Zelda
December 25th one year later
I stood at the window of our new apartment in Brooklyn Heights. White walls still smelling of fresh paint. Hardwood floors, new appliances. We’d moved in three months ago, and I still wasn’t used to the heat that flowed like a miracle from a central unit.
The Christmas lights came with us, of course. I strung them over the window that framed the East River and Manhattan beyond. On the wall next to the window hung an enlarged panel from Mother, May I? with a pop-out of text taken from The Guardian:
“A story of cause and effect. Of violence, vengeance and redemption, touched with shades of chaos theory. An unapologetic affirmation on the power of forgiveness.”
We’d received tons of generous reviews—so many I sometimes had to remind myself this was my life, not a dream. But the review from The Guardian stood out. All it lacked was a reference to love.
In my mind, Mother, May I? had ultimately been about love. But wasn’t love a kind of chaos theory? One small look, one smile or one word could alter the course of a life forever. Beckett and I were living proof.
Readers were clamoring for Ryder’s story. In one corner of our spacious living area was a new desk, stylish lamp, and two chairs where we worked to bring MMI? Volume II—Sins of the Father, to life.
Beckett came up behind me, put his arms around my waist and kissed my neck.
“They’re here. Are you ready?”
I picked up a small painting I had finished the day before. A complete contrast to the black-and-white of the graphic novel panels, a burst of yellow and red. I slipped it into my portfolio and shut off the overhead lights, leaving the string of white Christmas lights on. Fireflies dancing across the white walls in the dying afternoon light.
“Ready.”
We put on our coats and hats, grabbed our rolling suitcases and headed downstairs. Roy and Mary Goodwin were waiting with a taxi van. Mrs. Santino was in the backseat, bundled in a musty-smelling faux fox coat. She wore it every week, when we took her out to dinner or a movie.
No more handshakes—Roy hugged his son, slapped his back and shoulders and ruffled his head. Mary took Beckett’s face in her hands, kissed his cheeks, and nagged him affectionately to get a haircut.
One of these days I’d be able to watch this new little family without getting misty-eyed. For now, I blamed the wind and climbed into the van.
“How are you today, Mrs. Santino?” I asked in choppy Italian.
Mrs. Santino shrugged and rattled off a list of complaints—I caught something about achy joints, but most of it was too fast for me to decipher. She waved away my pathetic attempt at a reply, then took my hand and held it between hers. When Beckett climbed in, she burst out with more Italian, like a machine gun.
“Bel giovanotto, siediti accanto a me e dammi un bacio.”
Beckett shot me a confused look.
This was easy to translate. I pointed to the other side of the woman. “You sit there, handsome, and give the lady a kiss.”
He gave Mrs. Santino a peck, and she gushed more Italian. Beckett raised his brows but I only held up my hands, my smile ready to split my face.
The van took us to Penn Station for the two-hour train ride to Philadelphia, followed by another cab ride to my parents’ house. Beckett gave my hand a squeeze as walked up the front steps.
“You okay?”
I smiled up at him. “Never better.” It was a stock answer, but in this case, the absolute truth.
We congregated on the front steps, Beckett helping Mrs. Santino who clung to his arm. Mary looked nervous as she readjusted the pot of poinsettias in her arm, and Roy straightened his tie.
The door flung open.
“Sweetheart,” Mom cried, laughing and enveloping me in a long, warm hug. Then she caught up Beckett for a hug and kiss. “Merry Christmas, honey.”
“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Rossi,” Beckett said. “I’d like you to meet my parents, Roy and Mary Goodwin.”
The wind stung my eyes again. I used to never cry, afraid the pain would come flooding out. Now I cried at the damn drop of a hat. Pain could be suppressed, but happiness knew no such bonds. It came flooding out whether I wanted it to or not.
Might as well let it gush.
My entire family crowded the doorway and the front entry, absorbing the Goodwins into the house with hugs and handshakes. Mom made a fuss over the poinsettias, and Dad gaped at the label on the single-malt Scotch Roy offered.
“And this is Mrs. Santino,” Beckett said, helping the little lady up the stairs.
My mother greeted her in Italian and Mrs. Santino responded with a string of words too fast for me to catch. But to Auntie Lucille and my grandmothers, it was the call of one of their own. They swooped in like chattering crows, and drew Mrs. Santino into their circle. More complaints about joints, the cold, and recipes trailed behind them as they went to the kitchen to make sure no one was messing up the sauce.
Christmas dinner that night was completely different than the one the year before. The absence of Rosemary in our lives didn’t go unacknowledged, but we didn’t shut her out either. We told stories and laughed, and a few tears were shed. I know that my parents—my mom especially—hadn’t found any closure, but how could they ever? I watched my mother’s smile ebb and flow as thoughts and memories tugged her in different directions, and she made a comment that she thought maybe it was time to redo the curtains.
When she excused herself to use the bathroom, I grabbed the portfolio that rested at my feet under the table. Beckett squeezed my hand and kissed me.
“Love you,” he said.
“Love you back.”
I waited for my mother in the hall outside the bathroom door. She came out dabbing her eyes, and smiled tremulously when she saw me.
“Holidays will never be easy,” she said. “Only easier.
“I know.”
My shaking hands opened the portfolio and withdrew the small painting of Rosemary and me. Little sisters bathed in gold light, holding balloons in our favorite colors. I’d made myself younger. A best friend for Rosemary, not just a sister.
Mom’s hands shook too, as her eyes grazed over the little painting.
“It’s how I think of her. Us. Together,” I said. “And it helps. I was thinking maybe it would help you to think of her like this too.”
Mom put a hand to her mouth. Above her fingers, her eyes filled with tears. “Zelda…”
“Merry Christmas, Mom.”
She drew me to her and held me a long time. All the years I’d spent away from her arms, torn apart by guilt, were erased forever.
Dinner lasted two hours, with Grandma Stella’s tiramisu as the finale. We traipsed into the living room, where a fire roared. Conversation, wine, and brandy flowed. I don’t know if it was the heat of the fire, or the booze, but my face grew warmer and warmer, until I excused myself to get some air. I noticed Beckett was nowhere in sight. Neither was my father.
I went upstairs to the guestroom and stepped out to its little deck that overlooked the street.
The cold air felt good, snapping me out of my food coma. In a few minutes, the sliding glass door opened and Beckett came out to join me.
“Hey,” he said, standing behind me and wrapping me in his arms.
“Hey, yourself. So beautiful out here, isn’t it?”
The street was quiet, and yellow rectangles of warm light filled the windows on the townhouses opposite, colored light strung in garlands across their fronts. Above, the sky was black and backlit with stars.
“It is,” Beckett said. “You are so beautiful.”
He turned me to face him and kissed me.
“I just had a nice chat with your dad,” he said.
“I wondered where you’d gotten off to,” I said. “What did you talk about? Let me guess, football.”
He shrugged, gazing over my shoulder. “This and that. Stuff. Life. The future.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s that look for?”
“What look?” His usual teasing tone had a nervous edge to it.
“You look like you have a secret.”
“I’m an open book. Ask me anything.”
“You might regret that, Goodwin,” I said. “Where should I begin?”
“You could start by asking what’s in my pocket.”
“Sounds like the start of a dirty joke.”
He shook his head. “In about eight seconds, you’re going to feel so bad you said that, Rossi.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah?”
His voice grew soft. “Yeah.”
Beckett pulled from his coat pocket a small black velvet box and turned it over and over in his hand.
I heard a little sound escape me as a tingling spread across my chest. The cold, bracing air was nothing to the warmth that flooded me. “Beckett…”
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “If you say anything, I’m going to forget all the words I prepared, and something ridiculous like, ‘Us marry, yes or no?’ will pop out instead.”
I clapped my hands over my mouth, stifling laughter or a sob, I didn’t know which.
Beckett’s rugged features softened, and he took my hand in his.
“Zelda,” he began, and smiled in the most charmingly self-conscious way at how thick his voice sounded. He swallowed and tried again.
“Zelda, saying yes when you asked to live with me was the best decision I’ve made in my entire life. And I think about that a lot, how brave you were to ask. To try again after life knocked you down. And how you gave me a chance that night, to do the same. To try again, when I’d given up on myself.”
“I’d given up too,” I whispered. “I was lost in the dark without you, Beckett. You found me. You brought me home.”
“You are my home, baby,” he said. “I never want to be anywhere else.”
Beckett kissed me fiercely, then opened the box. Inside was a white-gold ring with a square-shaped diamond. It was set between two small butterflies outlined in tiny beads of silver, with smaller diamonds in their wings.
Beckett sank to one knee, his voice trembling at the edges, and removed the ring from the box.
“You and me, Zel,” he said hoarsely, slipping the ring on my finger. “What do you say? Will you marry me?”
In that instant, I saw the scene sketched out in black and white. The lonely busboy and the desperate girl with no place to go, sitting on a step in a cold alley, sharing a cigarette. I thought of the string of kindnesses that led to this moment, in this house full of love and joy. It began with Beckett saying yes to me, taking me in. It would end right here, with me saying yes as he asked me to be his wife.
I looked down into Beckett’s deep blue eyes, bottomless in their love for me. Tears slipped out of mine that had nothing to do with the wind and everything to do with perfect happiness.
“Yes.”