“I'm sorry, Doug, We were just busy opening the house and getting settled.”
“You sound tired,” he said sympathetically. She had been for the past few weeks, but he had never noticed either her fatigue or her depression.
“It's a long drive, but we're all fine.” Both children and caretaker were alive and well, as was the Labrador retriever.
“I wish I were there with all of you, instead of here with all my clients,” he said, and sounded as though he meant it.
“You'll be here soon,” she said sympathetically, anxious to get off the phone. She had nothing to say to him at the moment. She felt sapped of all her energy. She had nothing to offer him right now, in light of what he'd said to her, and he didn't seem to understand that. “We'll call you,” she said easily, and a moment later they hung up. As usual, he didn't tell her that he loved her. It didn't matter anyway. It was apparently a word that, at this point in their lives, meant very little to him.
She went back to the children after that, and helped them make their beds, since the cleaning service hadn't done it. And once they were all in bed, she slipped quietly into her darkroom. She hadn't been in it in nearly a year, but she found everything in the same meticulous order she had left it. And when she turned the light on, she saw the wall of some of her father's favorite pictures. There was one she had put up there of Doug too, and she stood and stared at it for a long moment. He had a handsome, familiar face that she knew better than any face in the world, except her children's, but she had known his for longer. And as she looked into his eyes in the photograph she saw all the coldness she had discovered there in the past three weeks, and everything that was missing in them. She wondered why she hadn't seen it sooner. Had she wanted to believe there was something else there? That he still loved her as he had in their youth? That he was still in love with her, as she had believed he was, until he told her how unimportant love was in a marriage? She could hear the words again as though he had just said them to her …what you need is companionship …decency … respect …someone you can rely on to take care of the children. She wondered now if this was really all he wanted. It was so much less than she wanted from him. She turned away then to look at a photograph of her father. He had been tall and thin, and looked like Doug in a way, but there was laughter in his eyes as he looked at you, something happy and excited and amused about his entire demeanor. He had had a funny little tilt to his head when he talked to you, and she could imagine him being in love at any age. He had been so young when he died, only forty-two, and yet he seemed so much more alive in the photograph than Doug did. There had been something so vibrant about him. She knew her mother had suffered from his absences, and their life had been difficult for her, but she also knew how much her mother had loved him, and how much he had loved her. And how angry her mother had been at him for dying. And India could remember as though it were yesterday how devastated she had been when her mother had told her what had happened. She couldn't imagine a world without her father in it somewhere. It was hard to believe he had been gone for twenty-eight years now, it seemed like an entire lifetime to her.
There were her photographs framed on the walls of the darkroom too, and she looked them over carefully for a moment as she stood there. They were good, very good, and captured a feeling and emotion that was almost like looking into a painting. She saw the ravaged faces of hungry children there, and a child sitting alone on a rock holding a doll, crying, while an entire village in Kenya burned behind her. There were faces of old men, and injured soldiers, and a woman laughing with sheer joy as she held her newborn baby. India had helped deliver it, and she still remembered that moment. It had been in a tiny hut somewhere outside Quito when she was in the Peace Corps. They were fragments of her life, frozen in time, and framed, so she could look at them forever. It was still hard for her to believe that all of that was gone from her life now. It had been an exchange she had made, a fair trade she always thought, only now she wondered. Had she gotten enough in return for what she'd given up? She knew she had when she thought of her children. But beyond that, what did she have now? And once the children were grown, what would she have then? Those were the questions she could no longer answer.
She checked the chemicals and the equipment, and made some notes, and then quietly turned off the light and went back to her bedroom. She took off her clothes and put her nightgown on, and then got into bed and turned off the light, and lay there for a long time, listening to the ocean. It was a peaceful sound she forgot every year, and then remembered when she came back here. It lulled her to sleep at night, and she lay listening to it when she woke in the morning. She loved the solemnity of it, the comfort it offered her. It was one of the things she loved about being here. And as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, she savored the fact that she was alone here this time, with only her children, her memories, and the ocean. For now at least, it was all she wanted.
Chapter 4
THE SUN was brilliant when she awoke the next day in Harwich, and the ocean was shimmering as though it were trimmed in silver. The kids were already up, and helping themselves to cereal when she walked in. She was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals, with her hair piled up on her head, held by two old tortoise-shell pins, and she was unaware of it, but she looked very pretty.
“What's everybody doing today?” she asked as she put a pot of coffee on. It seemed silly to do it just for herself, but she loved sitting on the deck, with a cup of coffee and reading, glancing up occasionally to look at the ocean. It was one of her favorite Cape Cod pastimes.
“I'm going over to see the Boardmans,” Jessica was quick to say. They had three older teenage sons, and a daughter her own age. Jessica had grown up with them, and loved them, and the boys were of particular interest to her now that two of them were in high school, and the third one was a freshman in college.
Jason had a friend down the street too, and had called him and made plans the night before to spend the day with him. Aimee wanted to go swimming at a friend's, and India promised to call and arrange it as soon as she had a cup of coffee, and Sam wanted to walk down the beach with her, and Crockett, the Labrador retriever. It sounded like a good plan to her, and she promised to walk with him a little later. In the meantime, he was happy playing with the toys he had left there the year before, and he was anxious to get his bike out.
By ten o'clock they were all on their way, and she and Sam walked down the steps to the beach, with the dog just behind them. Sam had brought a ball, and he kept throwing it for the dog, who fetched it devotedly, even when Sam threw it in the water. And India walked along happily, watching them, with her camera slung over her shoulder. After nearly thirty years of carrying it, it seemed like part of her body. Her children couldn't imagine seeing her without it.
They had walked almost a mile down the beach before they saw anyone they knew. It was still early in the season and people were only just beginning to arrive for the summer. The first friends they met were a couple she and Doug had known for years. They were both surgeons, from Boston. He was a little older than Doug, and she was a year or two older than he, somewhere near fifty. They had a son at Harvard Medical School, but for the past two years he hadn't come to the Cape, he was too busy, but they were both thrilled that he had decided to follow in their footsteps. They were Jenny and Dick Parker. And they smiled the moment they saw India and Sam approaching.