The Color of Heaven (11 page)

I swal owed uneasily. “This is about
you
, isn’t it? About why you left?”

Al at once, I felt dizzy and nauseated. I experienced a flash memory of the day she walked out on us.

I was riding my bicycle through town, licking strawberry ice cream off my wrist. I could feel the grated metal pedals under the soles of my shoes. I

could hear my squeaky wheels and the chain that needed grease. Quickly, I rounded the corner toward home, not knowing that my life would never

be the same…

Mom touched my shoulder. “Why don’t you go for a walk and get some fresh air? Besides, I need some time to get dressed.”

I rose from the table. “Wil you tel me more later?”

“Of course.”

I turned from her and walked out the front door, where I paused on the covered veranda. I glanced briefly at the porch swing to my right, then

breathed deeply the distinctive aromas of spring: the damp soil, recently thawed, and the mild, fresh air, wet and dewy after the rain.

It was stil early in the day. The neighborhood was quiet. There was no one about, except for one woman across the street, a few doors down. She

was outside in her yard, digging in the dirt with a smal spade. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Gardening
. When one had a garden, one had to weed it, and rake the dead leaves, and clean up al the fal en petals after the flowers bloomed and died. And what woman needed more work around the house? There was enough dirt to sweep and vacuum on the inside without getting into more

of it on the outside.

Stil , I couldn’t deny an appreciation for a beautiful garden in ful bloom, and I certainly adored the smel of roses and lilacs.

I watched the woman in the hat for a few minutes. There were no roses or lilacs in her garden. Everything just looked brown and wet.

The woman sat back on her heels and surveyed her work, then glanced up and saw me. She waved her arm through the air, as if she were trying

hard to get my attention.

I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if she might be waving at someone else – we didn’t know each other after al – but there was no one around,

so I waved back.

She smiled brightly, and even from a distance, I felt a strange stirring of recognition. Perhaps I had met her before, many years ago. Perhaps I knew her from my childhood. Maybe we went to school together. She looked to be about my age.

Knowing Mom would need some time to dress and put on her makeup, I decided to go over and say hel o. I started down the steps and crossed the

street.

“Good morning!” the woman cheerful y said. Getting up off her knees, she placed a hand on top of her hat and smiled at me. She was strikingly

beautiful with long black hair, a creamy complexion, ful lips, and blue eyes.

I held out my hand. “Hi. I’m Cora’s daughter, Sophie. Have we met before?”

Stil smiling, the woman removed her gardening gloves. She stepped forward to shake my hand, and I noticed two large mud stains on the knees of

her jeans. “No, but Cora and I are very close.”

I acknowledged the comment with a nod, and wondered what she must think of me. Surely she knew that I hadn’t seen my mother in many, many

years.

“I’m Catherine,” she said, without the least sign of awkwardness. “It’s wonderful to meet you at last.”

“I just arrived this morning.”

She chuckled. “I know. I was out here in my garden when you passed by earlier.”

“Oh.”

I hadn’t even noticed her.

Too caught up in my own problems, I suppose.

“You have your mother’s eyes,” she mentioned, with a warmth of spirit that eased the tension in my neck and shoulders.

“I’l take that as a compliment.” My mother had beautiful eyes.

I gestured to the garden bed at our feet. “I’m no expert, but aren’t you starting a bit early?”

“Not at al ,” she replied. “The ground is soft, the sun is shining. The time is just right.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about gardening. I live in New York.”

She linked her arm through mine. “That, my dear, is no excuse. Would you like a tour?”

“Um…” I glanced back at my mother’s house. “I suppose I have time.” I fol owed her to the flowerbed over by the fence.

“Right here, I’m going to have about fifty brown-eyed Susans,” she explained. “They’re my favorite flowers, but they won’t come up until late summer, so I have some iris bulbs mixed in. Over here is my biggest hosta, which wil be enormous by mid-summer.”

We walked al the way around the house, and Catherine described every flowerbed in bright, colorful detail. It was a comprehensive garden tour –

even though al I had seen so far was dirt.

We circled around to the front again, and I worked hard to summon my enthusiasm.

“It’s going to be beautiful. I wish I could be here to see it in ful bloom, but I’l probably be gone by then.”

“Back home?”

I nodded, determined to hide the fact that whenever I thought of returning to my home in Washington Square, my insides churned with dread.

Life had been so painful there.

“Wel …” Catherine paused. “When you have a life to get back to…”

“Me?” I chuckled bitterly. “I’m afraid I don’t have much of a life, here or anywhere else.”

Oh, God, did I real y just say that? I sounded like such a whiner.

“Your daughter…” She nodded with compassion. “And your husband. I’m very sorry, Sophie.”

So. She knew everything.

I inhaled deeply and let it out, and was at least thankful that I didn’t have to explain why my life was such a train wreck.

And how nice to have someone speak the truth and not pretend that everything was okay, when it wasn’t.

I looked down at the damp earth in the garden. “Obviously my mom told you about my recent setbacks.”

“
Setbacks
. That’s an awful y smal word to describe what you’ve been through.” She removed her hat. “And yes, mothers are always monitoring

what’s going on in their children’s lives. Grandmothers, too.”

I managed a melancholy smile. “I wouldn’t know about that. I never knew either of my grandmothers. They both passed away before I was born.”

“You have a sibling, don’t you? A sister?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re close to her?”

“Yes.”

“Wel , that’s a blessing.”

I simply nodded.

We stood quietly for a moment, basking in the sunshine, then continued wandering about the yard. Catherine showed me where she intended to

plant a rhubarb patch.

“Do you think you’l ever go back to work?” she asked. “I used to read your articles in the New Yorker. You’re an excel ent writer.”

I was surprised to hear this. It had been years since anyone mentioned my work. “Thank you. It’s very kind of you to say.” I paused. “Funny…

Sometimes it feels like it was al someone else’s fairy tale.” Because it was a different life, al gone now. “The truth is,” I confessed, “I haven’t felt ready to go back to work, or to do much of anything. Not since Megan…”

Catherine laid her hand on my arm. “It’s completely understandable, Sophie.”

“Is it?” I searched her eyes for answers. “Michael was ready to move on right away. He wanted to have another baby. He mentioned it just before

Megan died. I remember wondering if he had a heart. I asked myself, ‘Who is this man I married?’ but now I wonder if I was the one who had no

heart. Maybe it died with Megan, because I’ve been completely morose. I don’t blame him for leaving.”

The words spil ed out of my mouth too quickly. They were like marbles, bouncing away in al directions. I wanted to chase after them.

Just then, my mother cal ed to us from across the street. “Hel o!”

“Good morning!” Catherine gave me a meaningful look that told me she heard everything I said, and that it was okay. Everything was going to be

okay.

She waved at my mom. “I’m just showing Sophie my flowers!”

Struggling to col ect myself, I glimpsed at the dirt.
Flowers indeed.

“I don’t think she’s figured them out yet!” Catherine added with a grin.

“Figured them out?” I laughed. “Are they that difficult to understand?”

Catherine slid an arm around my waist and squeezed me affectionately. “Flowers can teach us many things, especial y when they’re out of sight,

like these ones are, hiding in the ground.”

She guided me out of the yard and back onto the street. “Now get back to your mother. She hasn’t seen you in a while, and I know how much she’s

missed you. But please come back and see me again later. I would love to talk to you some more. Or if you want, I can just listen. I’m good at that.

Actual y, if you don’t mind, I could use some help moving a shrub.”

I laughed and nodded, then looked across at my mother standing on the veranda in a blue dress that I remembered from my childhood. It was long

out of style now, but I appreciated her effort to take me back to the past with little details like the pink bathrobe with the pompoms, and now this.

I haven’t told you what you really need to know yet, Sophie, and it has nothing to do with your father….

Suddenly I was impatient to hear the rest of her story and to discover this hidden truth she had promised me. Maybe it would help me find my way

out of this dark cave I had retreated into, and back to a world where I was once happy and productive.

It was hard to imagine now, but there had once been a time when I rode the wheel of life as wel as anyone. In fact, I rode it like a rol er coaster at a theme park. It had
not
been a fairy tale.

On top of that, I had survived my worst nightmare. I was stil here, wasn’t I? Megan stil believed in me. She knew I could fix this. She
wanted
me to.

So off I went, with a measure of hopeful determination I had not felt in a long time. I crossed the street and approached the gate, never taking my

eyes off my mother’s, while my heart began to pound in a curious, eager rhythm.

The Deep Blue Sea

It was early October in 1968 when the monstrous wave crashed and exploded onto the coastline of my life, changing my future forever.

I had just turned twenty and was in my sophomore year at Wel esley Col ege. Peter and I were stil together. He was working ful -time at his father’s pulp and paper plant in Augusta and was being groomed to eventual y take over the business when the time came.

In my senior year of high school, I had applied to a few col eges around the country, and as a result of my academic record and volunteer work, I

was accepted into Wel esley with a ful scholarship. I was so happy when I opened the letter from that il ustrious school and read the news. I believed it would be my greatest achievement.

It wasn’t, however. There was something else far more important in my future, but I knew nothing of that yet. I was only twenty-one.

For two years, I studied cultures and humanity throughout the world, with a focus on Africa, Latin America and Asia. I completed courses in cross-

cultural studies of family, gender, law, and economics, and in the fal of ’68, I looked forward to graduating with a liberal arts degree in cultural anthropology.

Where life would take me after that, I had no idea. Most of the Wel esley women settled into married life not long after graduation. Some of them

made quite spectacular marriages, in fact, for it was, at that time, the customary ambition for a woman of my age to become a wife and raise a

family.

Perhaps that’s why I was so distracted in my final year. I wasn’t entirely certain I was ready to take that path.

o0o

On a very drizzly Tuesday afternoon, I remember sitting at my desk in my dorm room with a textbook open in front of me. I couldn’t keep my mind on

my studies, however. I kept glancing toward the window, where shiny raindrops pelted against the glass and streamed down in clear, quivering

rivulets onto the stone sil . A wild wind outside was whipping the leaves off the trees and rattling the windowpanes.

Sitting there by the dim light of my flickering desk lamp and watching the violent weather outside put me in a pensive, reflective mood. I thought of Peter. I missed him, of course, but at the same time, al kinds of unsettling images of traditional domesticity began to flash in my mind like slide

photographs on a screen.

A wedding dress. A three-tiered cake. Dinners, dusting, ironing, laundry soap, a burnt chicken in a roasting pan…

My heart began to pound as I sat there, trying so hard to study. I was aware of a growing sense of panic – a panic that quickly turned to desperation.

Frantic thoughts raced through my brain:
I was too young. I hadn’t really lived. I wasn’t ready to close all the doors in front of me and cross that
matrimonial threshold.

Peter, on the other hand, had no reservations about the future, not a single one. He doubted nothing, questioned nothing, and was simply counting

the days until my graduation, when he assumed I would be ready at last to strol down the aisle with a pretty bouquet of flowers in my hands.

He would have married me straight after high school if I hadn’t had my heart set on col ege. He’d agreed to wait, only because he knew I needed to

see and experience some of the world before I settled down. He knew it because he knew me better than anyone.

That didn’t mean he understood it.

And so, I continued to sit there on that rainy afternoon, chewing on a thumbnail while I struggled with my anxiety.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love Peter. I did. I loved him very much. But for as long as I could remember, I’d felt a vague, mysterious longing deep inside me, which frustrated me, because even I didn’t know how to satisfy it. For a while, I thought Wel esley would cure me of this mysterious yearning, but stil , there it was, like the pul of a magnet around my heart.

Tapping the end of my pencil lightly against my lips, I looked down at the smal print on the white pages of my textbook…