The Last Romantics(93)
Renee shrugged. “I guess I am,” she said. “I’ve been very lucky. In some ways.”
Caroline rushed on. “I mean, I know I’ve been lucky, too. I love my kids. They’re healthy, they’re happy. But ever since Joe, I have this dread, even more than before. Worse than the normal parenting dread. This terror. What if something happens? It’s like having your heart walking around outside your body, no protection, just at the mercy of the world. It’s awful.” Caroline laughed. “I mean, don’t worry. I’m on Xanax. I’m not going to lock them in a closet or anything.”
“Can the kids come to my next reading?” I asked. “KGB Bar in two weeks.” They were all teenagers now, frequent visitors to the city, Caroline had told us, urbane and generally bored with life in the suburbs.
“Yes, they’d love it,” Caroline said, and then she grimaced. “I can’t believe I’m the only one with kids.”
“Don’t look at me,” I said, and held up my hands. “Will’s already had the snip.” I made a scissoring motion with my hand, and Caroline laughed.
We both turned to Renee, but she wasn’t smiling. “No,” she said, and slowly shook her head. “Jonathan and I decided a long time ago. We’re too busy. And besides, I think becoming a parent would limit me.” Renee said these words carefully, thoughtfully. She was looking at Caroline with a clinical, cold eye. An appraisal of all the decisions Caroline had made and all that Caroline stood for.
Caroline said nothing, but her cheeks flushed red as though she’d been slapped. There seemed in her a sliver of shakiness, as though one side of her face had been drawn by a child. It would never disappear, never entirely. Today marked the first time I became aware of it.
Renee must have seen it, too. “No.” She held out a hand to Caroline. “I don’t mean it that way. You’ve . . . you’ve adapted to it. The kids are so wonderful. For you the sacrifices are worth it.”
Renee was just digging the hole deeper, I thought. Caroline still looked stunned. I worried that she might cry or run out of the restaurant, that we would return to how we’d been—separate, silent, the three of us alone. But Caroline looked down at her lap, shook her head, laughed.
“Renee,” she said, and she was truly smiling, a wisdom there. A tolerance. “Becoming a mother is the most expansive thing you can do. But it’s an experience you can’t really explain. I won’t even try.”
Then she turned to me and clapped her hands fast and said, “I’m going to plant a tree. A tree for Joe.”
“What kind?” I asked.
“Lilac,” Caroline said. “It reminds me of Joe. It’s tall with these big clumps of flowers that smell so good. Purple and green. Those were the Mavericks’ colors, remember?”
I nodded. Of course I remembered. Joe in the Mavericks uniform, tight green pants, purple baseball cap with that slanting M in bright green. Yes, a lilac tree. That was perfect.
We left the restaurant, blinking into the light of the day as though exiting a casino, recognizing what we had almost lost. We swayed a bit, from the wine and emotion, and then formed a tripoint hug in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Jesus, ladies,” a man barked as he walked around us. We ignored him.
And so three weeks after our lunch, on a beautiful morning in June, Will and I met Jonathan and Renee at Grand Central Station, and together we took the train to Hamden.
Caroline served us all wild salmon and a salad made from lettuces she and the kids had grown in their own raised beds in the yard. We sat outside, the long patio table set with Caroline’s colorful napkins and yellow tablecloth. There was wine, lemonade, a cake—Joe’s cake—that Noni and Caroline had baked together. Louis, Beatrix, and Lily threw a Frisbee and helped Caroline in the kitchen.
That year I had published my first book of poetry, The Lasts, and it had done well, at least by the low-achieving standards for a poetry book. As part of the tree ceremony, I read one poem—“The Last Tree Climbed”—about the locust in Noni’s front yard that, at the age of twenty-eight, the last Christmas before the accident, I had climbed with Joe on a bright, cold day.
And then Caroline, Renee, and I took turns with the shovel, digging the hole, maneuvering the young lilac into place. Already it had begun to flower, not the weighty purple clumps Caroline had been hoping for—those would come in later years—but even these delicate blossoms produced the most intoxicating scent.
Chapter 17
For a decade this was how we were: Renee and Jonathan in their West Village apartment, both of them sought after in their fields, frequent travelers, spending layover weekends in Berlin or London or Hong Kong. They became glamorous, in a sensible, intellectual way, she in medicine, he in design. They spoke at benefit galas and before groups of the young and talented. The travel and work, the possessions and experience—Renee had been lucky, so much luckier than she ever imagined she’d be. Caroline was right.
Will and I remained determined in our careers and committed in our marriage. We moved out of New York City at last and into a farmhouse, of all things, in the quaint commuter town of Croton-on-Hudson. Deer in the backyard, snowshoes at Christmas, a refrigerator in our basement that held only wine. I continued work on The Love Poem, the book that would define my career, publishing some pieces first on Instagram, where I found a vibrant poetry community and, over time, hundreds of thousands of followers. After Homer’s retirement, I was made editorial director of ClimateSenseNow!, and I felt at home in the role.