Текст книги "Her Name Is Rose: A Novel"

Автор книги: Christine Breen

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

She stopped. “I need to find someone.”

“In the … library?”

“Billy said I could use the Internet there. Isn’t that right?”

“Oh, right. But you don’t need the library. I have my laptop with me back at Grace’s. We can go there if you like and you can use mine.”

Iris considered. “All right,” she said at last, and they turned back. She told him then that her daughter, Rose, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

“Well, now I’m impressed.” Hector said most Americans probably wouldn’t have heard of it, but he had because he taught music composition at Berklee. “I mean, we have Juilliard, and Oberlin, too, and right here … well … over there”—he pointed as they crossed back over Huntington—“is the New England Conservatory. But the RAM? Wow. She must be really good.” They kept walking, but Iris had picked up the pace.

*   *   *

Hector at last orchestrated his thoughts about Hilary Barrett of 99 St. Botolph Street and now Iris’s promise about rescheduling some appointment. A further thought struck him. A discordant note. How had he not heard it before? Because he was a selfish so-and-so.

He looked quickly to her hand.

“You and … um … Mr. Bowen must be truly proud of her.”

“Yes. Very. Very proud of her.”

“I mean, sure—”

She stopped. Hector thought he’d insulted her. She looked away. “Luke, her father, died two years ago.” Then she walked on.

It’s a terrible thing in a man when half his heart is going one way, feeling sad, but in the other half, the strings of joy are playing full on. What could he say? “I’m sorry.”

They walked the remaining few minutes in silence, then once back at Grace’s went upstairs to their rooms, having agreed to meet in Grace’s old parlor in half an hour. Hector wasted no time, changed his shirt quickly for another of his Hawaiians, the olive green one with blue flowers, got his laptop, and raced back down.

Billy appeared from the kitchen. “Hey, Hector?”

“Billy.” Hector had arranged two armchairs around the coffee table. “Is Grace around?”

“No. Playing tennis with the seniors.”

“Good! I mean, good for Grace. Mrs. Hale. Her enthusiasm is a lesson for us all, hey? Listen, kid, me and Mrs. Bowen will be working in here.”

“Oh?”

“Mrs. Bowen needs to send some e-mails. I’m letting her use my laptop.”

Billy gave Hector a knowing look.

“I’m hooked. What can I say? But that’s between you and me.”

When Iris eventually appeared she’d changed clothes, too, and had washed her hair. It was still wet, the ends curving into scrolls, and dampening patches on her cotton blouse. Billy reappeared and she asked him for a pot of tea.

Hector turned the open laptop toward Iris. “Here you go.” The cursor beat in the search bar.

“I’ve never done this before.”

“What?” He pulled his chair closer to hers. She was still cool from showering and her hair smelled like apples.

“I’ve never ‘searched’ for a person before.”

Iris typed in “Hilary Barrett.” Hector didn’t say a word.

A 0.16-second search yielded nearly six million entries. She turned to him startled. “There can’t be that many people with the same name! I’ll never find her.”

“Try ‘Boston phone book,’” Hector said.

Her face reddened. “What? Why Boston?”

Hector stammered. “It … it was on the envelope … 99 St. Botolph Street. Right? I’m sorry. That’s around the corner?”

She thought about this for a second. “Right. The envelope. Of course.” Those gray eyes closed for a second.

“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” Hector looked at her, but she was looking out the window toward the park. After a long pause, she said, “It’s complicated. And … she wasn’t there. I went yesterday. It’s a restaurant, you know?” Back at the screen she typed “Boston phone book.” Her eyes scanned the first page of results. Top was White Pages.com.

Just then Grace opened the door carrying a tray. She was still in her tennis shorts. A gold chain was half hidden beneath her polo shirt.

“Iris! How are you? Billy said you’d like some tea. Here you go.” As she laid down the tray, her face obscured from Iris, she looked at Hector, thin eyebrows raised.

“Hector—”

“Gracie, Gracie, Gracie. Good match?”

“Wonderful … So you’ve finally met our Hector? Is he behaving himself? He’s a bit of wild card. Isn’t that right, Hector?”

Grace edged closer and squinted to see what was on the screen, but couldn’t. As she turned away, her red lips quivered, twitching to say something.

“I’m trying to locate an old friend,” Iris said at last. “Someone I met a long time ago in Dublin. She used to live in Boston.”

“Oh?”

“A Hilary Barrett.”

“Hil—”

“We’re searching the White Pages on the ’Net,” Hector interrupted, his tone suddenly harsh, cocked, and aimed at Grace. Iris seemed to sense there was a subplot, or so Hector feared, so he smiled at Grace then.

“Right. Yes. Of course,” Grace said. “Good idea. The White Pages. Well, you never know. Right? Always a good place to start, with the telephone book.” Grace walked toward the door but turned before leaving. Iris couldn’t see that she held her hands open as if ready to catch something. Like an answer. Eyes so wide that if they had been speaking they’d have been saying, Hector, what have you found out? Hector shushed her away with a small wave of his hand.

In all, there were thirteen search results for Hilary Barrett in the White Pages for Massachusetts. But only one in the age bracket that matched Iris’s guesstimation: Becket, MA.

“It’s probably not her.” She thought a moment. “Where is Becket? Maybe she moved there?” She fell silent again. She shook her head. “Anyway. I just can’t ring her up—”

“Sure. Sure you can. She’ll remember you. I mean … yours is not a voice one easily forgets.” Hector, Hector, Hector. What are you saying?

Iris paused. She stared at the screen. Her face flushed as she took this in. “No, I mean. I don’t even know her. She’s not an old friend,” she said at last. She bit her lower lip hard. Looked around the room and at the closed door. “She’s my daughter’s birth mother.”

Hector sat back and inclined his head forward and his mouth formed an “oh.” He looked surprised because he was. The missing piece had fallen into place, but it wasn’t what he’d expected.

“Rose is my adopted daughter.” Iris closed the laptop. Her hands lay on her lap and she made small fists with them. And then she explained: the promise she’d made to her husband before he died but had never carried out; how she’d “stolen” the envelope just a few days earlier from the Adoption Board and got the name and address; and that yesterday when she visited 99 St. Botolph Street, the man there had never heard of a woman named Hilary Barrett.

She explained it all except for the now missed appointment and the reason for it.

“So you see, I can’t just ring her up, even if this Hilary Barrett in Becket is the woman I’m looking for.”

She was elegant in her distress. She held it together. There was strength in this woman; Hector wondered if she knew she had it. Her story was breaking his heart, but his heart had a mind of its own and, to paraphrase the great Irish singer/songwriter, his heart was doing his thinking and it was leading him into a danger zone. He needed more time. More time to get to wherever this was going and to figure out some way to help her, and so in a flush of feeling he found himself saying, “Why don’t I drive you there?”

“What?”

“Sure. Why not? Plan B. You could get out of the city heat and see some country.”

“Is it far?”

“Becket? Not really. About two hours. West across the state. Into the Berkshires. Part of the Appalachian mountain range and really—”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll ask Grace if we can borrow the car.”

“Please! Please don’t tell her—”

“No. No. Of course not.”

“Why,” she continued, “it’s probably nothing. I’ve been pretty unlucky so far.”

Hector laid his hand on hers. “Sure. I understand. Your secret’s—” Iris looked at him. She pulled her hand away like it’d been stung by a bee.

“Sorry, I’m not good with words. What I meant was—”

“It’s okay. I think I know what you meant.”

“I just want to … you know … help.” He reached for her hand and held it firmly for a second, then let go. “I meant to tell you last night before the concert, but you weren’t around. I want to help you because … you helped me.”

“What?” Her eyes widened.

“Yeah. Yesterday morning. I finished my piece because of you … you were my inspiration.”

A group of young teenagers cycled past the window, their voices loud and happy. He watched her watching them until they cycled out of sight. Iris stood and went to the window. After a few moments, she walked toward Hector, put her hand briefly on his shoulder, and said, “Okay,” and then went out the front door and crossed the street to the park.

*   *   *

Hector found Grace and Billy in the office and when he told Grace that he wanted to borrow her car to take Iris to the Berkshires, she gave him that mother of all looks.

“What have you found out? What’s the appointment? And who is she looking for? Is it the name on the envelope? Have you found her?”

“Nothing about the appointment, and not exactly.”

“Hector! Tell me.”

“It’s a needle in a haystack, Grace. We found one Hilary Barrett in Becket, Massachusetts. What are the chances? Right, Billy?”

“Hilary Barrett. Hilary Barrett.” Grace mused and screwed her round, dolphinlike eyes closed. “I know that name.” Billy and Hector waited. Waiting for Grace to clarify, but she kept shaking her head and closing her eyes. “I can’t remember. Oh…”

“I might be able to help,” Billy said at last. Grace and Hector looked to him. “I mean. I am in computers. What do we know?”

“Of course. Billy. Computers! Now.” Grace spoke excitedly, her voice rising.

“We only know that she is Mrs. Bowen’s daughter’s birth mother,” said Hector.

Billy raised his eyebrows. “That’s a mouthful.”

“And, that this Hilary Barrett once lived at 99 St. Botolph Street. That’s about it. Right?” Hector looked to Grace. “She’d be around … I don’t know. What do you think? How old is Iris?”

“Oh my. She’s so pretty. Um? Early forties?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. So her daughter is … like … twenty?”

“No. Nearly nineteen,” Billy said and Grace and Hector looked to him. “Yeah, she told me yesterday morning when we were talking at breakfast and—”

“Right. Okay.” Hector was nodding his head up and down in a kind of staccatolike beat in double-time. “That makes this Hilary anywhere from forty to forty-five. Ish. Yeah?” Hector was bouncing on his toes now. Rocking back and forth. “Okay. See if you can find anything out, kiddo.”

“Will do.”

Then, as if in silent consent, they left in separate directions. Grace to the kitchen to plan that evening’s dinner, Billy to his laptop to see what he could find out. And Hector to his room, where he lay down and waited for the sound of Iris’s footsteps returning.

Eleven

The thing about Iris Bowen was she liked to talk to people, even strangers. Like a few days earlier with Thornton Pletz, the Polish-American waiter at Botolph’s. If it hadn’t been for the dead-ended conversation about Hilary, she would have gone on and asked him about his family in Europe. Had he any relatives still there? Did he have children? Or, with Kerry at the airport the day she arrived, if she hadn’t been so overwhelmed with the sense of arrival and her mission, Iris would have asked in what village in County Kerry her granny was born.

At home in Clare, she struck up conversations with the people behind shop counters, too. With the man who sold her flowers on a Wednesday afternoon at the street market in Ennis, with the fair-haired fishmonger from Slovakia, who had developed a habit of asking each time he met her, “When is Rose due back?” To which Iris usually replied, “In a few weeks.” Her answer, too, had become a habit. Their frequent exchanges (Iris always bought a piece of halibut from him on a Friday) had turned to repartee, which made the Slovakian and other customers in the fish shop smile.

A few things like that, little anchors, helped her cope with loss.

And, it made her feel less lonely.

Before flowers and fish, Iris would often meet Tess for lunch in Ennis. In winter they sat in old feather-stuffed chairs beside the fire, just inside the front door of the Old Ground Hotel. In the summer they sat in garden chairs under the ancient beech tree on the moss-lined patio. They became regulars among regulars and the owner, an art lover named Allen, got to know their names. He never failed to ask how Rose was getting on. He’d known Luke because Luke often lunched there on his noncourt days and they’d become friends. When Luke was in hospital, Allen would send meals from the hotel’s kitchen. One day he had driven all the way out to Ashwood to deliver a bread-and-butter pudding, which was Luke’s favorite.

All of this Iris thought about the following morning as she stood at the bedroom window upstairs in Grace Hale’s house, wondering if she should phone Tess again. She was sure Grace wouldn’t mind if she used her phone. She listened to the unfamiliar sounds of Boston’s early morning traffic, of buses and cars and garbage trucks. American cities woke so early. She was used to birds and tractors and, at this time of year, the disappearing song of the cuckoo.

Her hands were restless and she kept fussing with her hair. Twice since rising, Iris had changed her clothes. Nothing looked right. Sitting on the bed fastening her sandals she recalled the dream she’d had early that morning. Luke was in it. He was walking out of the sea holding a box. He walked toward her but the tide kept coming with him and he made no progress to the shore. He wasn’t struggling, just walking in his suit, ankle deep in the tide pools. He smiled. She couldn’t see what was in the box he carried from the sea.

She missed her garden—her own garden—where things had a way of working themselves out. A knock on the door made Iris jump. She opened it to find Hector, who had a tray that held a teapot and some toast and a daisy in a water glass.

“I thought maybe we could get a head start on breakfast and hit the road when you’re ready,” he said and he put the tray down on her made-up bed. He stood back as if somehow proud of himself. “You still want to go, don’t you?”

She nodded. “I’ll be down”—she hesitated—“in a bit. Five minutes.”

“Great.” He clapped his hands together. “I’ll get the car ready.”

Iris looked at the daisy. Some of its petals were missing. As if someone had plucked them.

*   *   *

Grace had agreed to lend Hector her old Jaguar so he could drive into the Berkshire Mountains to show Iris some of America. Or at least that’s what Grace had thought the previous night when they met for meat loaf and salad in her kitchen.

“To see some of my great state of Massachusetts, right?”

The table was laid with bone china and linen napkins and an assortment of lit candles. “I asked Billy to tidy up the car for your little road trip tomorrow,” Grace had said, pulling her muumuu that had gathered tight beneath her gold belt. She’d looked at Hector, whose teeth slightly eclipsed his bottom lip. His eyes seemed charged with some meaning Iris didn’t understand. Grace returned his scrutiny, then turned to Iris and went on. “Bob loved that car. You’ll like it. Drives like a dream. I couldn’t give it up when he died. I know it’s old—”

“Gracie, you’re a visionary,” Hector had said promptly, and pulled the chair for her to sit. He’d poured her wine and given her a look, which Iris found puzzling. Grace drank half the glass in one long sip.

“You’d better watch him, Iris, he’s a charmer.” Her voice had a curious undertone, Iris thought, as she watched her cut the meat loaf into slices.

During the supper, Iris succeeded in not having to talk about herself. Grateful the subject of the phone calls to Ireland was not referred to, she had instead asked questions. She’d learned about the renovation of the South End, which had been Grace’s passion for twenty years. Learned how Hector had answered an ad for a spare room and how he ended up living with Bob and Grace when he was a student at Berklee, and how long ago the neighborhood around St. Botolph had been populated by jazz musicians.

“Hector wore his hair in a ponytail those days,” Grace said distractedly.

Hector glanced sideways at Iris.

Grace continued, “You know, Botolph is the patron saint of Boston. It was named after him when the Pilgrims came here in the early 1600s. Right, Hector?”

“Something like that, Gracie.”

With a twinge of regret that here she was sitting, listening to something she knew Luke would have been more interested in than she was, Iris recalled when he’d told Rosie that a Bowen ancestor had been a passenger on the Mayflower, survived the journey, and landed at Plymouth Rock. Rose was doing a genealogy chart in primary school. Iris remembered because Rose was distressed about it. “Are they my ancestors, too?” she’d asked.

“Of course! What’s mine is yours, ma petite chou,” Luke had said.

And with that Rose was happy. If she ever struggled about her biological connections, she hid it well. Maybe she’d locked it away in a box. Iris could never be sure.

“Yes, I remember now,” Grace said. “Something about a stone and a monastery and a Benedictine abbot named Botwulf in England. English Pilgrims landed here and called it Boston. I can’t quite remember the connection. I have it written down somewhere.” She paused. “If you’re interested I can find it. You know—” Grace stopped suddenly and looked directly at Iris. “You know, I never asked you what brought you to Boston.”

“Grace! None of our business, I think.”

“I’m doing a gardening piece on Boston city gardens,” Iris said. She said it quickly, and she didn’t look at Hector.

“Oh?” Grace turned the wine in her glass. “That’s nice.”

They ate in silence for a little while.

“Enough for me,” Hector said, his hand covering his glass when Grace attempted to fill it from a third bottle. She looked to Iris, who shook her head gently.

“But thank you. It’s been a lovely evening.”

“Pleasure, I’m sure,” Grace replied with a just little too much emphasis on her Ss. “Sorry it was only meat loaf. Not much of a cook since Bob…” She paused and spoke pointedly to Iris. “It’s never the same. But we manage. We get on with it.” She rose and stood for a moment and looked toward the door. Hector got up then and put his arm around her, kissed her cheek, and led her out the door, his hasty movement making the candles flicker. For a moment then, light mottled the room and Iris had sat alone, feeling guilty that she had lied and wondering what she was going to say to Hilary Barrett in Becket, Massachusetts, the next day.

*   *   *

Now, in the sun-drenched morning, Iris locked her bedroom door and went downstairs. She looked into the breakfast room for Grace, but only Billy was there, serving a table of two young couples. More of Kerry’s special people? she wondered. He was telling them about the Mapparium.

Hector appeared at the front door. “Ready?” A swish of heat rushed in as he held the door open. His tall frame blocked the light coming through the doorway.

“Yes.”

“Wait!” Grace called when they were in the hallway. She came, still in her white terry-cloth bathrobe, carrying a basket. “I’ve some chicken sandwiches and lemonade. For your journey.”

“You’re too good.” Iris took the basket, gave Grace a half hug with her free arm.

“Thanks, Gracie.” Hector stood at the door and opened it wider, an edgy look raising his eyebrows.

Iris moved past him, down the steps to the car.

“Oh … wait! I remembered something,” Grace called.

“What?” asked Hector.

Ignoring him, Grace looked to Iris. “About St. Botolph … he’s known as the patron saint of travelers and wayfarers.”

Iris gave the basket to Hector and went back up the steps and hugged Grace with both arms. “You’re a pet, as we say in Ireland. A real pet.”

“Ohhhh,” Grace said, teary-eyed, adjusting the belt of her robe. “I do hope everything works out. It can, you know. Sometimes. Right?”

*   *   *

How suddenly surreal Iris’s life felt then. So unfamiliar was the blue day, the heat, the fancy car, and, not least, the man sitting beside her, humming. His quirky manner mystified her. Even excited her. She hadn’t been in the solo company of a man since her husband died. Not really. Not like this. Hector’s eyes shot from the rearview to the side mirror as he pulled the car quickly away from the curb. He wasn’t a smooth driver.

As they passed along St. Botolph, she noted the dark windows of the restaurant. It was Sunday, Thornton would be opening for brunch soon. At the corner of her mind was the look on Grace’s face as they pulled away. It was a look of a thousand words, none of which Iris understood, and she wondered if she was meant to.

“Is Grace all right?”

“Grace? Sure, fine. She’s probably a little under the weather. You know? Too much vino. No need to worry.” Hector drove the car west along Huntington. It seemed like he wanted to hurry. He pressed and released the accelerator as if pumping the car forward. She found it a little disturbing. After a few moments he turned the car right onto a larger road, and, as if she could hear his thoughts rummaging about in his head, flicking through his repertoire of suitable topics for discussion with a woman he hardly knew, but was trying to impress, she awaited his conversation. She looked out the window as they passed the Mary Baker Eddy Library and recalled the pink Irish family in the Mapparium and wondered where they were sweltering today. She hoped for their sakes they were at a beach. And for one brief moment, she wished she were there with them, safe among her own.

“That’s Berklee,” Hector said finally, and pointed. “Over there. Some of my happiest days—”

“Is it?” Iris said with a little more gusto then she’d intended, turning her head toward him but regretting her enthusiasm immediately.

What was she doing? She grabbed her hair, which uncharacteristically, she had braided loosely that morning. Like a schoolgirl’s. She began to untie it. She was looking for Hilary Barrett—that’s what she was doing. Focus, Iris.

A horn blared from behind. Hector’s eyes darted sideways and his head turned over his right shoulder. He was in the wrong lane. He flicked on the indicator, veered sharply off under the large green sign, MASSACHUSETTS TURNPIKE, and swung the car down the ramp onto the highway. It had happened too quickly for Iris to be scared. Hector was shaking his head and mumbling. Iris rubbed her elbow, which had struck the window.

“You hurt?”

“No. It’s okay.”

“I’m really sorry. God. I’m usually a good driver. Just a bit out of practice.” He slowed and settled into the middle lane. “I usually bike to work from where I live.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I teach composition at the conservatory in San Francisco. I’m just here in Boston in the summer.” He looked at her like he was going to say something more, like he was searching for words to explain himself, but he didn’t.

They drove west on the interstate, cutting through an abundant landscape of cedar trees at the edge of the city. And because she didn’t want only Hilary Barrett running in her mind, Iris said, “Tell me about Berklee?”

Hector hesitated only for a moment. “Really?”

“Really. I do know a little bit about music schools.”

“Of course you do. Right. I forgot. Rose. Well … for me, jazz is the thing. Not classical. Sorry. I eat, drink, sleep it. Berklee’s like the best jazz place for students in this country. Maybe the world.” He paused, but only for a second. “Ever hear of Quincy Jones? He was there before my time, but what an inspiration. ‘Dream a dream so big that if you just get half of it, you’ll still do okay.’ Pure Quincy. When I was a student”—Hector laughed—“actually … when I was at Grace and Bob’s, in the room you’re in, I’d lay awake at night and think what was the biggest dream I could dream.”

“Why don’t you teach there all the time?” As soon as she’d said it, the penny dropped. Oh God, he’s married. She turned to the window. That’s what the look on Grace’s face was about! She turned back. “Are you—?” She stopped herself, then realized she had to ask. “Are you married?”

“No. No. I’m not.” He glanced across at her. “I was. Once.”

“Children?”

“No.”

Iris didn’t want to know anymore right then, although his “once” lingered on the air like an echo.

Hector turned on the radio. Jazz with Eric Somebody or Other and soon he was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Inside the music, his driving improved. The Jag’s old air-conditioning made spurting noises so they turned it off and opened the windows. Iris’s hair curled about her face and she reached for it, tying it back again.

“In answer to your first question”—he looked over to her—“I love teaching at Berklee and a lot of great things happened there and came from there, but I love California. More.” His face was tan and nearly handsome but his eyes were timid, shylike. In having returned his gaze Iris sensed he was infatuated with her. She could feel it in her body, somewhere in her center, and it sent signals up and down, like sunrays lighting the dark.

Sitting as a passenger in a car gave her more comfort than just about anything else. Responsibility deferred to the driver and all other thoughts adjourned. She missed that—being a passenger. Such a simple thing. A thing you never think of when there’s two of you. Now she had to drive everywhere herself. When Luke was alive, Sundays saw them driving with Rose to the sea and up the west coast to Blackhead.

Iris let her hand extend out the open window. Her fingers felt the air, like she was combing waves.

“Ever heard of the Real Book?” Hector said after they’d been driving a while.

“No … but sounds real interesting.” She laughed. She’d made a joke. An actual joke. Something about Hector was bringing out a side of her that had gone underground. Okay, he was a bit eccentric, but she had to admit also there was a vibrancy in him that energized her. And although part of her resisted it, and even felt guilty, another part of her welcomed it. “Sorry. Tell me more.”

“Yeah?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Kidding. Go on.”

“Jazz isn’t like anything else, right?” he began, glancing at her to make sure. She nodded. “In the old days we used to play tunes from lead sheets, copied from old Tune-Dex cards. But these were full of mistakes. Then the tunes were compiled into the Real Book, because before that there was…”

“Don’t tell me,” said Iris, feeling irrepressibly girlish, “a fake book.”

Hector had relaxed. His laugh said so. Big and staccatolike and far removed from the brusque figure who’d stamped from the breakfast room on her first morning, just a couple days earlier.

“Seriously…” he went on.

Iris pretended to look serious.

“At the tail end of my years at Berklee, I sort of got myself involved with two guys, teachers, who put together—what became famously known in the jazz world as the Real Book. Every jazz player had to have one.” Hector’s eyes were alight and his voice quickened. “There are hundreds of tunes out there, but nobody was keeping track of them—exactly—I mean except for what came out in the Fakebook—”

“So … there were fake books?”

“Oh yeah. And just to confuse things, the Real Book is actually a Fakebook.” He laughed.

“I see.” She didn’t, but she admired his enthusiasm.

“It’s too confusing. The dudes whose songs were in the Fakebooks weren’t getting royalties. But there was no other way for young jazz musicians to learn, so it became the reference for every jazz song there ever was, the main link for students to jam and practice. It was called ‘fake’ because it was illegitimate.” Hector paused. “Get it?” But Iris had turned away. She was looking out the window. Somewhere between the “illegitimate” and “fake” he’d lost her.

“I’m rambling. Sorry. Once I get started on the Real Book … it still blows my mind.” Hector drummed his fingers on the dashboard of the Jag like it was a keyboard and he was playing the melody to the song playing on the radio.

Iris stayed looking at the Massachusetts countryside from the passenger window. He doesn’t get it, she thought. Illegitimate. Fake. Real. Come on. But as hurtful as it was, Iris didn’t blame him for cutting too close to the bone, or for being unaware that he had. It was something she had been dealing with her whole mothering life. Feeling like an imposter.

When they had been driving for about half an hour deep into western Massachusetts and were into the Berkshire Mountains, Hector pulled off the interstate at an exit called Lily Pond and explained it was where he used to stop on his way to Tanglewood. “There’s a jazz festival there in September,” he told her. “Maybe it’s a good idea to stretch our legs, or something. Have Grace’s picnic. Okay?” He pulled the car into a parking lot by the pond.

“Okay, Hector,” she said, hiding her apprehension. The more she thought about it, the more she felt she had no reference point for this sort of thing. None of it felt quite right now, standing in the open New England air in her summer dress, holding a picnic basket. The girlishness she’d let herself experience earlier was lost. The flirtation she’d allowed herself stung. The noon sun intensified an immense guilt.

In the trunk Hector had found a blanket. “Grace thinks of everything.” Facing the water a few meters from the shoreline he considered where to put it. The ground was hard and stony where it slipped into the brown mountain lake. A breeze blew feebly. It wasn’t enough to cool Iris, who stood holding the basket.

“Here, Iris. Shade. Over there.” Hector had found a wooden table a little way back from the water’s edge. Into the pine woods of white, filtered light Iris made out a stone shelter. Hiking socks hung along a rope tied between two trees, and beach towels and T-shirts draped over bushes like scattered flags. A young woman in a bathing suit came from behind the cabin, chased by a young man in shorts. Sidestepping rocks as she reached the water, the woman dove and swam in strong strokes.

Hector brushed pine needles away and laid the blanket on the bench and the basket on the picnic table. “Madam,” he said, and gestured theatrically.