Going Home Again (20 page)

“Yes, I do. We’re just having a paddle here.”

By now I was thinking it was a mistake to come out this far with Ava. I should have just called some emergency number, if there was one. What if we tipped over or found Hilary struggling, or worse?

And that’s when Hilary’s head appeared again, a dot on the horizon. At least I thought it was Hilary, though it was too small for me to be sure. But as we got closer, I saw her lift an arm and wave, and we heard her voice traveling over the water.

“Ahoy there,” she called.

She was smiling and radiant when she came up alongside the canoe. “There’s an island just around there,” she said, pointing. “An island of wild blueberries!”

“Jesus,” I said.

“You weren’t worried!”

“Are you some sort of Olympic swimmer or something?” Ava said, smiling.

Hilary let go of the gunwale and swam under the canoe and appeared on the other side. “Nope. Just a happy fish.”

After a late supper we went down to the dock to watch for falling stars. The sky was clear and dazzling, and the loons were hidden out there on the black water and calling to one another in a lonesome, plaintive way that made me feel happy and connected to the night. The three of us lay out on the warm boards, waiting for something in the sky to move. One came almost right away, but then for a long time the only thing we saw up there was the clumsy track of a satellite cutting the dark at its snail’s pace. We didn’t talk for a long while and just lay there peacefully, the anxiety of that scare out on the water that afternoon long gone.

“Silence,” I said.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Hilary said.

“It is. That’s the answer, right?” I said. “It’s silence.”

At the Falls, leaning against the handrail watching the water disappear over the gorge, Ava had dangled one of her brainteasers under my nose.
What’s broken every time it’s spoken?

Sprawled out on the dock, the three of us still looking skyward, I felt Ava’s arm tuck into mine.
“Muy bien, Papá,”
she said quietly, still watching the stars.

Then, again, the silence.

•  •  •

Next day I went down to the water with a fishing rod and took a few casts into the lily pads. Ava was already down there reading cross-legged on the dock. The water was dead still, and bands of mist snaked over the surface and rolled upward in small vanishing leaps. The light was new and fresh, and the heat of the day hadn’t yet gathered.

“There’s no fish in here,” I said, flipping the rod tip forward.

She turned a page.

I took a few more casts watching the lake. “But it sure looks nice,” I said.

This went on a little longer, then Ava folded the book over a finger and looked at me with an annoyed smile.

“Good book?” I said.

“You know you two don’t have to sleep in different rooms just because I’m here.”

I had no idea whether she’d been brooding about this all morning or the thought had only just then jumped into her head.

“We’re taking things slow,” I said.

“I’m almost thirteen, Dad. I
know
what grown-ups do when they’re alone together.”

“You do, do you?”

There was a pause.

“I mean other than argue,” she said.

“Your mother and I barely ever argued,” I said.

“Yeah, right. Maybe not with your voices,” she said, opening her book again.

Near the end, the freeze-out between me and Isabel was as loud as any shouting match. Ava knew this better than anyone, of course. I remember being conscious that things were unraveling quickly, but at the same time not quite believing it. Out of optimism or perhaps ignorance, I held on to the idea that things would right themselves between us—that just ahead on the horizon was some natural watershed we were approaching and that the best plan was to keep a steady course and ride forward until the landscape forced the issue. I didn’t know what role I’d have in that happening other than offering dogged perseverance and patience. But patience in a man’s world is little more in a woman’s than circumvention and avoidance.

Ava turned another page.

“Maybe we can take the canoe out later,” I said. “Or go for a hike. We could follow the road around the lake. Check out that dragon on the other side.”

“Don’t treat me like a child, okay?” she said.

“You said that yourself, how it looked like a dragon over there.”

She fixed me with an annoyed and pitying stare. “Everything looks like whatever you want it to look like if you’re far enough away. That’s why you’re here.”

I couldn’t argue the point. Somehow she’d gotten into my head. “But I’m coming back,” I said.

“No, you’re not. You’re just running away. You
and
Mom. You’re both stupid selfish idiots with your new Pablos and Hilarys.”

She didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the day. She could barely even look at me. She just sat in the shade under a tree and read her novel and then, after a tense supper, shut herself in her bedroom. I’d told Hilary what was going on, and after the lights in Ava’s room finally went dark around eleven, we stood out on the deck and shared a cigarette. I felt like all the life had been kicked out of me. I’d never heard that kind of anger from my daughter before and kept hearing it in my head, over and over.
Stupid selfish idiots
. And she was right. You can’t get mad at your kid for calling it like it is.

“You’re thinking about going back, aren’t you?” Hilary said, handing me the cigarette.

“I always am. How could I not?”

“Looks like it’s decision time.”

“It’s always decision time when you have kids,” I said.

“It’ll be all right,” she said.

“Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent Ava’s whole life just waiting for her to grow up. And now she’s half out the door, and I can’t do anything about it. That’s no way to spend your life, is it? Just waiting for your kid to grow up?”

The night air was cool, and the lights from the cottage windows shimmered over the grass and the silvery fingers of the beech trees. The lake was lost in darkness, and the night was deep and still, and all I wanted
to do was swim out into the middle and let myself sink to the bottom.

“No, it’s not,” Hilary said, “though this isn’t exactly my area of expertise.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s mine, either. You can probably see that by now.”

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up.”

“I don’t know a lot of men who gave it much thought before it happened. Having kids. And then you’re in the middle of it, and you’re dealing with it, people changing all around you.”

Voices came through the dark from the opposite shore, joyful and relaxed, people celebrating a fine night up north. I couldn’t make out the words, but they were the sounds of summer by the water, notes of celebration and renewal.

“I suppose it serves me right,” Hilary said.

“What’s that?”

“Your heart’s going where your daughter is. Every time. You’d be an asshole if it didn’t, right?”

“I’m a dad before anything. At least I know that much. But I thought maybe it would be easier. Coming over here, I mean. I thought maybe everything would be easier.”

“I think that’s why I’m starting to like you,” she said, taking the cigarette from between my fingers. She took a puff, then flicked it over the railing. “I’m not keeping you here. As long as you know that.”

We got ready for bed after that. While Hilary used the washroom, I stayed in the kitchen and watched a moth bouncing off the ceiling light.

“You
do
know this separate-room thing is silly, right?” she said when she was done. Her mouth tasted like toothpaste.

“I know it is,” I said.

“But I guess it’s kind of sweet, too.”

I switched off the kitchen light and climbed miserably into my cold bed at the end of the hall, my daughter’s words still ringing in my ears. I listened to the lake and the voices and the bounce of a springboard echoing through the night and thought about the days when I used to push Ava in a stroller down into the heart of the Retiro Park, watching the fortune-tellers reading palms and flipping tarot cards. I never stopped to hear my fortune but always wondered what lay ahead for us, where we’d be in ten or twenty years and what the little kid in the stroller I was pushing was going to end up being like. It was different every time I thought about it, but I never imagined her giving up on her parents like she had this day at the lake.

 Eleven

I looked up and saw Holly
talking to the receptionist at the front desk. It was Monday in late August now, and I was on the phone organizing some meetings in Dublin and Madrid for the following Friday and Saturday. I told the person on the other end of the line that I’d call back and went out to meet her.

“You’re busy,” she said. “I guess I’m barging in.”

“No, no,” I said, “this is great.”

I led her to my office and closed the door behind us. She took a seat in the chair across from my desk, her back to the window looking out over College Street.

“What’s up? This is a nice surprise.”

“I was in town. I just dropped Riley off at a friend’s house. She’s going to a concert tonight. I thought I’d say hello.”

“Good. I’m glad you did.”

We hadn’t spoken since the barbecue. Now she made a show of turning her head and checking out the office. “It looks great. A lot of work, I’m sure, but it has a good feel.”

“I was having my doubts there for a while that we’d actually see the day it was done.”

“You’ve got something to be proud of.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And your daughter? Ava, right? You said she was coming?”

“Been and gone. A few rough patches. But we managed. Just working out the new situation. It’s tough for kids.”

“For parents, too, right?” she said.

I wondered if she was here to tell me that she and her husband were splitting, that he’d picked up on something between us and got her talking about the past he never knew she had. I didn’t know what to think. But it seemed she had something to tell me.

“Do you ever think about those days back in Montreal?” she said.

“It was a pretty intense time. Sure, I do. A lot, actually.”

“Sometimes I can get pretty nostalgic,” she said.

“When I saw you last fall—I don’t know how to say it. It really took me back. It was great. I felt great. Confused but great. It was nice to be reminded that we had that in our lives.”

“It’s nice to hear you say that,” she said.

“It was pretty tough when I first got over here. What do you do when you’re uprooted, right? You look for something to hold on to. And there you were.”

“You’re saying nice things,” she said.

“I guess I am. But it’s true.”

“I don’t really—” She stopped herself.

“I think I know what you’re going to say.”

She shook her head and motioned with her hand that I should give her a minute.

“Okay,” I said.

And so I sat there waiting quietly for her to tell me that her marriage was over and that she’d been thinking about us and that maybe, once she got back on her feet again, maybe we could start slow, little by little, and see where we were. That’s why she’d come. I saw the confusion of a failed marriage in her face and felt sorry and pained that I couldn’t help her heal her broken heart any faster than the slow, agonizing time it would take.

“Miles jumped,” she said.

For a moment I was taken aback, the pivot was so jarring. “We don’t know that. No one can ever know that.”

“I do,” she said.

“You know he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t that sort of person. He was full of life. He wanted more than anything to—”

“I know he did.”

“You can’t say that,” I said. “And you shouldn’t say that.”

“I told him I wanted to be with you.” Her eyes began to tear up.

“I don’t understand.”

“I was a coward, Charlie. I was in love with you. And I didn’t know how else to tell him. It just happened.”

“You’re telling me something I can’t understand,” I said. “This is too much.”

“I told him after you fell asleep. We were lying in bed, and I said this horrible thing to him and just kept
going and going and he didn’t say anything. He didn’t say a word. I thought he didn’t care anymore. So I just kept going, taking him apart like that. And when I woke up he was gone.”

I remember not knowing what to feel or say that afternoon, and in some ways I still don’t. In less than a minute the last twenty years had been entirely recast, and the first love of my life was now grounded in the bedrock of a suicide. It was sadness I felt more than anything that day—I can say that now—but I felt angry, too. She’d wear that guilt forever, it would never go away, and there was nothing I could do or say about it to help her. Miles had died thinking the two people he loved most in his life had been laughing at him behind his back, and I couldn’t change that, either. That world of our youth, so long a source of strength for me, was gone.

I’d sat there stunned, my head abuzz, trying to process everything she’d told me, and checked the urge to rebuke her, to tell her she’d killed one of the most beautiful human beings either of us would ever know. Eventually she rose, wiped the tears from her eyes and silently left me to the privacy of my own thoughts.