Emily Franklin - Principles Of Love 06 - Labor Of Love (19 page)

"Sort of your announcement to yourself that you're on vacation and then the subtle back to reality?" She turns it to my station and sits up in her seat.

"Yeah."

"They always play new stuff," I say, "but they also cycle through ten songs I love that never make me wince. . . ."

"Like?" She looks at me, obviously taken with the fact that we're together, in a car, and it's not overtly terrible.

I turn the volume up."Like this."The song is "You're So Vain," Carly Simon's infamous ode, and I immediately sing along, remembering how Jacob and I sang the same song this past spring at school. Gala does, too, and a wave of nau sea and sadness comes over me when I hear her voice. It's like mine, which is like hers.

"We sound . . ." She looks at me in the middle of the song and we both know what she's about to say, so she switches

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tacks."You have a great voice. It's no wonder you're destined for a career in music."

I signal left, onto the road to Edgartown so we can go to the cottage. "I used to think that," I say, feeling just a little powerful as I shrug off her preconceptions of me."But now I'm not so sure."

"No? What then, art? Soccer?"

I give her my twisted mouth and shake my head. "Do I look like I'm headed for Olympic glory?" She laughs."Not that."

She doesn't ask what then and I don't volunteer the in formation. This, I suspect, is how the weekend will go-- careful conversations, both of us skirting on the edges in case--like skating on a possibly frozen pond--we sink with out warning.

After a marathon of Q&A ranging from third grade social issues (Tanya Oberman dropped me like a hot potato and never explained why) to the seventh grade talent contest (I placed second, robbed of the top place title by Greg Antho ny's rockin' anthem played on the electric keyboard), Gala and I finish our lunch before we get caught up further to the present.

"You know this place has been here as long as we've owned the cottage?" she says, pointing with her chin to the

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fried clam shack--the same one where I met Charlie. I spoke with him last night and he suggested going here with her, saying it's casual and cheap (so I don't feel weirdly indebted to her for a fancy lunch) and there's lots of distractions. He was right about that--and I'm thankful for his advice.

"Who is we?" I ask, sliding a ketchup-covered fry into my mouth.

"Oh." She looks embarrassed. "David. Your father and I . . ."

"I know who David is," I say. It slips out fast before I edit and it sounds pissy, but maybe that's okay. Maybe it would help us both if we get past the niceties and into the murk so we can--eventually, hopefully--climb out of it. "And it seems to me there isn't really an us there concerning the two of you. Is there?"

It's offensive to have her say that, like they're a couple or something. Like there's a coupling between any of us except me and my dad.

Gala takes this in stride; probably she's a little prepared for this."You know, you're right . . . aside from the fact that once you have a child with someone, you are always linked to them. No matter what. We conceived you and you are ours, like it or not."

I open my mouth to protest, but she goes on. "You feel like his. And I accept that. But he and I had a life together

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before you, and though it's distant, and mainly irrelevant now, it's the truth. Our union brought you here."

I don't jump into this right now. I don't launch a tirade, because it would be halfhearted and because I know she's right, at least in theory.

"So when I say we've owned the cottage, it's because most of my memories of it are tied up with him. David." I won der if he's told her about Louisa. I decide he has; he's got to have at least wanted to wield that as some sort of evidence he moved on.

"But I thought the cottage was yours."

"I suppose it is, technically.That's why I left the keys for you. So you could"--she sips her drink--"come and go as you please."

"I have a place." I'm not trying to alienate her, but I don't want to be wooed with keys, either. "I love the cot tage--Mable and I stayed there a lot. . . ."

"Mable." She pushes her food away and swings her long hair back so it's away from her face. Near us, families with children are huddled in groups, waiting to order, or pack ing up their cars to beat the long weekend crush. Fami lies, I imagine, who never fell apart. "She was a wonderful person."

I swallow and wipe my mouth on the waxy napkin. "I don't know that I can talk about her with you."

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"You're angry . . . ," Gala says. She looks at me and taps her foot, which shouldn't annoy me but does. "It's natural, I'm expecting this. . . ."

"You've planned it out? You know how I'll react?" I shrug."I didn't say I'm angry. I just said I don't want to talk about Mable with you. She told me how your friendship basically imploded. . . ."

Gala nods, the smile fading from her face, and she wipes each one of her fingers clean."We'd been growing apart for some time."

"She told me," I say, and feel kind of proud, like I knew something she didn't.Then I realize sadly that I knew lots that Gala didn't--all of Mable these past years, all of me, all of my dad."I feel like there's the proverbial elephant in the room."

"Is it purple?" Gala sighs. "Sadie always asked that--if there were purple elephants."

Hearing her say Sadie's name makes a tumble of ques tions come out."Is she coming? I mean, do you want us to know each other? Why didn't you tell me about her--or contact me sooner? Why? Why?" My whys get progressively higher-pitched, and I clamp my mouth closed.

"Don't you mean . . . why did I leave you?" Gala's voice is calm, not detached, but placid, like she's rehearsed this."I've thought about how best to answer this, Love." She pauses after saying my name, maybe amazed at how few times she's

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said it in her life."And I want to be honest with you. It's all I can give you now, that honesty. I can't do anything about the past."

"I know that." I look at her and then away, at some little kid tugging on his dad's shirt. I used to hold my dad's pinky, because his hand was too large. "For the record, I just want to say that my dad did an incredible job. He more than made up for . . . for not having . . . and also Mable. She was basi cally a mom for me.You should know that, too."

Gala nods, her eyes filling up with tears that recede after she thinks a minute."Maybe I did that on purpose. She was always going to be a better mother than I was. . . ."

I interrupt."But you never gave her the chance, did you? You took that away from her, left her to raise me pretty much with my dad--her brother. She didn't have a normal dating life. She couldn't."

"That was her choice." Gala's eyebrows crimp together. "I never demanded she drop everything and be with you."

"No," I say."I don't suppose you would do that. Not re ally your style."

Gala crosses her arms."I'm not asking to suddenly fill the void in your life that was filled by Mable--ironically which was a void created by me in the first place."

"Then what are you doing, exactly, Gala?" I call her Gala because it's what comes out, but she doesn't seem to mind.

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"Sadie's leaving for college soon--just like you will be-- and my marriage is breaking up. I'm selling the house, which you know from my letter. . . ."

Blush and an alarm race through me. I never read her letter. All that time, I had it. And I let it sit there, festering while I worried and got excited and angry and worried some more."I didn't read it."

Gala looks surprised.Then impressed."Really."

"I meant to . . . I think," I say and lick my lips. The salt from the food is still on them and stings a little.

"Maybe you didn't want to hear what I had to say."

Now my voice is calmer, and I'm ready to speak."I think that's true. I came back here and you left--obviously a sore spot--and I didn't . . . don't . . . want the excuses." I look at her to see what her reaction will be.

She reaches out and touches my hair, but I move back instinctually."I thought it would be long."

"It was . . . until very recently."

"Well, it suits you," she says, and then adds, "Not that I'm in a position to say that. I know this"--she gestures to herself, then back to me--"is up there with talk show crazi ness and . . ."

"You know what would help?" I ask. She holds up her hands to ask what. I go on."Just tell me why, and then we'll go on from there, okay? I don't need a . . ." I stop short of

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saying mother, because who would turn that down? I had that with Mable, but I don't want to lose Gala before I've gotten her at least partly."I'm not saying all's forgiven or that I'm not harboring some deeply screwed up abandonment issues that I'm sure will plague me throughout my life. . . ." My tone is semilighthearted but Gala winces."But suffice it to say I'm fairly well-adjusted, all things considered." Saying that aloud, I know it's true--I could have been a total mess, but I know I'm not. And this brings a cloud of confidence into my chest.

We walk from the food shack down to the Chappy ferry, going nowhere but needing to keep moving. Gala looks at the water, the pavement, the docks, anywhere but my face as she speaks. "Now they'd call it postpartum depression. Not just baby blues." Her voice is melodic as she tells this, and I can hear the fringes of song in it. "You were small, long . . ."

"That didn't last," I say, patting my head to show my short stature.

"We lived in this little apartment."

"The one in Cambridge? The one on the corner?" I re member Mable showing it to me and picturing my parents in the first throes of having a newborn there.

We walk past the harbor, up the street, circling so we're

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near Lighthouse Beach. The waves are small here, lapping rather than crashing, and the sand is littered with carcasses of horseshoe crabs and small fish. It's like we're walking amidst the debris of the years gone by.

"That's where we lived right after I had you," she says, the emphasis on had.

"You say it like you knew you wouldn't keep me."

Gala looks up to the sky, searching for clouds or answers. "I don't know.We went back to that funny little place--the main room was triangular, which sounds cool, but really it meant that no furniture fit in it. Not that we had much, but what we did have just sort of floated. . . ." She pauses, and I wonder if she's thinking that she and my dad were like that, floating in their early marriage, unsure where they might wash ashore. "The apartment overlooked the square, all the students scurrying around on their way to greater knowl edge. Or, that's how it seemed to me. But it was loud there. Too loud. So we moved to Kenmore Square. It added on

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