Third Epilogue
Becca
Thirty Years Later…
“Becca? Becca, are you here?”
“I’m in here, my love!”
“Where’s here?”
“The studio! I’m in the studio!”
As I listen to my husband stomp through the house, I dab several more drops of paint onto the canvas propped on the easel before me. Setting down my brush, I push myself up from my stool, wiping my hands on my frock as I rise. Just as I turn towards the entrance to the studio, Rich appears in the doorway, his eyes, as they have every day for the last thirty years, lighting up when he sees me.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says, coming up to me and throwing his arms around my shoulders. “How is my darling this fine morning?”
His hair is still wet from his morning spent down in the surf, the wetsuit he still has on clinging to his muscular frame. For a man who’s just hit sixty, he’s in as good a shape as ever, this undoubtedly due to his ritual of beginning every day with two or three hours amongst the waves.
“I’m wonderful, darling. Just about finished the painting. One more quick coating and that’ll be that.”
Holding me to him, Rich examines the canvas on the easel behind me.
“It’s beautiful,” he says, a smile spreading across his lips. I have my chin on his chest, my eyes locked on his. “One of your best. What are you going to do with it when you’re done?”
“It’s for Sophia’s daughter. Jen’s going to hang it in the new baby’s bedroom. Alexa is due any day now.”
“How wonderful! Though it does make me wonder when Tom or Mollie are going to grace us with grandchildren of our own.”
“Soon, hopefully.” Rising up onto my toes, I kiss Rich’s chin. “Actually, I was talking to Mollie on her way to work this morning and she told me that David had told her he was ready to start trying.”
“About damn time.”
“Agreed. How was the surf?”
“Incredible,” Rich says, his arms relaxing around me. Turning, he leads me over to the couch in the far corner of the studio. Every other wall in the room is lined with canvases of mine, some still not quite finished, others primed and waiting to be shipped to the people who’ve purchased them. Next to the couch is a large wooden desk, its top covered with various books and sheets of paper. Rich’s writings. From the looks of it, he was knee-deep in another novel, a fact I wouldn’t be able to confirm until he was finished.
Dropping down onto the couch, my husband of thirty years pulls me onto his lap, one arm around my shoulders, the other draped over my knee. I snuggle my face against his neck and draw in a lungful of air through my nose, breathing deep the scent I know I would never tire of.
“The waves were absolutely perfect,” he continues. “Rolling in one after the other. Cal and I both managed to catch several long rides.” Sighing in remembrance, he presses his lips to my forehead. “It was a gorgeous morning as well, the sun coming up over the water, the mountains so green in the backdrop. A family of dolphins stayed near us for quite some time.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“It was. Anyways, going back to what we were talking about a minute ago…do you know what Cal told me?”
“Hmm?”
“He said that on the radio this morning he’d heard that one of Hawaii’s foremost painters was going to have several of her paintings hanging in the Louvre come the New Year.”
“Huh.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
Lifting my head, I look at Rich, the semi-serious glint in his eye making me giggle. Even though I too was almost sixty, I felt just like a schoolgirl in his arms.
“When they were actually hanging there. I don’t like to count my chickens before they hatch.”
“That’s amazing, my love. See? I always knew you were going to be one of the greats.”
“I’m not sure that’s what that means. It’s not like I’m redefining painting itself, not like Monet or Gauguin or Da Vinci. I just so happen to be pretty decent at it.”
“And by decent you mean you have works in almost every major museum in the world. That sounds pretty great to me.”
“Well, I couldn’t have done it without you. If you hadn’t gotten that first painting into the Met—”
“Oh, please,” Rich cuts me off. “It would have happened with or without my help. Truthfully, I was just being egotistical. I just wanted to say that I was the one who got you started. Biographers will be forced to remember my name now.”
In the mango tree just outside the window of the studio, a bird calls to its mate, its lilting song full of joy. A moment later, its mate responds from a tree deeper in the backyard. Behind this call and response, the crash of the ocean a hundred yards beyond the house is just barely audible.
“Well, I have a feeling they’re going to remember you regardless. We both know I’m not the only one hiding her successes. Mollie told me she’d read in the paper yesterday that a certain tall, handsome someone was being shortlisted for one of the biggest literary awards in the nation.”
It’s Rich’s turn to grin sheepishly. “Caught red-handed, huh?”
“Red-handed, indeed, my love. I’m so proud of you!”
“I have my muse to thank. I don’t think I’d have ever begun to write if it hadn’t have been for you. How can a man see such beauty and not be inspired?”
“Are you trying to flatter me?”
“Is it working?”
“Perhaps.” I plant a gentle peck on his lips. “Though I don’t know what you see that’s so beautiful anymore. I’m so old and wrinkly…”
Cupping my chin with his hand, Rich turns my face to look at him.
“No, you’re not,” he says quietly. “You’re more beautiful than ever. I mean that.”
“But—“
“No. No buts. I won’t listen to any. As I said all those years ago and will continue to say every day until I die, you are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, both inside and out. I feel like the luckiest man in the world being able to wake up next to you every day, to open my eyes and to see you sleeping there beside me, your mouth open, drool dripping down your cheeks, snoring like a train rumbling down the—“
“Rich!”
He laughs. “Seriously, my love. I couldn’t be any happier. Do you know that most days I go to sleep thinking about how unfair it is? It’s unfair that I should get to be so happy, so utterly content. All over the world people are struggling, alone and scared and without another soul to care for them. I don’t know why God blessed me so, but as soon as I get the opportunity, I’m going to thank him.”
He falls silent, the two of us staring deep into one another’s eyes, our souls connected by some unseen, and yet unbreakable, thread. He’s right, in a way. It was unfair to be so happy, to have so much joy in one’s life when so many others had so little.
Sitting there, my arm around his shoulder, his hand lovingly caressing my face, his bright, blue eyes looking imploringly into mine, suddenly the years begin to unfold before me. A good, full life we’ve had together, overflowing with moments of tenderness and feelings of love at every turn. From those first weeks after our reconciliation to our courtship to the first years of our marriage to our first child to our second and to all the moments in between and since—birthdays, holidays, vacations, triumphs, failures, sicknesses, moments of health, moments of joy, of hurt, of understanding and misunderstanding, of forgiveness and of growth—ours had been a life that, given the chance, I would not change a single thing about.
“What are you thinking?” Rich whispers after a while, his soft words breaking the silence. As ever, it’s just the two of us in this world of ours, two bodies with one soul marching through this strange little thing called existence.
“I’m thinking about everything that led us here. And how strange it is that for twenty-eight years I never truly felt alive, not until you came into my world. Sometimes I wish I had met you sooner, though I know it could only have happened after I had walked through such terrible fire. That was what made my heart ready for you.”
“I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes, it feels like the life I led before you came along belonged to someone else, that it happened to someone else. Can you believe that I was once a famous football player?”
“The best in the nation. I still see your face pop up every so often in sports documentaries.”
Rich shakes his head. “So strange. What’s more: I don’t miss it in the slightest. I never have. None of it mattered once I met you.”
“You know a card came in the mail the other week.”
“From her?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“What did it say?”
I shrug. “The usual. That she was sorry again for how she had acted, and that it took a long time to realize that who she was was not who she was supposed to be. And then she wrote that her first grandchild had been born. Maddie, I believe her name is.”
“I still can’t believe you keep up with her. How can you not hate her?”
I laugh. “Oh, I did. For a very long time, in fact. But I realized long ago that life has no room for hate. All hate does is take. From you, from me, from her. Better to fill oneself with love. Besides, why should I hate her? I needed her to get me to you. She’s as much a part of our story as anything else. If anything, I’m grateful.”
“See? Beautiful inside and out.”
His arms tightening around me, Rich pulls my head back down to his shoulder. We sit like that for some time, the two of us just thinking our thoughts as the day slowly rises, morning melting into afternoon, listening as a gentle breeze rustles the branches of the mango tree just outside the window.
“Alright,” Rich says after nearly an hour has passed in this comfortable reverie. He rises from the couch with me cradled to him. Even though I’m a bit heavier than in my youth, I still seem to weigh nothing in his strong arms. Setting me on my feet, he strides across the room to a stereo on a small table near my easel. Flicking it on, he turns the dial, scanning through the channels until he comes upon a saxophone singing a slow, happy, hopeful tune. “Let’s dance, my love.”
Crossing back to me, Rich places his hands on my waist. I drape my arms over his shoulders, our hips swaying as we begin to slowly spin in place.
“I love you, Rich,” I murmur, pulling him to me so that I can rest my cheek against his chest. His heartbeat is as strong and as steady as ever.
“I love you, too, Becca,” he says, resting his chin atop my head. “From now until the end of time.”
“From now until the end of time,” I echo, my eyes closing as the soft music envelops my spirit and lifts it up to the heavens. “From now until the end of time…”
THE END
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