“I’ll come see you,” I promised. “I’ll write.”
I felt him nod as he held me.
“You have to write back,” I said. I was crying again, as overwhelmed with happiness and hope as I’d been with sorrow. “Real letters, okay? With your tiny little handwriting.”
He set me down on my feet. “You know that bear you gave me?” When I nodded, he said, “I’ve still got it. I kept it, every time we moved, everywhere we went.”
My heart felt like it was overflowing, like it would burst out of my chest.
“I love you,” I said, not caring that I’d said it first. He kissed my lips, kissed my cheek, and then, so low that I could barely hear it, said, “I love you too.”
PART II
Somebody’s Baby
Rachel
1995
Even barefoot in her kitchen, in the loose-fitting clothes that she never wore out of the house, Nana looked stylish. Her fingernails were polished, her loose linen pants were crisp, and around her left wrist she wore a silver bracelet with a black pearl set in the center, a souvenir from a long-ago trip to Tahiti.
“I’m not saying no,” she told me from her perch on the step stool. “I’m saying that it’s a big decision. Your first love is important. It’s part of your story. The story you’ll tell yourself, the one you’ll tell about yourself, for the rest of your life.” Nana had just returned from her latest trip, a three-week sojourn on a slow-moving barge that took her from Bruges to Paris, with stops at castles and vineyards, tulip fields and the formal Keukenhof garden. She’d come back with painted wooden clogs and a snow-filled glass globe with a miniature windmill inside. I had a snow globe from every place she’d been, from every trip she’d taken since I was born.
“I know,” I said. My face felt hot and my throat was constricted. After two years of phone calls and letters, I couldn’t believe that there was a chance that Andy and I would finally see each other . . . and I was pretty sure of what would happen when we did. “He’s wonderful. I’ll introduce you. You’ll like him. I know you will.”
“Whether I like him isn’t what matters.” Her feet were bare, her toenails, as always, neatly shaped and painted. She was vain about her tiny, narrow feet with their high arches.
“His name is Andy,” I began.
“I know his name,” said Nana as she stretched to hang one of the densely patterned blue-and-white Delft plates on the wall above her stove. While she was barging, she’d had her kitchen redone. The floors were squares of creamy white marble, with matching marble countertops and a stainless-steel stove and refrigerator. It had sounded sterile and chilly when she’d described it—the white paint on the cabinets, all that gleaming metal—but there were touches of color that warmed the space. A seaglass-green vase on the table held a bunch of bright daffodils. Hanging on the walls were plates from her travels to Portugal and Italy and Greece, inlaid ceramics and glazed pottery.
“And you know where I met him, and you know we’ve been talking for two years.” Nana also knew that I had begged my parents to let me see him. I’d told them I would take a plane or a train, or even a bus, that I would pay for the trip with my own money, that if I stayed with Andy his mother would be there and nothing bad would happen. Finally, in utter desperation, I’d told them that they could take me to Philly themselves and chaperone us around the city, watching as we dutifully inspected the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall. They’d turned me down every time, no matter how insistently I’d asked, no matter how good I’d been. No matter how hard I’d worked to bring my math grade from a B to an A-minus, or that I was volunteering at the Playtime Project, where homeless children came to the JCC once a week to swim and play.
Senior year, I’d started campaigning for Andy to be my prom date. He had enough money to come down by bus and even stay in a hotel, but my parents refused that, too.
“There are plenty of nice boys right here in Clearview,” my mother would say from her seat at the dinner table, and my father, from his place at the head, would nod and say, “Helen’s right,” before reaching for the platter of chicken or grilled fish. Nana was my last chance, my only hope. Graduation was a month away and she was taking me on what she called the Grand Tour—Rome and Florence, Paris and London. It had been Andy’s suggestion that I ask if we could stop in Philadelphia first. It’s a big airport, he’d told me. Lots of international flights leave from here.
“He’s very mature,” I told Nana. “He’s got two jobs—a paper route in the morning, and then he works in a bowling alley three nights a week. He’s going to Oregon on a full athletic scholarship.” None of which impressed my parents. They cared about grades and SAT scores, not about sports. When I’d asked if I could apply to Oregon, they’d told me absolutely not on that front, too. “There are plenty of good schools on this side of the country,” said my mother, without adding that not only did she want me close to home, she also wanted me close to the doctors who’d been caring for me all my life. “Helen’s right,” my father would echo, from his spot at the card table in the corner, where he did crossword puzzles and Sudoku.