Lucy by the Sea (Amgash, #4)(21)

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At five in the morning we took off. William had gotten up at four-thirty and gone outside, and by the light of the porch he put our New York license plates back on the car. We drove quietly for a long part of the way, and I actually fell asleep for a few minutes. When I woke up the sun was streaming through the trees. As we got farther south the trees were all a darker green than they were in Maine; it was a beautiful day. There was not much traffic. We stopped at a rest area, and we each ate one of the sandwiches I had made, and then William peed in the woods, and I did too.

As we finally got to Connecticut and pulled into the town—it is a small town in southern Connecticut—William tossed me a mask and said, “Put that on.” So I did. In much of the town the houses were small, ordinary-looking, but the street where Melvin and Barbara lived was lined with huge trees, with all their leaves shining brightly in the sun. And right before we pulled into the driveway—the house was a large one, set back from the road, it had a Tudor look to it—William stopped the car and put on a mask as well. Then he called Chrissy. “We’re here,” he said when she answered, and I heard her yell, “Where? You’re here? Wait, Dad, you’re here?”

“Come on out,” he said, “because we’re not coming in.”



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And there was Chrissy, walking out the front door. She looked unbelievably beautiful to me, there was a glow to her face as she put on her mask, and Michael came behind her, waving his hand, and then dear Becka came out and she looked so different, I could hardly believe it was her. Her hair had grown long, way over her shoulders, and it was slightly curly and she had lost a little bit of weight, and she looked older. “Becka!” I called, and she smiled and said, “Hi, Mom.”

“Chrissy!” I said. Oh God how I wanted to hug them! “Dad says no hugging,” I said.

“He’s right,” Chrissy said, but she blew me kisses. Becka and Michael both put on masks that they had been holding in their hands.

And we stood there, the five of us, and it was very strange.



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Michael said that his father had called twenty minutes ago, they were on their way from the airport. “Okay,” said William. He nodded and said, “I will do my best, Michael. I hope you will excuse me, but I am going to try my best.”

“Good luck,” said Michael; he said this with defeat. And William said, “I know.”



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I could not stop looking at the girls; they were so grown-up-appearing, and they seemed a little awkward, as though they did not know what to do with us. So I said, “Let’s sit by the pool,” and so we all went over to the pool, which still had its cover on from way back before Michael’s parents had gone to Florida before the pandemic. It was like a trampoline—the cover, I mean—only stuck into the ground with thick peg-like things. But there were plastic chairs around it and we arranged the chairs far apart and we sat down. Becka had a seriousness to her eyes, oh God, she broke my heart, but she seemed okay. Or perhaps she was pretending to be okay, I don’t know, but Becka has never been able to pretend, is what I mean. I desperately wanted to speak to each child alone. “Becka,” I said, “tell me how you are.”

“I’m okay,” she said, and I thought, Oh my God, she is lying, but she looked at me then and I saw—I thought I saw—a new maturity in her face, although with the mask on it was hard to know. “Please don’t worry about me, Mom,” she said. “I’m really okay.” And then her eyes got very bright as she started to tell me about her work; she said how there was so much to do, because with all the schools closed there had been a rise in domestic abuse, but it wasn’t getting reported enough, and she told me what she did on the computer about these things, and I was very interested and yet I could not quite listen, I could only watch her eyes, and how she flicked her hair back over her shoulder in a way that was new to me. And yet she was Becka through and through.

And then Chrissy, who is a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said she had tons and tons of work to do because with all the lockdowns they had to be careful about people’s civil rights, and I noticed that William did not say anything to her as she spoke about this. But then he said, “Good for you, Chrissy.”

A breeze made a green leaf scuttle across the pool’s covering.

And then I asked Michael how his work was—he is an investor—and he said, “Man, it is just absolutely fucking crazy out there right now.” And I said I understood.



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Just as I was saying that, a black car pulled into the driveway and we all stood up hurriedly and walked toward the long circular driveway, and after a moment Melvin got out of the backseat; he was wearing kelly green slacks and a pink polo shirt, and then Barbara got out, she looked skinnier than ever, wearing a canvas hat, and Melvin took off his sunglasses and squinted in our direction and said, “What the—” Then he broke into a smile and said, “Hey—you two!” He stuck his hand out to shake William’s hand.

I have always liked Melvin. He has a charm to him, he is youthful-looking, and I always sort of felt bad that he was married to Barbara, who I thought was never—since I had known her—a happy woman.