Part 44 (1/2)
”I think my parents were like the Red Cross.”
”Mired in politics and financial impropriety?”
She smiles. ”Doctors Without Borders, then. Willing to bring aid anywhere, anyhow, to anyone.”
”Even to you? Do you feel they've aided you?”
She thinks. ”I know it's crazy, but yes. It's done me good to have them here, yes.”
”Some connection to your past, however inchoate.”
”Putting me, no doubt, on a road to ancestor wors.h.i.+p.”
He laughs loudly. ”But tell me.” He clears his throat. ”Have your parents been of aid to us? I ask because, you know, we never did finish our conversation the other night.”
His tone is so light, she is surprised, when she looks in his eyes, to see pain.
”Can you forgive me?” he goes on. ”Because I know I'm years late with this but I ask your forgiveness, Hattie Kong. I do.”
She folds up a second box.
” 'I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me,' ” she recites finally. ” 'I am gone like the shadow when it declineth; I am tossed up and down as the locust.' ”
”From the Bible.”
She tries not to laugh. ”Very good.”
”Your heart is wounded within you.”
She puts her hands on the jars for a moment, feeling them. ”Yes.”
”I was torn, Hattie. I don't know if you can see that.”
”I'd have been torn, too,” she acknowledges.
”And yet, you were right to be mad.”
”Was I?”
She sees Everett, slumped over then; she smells the smoke. Guess I'd rather have my rage. Guess I'm planning to have it for breakfast. And there is the breakfast table, with a long line of blue and white jars on it, and a red tablecloth.
”You were hurt,” he says.
”I was,” she answers-calm but startled: For something light and large has come to her, an ease; she is not herself. And as Carter moves with some emotion to embrace her, she feels, not the bubbly thing she'd always imagined their love would be, but something else-a defining grace, bittersweet and hard-won.
”It would be nice to have some sort of send-off ritual for your mom and dad, wouldn't it?” he says, a little later. What hair he has is flying every which way; his gaze is dreamy; she has never seen such crow's-feet.
”Umm,” she says.
”Here we have rituals for yoga and funerals but not this.” ”Umm.”
He kisses her between her eyes-one of his new favorite spots. ”We should invent one.”
Nothing brilliant comes to mind, though, so in the end they simply make a nice dinner, and eat with the jars on the table, like guests. Then they meditate a little. And then, though he's a little full for such things, Carter tucks in his s.h.i.+rt and stands on his head.
Josh calls a week after Thanksgiving: He and Serena have broken up. He's not crying, but his voice on the phone is froggy-nothing like his radio voice.
”She decided I was too old for her,” he says.
”Just like that?”
”Out of the blue. I don't know why.”
”Did someone say something to her? Her parents?”
”Not that I know of. But she did get pregnant and miscarry, so maybe that was a factor.”
Hattie clears her throat. ”Umm, that might have been a factor, yes. How pregnant was she?”
”Not very. Six weeks and change.”
”Still. That sort of thing can be world-changing for a young woman, Josh.”
”It was the first thing that had ever gone wrong with her life. I told her things will go wrong because, you know, that's life. But it wasn't what she wanted to hear, I guess.”
”She might have needed sympathy.”
”Someone to agree it was the end of the world.”
Joe's voice.
”Let me ask you. How do you feel now?” she asks.
”Like it's the end of the world. Like I'll never love anyone as much in all my life. But maybe I've lost perspective.”
”Or maybe she's the love of your life and you never will love anyone more.” Hattie hesitates to say so, but it's true.
Silence.