—
After Silas walked Eleanor back to her car, she drove home full of excitement and not a little anxiety. Change was hard for everyone, but vast change was terrifying.
A strange car was in her driveway.
Phillip was leaning against it, his arms crossed in front of his chest.
Eleanor parked on the curb. She certainly didn’t want to block him in. She took her time gathering her purse, emotionally preparing herself for the oncoming battle.
The problem was that she’d always cared for her son-in-law. She’d admired him for staying with Alicia, who could be, and no one knew this better than Eleanor, demanding.
When Alicia and Phillip were young, with their new baby daughter, in a new home with new neighbors, Eleanor spent weeks with them, helping take care of Arianna—she was Arianna back then and for years afterward, before she insisted on shortening her name. Phillip was doing surgery at Mass General, and he came home tired but ecstatic. Phillip would stride into the house, searching out his wife, and sometimes he was so ebullient he would pick Alicia up and spin her around.
“I saved someone’s life today!” he’d say.
“Tell me everything!” Alicia would reply.
Eleanor would sit in the corner, holding Arianna, while Phillip described the surgery, telling her about the patient and the family. Alicia would gaze at him as if he were a hero, which, in a way, he was.
When did that change? Why? By the time Arianna was three, Phillip was busier with paperwork and Alicia was no longer thrilled by Phillip’s successes. They were expected. Arianna was in a neighborhood playgroup, and Alicia spent time with the other mothers, who were gossipy and fun and wanted to take clothes to the Pine Street Inn or have a bake sale for the preschool. Eleanor was often invited to stay with Alicia’s family, probably because she prepared dinner and played with Arianna while Alicia was at a meeting or out doing good works.
When Arianna started kindergarten, Eleanor was not invited over as often. Mortimer was five years older than Eleanor, and slowing down. A range of irritating health problems bothered him. Arthritis. Shortness of breath, coughing, and fatigue. Eleanor tried to make healthy meals, but Mortimer preferred his Scotch and his cigarettes to salad and fish, even though it was against the doctor’s orders. As she thought about it, Eleanor realized her marriage was going through a difficult time just when Alicia’s was. Mortimer retired, played golf, drank at the club with his pals, and lived in his leather recliner watching sports. He didn’t want to join Eleanor when she went down to Nantucket to check on the house in the fall and spring, and he was cranky all the time when she made him come down in the summer.
Actually, it made Eleanor smile: What time could do.
She’d loved Mortimer when they married, and then they’d muddled through the middle of their years with Alicia and Cliff—and Cliff had been active, to say the least. By the time Eleanor was sixty and Mortimer was sixty-five, they had both slowed down, but by then they were good companions, rubbing along together like a pair of yoked oxen. When Mortimer died three years ago, Eleanor had been lost. Alicia and Ari and Cliff had come down to Nantucket for much of the summer, but Phillip had been too busy working to come to the island.
Now, here was Phillip, fifty years old—no, wait, he was forty-nine. He would turn fifty in September. Eleanor allowed herself to sit a moment with her head leaning back on the headrest. Current wisdom dictated that fifty was a dangerous age, especially for a man. It was probably true that Phillip had less energy for the long hours of standing on his feet, focusing on his surgeries. Also, he was starting to lose his hair. His only child, his daughter, had graduated from college and hadn’t really lived at home or needed him or adored him for four years, and Ari was only going to become more involved in her own life. And his wife. Alicia. She was only forty-six, but the dreaded fifty was headed her way. She wanted some glamour. She wanted some…space. She’d baked cupcakes and chaired committees and centered her life around her home. No wonder she wanted to go on a cruise.
And now Cliff said Alicia had met a man on the cruise to Canada? Eleanor thought the durability of a shipboard romance was pretty unlikely. But in her heart, Eleanor hoped Alicia and Phillip would get back together. Hopefully they had some lovely companionable years ahead.
She stepped out of her car and walked up her driveway.
“Phillip. What a surprise.”
“Could I talk to you for a few moments, please, Eleanor?”
She looked at her watch, even though she knew what time it was. “Ari will be home soon.”
“I’d like to talk with her, too.”
“Come in, then,” Eleanor said, not smiling. He had betrayed her daughter. He had broken her beloved granddaughter’s heart.
It was just after four o’clock. Over the weeks the sun had slowly changed position and now the deck was totally in shade.
“Would you like some iced tea?” Eleanor asked.
“That would be great. Thank you.”
They took their glasses out to the deck and sat in chairs across from one another at the table.
Phillip put his hands around the glass and looked steadily at Eleanor. “I’ve botched it all up and I want to apologize.”
“You should be talking to Alicia and Ari, not me.” Eleanor stared back. The truth was, she loved Phillip as if he were her own child. She respected him for his work. Over the years, she’d watched him grow from an enthusiastic young man into a distinguished medical specialist. He’d given her daughter and granddaughter stability, a handsome house, and more important, he’d provided them with love—great, abiding, forgiving, admiring love—as they went through life.
