Page 117 of Happy After All

“Can I sit?”

“Of course,” she says.

I didn’t go in and talk to my mother yesterday. There is nothing for me to learn from her. There’s nothing that matters.

Not there, in that sad, dilapidated house. I won’t learn anything by shining a flashlight in the dark corners of my childhood. Picking over the bones of all my disappointment.

It occurs to me that life has done a decent job of bringing love to me. Even when I wasn’t looking for it.

“I wanted to thank you. For the other night.”

She shakes her head. “No thanks are required.”

“I want to thank you. I have a mother, and she can’t love anyone but herself. When I needed her the very most, she wasn’t there for me.” I close my eyes. “Not just one time. So many times. I needed wisdom, and I didn’t have a mother who could give it. I needed love, and I didn’t have a mother who could give it.”

“You know,” Alice says, “people say dreadful things sometimes. They don’t know they’re dreadful. They say them without thinking. They say them without considering who they might be talking to. I have heard, countless times, that a woman doesn’t know love until she has a child. There are a great many women who don’t really know love, even when they have children. Amelia, I have known love. Great and deep and terrible. Beautiful, destructive. Self-sacrificial. Selfish, sometimes. I’ve lived so many lives all in one. It is a life’s work to look back on all your years and see that what you are, what you felt, what you experienced, was enough all along. Even now, here I am. With you. Here, in this place. It’s new. Even at ninety-five, there are still new people and places to see and be in. Believe me, my girl. I know love.” She puts her hand out and presses it over mine. “So do you.”

I feel like this wisdom is unearned. Like I haven’t lived enough to hear it.

I want her certainty. I feel like I do know love.

More importantly, I’m starting to realize what I want it to look like in my life.

Maybe I still want everything. Or maybe this is the first time I’ve actually wanted everything.

With Christopher I wanted whatever he would give me. I was determined to bend myself into whatever shape worked. Until I couldn’t do that anymore.

Until my feelings were bigger than his.

Choosing those feelings, choosing myself, has been the best thing. It’s what brought me here.

To this moment.

To Nathan.

“I ... Alice,” I say. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I just feel like I need to tell you that you’ve been the mother I needed. The one I never got. When I went to see her yesterday ... I tried to go see her yesterday. I didn’t want to go in. I didn’t want to have a conversation with her. There were a lot of good reasons for that. I didn’t realize until just now that I have experienced what it’s like to have a good, loving woman in my life. One who supports me. Cares for me. One who has the wisdom for me I am aching for. One who sees me. So I just wanted to thank you. For being something she couldn’t.”

Alice squeezes my hand, and I’m quite certain I see tears in her blue eyes. At least, as certain as I can be because of all the tears in mine.

“A life as long as I’ve had,” Alice says, “is filled with all kinds of possibilities. So many doors you can walk through. So many worlds. I’m happy with the world I spent all these years in.”

“Can I ask you another question?”

“Of course you can.”

“You loved Marty so much. You built a life together. A beautiful one. He was the love of your life.”

“Yes,” she says.

“If someone is the love of your life ... there’s no ... is there no one else you can love after that?”

“I don’t believe that,” Alice says. “You have to understand, I’m a woman from a very specific era. My husband was a wonderful man.When he died, I could wear shorts, even though he never liked them. I could get a bichon frise, even though he always said they were terrible dogs. I didn’t have to ask anyone permission for anything. I didn’t have to consider someone else’s feelings. I wanted freedom more than I wanted romance.Freedomwas something I hadn’t had in my life before. I’m not saying that he was a controlling man, or a bad one. It’s just that even in the nicest relationships, you have to consider each other. I wanted to be selfish. Like I said, I am an oak. I don’t wish to choose to bend around anything new, but that’s not to say there’s anythingwrongwith bending your life around someone.”

She pauses for a long moment. “I think the most important truth is that I didn’t meet anyone who could hold a candle to the love of my life. I didn’t meet anyone who made me want romance more than solitude. I did meet a man who made me forget myself. Who made me lose my head. I had a couple of love affairs after Marty died.”

I feel scandalized by this. “Did you?”

“Yes,” she says. “I didn’t want to share my life, but that didn’t mean I wanted an empty bed. The truth is, had one of those men been special ...”

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