The Probable Future
Page 119

Either way, Matt had been hired by the town to cut down the seedlings that cropped up around the boathouse each spring, making it difficult for people to get their canoes into the water. He’d defended his thesis and accepted the job at the college. In the fall, someone else would have to be hired to clear away the fallen branches on the Elliots’ property and bag the leaves on the common. Someone else would have to plow snow this coming winter, and then in April to power-wash the pine pollen off the sidewalks around Town Hall and the library. But at this time of year there would always be enough work for two men; next May, when classes let out, Matt would be back here at the boathouse, cutting down peach saplings, working so hard the only thing he’d hear was the echo of his own breathing, a steady rhythm.
Jenny took her latest paintings out of the picnic basket and arranged them in the grass. There was a girl with black hair. There was a garden where everything was green, except for a single azure bloom, hydrangea blue, sky blue, blue as the water had been when the marsh was a deep inlet where peach saplings destined for Boston Harbor had floated. Just last night, Jenny had experienced a dream that was filled with a strange pattern of red and blue lines, not unlike a spider’s web. It wasn’t until she painted the dream that she realized it was a human heart. It was her mother’s life in color, in scarlet and indigo. Now, in the marsh, Jenny lay down with Matt for a few minutes in the grass. Her own heart beat ridiculously fast when she was beside him. Love was like that, like a dream you didn’t quite understand, one in which you didn’t necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you.
Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything, even to someone at the very end of their life, such as Elinor Sparrow. The more Elinor slept, the more she dreamed, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still attached to this world. It was too late for medicine, for intervention, for hope, but it was not too late to give some things away. To her daughter, she gave the dreams of her youth. To her granddaughter, she gave Rebecca’s bell, so she would never be silenced.
Sometimes Stella sat by her grandmother’s bed and held her hand, and it was the only attachment Elinor Sparrow had to this world: the thread that pulled her back. Sometimes Jenny brought her water or tea, and this was the only attachment: the needle that pulled the thread. Sometimes it was Brock Stewart, carrying her out to the garden so she could feel sunlight, and this was the attachment she had to this world, the cloth that covered her and held her in place, so that she stayed with them like a leaf caught between branches, rattling, paper-thin, so translucent you could see right through into the next world.
But even those who are barely attached have their worries. Elinor fretted about what would happen to Argus after she passed on. If no one stayed on in Cake House, where would he go?
“When I die, you’ll have to take him,” she told Brock one day in the garden. She’d been dreaming of Argus. He was a puppy who refused to be separated from her. She tied him to a desk and told him to stay, and he just pulled the furniture along as he trailed after.
“Another animal that refuses to die? Elly, you can’t do that to me. I just got rid of Sooner.”
“Sorry. It’s done. I bequeath him to you.”
“Ah, Argus.” The doctor leaned to rub the faithful dog’s head. “Live well, but don’t live much longer.”
Elinor laughed. “You mean, mean man.”
“I’m cruel,” the doctor agreed. “I’m sure my cooking would kill the poor boy in no time flat, since he’s used to your chicken and rice.”
For so long Elinor had felt nothing, it still was a surprise to feel so much now. Anyone would think that being empty inside would make a person feel light, but in fact it brought with it a terrible heaviness. It was as though her bones had been made of iron all these years, her shoes made of lead. Only now, sitting with Brock in the garden, with Argus dozing at their feet, did Elinor slip off those shoes. The grass felt warm on her toes. Almost summer. Was that a dream, or was it real? She blinked back the sunlight.
“Where do you think old Sooner is now?” Elinor asked of the doctor’s horse.
“He’s still in my field. He’s in the earth. In the grass.”
The doctor turned and wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands.
“Who would have guessed you’d be crying over that old hay bag.”
But that wasn’t it at all, Elinor saw that from the look on his face when he turned to her. That was the attachment, that was the way he held on to her.