would want to leave Laura. "All our phone conversations and you never said a word. Are you all right? Are the girls?"
"Almost nine months ago," she answers. "The girls aren't happy about it, and while John can be a jerk, he's a decent father." She wets her lips with her tongue. "Sometimes I think my life's falling apart. Josephine seems to hate me since John left, and Camille keeps waiting for her daddy to come home."
I let Laura's words sink in. Her eyes brim with tears, and I reach over to touch her arm. "I'm sorry," I say softly. "It'll get better."
She glances over. "It's not how I thought my life would turn out. Remember when I wanted to rule the world? Instead, I can't even manage my own little one."
I take a closer look at Laura. She looks wonderful in a pair of jeans and a pale blue sweater, but for the first time, I can see that she has aged too, in the tiny lines spreading from the corners of her eyes when she squints against the sunlight.
"I think you've managed just fine. You have two lovely daughters and a job you're great at."
"And a failed marriage,"Laura adds.
I lean toward her. "Just because a marriage ends, it doesn't mean you've failed."
"You think so?"
"I know so."
We drive in silence for a few minutes, and I suddenly feel as if all of life has passed me by. While the lives of most people took twists and turns, mine simply followed a two-lane road that led right back to Daring.
"So what will you do now?" I ask.
"I'm here with you," Laura says, watching the road. "Daring is where I want to be right now. And when we return to New York, life will go on."
Yes, it does go on, I want to tell her. Seeing Laura again reminds me that there was one little twist in my life, that long ago glimmer of hope that I'd found my prince. It was after I left Daring with Laura to go off to college at Berkeley. His name was Mark, and I remember how the hard, quick sound of his name clicked off my tongue a few times before I actually had a chance to say it to his face. He was the best friend of Laura's then boyfriend Charlie, during our junior year. The first time Mark came to our Berkeley apartment I was running out the door to an evening class. He held the door open for me as I walked out right under his arm. I remember looking up and seeing his long hair and the dark stubble of beard along his chin. When Laura introduced us, she said he was majoring in English and was devoted to Coleridge.
When Mark started coming around the apartment more, I found myself going to the library less and studying in my room, lured out of it by the low hum of voices and the Jefferson Starship blaring from the living room. I began to notice small things about him — his quickness and humor in conversation, the closeness and understanding between us, how he reminded me of a nineteenth-century poet with his beard and long hair. He must have felt the same way as we talked and laughed late into the night, comparing the writings of Coleridge and Blake. I began to miss him when he wasn't around and wanting to be with him when he was. They were feelings I'd never felt before, and they frightened me as much as they brought me happiness. Was this love? Was this the same longing my parents felt that had carried them across so many barriers? For the first time, I dared to allow myself the possibility of a normal life.
On our first real date, Mark took me out for pizza and beer. Afterward we walked the three blocks back to my apartment. It was the end of fall term, nearing the holidays, and the night was dark and cold. There was a damp, wet smell of concrete in the air. I breathed it in and felt slightly light-headed from the beer as the sharp wind stung my cheeks. We were in the middle of a conversation when Mark suddenly stopped walking and leaned over to kiss me. His hands rested on my shoulders as if I were a small child he was kissing good night. What I remember is his face suddenly in front of mine, his warm breath soothing my cheeks as his lips parted and pressed against mine. Afterward, we kept walking and he took my hand in his, leading me in the opposite direction^ back to his apartment.
His room was small and cramped with books and clothes strewn everywhere. It smelled closed and musty. There was a desk and chair to one side and a mattress on the floor. I made him turn off the lights, nervous and afraid that he would see my body — my flat breasts and too thin legs — and not want to be with me. I wanted him to love me. And he did. I felt his arms around me, heard him whisper "Hana," before kissing me, touching me, and then laying his body so gently on top of mine.
Can a fairy tale have an unhappy ending? I wonder. Then I remember the little girl with the red shoes who couldn't stop dancing until her feet were cut off, and the little match girl who struck every match she had and still died in the cold. My fairy tale isn't quite so dramatic. After our night together, I told Mark about Werner. At first, he acted as if it didn't matter. But then he stopped coming by the apartment. He didn't call to ask me out and dropped the one class we had together. Kissing Mark hadn't turned him into my prince after all. He had thought better of it and headed for the hills. Laura never forgave him, while I grieved in silence, a knot lodged at the base of my heart, making it hard to breathe. Even after so many years, I try not to recall that time and place, but as if it's an old wound that leaves phantom pains, I sometimes still feel that whisper of love.
Then a couple of years ago my mother and I drove down to San Francisco for some tests. We had just walked out of the hospital into a beautiful;, bright day, and I had slipped on my sunglasses and hat. "My robber's disguise," I told Cate. "Any banks close by?" She was laughing there beside me, saying something about our getting lunch, when, on that busy street, I looked up to see a slightly older, short-haired, clean-shaven Mark walking toward us with a well-dressed woman. He held her arm just above the elbow in that intimate way, firm and possessive, as they walked right past us. He glanced quickly at me and then away again. In that instant I saw the same dark, intense eyes of our youth, while all he saw was a small old woman, now a complete stranger.
I always wanted to tell Laura, but I simply couldn't.
Laura turns down Poplar Street and slows down. It takes us a moment to realize that there's no more Bishop's Orchard. Both of us turn to check the street sign again, then look back at where the once beautiful orchard was. In its place are rows and rows of identical houses, all single- and double-story Craftsman-style, where our grafted pear trees once were.
"Damn!" Laura says. "Nothing stays the same, not even here in Daring."
First Trigger, now Big Betsy, I think to myself. All the foundations of my childhood gone. I swallow, and a slight tremor that's nothing but sadness moves through me.
JOSEPHINE
Photographs
While Camille watches television, I take another look at all the photos on top of the piano. In the daylight they seem different, brighter and more alive. I can see traces of Hana in the cute and healthy kid in the snapshots, especially in her dark eyes. I stare at the pictures for so long, I feel as if I almost know each and every one of the faces smiling back at me.
"What are you doing?" Camille suddenly asks.
"Looking at photos of Cate and Hana and their family,"
I answer, glancing at her sitting on the sofa. "Here's another one of Mom, too."
Camille comes over to my side and follows my gaze. "Hana's so young," she says softly.
"Yeah," I answer, as if I'd known her back then, still lively and full of mischief. I turn back to the photos and study the faces.
I stare at a snapshot of Hana and Mom on their bikes, so happy and carefree together. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Hana, finding out that her life would never be like everyone else's. Mom said Hana was about the age I am now when she first found out about the disease. What about her dreams? Did she ever have a boyfriend? What would it be like to have the whole world pass you by in so short a time?
Camille steps back and says casually, "I mean, how creepy to be so old when you're really young."
"No kidding," I say, irritated, really wanting to say, Can you think of a more stupid statement? But I hold it in. I know enough not to embarrass Mom with one of our fights when Cate and Dr. Truman are in the kitchen. "Just imagine if it happened to you," I say instead.
But when I turn around, Camille is already back on the sofa watching a cartoon, the high-pitched voices and quick-paced music echoing through the room.
CATE
Salvation
I don't know what I expect, but ever since Miles left over an hour ago, I've been scouring the kitchen, anxiously waiting for Hana to return. It's the first time in years that she and I have been apart for more than a few minutes, and it feels as if part of me is missing. I can't help but think that this is how it'll be when Hana is really gone. I'll always be waiting. I'll have a garden blooming with flowers, the cleanest kitchen in Daring, but no Hana.
It was Lily who first broached the subject of letting go, as she put it, when we were right here in the kitchen last week. It sounded like a topic for an afternoon talk show.
"It's the one who's left behind that has it the hardest," she said to me; she's never been one to mince words. She pressed the cake crumbs on the table with her fingertips and deposited them back onto the plate.