Beach Glass (29 page)

“ARE YOU READY, Katy?”

I hear my mother’s voice, but this isn’t a question I need to answer, and the day is so perfect at this moment I’m afraid speaking will disturb it, like ripples making a reflection in water disappear. Outside the wall-long picture window of Carson’s room at the Wakefield mansion, sun makes the blankets of snow draping the grounds glisten. The hedge maze where Carson and I walked and made love is topped in white frosting, held up by a lacy network of brown twigs. The sky is so blue for a late winter’s day in February, as blue as the ocean beyond the garden bedecked with flowers. What a perfect day and place for the wedding I’d dreamed of.

Instead, I’m going to a funeral.

No. No, it’s not a funeral, I remind myself, fighting to keep the tears welling in my eyes from falling. This is supposed to be a celebration of Carson’s life, a life anyone would agree was one well lived and too short, so short I can barely breathe. I smooth down my black dress in a daze, vaguely remembering that my sister chose it for me. She and Celia have been here for a while. I don’t know how long. I don’t remember much after the plane ride home from Mexico, the seat next to me empty.

“Katy,” my mother says softly, but she knows not to say any more as I keep looking out the window. No, Mommy, I’m not ready. No one is ever ready to go to the funeral of the love of her life. But if anyone knows how that feels, it’s my mother.
What a sparkler of a day
, my dad would have said. He said pretty things like that.

After a moment, I feel a soft hand on my shoulder. I look up at my mother, begging her for the strength to get through this. She puts both hands on my shoulders then and draws me up to standing tall. Her grey eyes, which I always thought of as flinty, fill with tears, but her face remains steady. She’s showing me how this is done.

I try to mimic her face while trying not to copy the rest of how she coped with my father’s death. This was what turned her hard. Losing him took her from being a lighthearted, spirited woman to someone who closed herself off to the world. I can’t let that happen to me. Everything that Carson gave me would be lost. That’s all I have left of him.

But right now, to get through this, I need to be like my mother. Not hard, but strong. I reach up and hold her arms, and she holds mine. We stand there, her giving me the strength I need, our faces steady as the tears roll down our cheeks.

“Now,” my mother says, “are you ready, Katy?”

“No,” I say. “Let’s go.”

I have to be strong
, I think as I walk into the tented garden area and see Chandler sobbing in her mother’s arms.
I have to be strong
, I think as Anthea Stanhope, tall, willowy, beautiful even as tears stream down her face, wordlessly embraces me. Her husband stands behind her, ashen, holding one of their four children in his arms.
I have to be strong
, I think as I see Randy and Evan and Juan and even Anya. Her eyes lock with mine for a moment before she looks away.

I take my chair in the front row of the heated white tent, so perfect for a wedding, trying to be strong for myself and everyone else who loved Carson. I sit between my mother and my sister, hearing Vic sniffle, Celia fuss, Ray soothe her. I listen to Evan describe, in a voice choked by crippling survivor’s guilt, how Carson found him, half drowned, in the roiling current. Evan’s surfboard had been ripped from him, the leash snapped. The two men were too much for Carson’s board to take them to the surface, so Carson undid his leash and let go, probably thinking he could make it to sunlight on his own. He gave his surfboard to Evan, and he let go.

My eyes can’t leave the enlarged portrait on the easel. The sea refused to give back its beloved mythical son. In absence of a body to bury, Carson’s face beams out from this photo, larger than life, though as every one of the two hundred or so people gathered here knows, it’s a thin representation of the real man. The photo was taken in Costa Rica by my friend Brigitte, who sits behind me, her hand trembling on my shoulder. Carson shines as the sunset’s tones gild every angle of his handsome features, though the glow of passion that comes from within him is so much brighter.

No, I can’t be strong, and I haven’t learned how to be brave enough to face this. I twist my hands free from the sad clutches of my mother and sister, and I lurch away, as though learning to walk again. When I hear footsteps behind me, I start to run. My mother’s words, “Let her be,” fade quickly away.

I want to hide. I don’t know where I’m going as I run into the mansion, past the caterers setting up for the wake, past so many doors and down a long hallway, and finally I hit a dead end of a door and blindly push into it. It opens, and I slam it shut behind me, my head falling against it as my sobs are finally freed.

“Kate.”

A breath freezes in me. That deep, rich voice.
Carson!
I turn around and see a sight so strange it takes a moment for me to understand. It’s Mr. Wakefield, sitting by the window, with tears streaming down his anguished face.

The only time I met him, during that tense father-and-son showdown here, his steely expression controlled everyone else. I don’t recognize this man as Carson’s domineering father, the ruthless head of an empire. What I see is a broken man. His face crumples as he looks at me.

“My son,” he cries, “Oh, God, my son!”

Seeing Carson’s father weep with such pain reduces me to sobbing like a child, my chest heaving, my fists pushed into my eyes. I don’t see Carson’s father come to me. I feel arms around me, holding me tightly as we both heave sadness.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers, holding me in a fatherly way, and his voice is so full of pain I weep harder into the lapel of his suit.

Mr. Wakefield calms his breathing and clears his throat, trying to be strong for me. “Come, Kate. Sit down,” he says, leading me to a couch by the window of his office. We sit on the burgundy leather, and he produces a white handkerchief from his pocket. I wipe my eyes. His are watery and vacant, too, but he’s focused on me now. “I wish there was something I could say that would help.”

Everything in me hurts, and yet I feel hollow. “I wish there was, too.”

“I could see how much he loved you,” Mr. Wakefield says. He waits a moment. “Kate, there’s something you need to know.”

My head shakes back and forth. “I don’t know if I can take whatever it is, and I can’t think of a thing that would matter.”

“Maybe not now, but in the future, down the road.” Mr. Wakefield trails off. Then he takes my hands. “He left everything to you.”

I look up at him, not understanding.

“Shortly after Carson met you,” Mr. Wakefield continues, “he got in touch with the family lawyers. He told them he’d be getting married soon, and he had them draw up a will. He named you as the sole beneficiary. His trust fund, his stock holdings in Wakefield Media, everything he had, he said, was to go to his wife, Katherine McNamara Wakefield.”

“I don’t care about money.” Tears slip past my closed eyes. “And we never married.” My heart, shattered, somehow manages to break even more. He wanted to elope. I was the one who wanted to wait for our families to be together, united for us. As they are now, but, God, not for this reason.

Mr. Wakefield puts his hand on my shoulder, a polite request for my attention. “I know you didn’t, Kate. I was aware of everything. Where you went, what you were both doing, him drawing up those papers. I knew where he was in Costa Rica and before that.”

I look up again. “You had him followed? And us? But why?”

His chin trembles for a moment before he blurts out, “He was my son!” Mr. Wakefield fights for control as he says, “I wanted to know that he was all right. And yes, I wanted to know who he was with and make sure no one would take advantage of him.” He sighs. “I know what you must think of me. And I know he—” His voice breaks. “My son hated me. But you, Kate,” he says, squeezing my hand, “You brought him such happiness.”

“I wish I believed that.” My voice is a whisper as I fight the tears. “I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t stop him.”

“Kate.” Mr. Wakefield’s face goes stern, more like the way I remember him. “No one could have stopped Carson from doing what he wanted. He inherited the Wakefield drive and stubbornness. Or
 . . .
or perhaps I drove him to it. That’s my burden to bear, Kate, that and all the other mistakes I’ve made with my family that I’ll regret for the rest of my days.” His eyes soften. “My only balm is knowing how happy he was, Kate. How happy you made him. I know you would have married. And I would have been so proud to call you my daughter-in-law.”

WITH QUIET awareness, from the faraway corner in life where I’ve retreated, I see my mother making up for every moment of my childhood that she was distant. She is the perfect combination of strong, sensible, take-charge, and tender. After the service, she ushers me to the backseat of Vic’s car, and she puts my head on her shoulder. She orders Vic to take us back to their apartment and Bethy and Ray to go to my apartment for some of my clothes because I’ll be staying with her and Vic.

“Bring back enough for a month,” my mother says. “Maybe more.”

I don’t object in the way I might normally. This new normal, my life without Carson, is something I want no part of. Right now my world is my head on my mother’s shoulder, tendrils of her steel grey hair touching my face. Her soft hand has a firm grip on mine, though we both know I’ve already fallen so far.

But not as far as I will. Time becomes measured in overheard conversations. Ray telling Bethy he has to get back to work, and her saying she needs to stay here at least a week longer. A few days later, Ray comes in to say goodbye to me, but he doesn’t say anything for a while, knowing there is nothing to say, nothing I want to hear. My brother-in-law sits on the edge of my bed, kindly holding my hand. Then he tells me he loves me, kisses my forehead, and leaves.

Another day, another overheard conversation. It’s one-sided, my mother on the phone with, I guess after a few moments, my agent or the publisher of my book. No, she says, Katy can’t do any press for
Spirit.
I close my eyes. Writing a book was something I’d waited my whole life to do. The victory is empty now that I have no beloved to share it with. Mom didn’t consult me about this decision, but she’s right. How can I possibly talk about the resilience of the human spirit when mine is broken?

I know when Bethy curls up in my old bed next to me, just as she used to when we were small, that she has to tell me she’s going home. She puts her arm around me, and I take her hand and tuck it under my chin.

“Ray needs you,” I say, relieving her of the burden of finding the right way to say goodbye. “Celia needs her mommy back.”

“He and I talked,” Bethy says, her voice quiet and near. “We want you to spend a few months with us. We have the spare room. It would be good, Katy. Good for Celia to have her auntie. And good for me to have my sister.”

And good for me
, I think, though the thought of travel, remembering that empty seat next to me on the plane, is inconceivable. “Okay.”

My answer elicits a sigh of relief, and Bethy kisses my temple.

I wake up to voices from the kitchen, Vic talking to Mom. “She’s not eating. She has to eat something. Would she want split pea soup?”

I pull up the blankets over my head. My stomach both rumbles and rolls, like I’m seasick.

SLOWLY, I START making brief visits with life, feeling my way from my bedroom to Mom’s living room like something that has been hibernating gingerly, tentatively emerging from a cave. It’s exhausting, because I don’t sleep well. My dreams are vivid and unexpectedly sweet, always about some loving moment with Carson, and I wake up excited, thinking I’m going to see him. Then I remember. I can’t fall asleep for hours after that. So sometimes, I just migrate from the bed to the couch. It’s a long trip.

Eventually, I make it to the dining table, which causes Vic to say a prayer of thanks as he goes into action in the kitchen. But I have a strange aversion to certain foods. All I want is mashed potatoes, so Vic makes them for me in abundance. He gradually adds small amounts of things like roast beef, glazed carrots. They taste metallic, but I eat some just to make that worried look on Mom’s and Vic’s faces go away for a while. But one morning, after much urging from my mother, I just manage to get down the scrambled eggs Vic made for me before I have to run to the bathroom to put my head in the toilet.

“I
told
you,” I admonish my mother, wiping my mouth with a tissue, “I wasn’t hungry.”

I expect a terse reply about how I have to keep up my strength, but my mother just stares at me as I lean on the bathroom sink to get to my feet. She’s been looking at me intently since she brought me home with her, but this time, she’s examining me. She looks at my face and then all up and down my body.

“Katy,” she whispers. “Are you pregnant?”

I DREAM ABOUT Carson again that night.

The dreams have been fleeting but so wonderful. A touch. His smile. I’ll think I hear the laugh that starts from deep in his chest. But every now and then, I dream about the day I wiped out. That’s what happens tonight as I drift from my world to his.

These dreams start with me being churned in slow motion by the water. When I first started having them, Carson reached me and pulled me to the surface. But each time the dream recurred, he was a little further away, and it took him longer to get to me. Tonight, when I have the dream again, he’s so far away that we both know he isn’t going to reach me in time. I’m drowning, and he can’t save me.

Anything is possible in dreams, and anything is possible for dreamers. So even though we’re both underwater, I can hear Carson speak as clearly as though he were right next to me.

Swim, Kate,
he says, giving me that beautiful smile I live for.
You have to swim.