I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(27)
Without taking his eyes off the planter, Zach nodded. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. We’ll talk later.”
He swiveled his head to catch my eye. “Okay? Later. Soon.”
I didn’t speak or move, just regarded him blankly, through the screen, then watched as he jogged out of the yard. As I listened to Ian’s car pull out fast, tires whining, and blast off through my pretty, sleepy, tree-lined neighborhood, there it was at last, unmistakable, ribboning like a cool, bright stream up through my chest, trickling down my legs and arms: relief.
Chapter Nine
Edith
Edith didn’t fit.
She had not fit before, plenty of times, although she was nearly positive that she had never been regarded as odd, not full-blown odd anyway. Aloof was what she usually got, even occasionally—ridiculously—mysterious, her sort of looks somehow taking the more accurate adjective shy out of contention. Although even shy wasn’t quite right. The truth was that Edith had always done her best within a clearly defined context. School. Nursing school. Work. She could talk—could even be funny or clever—when there was something real to talk about: books, tests, teachers, current events, music, patients, cases. Concepts. Edith could get downright voluble about concepts. Evolutionary theory. Communism. Fascism. Ethics.
She could talk to the grocer about vegetables, to the butcher about meat. She had talked to her father about birds, fungi, tides, bees, ants, the phases of the moon, predator and prey, the cycle of life.
When she fell in love with Joseph, she discovered, for the first time, her gift for telling a story, for finagling beauty and humor and weirdness out of the everyday with the right detail, the proper metaphor.
But coffees, cocktail parties, neighborhood barbecues, all these seemed to her like games the rules of which she’d never learned. Conversations reminded her of the time when, as a little girl, she tried to catch tadpoles with her fingers, the subject matter darting and slippery, wriggling away at the last second. Her confusion turned her, not fluttery, but blunt, keeping quiet, then tossing a comment like a stone, sending the tadpoles skittering off. In the ungainly silence that followed, the other women would sip their drinks, bite into a canapé or deviled egg, telegraphing Poor Joseph, what an odd bird his wife is to each other with their eyes.
But for Joseph’s sake, she kept trying. In truth, Edith would’ve spent her days with only her husband. To her, his body alone was a world—rippling, bristling, full of weather, flavors, seasons, never the same two days in a row—and their private sphere of house, yard, marshes, bay, ocean, beach was an entire universe. Both were enough to command her rapt attention, to fire her imagination, to bring her joy for a thousand lifetimes. Honestly, the idea of wanting to spend time with people one did not love absolutely mystified her. But Joseph liked company, small talk, sharing food. Magnetic, gregarious, he drew people to him and was drawn in return. And he wanted her with him, so she went.
But she never fit. Even looking like everyone else eluded her. All her life, she had never managed polish or tidiness, never, even as a child, been perky or pretty or cute. She’d understood—because she had been told—that she was a certain kind of beautiful, with her long, angular face, her strong brows, curving mouth, dark, feathery lashed eyes, but, distracted by books and animal tracks, mud, water, insects, and bones, and half in love with loneliness, she had never cared. A gangly girl, now she stood tall, narrow hipped, broad shouldered, leggy as a heron. In an era of things staying in place, of starch and hairspray, she was loosely gathered, pieces of her forever apt to ravel, crease, fly away. In the salt air, her long bob uncurled, tangled in wind. Her lipstick smudged.
At home, she went without makeup, lived in blue jeans and Joseph’s shirts, her hair held off her face with a scarf. In the beginning, when they first fell in love, for the first month perhaps, her beauty mattered to her as it never had before. She loved her face because Joseph did, because it was something she could give him, but it was as if once she had handed it over to him, had given it into his keeping for good, she forgot about it. When he photographed her, he laughed because she never posed, never offered the planes of her cheeks to the light, never even remembered to look into the camera. Instead, she watched him, cherishing each piece of him with her attention, his hands holding the camera, his brown hair falling on his forehead, the shell-curve of his ear, the way the collar of his shirt opened to reveal, like a secret, the triangle of skin at the base of his throat.
Chapter Ten
Clare
The morning after Zach’s nighttime visit, he texted me a long, sad apology that made me ache for him and that ended: I messed up like I messed up at the lake house. It’s like I have this well of anger inside me and I don’t know how exactly it got there and I don’t know how to cap it so that nothing gets out. But I think I can learn, especially when it comes to getting angry at you. Because god Clare I know you deserve better and I understand why you’d run away from a person like me. But I still wished you’d stayed. I know you could fix me if you were here.
I texted back: I messed up, too, Zach, so badly. But I really believe you don’t need me to change the things you want to change about yourself. You’re smart and strong and good enough to do it on your own. I hope I am, too.