The Rules of Love & Grammar (10 page)

I don't know what to say to this. Is he referring to Sean's breakup with Sydney Parker or to something else? Does he think Sean needs to be protected, or does he think I do?

Before I can ask, Peter says, “I wanted to thank you before, for the song, but you ran off. That's the best birthday present I've gotten in a long time.”

“Really? You didn't think it was too much?”

“No. I think it was just perfect. Nobody's ever put so much heart into singing ‘Happy Birthday' to me before.” He rubs his hand lightly across my cheek. Then he walks me down the stairs, picking up the sandals as we near the bottom of the staircase. “Your shoes, m'lady?” He gestures for me to sit down. His hands feel warm as he takes my right foot, slides it into the sandal, and then does the same with my left foot. Everything inside me tingles.

We stand up, and he looks into my eyes. “I'd love to see you again, Grace—just the two of us.”

“I'd like that as well,” I say, barely able to speak.

“And you'll have to come to the set. You can see what I do.”

The set. See what he does. That sounds wonderful. “Sure. That's a great idea.”

“Why don't you give me your number?” He pulls out his cell phone and enters the number as I recite it. “Now I know how to find you,” he says. “Although I would have hunted you down if I'd needed to. I know where you are.”

He smiles, and I feel as if I'm back in middle school, in Spanish class, the first time he ever spoke to me.
¿Dónde está tu libro?
he'd asked.
Where is your book?
I'd left my Spanish book at home, a careless mistake that turned out to be a coup because I got to look on with Peter for the entire fifty-minute class.

“Yes, I'm staying with my folks,” I say.

“On the point,” he says. “I remember.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he looks around the foyer, at the staircase with the ebony banister, at the antique chandelier hanging like a planet in orbit, twenty feet above us. He nods. “I remember.”

 

I
drag the beach umbrella from the garage, its yellow and white stripes faded, dust rubbing onto my shorts. Mom picks up the collapsible chairs and puts them in the canvas bag with the water bottles and the sunscreen.

“You know I don't watch much TV,” she says as we walk down the driveway, heading for the beach. “But I always did try to make time for
Stat!
I thought the stories were well written, and Sean Leeds…well, who could mind looking at him for an hour?”

“Yes, he was on the show for a long time before he got into movies.”

We head down Salt Meadow Lane, the beach bag bouncing against Mom's hip. “I saw him in something recently,” she says. “On TV. A movie about a man who inherited a bed-and-breakfast and wanted to sell it, but one of the women who worked there helped him keep it going, and then, of course, they fell in love. The story wasn't all that believable, but it did have its moments.” The road bends, and we pass Mrs. Baylor's house, where pink beach roses wander through the white pickets in the fence.

“Late Check-In,”
I say.

“Hmm?”

“That's the name of the movie.”

“Oh, right, yes. I think that was it. Well, he is very handsome. I'd accept his offer if he asked
me
to dance, that's for sure.” She laughs and her face suddenly takes on a carefree look and I glimpse how I imagine she might have looked as a young woman.

We turn onto a path bordered by bushes and brambles, sand edging its way onto my flip-flops, seagulls circling over our heads. The smells of seaweed and brine float on the breeze. When we reach the end of the path, I stop to take in the small beach—the water a bright, fervent blue, the waves curling like crescents of lace before breaking on shore. To the left is an outcropping of rocks Renny and I used to climb, and a long, flat boulder at the end, where we'd sit and try to catch minnows with crumbs of bread on the ends of twigs.

Only for residents of Salt Meadow Lane, Salt Meadow Way, and Sachem's Cove, the beach is never crowded. I spot an elderly man reading the Sunday
New York Times
under a red umbrella, a woman rubbing sunscreen on the pale skin of two blond children, a group of teenagers sitting in a huddle on striped beach towels, and a few people in the water.

My mother digs the umbrella pole into the sand, and I gaze at the sound and think about Peter and the feel of his hands when he slipped the sandals onto my feet, the way he smiled and called me
m'lady.
I think about his blue eyes, that little section of wavy hair I'd love to touch, and the way his hand brushed across my cheek. I think about how every time I look at him, all the things we did together come rushing back to me. Eating ice cream cones in the gazebo on summer nights, watching movies at the Dorset Playhouse, making up songs about Mr. Teague's algebra class, daring each other to ride the roller coaster with our eyes closed at the amusement park upstate, swimming in the Banfields' pool. And the kiss on the night of the dance.

Mom opens the umbrella, defining a circle of shade on the hot sand. I sit down in one of the chairs with my copy of
Real Simple
and my water bottle, while she pulls a sketch pad from the beach bag. I watch the mother and children walk down the beach, collecting shells, and then I start to flip through the magazine. After a moment I glance over to see what my mother is drawing. It's an atrium—a circular area containing trees, surrounded by a low wall—inside a contemporary-looking house. “That's interesting.”

She looks up. “What? Oh, this?” She sketches a few more lines. “New construction. On Brookfield Lane. I had a brainstorm early this morning, so I'm doing a little redesign.”

“What was the brainstorm?”

She pauses, her pencil in the air. “This atrium. I think it will make all the difference in the world.”

I feel my throat tighten. I wonder if it's just an atrium or if it's another shrine for Renny. It's got the feel of a shrine to me, the way that loft area did in the drawing of the barn. I thought she'd gotten over all this years ago. I wonder what she'll say if I tell her I was in her greenhouse last night. Will she tell me the truth about what she's doing?

“You know,” I say, glancing at her from the corner of my eye, “when I danced with Sean Leeds last night, it was in one of your shrines.”

She turns to me. “What's this?”

“The house where Peter had the party. One of your shrines was in there. Upstairs. A greenhouse.”

A shadow crosses her face. “A greenhouse.”

“Yes, the house is on Mill Pond.”

Mom doesn't move. She doesn't say a word. She just studies the water, as though the house might be forming somewhere out there on the waves. “A greenhouse on Mill Pond.” A blue-hulled skiff motors by in the distance, the whine of its engine like a long punctuation mark. “Yes. I remember that house.” She puts down the pad.

“I remember the people who built it,” she says. “I think their name was Adkinson or Atchinson, something like that. The wife saw that I'd put the greenhouse on the plans, and she loved the idea. The husband thought it was a waste of space. She invited me to come see the place after they moved in. She'd already bought a number of plants, and it was really looking nice. I remember some lilies that were especially lovely.” The motorboat glides by, and Mom watches it for a moment. Then she says, “That was the last time I saw her. A couple of years later, I heard the house was on the market, that they were getting a divorce. It made me sad. I used to think maybe it was my fault. That if I hadn't built that greenhouse, they might still be together.”

I shift my chair into the sun to get rid of the goose bumps on my legs. This is exactly why I worry about her making these shrines. “No, Mom, things don't happen that way. We can't control what other people do.”

“I know it doesn't make any sense.”

“Whatever happened with those people wasn't your fault. But making shrines for Renny…I just don't think it's a good idea. It's not healthy for you.”

She looks at me with tired eyes. “I'm sixty-two years old, Grace. I know you're concerned about me, but I can take care of myself. I've been doing it for a long time.” Although she doesn't sound angry, her tone hovers between insulted and hurt, and I feel bad.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I just worry about you sometimes.”

“You've got enough on your own plate. You don't have to take me on as well.” She gives me a melancholy look, and she suddenly seems so fragile.

I watch the teenagers as they get up from their towels and walk down the beach toward the rocks where Renny and I used to play. “They're growing orchids,” I say. “In the greenhouse.”

Mom's eyes brighten a little. “Really?”

“Yes. There must be at least two hundred. They've got a paphiopedilum you wouldn't believe. Just gorgeous. Tons of bloom spikes on it. The whole place was magical.”

“Orchids.” Mom nods. Waves break, white foam spreading and disappearing on the shore. At the far edge, the horizon stares back, blue fading into darker blue. “We had a lot of orchids, Renny and I. Do you remember how she used to grow them from seed? I never had the patience.” She brushes some sand off her leg. “She was like your father that way.”

She's right about that. Renny was patient. Patient and a perfectionist. Maybe not the best combination. “I think you would love how the greenhouse looks,” I say. “Maybe I can ask Peter to let us come over so you can see it.”

Mom smiles, and she runs her hand over my hair. “That would be nice.”

We step from under the umbrella and walk toward the sound, across the line of seaweed and over the pebbles. The tide is coming in, and we wade in up to our knees, the dark water cold but refreshing, the horizon looking a million miles away.

“It's nice that you've run into Peter again, after all this time,” Mom says. “I remember him as a kid. He was always friendly, always had something to say. And he was smart. I remember that, too.”

I scan the water's edge, and the damp line that swallows the dry sand as the tide comes in. We used to walk along the high-water line here, Peter and I, looking for sea glass, scouring that place where the tide makes its farthest reach and pushes the sea lettuce and kelp and shells to shore.

My mother walks a few steps farther into the water, and I follow. “Relationships are funny things, aren't they?” she says. “We don't always know where or when the right person will come along.”

“No, we don't,” I say.

“I wasn't at all interested in your father when I first met him,” she says as the teenagers run into the water farther down the beach. I know this story, about how Mom was dating a guy named Bill Adler, a lawyer she was crazy about. And how she and a friend enrolled in an evening poetry-writing class at Columbia, and Dad turned out to be the professor.

“Joanie was the one who wanted to take the class, not me,” Mom says, sprinkling water on her arms. I let her talk, even though I know the tale as if it were my own. “I had my hands full working as a young architect in the city. What did I need poetry for? But she persuaded me to sign up with her.” A little spray of water hits me in the face, and I brush it off my cheeks.

“Joanie tried to convince me that your dad was interested in me. Oh, sure, I knew he was flirting a little, but I wasn't paying much attention. I was so absorbed with Bill. Everything was Bill. And then one night during class, your father returned one of my poems with a poem of his own attached—‘Adjacent to My Heart.' You know the one. He'd written it for me. That's when I just…” She pauses to brush a piece of seaweed off her leg. “When I just woke up.”

“I love that story,” I say, swishing my hands through the water.

“I'm just trying to tell you that you never know where love will come from, Grace. So if you really care for Peter, I hope it works out. I hope he feels the same way. But don't try to plan too much. Let life unfold, or you'll miss the chance to be surprised. Surprises can be wonderful.”

I'm touched by her words, especially when I think about Renny's death—one surprise in my mother's life that was anything but good. “Thanks, Mom.”

She walks back to the umbrella, her chin tilted up, her hair bouncing on the breeze. I walk as far as the high-water mark, and then I stroll across the beach, keeping my head down, looking for sea glass. Once I found a big piece of teal-blue sea glass here, the only piece I ever found in that particular shade. I brought it home and gave it to Peter, and he tied a piece of fishing line around it and hung it in the window of his room. When the sun was at the right angle, that piece of glass blazed in color, like the Caribbean Sea. I wonder if Peter still has it. I wonder if they have sea glass in L.A.

That afternoon, Dad and I drive to the garden center to pick out a tree to commemorate Renny's birthday, something we do every year. It's a belated commemoration, as her birthday was in April, but I wasn't here then.

We walk through the parking lot, which is full of people carrying flowering plants and hauling bags of soil and fertilizer to their cars. I stop to admire some bright-pink impatiens and follow Dad up a little slope, toward the nursery.

“Your mom said she needs to come here to pick up more flowers for the yard,” he tells me. “She didn't trust me to get them. She's got a certain color in mind.”

“I think the yard looks great already.”

“So do I, but you know your mother. There's some spot that's not quite right. She wants everything to be perfect for the party.”

“Maybe Mom will be a party planner in her next life,” I say as we stop at the first row of young trees. I look at the tags—birch, cedar, honey locust. “I think she likes doing it.”

“She'd be good at it,” Dad says.

I brush my hand over the leaves of a red maple, and I can picture the tree in a couple of months, glowing in the orange and crimson hues of autumn. “What would you be, Dad? If you weren't a poet?”

He laughs. “I don't know. I've been a poet for so long, I can't imagine doing anything else. But I guess, if I had to do it differently, I might want to be a photographer.”

I've looked at many of his photos on his computer, and there are a few on the wall in the hallway upstairs—a street corner caught at dawn when no one is around, a swing set in an empty schoolyard, a grove of birch trees in the middle of winter, snow falling silently. They make me feel as though I've landed in a place where someone has just left or is just about to arrive.

“You're a good photographer,” I say. “Although your photos usually make me feel a little sad.”

“I don't know how good I am, but I like doing it. It has its own language. And it would give me an excuse to spend more time outside.”

I've seen him work on his poetry outdoors when the weather is warm. Sometimes he sits in one of the Adirondack chairs in the backyard, down by the water, scratching lines in one of his notebooks. He'll gaze at the water for a while, and then he'll stare at the notebook and scrawl something on the page. Days or weeks later it might end up as a finished poem of twenty or thirty or forty lines. Or it might end up as nothing.

I walk toward a little area with a sign that says Fruit Trees. The trees are only six or seven feet tall, and none of them are bearing any fruit yet. The labels read Pear, Peach, and Plum.

“Maybe we should get a fruit tree,” I say. “We've never done that.”

“I don't know how well a fruit tree would do in our yard,” Dad says, “being so close to salt water. Didn't we look into this once before and figure out we wouldn't be able to grow them very well?”