Chapter Nineteen
Linnea’s departure was just the start and within twenty minutes the last of the guests took their leave.
Nat kissed his great-aunts and turned to his parents. “I’m off too,” he said.
“It’s still early.” His mother pointed out. “Why don’t you come along to our house for a bit? Your father has some tunes he wants to run past you. Besides”—she brushed a piece of his hair away from his eyes—“we’ve barely seen you. I don’t think you’ve been to the house since Thanksgiving and we’re only down the road.”
He hadn’t. It wasn’t exactly deliberate, it just didn’t feel natural. Either Nat spent all his time with his parents or they were on opposite sides of the country, sometimes the world. Being able to just pop in for a coffee and a chat with them was an alien concept to him.
Their house was a lot smaller than both Crooked Corner and the Summer House, built many decades later, but although more modest in size it had beautiful views over the Marietta river. As Nat had predicted, the whole of the front of the house was covered with Christmas lights, strands of multicolored bulbs wound through many of the trees.
His parents had still been unpacking at Thanksgiving so it was a shock when Nat walked in and saw a finished house, photos of Lacey and him everywhere. Baby photos, the two of them as children posing in front of landmarks all over the world. Pictures of him onstage. Amidst the photos were what seemed like a thousand souvenirs; masks from Venice, dolls from Russia, glass animals from Prague, a decorated boomerang hung next to a silk Japanese fan. And that was just in the wide hallway. Nat turned slowly, trying to take it all in. “Where on earth have you been storing all this stuff?”
“Back at the ranch,” his father said. “Your grandfather kept it for us. I must admit, I didn’t realize we had accumulated quite so much.”
The large sitting room was more of the same; brightly-colored throws from India covered the couch, wooden animals carved in Africa marched along the mantelpiece and more photos lined the walls. A huge Christmas tree dominated the corner. “All those years you told me that we didn’t need things to weigh us down, just music in our hearts and some way of playing it and all along you were secret pack rats?” Nat said, accepting the beer his mother gave him.
“We only bought one thing from everywhere we visited as a memento. I guess we visited a lot of places,” his mother said. “Every ornament on the tree we picked up while traveling. I can remember buying each one.”
“It’s like living amongst our memories,” his father said. “It’s actually very inspiring. I’ve written more in the last three weeks than in the last three years.”
Nat sat down on the overstuffed couch, removing several embroidered cushions in order to make space and stared at his father in disbelief. “You always said that being on the move, no ties, no possessions, was the best way to free up inspiration.” He didn’t want to sound accusatory, but he couldn’t help it. The whole house felt like a rebuttal of his childhood, the values he had held dear.
“But these aren’t possessions, they are reminders of the past, of the world outside this town.” His father sounded surprised. “Hold on, let me get my guitar. I’ll show you.”
Nat took a long drink of his beer as his father left the room, then set the bottle down and looked over at his mother. “Is this what you wanted all the time?” he asked. She looked so domesticated, curled up on the love seat, one hand on Biscuit’s head. “A home, to be settled?
“No. No, I never wanted to settle, I wanted a different way of life, Nat.” In many ways, his mother was exactly the same as she had always been, in her long, flowing dress. Still tall and slim, her blonde hair long and poker straight. It was the surroundings which changed her. “I wanted you and Lacey to be citizens of the world, to grow up not wanting the latest sneakers or gadgets, but experiences. I wanted to make music free from the demands of a timetable and a school day, not to be tied down by domesticity. It’s so often the woman who ends up compromising, you know. But we’re getting older, your father and I. We’ll still travel, still tour, but it’s time we had a home to come back to.”
“So you don’t regret it? Spending your life on the road, no ties, no community, no home of your own?” Nat didn’t know why her answer was so important, he just knew it was.
She didn’t answer for a long time, continuing to pull Biscuit’s long ears through her fingers while the dog made blissful crooning sounds in the back of his throat. “Professionally, no. Personally, no. As a mother? A little.”
That he hadn’t expected. The words hit hard. “Why? We’re both fine. Look at these photos, we saw the world, how many people can say that? We have good careers, Lacey is engaged and happy…”
“Lacey took a long time to let anyone get close and, as for you, Nat, I worry you never will.”
“That’s not true.” But he couldn’t look at his mother as he protested.
“No? You make friends easily, but who outside your family can you turn to? And you keep us at arm’s length most of the time. I think showing you the world was a huge gift, giving you the opportunity to play music every day a boon. But I don’t want you to end up alone, my darling, and I worry that’s where you are headed.”
“I’m only twenty-eight.” He tried to laugh her words off, to tell himself they didn’t sting, that the truth of them hadn’t hit home.
“Twenty-eight with no home of your own, no relationship outside your family which has ever meant anything to you. I know I spent my life traveling, but I had your father, I had you and Lacey. I was never alone.”
“I’m twenty-eight with an album that has sold really well, a label ready to pump money into promoting my next, a world tour under my belt.” He was being defensive, but had no idea how else to react. “Look, Mom, I’m glad you and Dad are happy and I am delighted that Lacey has what she has always wanted, but that doesn’t mean that settling down is right for me, not yet.” The memory of how lonely he had been earlier that evening shivered through him.
Lonely that was, until Linnea joined him. For those brief moments the whole evening made sense. He was part of it.
But how could he put his trust in someone who had turned him away before? Someone who thought he was safe precisely because he wasn’t settled.
He half expected his mother to get cross or upset, but she just looked at him, her gaze penetrating. “Did that last album make you happy, Nat?”
“I’m happy every time I hear my songs play on the radio,” he retorted.
“Every time you played them? Was it like greeting an old friend? Like coming home?”
“I thought we’d established that I have no home, no old friends.”
He regretted the words as soon as he said them, especially as they obviously hit home, his mother closing her eyes as if in pain. “Mom. I’m a professional musician and my music sells. That makes me happy.” At least, it made him content.
“Nat, all I want is your happiness. For you to find your own road, not to be constrained by the way we raised you. There is no shame in needing people, in needing roots. There’s no shame in love.”
“Not all of us are lucky enough to find that kind of love.” He stared over at the photos.
The four of them outside the Eiffel Tower, outside the Taj Mahal, outside the White House. He’d been all around the globe, but he’d never spent enough time any one place to know it intimately. Marietta was the only place that had the pull of home for him. Had it always, or was it because Linnea had shown him a brief glimpse of what being in that kind of family could be like?
“Not everyone has a forever love.”
“You’re a Hathaway. When a Hathaway falls in love he or she falls forever. Look at your grandparents. Look at your Aunt Patty, still in love with a man who died forty years ago. You’re like swans. You mate for life.”
Nat had heard the family legend many times, but had never thought it affected him. What if it did? What if he had given his heart away at eighteen to someone who hadn’t wanted it? He folded his arms and gave his mother a sardonic glance. “That’s just a story.”
“What about Linnea? You seem close.”
“We are. We’re friends. See, I am capable of making them.” But the joke fell flat.
“She’s a lovely girl.”
“She’s a wonderful woman, with two wonderful children, and a lot of responsibility to juggle,” he said. “I like her, I enjoy her company, but she needs someone steadier than me. Someone who will always be there for her.” Unlike her husband, unlike Nat who might not spend his spare time rock climbing, but was no steadier for that.
“Why can’t that person be you?”
Nat stared over at his mother. “Even if we were in that kind of relationship, even if she wanted to be with me, it still wouldn’t work between us. It couldn’t. I have commitments all over the country. I am going on tour again, and then there will be another one and then another one. That’s not what she needs.”
“Zac works in San Francisco every week. Lots of musicians manage to have families, Nat, just because we didn’t settle doesn’t mean you can’t.”
To Nat’s relief, his father ambled into the room, a guitar in each hand and Nat jumped up to relieve him of one. “Let me play you a song from the new album,” he said hurriedly, knowing nothing would distract his mother as quickly as music and wanting to push her words away. Because if she was right, there was no reason for him to run away.
But Linnea only wanted a transition guy; she’d made that very clear. And that Nat could do. Steady forever guy? That was something he had no idea how to do, how to be. And the risks of getting it wrong were far too high.