“I think I’m a Buddhist,” was Kal’s inane reply. “But I’m going to table it for the moment.”
One thing at a time.
—
Rosemary sat very still, her fork poised in midair, deeply surprised by Kal’s declaration.
How simple it was.
“Completely,” she said. “We get completely.”
Kal smiled at her, the first smile, the best smile, with the lines around his eyes crinkling and the gap between his teeth, his face broken open and right.
“Yeah, but not how we meant it last night,” he said. “Not focused on what you have to give me or I have to give you for it to meet some standard that means we’re doing it right. I’m talking about completely in this whole other way, where I love you because you’re you, and whatever you want to do, that’s fantastic because I want you to be you, and I want you to live your life however you want to live it. That’s the kind of completely we can’t mess up. There aren’t any rules. There’s just you and me.”
Her fork hit the edge of her plate with a clatter. Her hand shaking. Her eyes watering, tears spilling over.
It was overwhelming, this feeling in her body. Familiar, too, but not because she’d ever felt it before.
Because she’d been searching for it.
This was how Rosemary had thought she would feel on top of the mountain, at the end of a long and difficult climb, with the world laid out beneath her. As though her body had no boundaries, just awe and gratitude and love spilling over everywhere.
She turned to Beatrice, her baby, with her rainbow hair and her perfect face. “I love you,” she said. “I love you so much. I’ve never stopped loving you for one minute, and I’m so proud of you all the time. I need you to know, I’m your mum.” Her voice had gone shaky. Her ears were hot. She wiped at her face with her napkin.
“Jeez,” her daughter said.
Rosemary leaned into Beatrice’s shoulder, put an arm around her, squeezed her close. “I’m just going to keep on being your mum however you need me to be. There isn’t anytime you can’t call me and ask for whatever you need, no matter where I am in the world.”
“I know that.”
“Okay. Good.” Rosemary leaked tea
rs into her daughter’s hair, fully aware that her behavior was that of a woman who’d come unhinged in front of an entire dinner table of virtual strangers and her ex-husband.
It was excellent to be unhinged. Probably she should have allowed herself to unhinge a long time ago. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next, you know? With my life? But I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me, Mum.”
“Oh, good.” That was settled, then. She sniffled and squished love into her daughter’s body until Beatrice began to squirm, and then she let go and looked at Winston, whose expression was one she hadn’t seen in years—just love and approval and pleasure.
“We made such a good baby,” she said helplessly.
“We did.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I get a mojito to help me through this?” Beatrice asked.
Ben shot to his feet. “I’ll do it.”
Then Allie was laughing and Ben was in the kitchen, Nancy dabbing at the corner of one eye with her napkin, the stillness broken into relief. Rosemary found Kal across the table, beautiful Kal, who loved her even when she messed it up.
“I want completely,” she said. “I want completely with you.”
He walked around the table, and by the time he made it to her chair she’d risen to meet him, put her arms around him, kissed him in front of everyone with her full heart.
Her head on his chest, his hands on her back, she felt his reply with her whole body. “I want that, too.”