Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel (20 page)

“Hannah?” she calls out to me. Reluctantly, I turn to face her. Thank goodness, she’s already wrapped herself up in a bathrobe. Rhett is tailing behind her, a towel around his waist.

“Hey,” I say, “just wanted to let you know that Nate and I will be spending the day together.”

“Okay, darling,” my grandmother says. “Have fun.” She’s smiling, but I can tell she’s upset.

“Unless you’d rather I stay here,” I say under my breath, walking back toward her. My grandmother keeps the smile on her face and assures me that everything is fine and that I should go. I ask her if there’s anything I can help her with before my mother comes out to stay with us, but she laughs and reminds me that everything’s completely under control. Silly me. When you have an in-house staff of five, things generally are under control.

“What you can help me with is enjoying your date with your beau,” she says. “That is what I would like you to do today.”

I practically skip back to Nate’s car. He’s already got it running, radio blasting, but he still jumps out of the driver’s seat to help me in.

“I would open the door for you, but…” he says, motioning to the space where the door should be, and we both laugh. I love that he refuses to drive out of the driveway until I’m snug in my seat belt.

The drive out east to Montauk is beautiful and it’s easy to enjoy the drive. The only way to describe it is “peaceful.” The air is fresher, warmer, and as I take it in, I feel my breaths getting deeper, slower. Each time the road twists or turns there’s something new to see. A windmill, a tiny lake, even a family of deer. After about twenty minutes, we drive through the town of East Hampton. It’s much larger than the town of Southampton, but otherwise very similar. Many of the same stores are here, but each shop is a bit bigger. Everything in East Hampton is bigger. In South, we have hedge-fund millionaires and trust-fund babies. In East, they have movie stars.

“That place looks good,” I say, pointing out a restaurant filled with diners at outside tables. “Should we stop there?”

“I’ve got something even better planned,” Nate says, smiling to himself. I can’t help but smile back.

We drive a bit further east on Route 27 and then pull off the road when we get to Amagansett. It looks like we’re pulling off into a dusty parking lot, but as Nate parks the Jeep, I see that we’re at a roadside oyster bar. Yet again, he’s shown me a side of the Hamptons I wouldn’t have expected. Yet again, I’m pleasantly surprised.

We order way too much—a veritable feast of fried foods. The sun begins to burn my shoulders and I wish I could freeze time. Just take a photograph of this very moment and save it for all of eternity. Be able to look back on it fondly, like my grandmother does with her photographs, and remember how blissfully happy I was on this day. I feel Nate’s eyes on me, and I turn to find him smiling at me. I wonder what he’s thinking.

“I just want to memorize this moment,” I say.

“Well, yes,” he says. “These clams are pretty perfect.”

“You know what I mean,” I say, laughing.

“There will be lots more times like this to look forward to,” he says matter-of-factly. “And lots more clams, of course,” he adds, popping one into his mouth.

“What if there’s not?” I ask, and I’m surprised at myself for saying the precise thing I feel. “What if happiness doesn’t last?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Nate says, and gently takes my hand.

“Everything’s going to be so different tomorrow,” I say, looking off at the street. I can see the ocean over the houses on the other side of the street.

“But we can still be happy,” he says. “Maybe this time will be good for you and your mother. Maybe you’ll find something deeper than what you had. Everything happens for a reason.”

I don’t think everything happens for a reason, but I don’t tell Nate that. Is there a reason my mother lost her father when she was only twelve years old? Why I’m a widow? What’s the reason why Hunter lost his mom, I want to ask.

Instead I say: “You’re right.”

It’s still quite a drive to Montauk, but I can see why Nate said that it would be worth it. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, but there’s more to it than that. The beach out here seems slightly more natural, more untouched than the beaches further west. I lie down on the blanket we’ve set out and Nate sits beside me. He takes my hand and kisses it gently.

I think about what he said earlier—that we can be happy. Even with everything going on in my life right now, Nate thinks we can be happy together.

My mother is dying. My strong-willed, passionate, impossible-to-talk-to mother is dying. And now I no longer have the luxury of being mad at her for things she cannot change. I can either try to talk to her, carve out some kind of relationship, or regret it for the rest of my life. But the time is now. Find a way to be happy now. Deal with the issues I’ve got with my mother now. I vow to make the time I spend with my mother count.

And what has she done that’s really so bad, anyway? She didn’t give me a conventional life. But lots of mothers give their kids more conventional ones, and they’re still screwed up. She’s difficult to get along with, impossible really. But I can be difficult, too. She is artistic, and she resents me for not being more like her. But I resent her for not being more like me. Nate turns to me and smiles and I tell myself that yes, we can be happy.

“Go for a swim?” he asks, and I nod my head yes. As he takes off his shirt and I start to take off my dress, I think about the last time we went for a swim together, and I blush. He wraps a towel around his waist and then takes his shorts off and puts a bathing suit on like a kid would do at the beach. I can’t help but find it adorable.

He grabs my hand and we run toward the water and jump right in. It’s colder than I expect, and I back away, releasing Nate’s hand.

“You can’t get away from me that easily,” he says, and grabs me around the waist and picks me up. It’s so unexpected that I let out a half-laugh half-scream, which only makes Nate forge deeper into the water.

“Okay, I give up! Put me down!”

“Never,” Nate says, and pulls me tighter. He goes further into the water, and the waves crash against us.

“I surrender,” I say.

“Me too.”

Nate sets me down gently and we descend into the water. He gets closer to me and I put my arms around his neck. He puts his lips to mine. He tastes salty sweet. We’re tangled in each other, and the outside world is a blur. So much so that we don’t even realize when a huge wave is coming. We’re kissing and kissing as it knocks us both over and we go under the water. We both pop back up at the same time and begin laughing hysterically. Nate’s hair is going in fourteen different directions, and mine has released itself from the baseball cap and is all over my face.

The baseball cap is soaked and it begins leaking water from its bill. I take if off, ring it out, then put it right back on my head.

I’m about to suggest we head back to our beach blanket when Nate says, “Let’s jump over the waves.” And that’s how we spend the remainder of the afternoon. Holding hands like little children, jumping over the waves, not thinking about tomorrow.

Thirty

Even though I’m thirty-four years old, I still feel odd about waking up in my grandmother’s house with a boy in my bed. Even if that boy is a thirty-four-year-old man. But my grandmother doesn’t seem to mind. After all, she’s got a man at the breakfast table the following morning, too. I imagine she won’t lecture me about putting all of my eggs into one basket as Rhett and Nate talk golf, politics, and wine. I’m surprised to learn that Nate has such a strong opinion about the wines coming out of Australia. Rhett, of course, refuses to drink anything that does not come out of France.

After breakfast, Nate still refuses to leave. He’s there when my mother arrives, entourage in tow. Which, I now realize, was his plan all along. To be there for me. To make sure I’m okay. To be my rock, should I need it.

My mother looks thinner than the last time I saw her, but I’ve only noticed it because I’m looking for it. I want to tell myself she’s not that sick, that she will recover. I’m looking for signs, grasping at straws.

The hospice worker was here yesterday when I was out with Nate and set up a bunch of rooms on the opposite end of the house from where my grandmother’s room is. I’ve decided to move my things back into the main house from the guest house, and my room is somewhere in the middle, just down the hall from my mother, a little closer to my grandmother’s.

“Who are you?” my mother asks Nate.

“Mom, this is Nate Sugarman,” I say.

“Nice to meet you,” Nate says, and my mother nods, sizing him up. In lieu of small talk, she simply stares at Nate, taking in every inch of him. It’s times like these when I pray that my mother won’t act like she usually does, and just follow societal norms. But she doesn’t. She would never tell someone “nice to meet you” unless she really did find it nice to meet that other person. Clearly, she does not find it nice to meet Nate.

“I’m Gray’s assistant,” a young girl says to me. “You must be Hannah.”

I shake her hand and introduce her to Nate. She won’t be staying with us, but she’s here today to get my mother all set up in her rooms. Nate offers to help her move some of my mother’s equipment to the basement—one of the rooms down there has been converted to a dark room—and my grandmother supervises the movers as they cart my mother’s things in, box by box.

“Tea?” my mother asks, and I nod my head yes and follow her into the kitchen. “I brought this tea back from China last time I was there.”

“Okay, great,” I say, smiling. I am turning over a new leaf with my mother. I will get along with her if it kills me. “Let me get the kettle for you.”

I walk to the stove to grab the kettle from her, but she blocks my path with her body.

“Oh no,” she says. “You’re not doing this.”

“It’s just tea,” I say, laughing self-consciously.

“It’s not just tea,” she says. “You know, I told Vivienne that if I was going to come out here, you were not allowed to do this.”

“Do what?” I say, and walk back to the island. I pull out a stool and sit down on it.

“Treat me like I’m dying,” she says.

I have no response to this. I resist the temptation of explaining to her that my behavior is justified. She
is
dying.

“Let’s just talk the way we normally talk,” she says, lighting the stove and walking over to me at the counter. “For all these years, we’ve agreed to disagree. Let’s not walk on eggshells now. Don’t talk down to me. Don’t act any differently.”

“Well,” I say, “I’m doing this thing where I try to make the most of my time with you.”

My mother laughs heartily. “That doesn’t mean that you can’t be yourself. So what if I’m dying? Everyone dies, eventually.”

I have no idea how she can be so cavalier. Unless she’s still processing the shock of her diagnosis. Or maybe it’s because, after a lifetime of covering people dying in wars, you come to accept that everyone dies eventually, and that your time will come, too.

“So how about this?” she asks me. “We just act the way we normally do—no special efforts, nothing different from the usual. And then you can tell your future kids stories about how we spent this summer together even though I was such an awful mother.”

“I don’t really think you were an awful mother,” I say under my breath. I can tell that she’s heard me by the sly smile playing on her lips.

The kettle begins to whistle. My mother is about to remove it from the burner just as Nate comes back upstairs from the basement.

“Let me help you with that,” he says, and slides in next to my mother. Before she has a chance to object, before she even knows what’s going on, he puts the kettle onto a trivet and smiles at my mother.

“So, you’re Nate Sugarman,” she says, hand on one hip.

“It’s so nice to meet you, too,” Nate says, and tries to hug her. My mother doesn’t respond to his hug, so Nate eventually releases his grip and just stands there smiling. My mother regards him.

Finally, after what seems like hours, she says: “I can’t wait to get my claws into you.”

Thirty-one

“That’s how you know he’s a keeper,” I tell Priya, but she’s distracted.

“Who’s a keeper?”

“Detective Moretti,” I say. “Because he insisted you cancel your plans and instead come out to see me this weekend.”

We’re walking through town with ice-cream cones from the Fudge Company. Priya’s is dripping down her arm and she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, Vince,” she says.

“I can’t call him that,” I say, and hand Priya a napkin.

“Should we go into this store?” she asks, pointing to the window of a boutique. “It looks cute.”

“You can’t go into any of the stores here with ice cream,” I say. She’s trying so hard to distract me that it’s almost difficult to have a conversation.

“We can talk about it, you know,” I say. “You don’t have to try to keep my mind occupied.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” she says. Tears are streaming down her face. “I’m just so sorry.”

“I know,” I say, and motion to a nearby bench so we can sit down.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says. “I certainly don’t want to compare it to what I went through with my mother because—”

“I know,” I say, and we are both silent for a minute. I know that we’re thinking the same thing: this is different from when Priya’s mom got sick because her mom got better and mine is going to die.

“Okay,” Priya says, breaking the silence. “Here’s the deal. I love you, so I don’t want to say the wrong thing and upset you even more.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I appreciate that.”

“I’m not trying to be weird. I’m trying to be awesome, but no awesomeness is coming.”

“You are awesome, I assure you.”

“I miss you,” she says.

“I miss you, too,” I say.

“So, is there something I could say to make you feel better?” she asks. “Since the whole distracting-you thing isn’t working out?”

“No,” I say. “Just having you here is making me feel better. I’m glad you didn’t listen to me.”

“I’m really glad, too,” she says. We both smile.