“I think so,” said Clare, and after a pause, “I don’t think she was in love with him. I mean, maybe she was, but I don’t think so.”
I took a breath. “People have different ideas about that, and you’ll have to make up your own mind. You want to know what I think?”
“Yes.”
“I think it’s OK not to be in love. If you like the person and trust him and if you’ve decided all on your own that having sex with him is what you want to do, I think it’s fine.” For the record, I’d thought this for a very long time and did not speak out of my present condition of eternally unrequited love and possible future of never loving another man as long as I lived, although I’ll say this: Loveless life or not, no way was I becoming a celibate. Come on.
“Have you ever been in love?” asked Clare, suddenly blindsiding me. I hoped she didn’t notice my discomfort, but since I sat there frozen and blinking, with a hot flush creeping over my neck and face, she would have had to have been blind as a bat not to notice.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, so casually I practically yawned the words. Then I shrugged one shoulder, completing my transformation into a caricature of a casual person.
“With who?”
“Oh, just—someone.” Oh, just someone? Was it possible to be more lame? It was not. I sighed. “Someone who doesn’t love me back.”
“I bet you’re wrong,” said Clare instantly. “I bet he does.”
“Thank you for that, Clare, but nope, nope, nope. For one thing, he’s married to someone else.” I scanned her face for an “aha!” look, but lots of people—maybe every lovable man on the planet, although I sincerely hoped not—were married to other people. She gazed back at me, innocent as a newly hatched bird. “And his feelings toward me are purely fraternal.” I threw that in for veracity’s sake, and I saw Clare’s confused look, but no way was I explaining. I rushed on. “And, as if that weren’t enough, I’m not his type.”
“How could you not be someone’s type?” asked Clare, with an honest disbelief I found adorable.
“No ambition.” But this wasn’t quite what I meant. “No divine purpose driving my life. I’m not passionate enough, maybe.”
Clare laughed. Then she got serious. “Sorry. But that’s funny, you not being passionate enough. You’re passionate about everything! The Philadelphia Story and Teo’s mom’s pancakes and Mrs. Goldberg and all the stuff in this attic and pajamas and Walt Whitman.” She laughed again.
I laughed too, even though I was so touched I could’ve cried.
“And me. Even me. You’re passionate about me, too, right?” Oh, Clare. Even you?
“From the bottom of my heart, yes,” I told her.
“What are you going to do with all this stuff?” asked Clare, gazing around.
“I’ve thought about that. I want Ruth and Bern, Mrs. Goldberg’s kids, to have whatever they want. Everything, if that’s what they want.”
“I knew you’d say that,” said Clare with satisfaction.
“But first, I’m going to go through and catalogue every object, even every photograph. Catalogue it and write down the story that goes with it, the one Mrs. Goldberg told me, because everything in here matters and has a story.”
“So, when they’re deciding what they want, they’ll know how much each thing matters. It wouldn’t be fair to just show them the object, right?”
“Right,” I said, amazed at Clare’s understanding. “And whatever they end up taking, the stories will go with them.”
“Good idea,” said Clare. She sat, thinking.
“Your apartment is just like this, isn’t it, Cornelia? It really belongs to you. I thought that right away, as soon as I got there. How you chose everything, and all of it’s important. You’re exactly like Mrs. Goldberg.” It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.
From the big attic window, I could see the shiny leaves of the magnolia next to the house, bare now of the white rice bowls of blossom that would deck it in summer and, beyond that, I could see the magnificent, ancient white oak that dropped its fat acorns and mantle of shade in Mrs. Goldberg’s yard. And beyond that, the other houses on the street with their chimneys and hedges and flowerbeds, dusk skirting their rooftops. Each house a receptacle of mystery and dailiness, each holding a family inside its walls. And in the distance, the rim of Blue Ridge, encircling us all.
“Cornelia?” said Clare.
“I was just thinking how Mrs. Goldberg gave all her stories to me,” I said, tears blurring my eyes. “And how, if you want, I’ll give all mine to you.”
26
Clare
“Are your hands aching?” Ellie asked Clare. Cornelia’s mother wanted Clare to call her Ellie, short for Eleanor.
Clare set down the sharp, scissor-shaped shears she’d been using, took off the gardening glove, and uncramped her fingers, spreading and closing them, finding satisfaction in the unfamiliar stiffness.
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s a good ache.”
They were pruning the butterfly bushes in the backyard. It had taken a while for Clare to get comfortable with the pruning, to understand that she wasn’t killing the plants. It seemed drastic—severe—cutting the stems back to just eight inches from the ground, and she winced at the forlorn sticks poking up out of their cold patch of dirt.
“I know it looks bad, but these shrubs only flower on new wood,” explained Ellie. “We’re doing the plants a favor. The butterflies, too. Wait until summer; you won’t be able to tell where the blooms end and the butterflies start. And the hummingbirds. They’ll be thanking us too.”
Clare smiled into the bush she was working on; Cornelia’s mother wanted her back in summer, didn’t just want her, but expected her. Clare imagined the two of them sitting on the redwood bench in the yard, sipping iced tea and watching the whirring hummingbirds like tiny machines, the butterflies afloat around the bushes. Still, even after her brain knew she wasn’t harming the shrubs, it took a while for her hands to believe. They’d hesitate, just seconds, before they cut each twig.
“You’re doing a beautiful job,” said Ellie. Clare smiled into the bush again.
“Have you ever read The Secret Garden?” ventured Clare.
“Oh, gosh, let me think. Sure I have, but it was ages ago. Did Ollie love that book or Cornelia?” Even when she was talking, Ellie didn’t stop working. Clare admired the absolute certainty of her movements. Like Teo cutting the vegetables. She wondered if she’d ever be that good at something.
“I bet Cornelia did,” said Clare. “There’s this kid in the book, Dickon, who can tell right away if a plant is dead or not. I guess they all look dead, but he can find the new wood. When he finds a live one, he calls it ‘wick.’ He’s sort of magic, I think.”
“Some people are like that; they just have a sense. But I’ll tell you what, Clare, I read a lot of books and magazine articles before I learned much of anything.” She smiled at Clare, a rectangular smile like Cornelia’s. “Killed a lot of plants, too.”
“At home, we have a gardener, Mr. Field, which is a good name for a gardener, I think. He comes once a week, but I don’t think I ever really paid attention to what he does.” Clare wished she had. “I guess I just thought you put them in the ground, and they grow.”
“That’s true for some plants,” said Ellie. She pointed to another type of bush. “That crepe myrtle pretty much takes care of itself. But if I don’t prune my hydrangea just right”—she pointed to another bush, a big one—“it doesn’t do a thing.”
“We have hydrangea too,” said Clare, excitedly. “They’re my favorite, the way the flowers grow in whole bouquets. And I like the color. So deep blue, it’s almost purple.”
“Blues are my favorite,” said Ellie. “Well, when you’re back home, you’ll have to get Mr. Field to let you help. My kids were never interested. Maybe it’s part of the reason Ollie and Cornelia live in cities, so they don’t have to take care of anything.”
Ellie didn’t sound disa
ppointed or accusatory, just matter-of-fact, so it was really more to herself than to Ellie that Clare said, “That doesn’t seem true about Cornelia.”
She flushed. She didn’t mean to contradict. “I’m sorry.” Cornelia’s mother smiled and waved her hand in a way that meant “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
“But even though Cornelia doesn’t have a garden, she’s always taking care of things, taking care of things carefully. Like everything in her apartment is old, and a lot of it is fragile—it looks fragile to me—and she’s so gentle with it. She doesn’t even use the dishwasher because she’s afraid the cups and stuff will crack or the gold trim will get worn off the plates. And she dusts the surfaces of her little paintings with a feather-duster. And you can just tell by the way she holds things that she loves them.” Clare knew she was talking her head off, but it felt nice to say good, true things about Cornelia out loud and to someone, instead of just writing them in her notebook.
For the first time since they’d started, Ellie stopped working. She rubbed her chin with the back of one gloved hand, thoughtfully, and looked at Clare. “You know what? You’re right. I’d never thought about it quite like that. Cornelia and I don’t usually love the same things, but what she loves, she takes care of.”
“People, too,” said Clare, effusively. “Like me. After my mother disappeared, my dad came and picked me up and brought me to her café. And I couldn’t help it, I just burst out crying in the middle of the floor. Cornelia came over and just hugged me in this strong hug for so long.”
“Your mother disappeared?” Ellie looked confused, but Clare didn’t notice.
“And she didn’t even know me,” Clare went on. “She’d never seen me before. And I found out later that she didn’t even know my dad had a daughter. But she started taking care of me, like it was just the normal thing to do. I bet not very many people would do that.”
“You’re probably right,” said Ellie quietly. “Cornelia’s always been a good girl. A good, generous girl. I’m glad you found your way to each other. Did you have a very bad time before that?”
Clare’s breath stopped in her throat. Cornelia had told Ellie that Clare’s mother was on a trip. Clare couldn’t believe she’d forgotten that.
But when she turned to Ellie, her nervousness disappeared. And she began to explain, explain everything. Why Cornelia had lied and what the truth was. Once she started, it was simple. Breathe in, breathe out, trim the stems, open and shut the shears, and talk. When she’d finished, she glanced over at Ellie. The look on her face seemed somewhere between mad and worried; Clare hadn’t expected such an expression.
“I’m sorry you had to experience all of that. Your mother leaving more every day and then really leaving you,” she said in a hard voice.
“But she didn’t mean to,” Clare said urgently. “She was sick.”
She watched the line of Ellie’s mouth soften.
“Of course she was,” she said kindly. “Of course she didn’t mean to. She loves you.” Clare felt the anxiety that had been rising in her chest subside.
“I knew someone who was sick like that,” said Ellie briskly. “Not exactly like that. She was sick for a very long time—years—and never did anything to make herself well. Nothing. Except drink, which didn’t work, naturally.”
Clare didn’t know what to say. Ellie took a glance at her, then dropped her shears and threw her gloves on the ground. She put a hand on each of Clare’s shoulders.
“Oh, honey, what am I doing? I’m so sorry. Ancient, ancient history.” She looked amazed. “I didn’t think there was any anger left in there. I could just kick myself for spilling it all out in front of you.”
“That’s OK,” said Clare, and it was. She smiled. “Cornelia calls me ‘honey’ too.”
“You know what I think?” said Ellie cheerfully. “I think your mother is doing every single thing she can to get back to you. If I were you, I’d just stop worrying and enjoy yourself until she gets here.”
Clare was enjoying herself, truly and without guilt, not so much because she felt as certain as Ellie that her mother was coming back, safe and sound. She had moments when she did feel certain, but more often, she put the whole question of whether and when her mother would come back aside. The truth was that she’d lived for a long time with fear like a demon hanging on to her doggedly and yelling in her ears, and living that way hadn’t helped anything; it hadn’t brought her mother home. She didn’t want to feel sick and tired of life, and the worry had made her feel like that.
The night before the pruning, Clare had lain in bed floating just this side of sleep, and in a peaceful, hazy way, she had explored the idea of what would happen if her mother didn’t come back. The answer came to her at once, drifted up like a blow-up raft in a blue swimming pool. I’ll live with Cornelia and Teo, she thought. And even though she’d wake up the next morning, remember and understand that that didn’t make any sense, it was the thought that had carried her, painlessly, past the demon, and into sleep.
Two days later, Clare sat at the computer table that stood at the far end of the attic bedroom, alone in the house, or as alone as anyone ever was in that house. In fact, Toby and Cam were in the yard playing a game the point of which was to keep a little sack filled with beans or sand or something from hitting the ground. From where she sat, Clare could see them out the window. But Dr. B (everyone called him Dr. B or just B, which amused Clare, as though Brown were too long to bother saying each time you spoke to him) was at his office, and Ellie was grocery shopping—“marketing,” she called it.
Cornelia was back at Mrs. Goldberg’s, where Clare had been too, until fifteen minutes ago. They’d been cataloguing, as they had been for the past couple of days, and Cornelia had been typing the objects’ stories into her laptop. Clare loved the attic, so full and with stories floating in its sunny air like mist, and she loved the peace of being there with Cornelia, talking or just listening to Cornelia’s quick fingers send out flurries of taps as she typed.
But today Clare had left early, saying she and Ellie were going together to Ellie’s usual salon for haircuts.
“Uh-oh,” said Cornelia. “Don’t let that Ellie talk you into anything drastic. No Mohawks or purple streaks, you hear?”
But Clare knew Ellie wouldn’t be home yet, that their appointments weren’t for another hour. She sat bolt upright at the computer, staring tensely at the screen. The room was dim at that time of day, and she hadn’t turned on any lights. In the semi-dark, the computer glowed with a light that seemed somehow dangerous to Clare, like radiation, even though she knew this was silly.
“Just do it,” she hissed to herself. “Do it!”
And she did it. When she was finished, she took a black pen and, with practiced care, forged her mother’s signature. Then she printed out an address on the envelope she’d taken from a box in the roll-top desk downstairs, placed a stamp on the envelope, folded the sheet she’d signed in thirds, and slid it in. As she held the envelope, ready to lick it shut, she stopped. She moved again to lick it shut, and stopped again. Then she made a huffing sound, got up, and stuck the envelope underneath the pillow of her made bed.
A few hours later she saw Cornelia walking across the lawn, her laptop swinging in its red case, and Clare ran to meet her, the envelope in her hand.
“Well, look at you!” said Cornelia with pleasure. “Turn around.”
Clare’s chestnut hair hung a couple inches above her shoulders. The back was cut a little higher than the front so that two pointed wings of hair swung forward.
“It’s marvelous! Perfect!” sang out Cornelia.
“Watch this,” said Clare happily, and she shook her head hard from side to side. When she stopped, the hair settled right back into its shining bob.
“I adore it,” said Cornelia. “So Vidal Sassoon.”
Clare almost asked what that meant, Vidal Sassoon, but she didn’t want to get sidetracked. She had business to take care of, and if she didn’
t take care of it now, she was afraid she never would.
She handed Cornelia the envelope.
“I almost mailed it without showing you,” she said somberly. “But then I couldn’t. Like when you called me in to talk to you and Teo that time. We should make decisions together.”
Cornelia raised her eyebrows, then took the letter out and read it.
“Oh, Clare,” she said.
“We only have two days left,” said Clare.
“And you’re not ready to go.” Cornelia sighed. She touched Clare’s hair, making it swing.
“People come back late from vacation all the time. Really. And all they’re doing is skiing or some dumb thing like that.”
“Don’t let Cam and Toby hear you say that,” said Cornelia with a tired smile. “Skiing is their religion. They think if you’re a good boy, when you die, you go to Courchevel.”
“What’s that?” asked Clare.
“Some dumb ski resort in Switzerland.”
“Are we talking about skiing now?” asked Clare hopefully.
“No, I guess we aren’t,” said Cornelia. “To tell you the truth, I don’t feel ready to leave, either. Which is what makes this so hard.” When she said “this,” she gave the letter a shake.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I have to put what I want aside and figure out what’s really right. For you.”
“I can’t,” said Clare, her voice trembling. “I can’t go back yet. I just can’t. I can’t even imagine it.”
“Clare, this letter only buys you a week,” said Cornelia. Her eyes were full of concern.
“I know,” said Clare quickly. “I know, and I promise we’ll go back then. I’ll be ready.”
Cornelia stared hard at the letter and then at the ground. Clare waited.
“If you need it that much, Clare, honey, all right. One more week.”
Clare hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. Wow, she thought, someday soon, I’ll be taller than Cornelia.