The Other Life (36 page)

“How about today?” she said.

His eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Really.”

That morning, Quinn had finally called Ellis Everett, the art dealer, and told him he could have a number of her mother’s paintings to sell on consignment. She would keep the landscape Nan had been working on when she died and hang it over the sofa in the living room. Hayden would get his portrait, which he wanted to put in the guest room in his apartment, but Cordell insisted it go on the wall in their bedroom, right over his computer. Her father wanted to hang his portrait in his Florida home. Quinn was still deciding what to do with
The Wall
, the painting of mother and daughter together yet apart. She didn’t want to give it to Ellis, but she couldn’t bring herself to hang it in her home as a constant reminder of her mother’s suicide. Perhaps she would get it framed and leave it in the studio until she could figure out where it belonged.

“Can I have the easel, too?” Isaac said as he dashed into the sundrenched room.

“I don’t see why not,” Quinn said. She and Lewis were planning to finish the basement in their home and turn it into a playroom, and she could imagine making one corner of it a studio for Isaac. It wouldn’t have the lovely natural light of her mother’s space, of course, but it would do.

“Are we taking Nana’s paintings?” he asked.

She looked around at the stacks of framed canvases lining the room. “Afraid not,” she said. “Most of them are going to be sold.”

He looked surprised—almost affronted. “To strangers?”

She nodded. “Art lovers.”

He thought about that for a moment and seemed satisfied with the response. “Can I look at them?”

“Of course.”

Quinn helped her son go through the stacks of paintings on the floor, most of which were landscapes. When they got to one that looked like a depiction of Jones Beach bathed in winter light, she pulled it out. In the foreground there was a pale gray shack with a sign by the door that said LIFEGUARDS ONLY. Early-morning shadows stretched long on the sand, and the sky and sea seemed to go on forever.

“What do you think of this?” she asked.

“I can smell the beach,” he said.

Quinn laughed. “I think I can, too.”

“I like it,” he said, tilting his head in a way that made Quinn want to squeeze him.

“Do you want to keep it? We could hang it in your room.”

Isaac clapped his hands, and Quinn turned over the canvas to read the back. There was a label that said
Morning Light on Empty Beach.

She went through the rest of the paintings with him, enjoying his reactions. Quinn explained that they would get to keep slides of all the pictures, so he would be able to look at them whenever he wanted.

“Uncle Hayden!” he squealed when they got to a stack of unframed canvases.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s pretty.”

She laughed. “Pretty? I guess it is.”

She showed him the portrait of her father and tried to quickly pass over the painting of her and Nan, together yet apart, but Isaac stopped her.

“Wait,” he said. “That’s you.”

“Right,” she said. “And Nana’s on the stool.”

“I think she’s waiting for you,” he said.

Quinn didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Lately, she had been trying to comfort herself with the idea that her mother’s spirit would always be with her. But the reminder that she would never again see her in the flesh brought fresh pain.

“Mommy, are you crying?”

“A little bit.”

“Why?”

She swallowed over the swelling in her throat. “Because . . . I miss her.”

“I think we should take this painting instead of the beach one,” he said.

This was hard. Isaac wanted the picture. Her mother probably wanted her to have it. And yet. “I don’t know, kiddo,” she said.

“But it’s my favorite,” he said.

“Why is it your favorite?”

He furrowed his small brow and licked his dry lips. “When I look at this, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe you’ll go in the door and maybe you won’t. It’s like the beginning of a story.”

“I never thought of it that way,” she said, and it was true—she hadn’t. Quinn stared at the picture and thought about taking it home. Could she possibly appreciate this painting as something other than a suicide note? Could it even be a comfort, reminding her of the choices she and her mother had both made?

Quinn pulled the canvas from its place in the stack and placed it on the easel so that it was eye level. She took a few steps back to get a better look.

“Can we take it, Mom? Can we take it instead of the beach picture? Please?”

Quinn continued staring at the picture—at her mother’s face, looking directly at her. It did, in fact, seem as if Nan were waiting for something.

“No,” she said to Isaac as she walked back and removed the painting. She put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll take both.”

 

 

WITH NO PORTAL to distract her and bed rest no longer mandatory, Quinn’s days were filled with the normal, albeit scaled-back, activities of a wife and mother. But she allowed herself the indulgence of occasional trips to the store, preparing for Naomi’s arrival with secret optimism. She didn’t dare tell anyone and risk looks of concern and pity. She wanted none of it. Quinn believed with all her heart that she would bring baby Naomi home from the hospital. She didn’t know how sick she might be, but she knew they would get to love her.

She picked out a soft cream paint color for the walls of the nursery, and bought pale pink valances for the windows to match the patchwork bumper set she had chosen for the crib. The tiny outfit she had worn the day her parents brought her home had been washed, wrapped in tissue paper, and set in a drawer.

Throughout all this, Quinn pictured her mother at her side, and imagined her reactions and encouragement. She wondered if perhaps she was doing it a little too much. Shouldn’t she, after all, be experiencing some sort of closure? Maybe she needed to take a trip to the cemetery and say good-bye again . . . this time for good.

On a December morning bright with bitter cold, Quinn drove to the New Montefiore Cemetery in eastern Long Island to visit her mother’s grave. The tombstone was a simple gray block of granite that read:

Quinn picked up a smooth rock and placed it on top. She ran her gloved fingers over the year of death and looked around. There was little life on the grounds that day. In the distance ahead of her a couple stood over a grave. Beyond them someone who might have been a caretaker was kneeling, perhaps picking up trash. Quinn pulled her scarf over her nose and mouth and hugged herself against the breeze.

She heard car doors shut and looked to her right. Several rows down, a hearse and cars were pulling over, and people were getting out, slamming the doors and walking slowly toward the grave of the loved one being lowered into the ground.

Quinn pulled off her glove and touched her mother’s name, as if there might be some magic in the engraved letters. But it was just stone.

A woman at the burial cried out in anguish and the wind carried the sound across the flat terrain. Quinn recognized the pain. It came from the place where loss met fury.
It’s all so unfair,
the cry seemed to say.
I love this person too much for her to be gone.

That was exactly how Quinn felt when her mother was buried. Now, though, the fury was gone. Her sorrow was mixed with gratitude.

Quinn kissed her fingers and touched her mother’s name.

“Love you, Mom,” she said. “Thank you.”

AT BREAKFAST the following Sunday, Lewis announced that it would be an unseasonably mild day for December—a rare gift of warmth just before the weather turned coldest.

“We should take advantage of it,” he said. “Do something outdoors.”

“The zoo?” Quinn suggested.

“The beach!” Isaac said.

His parents looked at him.

“Not quite
that
warm, buddy,” Lewis said.

Quinn smiled. “I think we should go.”

“Are you serious?” Lewis asked.

“Just to see the light,” she said. “Like that painting my mother made,
Morning Light on Empty
Beach.”

“It’ll be empty,” Lewis said, “that’s for sure.”

A short while later, wearing extra layers to compensate for the wind off the ocean, they piled into the car and headed to Jones Beach, cruising past the toll booths, which were closed for the season. They pulled into a lot, which would have been packed on a summer day. Today, there were only two other cars in the vast, lonely field.

They didn’t bring much for this outing. Lewis had a single folding chair strapped to his back. It was for Quinn, who wasn’t supposed to take long walks without resting. She was carrying a small tote bag containing a thermos filled with hot chocolate in case they got cold, a digital camera, and a paperback. Isaac held a football.

“It’s cloudy,” Quinn said, disappointed that the long, dramatic shadows of her mother’s painting were nowhere in sight.

Lewis looked up. “It’ll pass,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

They walked toward the water and looked out at the ocean, which put on a grand show. The waves rose and crashed, rose and crashed, as if intent on demonstrating the power and chaos of nature. It was humbling, beautiful. Lewis stood in the middle, one arm around his wife and the other around his son. Quinn had her hand on her belly, feeling Naomi react to the strange, rhythmic sounds.

Isaac looked up and down the shoreline, and then pointed to something in the distance.

“Is that it?” he asked.

Quinn followed the line of his finger, but couldn’t figure out what he was pointing at.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“That,” he insisted. “That little building.”

“You mean the lifeguard shack? From Nana’s painting?”

He nodded. “That’s it, right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s take a walk and find out.”

“You sure you’re up for this?” Lewis asked.

“It’s not that far,” she said. “And, besides, you’ve got the chair. I could always stop and rest.”

They walked along the beach, listening to the ocean, occasionally stopping to inspect an interesting shell or stone, a few of which found their way into Isaac’s pockets. When they reached the little building, they walked around it and sure enough there was a stenciled sign by the door that said LIFEGUARDS ONLY. Beneath it there was a bit of unintelligible graffiti, but other than that it looked exactly like the one in Nan’s painting.

“This is it!” Isaac said, excited. He ran back a few feet and looked at it from a distance. “Come here! Look!”

Quinn and Lewis stood behind him to view the shack from his perspective. Sure enough, he had found the right spot. Quinn snapped a few pictures so that they could compare it with the painting when they got home.

“You think there are any sharks in the water?” Isaac asked, and it was clear to Quinn he was done with the shack, ready to focus his excitement on something else.

Lewis set up the folding chair for Quinn, and she sat while he and Isaac threw the football back and forth. She took out her paperback and started to read, getting absorbed in the story. After a few minutes, a drop of moisture hit the page. Spray from the ocean, Quinn assumed, and kept reading. But she saw another spot and then another, appearing as if out of nowhere.

Quinn looked at her husband and son, who had stopped playing ball and were staring into the sky. She realized why her pages were getting wet.

It was snowing.

Tiny white specks quickly gave way to great flakes falling everywhere—the sea, the sand, the shack. Snow on the beach! The little family was surrounded. It drifted downward like magic confetti, melting on contact. It was so unexpected, it made Quinn laugh. Her husband laughed, too, and then Isaac joined in. Lewis hadn’t predicted a snow shower. No one had. It was that very element of surprise that made it so wondrous. Quinn closed her book and turned her face toward the sky. Snow on a mild day in December may have fallen short of being a miracle, but to Quinn, Lewis, and Isaac, it felt like a gift sent just for them . . . a hiccup in nature that delivered as much joy as a family chose to receive.