[A pause.]
Daddy: If it’s you and Teo, it could only be serious, so I guess I mean do you mean what you just said.
Cornelia [from the bottom of her heart]: I do.
Daddy [grinning]: Teo doesn’t look much like Cary Grant.
Cornelia [grinning back]: I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.
Daddy: Don’t tell Ollie but, Cornelia, it’s what I’ve always wanted.
[Daddy’s eyes shining. Cornelia standing humbly in their light.]
Conversation Two: Toby and Cam, early evening, as they throw a football and shout friendly insults at each other.
Cornelia [shouting over friendly insults]: Hey, you guys, you’ll never guess what Teo and I are in. Love.
[Toby’s arm arrested mid-throw. Football thudding to the ground.
Cam cantering over like the golden retriever he is.
Finally…]
Cam [whining]: But I got him after Ollie. I called it!
Toby: Shut up, dude. He’s mine!
[Wrestling.]
Cornelia: I adore you guys, you know that?
[Toby and Cam looking pleased and sheepish.
Pleased, sheepish, and adoring moment broken by the inevitable picking up of Cornelia and the inevitable bodily tossing of her like a medicine ball from one brother to the other, as the evening star looks on.]
And you don’t need to point out that the above conversations went worlds better than any bombshell-dropping daughter and sister has the right to expect. I got off easy, I knew it, and I was properly grateful, believe me. Grateful, grateful. I went to bed that night radiant with familial love.
You also don’t need to point out that in telling my father and my brothers first, I hadn’t exactly rushed boldly in and seized the bull by the horns, bearded the roaring lion in its den. But think about it: If you’re dropping a bombshell, why not choose the easier targets first, then tackle the really tough ones later, with a good night’s sleep under your belt and the glow of the early victories on your brow?
So there, you see? It wasn’t cowardice; it was strategy.
Conversation Three: Clare, at the breakfast table the next morning, alone with Cornelia.
Cornelia: Clare, I have to tell you something.
Clare [not looking up from her cereal bowl]:…
Cornelia: It turns out that I’m in love with Teo. And you know what?
Clare [not looking up from her cereal bowl]:…
Cornelia: He’s in love with me.
[Clare meeting Cornelia’s eyes with hers. Her eyes full of Cornelia can’t tell what.]
Cornelia [taking a deep breath]: I’m going to New York with him tomorrow. I mean, not permanently, but for a few days, until I can stand to be away from him. Then I’ll go back and pack up my apartment and move there. Eventually. And you know, it’s
New York. It’s not far at all. And I’m going to learn how to drive, so I can come see you all the time. Teo, too, he’ll visit a lot, whenever he can, with me or without me. Because we love you so much, and we can’t stand to be away from you for very long either. Clare, honey, please say something.
[Nothing. Then…]
Clare: Whatever.
Oh, Clare.
After we ate a silent breakfast together, I went up to my room and called Linny. I told her what I’d told everyone else.
She said, “Cornelia. I’m so delirious with joy, I can’t even make a joke.”
“You can’t?” I asked her. “Because, Linny, I could really use one.” Linny considered this and then said, “I can’t make a joke, but I can ask you about sex. Will that do the trick?”
“I think it might,” I said.
“Are you having it?”
“Linny. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours!”
“Give or take twenty-four years.”
I thought about arguing, re-submitting my transubstantiation theory, but quickly recognized this thought for the self-abnegating lunacy it was.
“We’re not having it,” I said.
“Oh, God, Cornelia.” There was sudden horror in Linny’s voice. “You’re not putting it off until he’s divorced, are you?”
A good question, pertinent. So good and pertinent, in fact, that Teo had asked me his unhorrified but equally urgent version of the selfsame question during a stolen half-hour on the oriental rug in Mrs. Goldberg’s attic the night before, asked it after I’d pulled back, panting, at the feel of his hand sliding under my sweater and making its electric way along my rib cage.
“We’re playing by the rules, then?” he’d asked, raspy-voiced. The hand retreated, which is what I wanted, definitely wanted, because why would I have pulled away if I didn’t want it, except as soon as it was gone, I’d have given my eyeteeth to have it back.
“Teo. She’s my sister.” I sighed, knowing the same thought was in both our heads: how, husband or no husband, no way in hell was Ollie forbearing from a single thing, how no doubt even at that very moment, even as Teo and I lay side-by-side, frustration faintly tingeing our elation, Ollie and Edmund were on their pebbly beach, disporting themselves before God and tortoises.
But in my mind’s eye, alongside this all-too-lurid picture, was another one, more lurid still, of a lifetime of my looking in mirrors to find the goggle eyes of Bette Davis staring back. Who could face that kind of future? Could you?
I told Linny the same thing I’d told Teo: “We’ll abide by the letter of the law while entirely ignoring its spirit each and every chance we get.”
To which Teo had replied, with affectionate laughter, “Only you would say that.”
To which Linny replied, with affectionate disgust, “You are so fucking weird.”
Then, lamely, I added to Linny what I’d added, lamely, to Teo: “That’s the plan for now, anyway.”
To which Teo had said chivalrously, “Nope, better not leave that door open. I might be tempted to try to change your mind.”
To which Linny said derisively, “For now? Ha! You won’t make it a week, sister.”
Then she asked, “By the way, since they weren’t in love and so forth, did he and Ollie…?” Linny is not one to leave a stone unturned, not even that one.
“Linny, they were married for two years,” I said calmly. “One assumes they had sex.”
“One assumes? Come on, I know you asked him. I know you did,” she said knowingly.
“I don’t know why you’d say that,” I said.
“Cornelia.”
Damn that Linny.
OK, I had, I’d asked him. By way of testing a pet theory that my love for Teo existed on a plane above jealousy, I’d asked, and his answer hadn’t stung a bit. My jealousy-proof heart beat on, triumphant.
“They did. He said it was fine.” His exact words.
“Fine? Around here, we call that damning with faint praise,” said my friend Linny and, jealousy-proof or not, I’ll admit it, the evil grin I heard in her voice was music to my ears.
That night as I was packing, my mother came into my room with a pair of my oldest jeans, an ironed, knife’s-edge pleat down the center of each leg.
“Don’t forget these,” she said.
I sat down on the bed.
“Mom.”
She sat down next to me.
“You’ve sure shaken things up around here,” she told me, and my heart dropped, because I knew as well as I knew anything that shaken-up things were the last things my mother wanted.
“I love him with my soul,” I said, because I knew this, too.
She looked at me. “Well, why wouldn’t you? He’s a wonderful boy.”
“He’s the best man in the world.”
“Your father is the best man in the world.” The force of her love for her husband rolled over me like a wave. Wow, I thought. Has that been in there all this time?
“Look at us,” I said. “Two lovesick peas in a pod.” And she smiled at me.
“When will their divorce be final?” she asked. So I gave her the exp
lanation Teo had given me, along with his plan to wait a year.
“A year?” said my mother sharply. “That’s crazy.” And I felt like I was the one who was crazy. Or else she was. I’d been sure she’d want Teo to do the noble thing and wait.
“He won’t say terrible things about Ollie.” I sighed. “He just won’t.”
My mother’s eyes gleamed. “But Ollie might be persuaded to say bad things about him, don’t you think? With a well-placed nudge from her mother?”
“Mom!” I was out-and-out shocked.
She lay a hand on my cheek. “Baby,” she said, “why the surprise? I’ve always been on the side of love. Didn’t you know that?”
When I thought about it, I realized I did know it. Of course. I’d known it all along.
The next morning, Clare didn’t come down for breakfast.
“I’m sorry, Cornelia,” said Viviana. “More sorry for her than for you, because she’ll hate it that she didn’t say good-bye. Later, she’ll hate it.”
Then she paused, and I braced myself for another thank-you.
But Viviana just smiled and said, “When you come visit, you’ll have three places to stay, now. This house, Teo’s parents’ house, and Mrs. Goldberg’s house.”
An invitation. I smiled back at her.
“Your house, now,” I said.
After a long conversation that had involved my insisting on giving it to them, and Viviana’s insisting on buying it, I’d agreed to sell.
“And Clare’s house,” I added happily, even jubilantly, because that’s what love does: You give up a house that’s been your heart’s home most of your life and come away feeling like you’ve been handed the sun and moon.
“Plan on extended visits,” Viviana told me.
She waited a long time. She scared me with her waiting. But, as I was putting my bag into the trunk of Teo’s car, suddenly there she was. Not there, then there, then in my arms.
“Call me honey,” Clare said, her cheek against my cheek.
“Oh, honey, honey, honey,” I told her, “Clare. Child of my heart. Honey, I hate to leave you.”
I hated to leave her. I was sick with leaving her.
“But you’ll come back,” she said, “and see me soon.”
“You know I will.”
Then she looked at my face with her matchless brown eyes and smiled.
“I want you and Teo to get married,” she whispered, “and be together forever.” She was crying. “I want all of us to be together forever. I wish someone could promise me that.”
I kissed her. “Is that the hardest promise you’ve got? Because that’s an easy one.”
I remembered Teo saying, “Why do you think I love you so much?”
“Our loving each other is just the world we live in, like the grass under our feet,” I told Clare. “No matter where we are, it’s the world we live in. Do you know what I mean?”
And into my shoulder, Clare was nodding yes, yes, yes.
I waited to cry until Teo and I were driving away, and then I couldn’t stop.
“How can I leave her?” I said. “I can’t leave her.”
He reached over and held my hand.
“Do you think she knows how I love her?” I asked him.
“I know she knows,” he said.
Suddenly it seemed vitally important that everyone I loved know exactly how and how much. I felt feverish with wanting them to know. I turned to Teo.
“Do you know how I love you?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
“No, I mean, I’m not fooling around here,” I said vehemently. “This isn’t—dating.”
“I know.”
He drove and I stared at him, at his glowing beauty that was beautiful because it was beauty, but mostly because it was his. Teo looked like no one who had ever lived. I was seized with a frantic thought.
“Teo,” I said, “I don’t love you for your beauty.”
He laughed. “Uh-oh,” he said. “What else is there?”
Like no one who had ever lived, I thought. Except maybe Lawrence Olivier, the tiniest bit, but only around the cheekbones.
We rode for a long time after that without saying anything.
“And I should probably just tell you that I want to have a baby. Not right away, but soon. Really soon.” I just said it. I rushed right out on that limb and stood there for all I was worth, with wind in my face and birdsong in my ears, not looking down or anywhere but at Teo.
“OK,” said Teo, so serenely that I thought he must have misunderstood.
“With you,” I said. “I want to have a baby with you. Soon.”
He didn’t laugh. He pulled the car to the side of the road and kissed my wet face.
“The sooner the better,” he said.
And we keep driving, the mountains blue and beneficent in the distance, then gone. Gone but not gone. The mountains, Clare, Mrs. Goldberg, my mother and father, Ollie, Cam, Toby, Linny, Martin, Viviana, all right here. You, too. My heart is large; it can contain everything at once, and the road I’m on with Teo, can you see it? It runs forward and backward and no matter which way we travel on it, the direction is the same. You know the direction I mean: Homeward.
Acknowledgments
I offer heartfelt thanks to the following people:
Everyone at Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner, especially my agent, Jennifer Carlson, for her immense sanity and patience and for believing in this book before it was a book;
All the folks at Dutton, especially my editor Laurie Chittenden for her clear eyes and ever-judicious guidance, along with her kind assistant Erika Kahn;
The amazing Shari Smiley at CAA;
My treasured brain trust—Ralph Ashbrooke, Julianna Baggott, Susan Davis, Dan Fertel, Rebecca Flowers Schamess, Annie Pilson, Kristina de los Santos, and David G. W. Scott—early readers who provided advice and resounding cheers along the way;
Mark Caughey and Kym Pinder for keeping my edges sharp and for turning over the little house in Vermont to me and Cornelia and Clare;
Diane Sheehan, my lucky children’s third parent;
Arturo and Mary de los Santos, my parents, for steady, steadying love;
My children Charles and Annabel who wear me out, make me laugh, and grace my life every day;
And, most of all, thank you to my husband David Teague: leading man, first reader, resident genius, and joyful collaborator. There aren’t enough words in the world.
Marisa de los Santos, Love Walked In
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