At the commercial break, Noah hit Mute. “So? You have a good time?”
I hesitated. “Um … well, the party was at the funeral home. Mom and Dad were there. It was fine.”
“Sounds like a shit bath to me,” he said.
“You were right to stay home,” I confirmed. Noah avoided family get-togethers as if they were hotbeds of ebola. He wasn’t exactly close with my father, his son. Dad’s brother, Remy, had died in a car accident at age twenty, and I gathered from the little Dad said that Remy was the type of son Noah had expected: rugged, quiet, good with his hands. My father, on the other hand, had spent his life schmoozing people as a drug sales rep. And, of course, there was my parents’ divorce. Noah, who had adored my grandmother and nursed her through the horrors of pancreatic cancer, fiercely disapproved. “I brought you some cake, though,” I added.
“Knew I kept you around for a reason,” he said. “Here.” He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a little hand-carved animal … a dog. A husky.
“Oh! Thank you, Noah!” I gave him a kiss, which he tolerated with a mere grumble. He’d been making his grandchildren—and great-grandchildren—these little animals all our lives. I had quite a collection.
“You seem down,” Noah observed. This was deep in Dr. Phil territory from a man who didn’t spend a whole lot of time navel-gazing … in fact, Noah was the least sentimental person I’d ever met. He never spoke of my uncle Remy, but there was a picture of him in Noah’s room, the one thing that never needed dusting. When Gran died—I was six at the time—Noah didn’t shed a single tear, but his sorrow was palpable. I’d drawn him a card every week for months to try to cheer him up. Even when the bandages came off his leg for the first time, his only comment was, “Fuckin’ foolish.” No self-pity, no maudlin mourning of his limb. To comment on my emotional state … shocking.
I stared at him, but he didn’t look away from the muted television set. “Um … no. I’m fine.” I glanced at my wrist. Still wearing Mark’s gift, loser that I was. “Noah, I’m thinking I should probably find a …” the word boyfriend sounded so lame “… a special someone.” Ooh. Not much better. Far worse, in fact. “Care to share the wisdom of your long life?”
“Don’t do it,” he said. “Nothing but heartache and misery.” Underneath his white beard (Noah looked like a malnourished, possibly homeless Santa), his mouth twitched. “You can live here forever and take care of me.”
“And I do so love taking care of you,” I said. “How about a nice enema before bed?”
“Watch your mouth, smart-ass,” he said.
“Hey. Be sweet to me. I turned thirty today,” I reminded him. Bowie licked my hand, then turned on his back so I could see that his big white belly was just lying there, all alone and unrubbed.
“On second thought, ‘twouldn’t hurt for you to get a move on with life, Callie,” Noah said unexpectedly. “Don’t have to stay here forever.”
“Who else would put up with you?” I asked.
“Got a point there. You gonna talk all night, or can I watch Johnathan save this guy?”
“I’m going to bed. You need anything?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart.” He dragged his eyes off the TV. “Happy birthday, pretty girl.”
I paused. “Wow. It’s that bad?”
His beard twitched. “Cahn’t say I didn’t try.”
A few minutes later, washed and brushed and in my comfiest jammies (pink-and-yellow striped shorts, yellow cami), I was sitting in my rocking chair. Turning thirty was a momentous event in a woman’s life. Also, I needed to … I don’t know. Process things. And there was no better place to process anything than my Morelock chair, which I’d received twenty-two years ago to this very day.
There are two halves of Vermont—Old Vermont and New. Old Vermont was made up of crusty, rugged people who dropped their Rs and owned the same American-made pickup truck for thirty years, didn’t feel the cold and were immune to blackflies. Noah was Old, of course … he might not speak to his neighbor, but he’d cut and stack five cords of wood if that neighbor became sick. New Vermont … well, they were people who drove Volvos and Priuses, owned expensive hiking boots and hung out their laundry as a political statement as much as to get the clothes dry. They were friendly and cheerful … not like Noah at all, in other words.
Like my grandfather, David Morelock was Old Vermont. He was a furniture maker and Noah’s longtime compatriot. One summer, a reporter happened to be vacationing in St. Albans, where Mr. Morelock lived, and stumbled upon the furniture shop, learned Mr. Morelock had no formal training and didn’t even use power tools … just went out to his barn each day and worked. Two months later, the New York Times featured a story on Mr. Morelock, and bingo! He went from local craftsman to American legend. Suddenly, all those New Vermonters had to have a piece of Morelock furniture, and just like that, the old man had more work than he could manage. Before the story in the Times, his pieces had cost a few hundred dollars apiece. After the story, they sold for thousands, much to the amusement of their maker.
The day I turned eight was a bleak one in my personal history. Dad had moved out the week before, and in all the distress, my birthday was kind of forgotten. Mom was not only pregnant, heartbroken, furious, but also trying to manage a double funeral for a couple who’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Hester was away for the summer at some mathlete camp, and the end result was that Mom had hurriedly poured me some Cheerios, then shuttled me over to my grandfather’s. Noah popped me in his truck and drove to St. Albans. I don’t remember the reason.
At any rate, the two men got talking, and I wandered around the drafty old barn, picking up scraps of wood, drawing my initials in a pile of sawdust, trying not to be bothered by the fact that no one remembered that I was eight years old, because even then I understood that grown-ups had a lot of problems. Then I saw the chair.
It was a rocking chair, the type meant for a front porch. Made from honey-colored tiger maple, it was truly a work of art, elegant and slender, almost glowing from within. With a glance at Noah and Mr. Morelock to ascertain that they were too busy to notice, I gave it a little nudge, and it glided back soundlessly. Could I sit in it? There was no sign saying I couldn’t. I sat. The seat and back were perfectly proportioned, curving in all the right places, and when I rocked in it, the movement was as gentle and slow as a quiet river.
Even then, I recognized that the chair was special. It was so … graceful. And so happy, somehow. Just sitting in this chair would make a person feel better. Even if her daddy didn’t live at home anymore. Even if her sister was far away. Even if her mom hadn’t baked a birthday cake. This was a chair that promised a better time ahead. The tightness that had wrapped itself around my throat the day my parents told me they were getting divorced seemed to ease as I rocked, the motion somehow tender and deep.
Closing my eyes, I pictured, perhaps for the first time, what I’d be like as a grown-up. I’d have a rooftop apartment in Manhattan overlooking the entire city. There’d be a garden up there with lemon trees and glorious flowers, and I’d work all day on the Today show, and at night, I’d come home and Bryant Gumbel, my husband, would bring me a drink that contained alcohol, and we’d hold hands and talk about really adult things, and he’d never leave me, a fact I’d know beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“You like that chair, little one?” Mr. Morelock asked, and I jumped in guilt and opened