Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,178
“You tell him, Bill!” my father yelled.
I went out the door and into the garden. It wasn’t until I had wandered halfway across the lawn that I realized my mother was there as well. She was sitting in one of the chairs at the table. I walked over and took the seat beside her.
“It was a nice party, wasn’t it, Mum?” I said, looking at the flower beds and the faces of the pansies. In the grainy light, it was easy to imagine them as animals, a long row of fierce little sentries standing guard.
“It was lovely,” my mother said. “I’m a bit full now. I think I ate too much, to be honest. But I did have a terrific time. It’s nice to be home. Nice to be back.” There was a new steadiness in her voice. It melded, like the day’s fading colors, into the falling dusk.
“I missed everybody so much,” she said. “When you’re away like that, it’s hard to remember that you have a home.”
As she spoke, I felt a hard stab of guilt for not visiting her. Grandma and my father had both asked me many times to go with them, but I’d always refused. Though it had been impossible to soothe myself by imagining her on a world cruise or some other exciting adventure, I hadn’t been able to face her in the hospital.
“I’m glad you’re back, Mum.” I said it although I wasn’t quite sure I meant it.
“Yes,” my mother said. “So am I.” Then she turned in her chair so that she was looking right at me, her eyes glassy bright in the blurred contours of her face. “You know what helped me more than anything when I was in there? More than the doctors and the pills and all that silly arts and crafts they make you do?”
I shook my head.
“It was those letters you sent me, love. They were just wonderful. They kept my spirits up something marvelous. I looked forward to getting them ever so much.”
“You did?”
“Oh, yes. I was reading them again just now, until it got too dark.” She lifted a little stack of papers she’d been holding in her lap. “And in the hospital, when I got them—well, reading about all those countries and places you wrote about … You made everything seem so real.”
“I looked it all up, in the main library at Bleakwick. I thought you might find it interesting. I thought it might help cheer you up.”
“Oh, it did, love. Made me feel like there was something to look forward to, once I got better, once I got out.” Then she reached over and placed her hand, loose and cool, over mine.
“I liked writing to you,” I said.
My mother nodded. “Yes, love, I could tell.”
Then we sat there, not speaking. And, for the first time in my mother’s presence, I took in the delicious stillness of a warm summer evening—the slowly shifting shadows, the steady rhythm of my own breath. I let myself simply be there, wrapped in nothing but the evening’s drawn-out perfection, and the reassurance that beyond the leafy barrier of our garden the world was waiting, beautiful and immense.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MY THANKS GO FIRST TO CINDY SPIEGEL AND MIKE MEZZO AT Spiegel & Grau for their invaluable insights and skillful editing, and to my agent, Eric Simonoff. I am deeply grateful to Poets & Writers and the California Writers Exchange Program and, in particular, Cheryl Klein and Jamie Fitzgerald. For their excellent feedback and sage advice, I’d like to thank Teresa Burns Gunther, Margo Perin, and Rebecca Chekouras. And for their enthusiastic support of my writing, I’m very grateful to Jennifer Fechner, Rosemary Christoph, Terry Glavin, and Bev Parrish. I am also enormously grateful to my wonderful friends and all the ways in which their presence has helped me do what I love. Above all, I am deeply thankful to my partner, Suse Herting—a solid, steadfast presence and a beautiful soul.
I’d also like to thank my father, who gifted me with his love of books; I wish you could read this one, Dad.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in East Yorkshire, England, ELAINE BEALE is the winner of the 2007 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange contest, a competition she won for a partial draft of this novel. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in several anthologies. She lives in Oakland, California.
Another Life Altogether is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.