Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

Francis is silent. They drive several more blocks, the dark running through her hair. She can’t smell the sea, but she can feel it is close. They come to a crossroads, and Francis slows to a stop.

He turns to look at her.

“I was a disappointment,” he says. “Mike was strong and steady. Luke was smart and funny. Patty Ann was…like an arrow. And Sissy was Sissy . I was just, you know, pretty. I could never live up to any of you.”

It takes her breath away. “Is that how you think?”

Francis just looks at her. Even in the night, his eyes are so clear and blue — even more Michael’s eyes now than they were when he was still a boy. Her youngest son has seen things. Like Michael, he has stories he may never tell.

“You are so stupid, Francis,” she says.

He laughs softly. “That doesn’t help.”

“That’s not how it is when you have children. To me, each and every one of you was— is —perfect. Even Patty Ann, who has given me a headache for, well, basically since the day your father died, is still utterly perfect to me. You were, all of you, the best kids in the entire world. That’s what it means to be a mother. You’ll see when you and your girl start having children.”

Behind them, a car honks.

“I may be perfect, but I don’t think I can ever be a mother,” Francis says, putting the convertible back in motion.

“You know what I mean. You were all perfect to your father also. We didn’t say this one is a and that one is b . We said this one wants that and that one wants this. That’s how parents think about their children. You’ll see.”

They drive again in silence until they reach Patty Ann’s desolate street. Shadows have fallen over the overgrown trees, the yard, the boarded-up houses around it. The Pacific whispers gently in the viscous night air. Ronnie has taken the space behind Patty Ann’s in the driveway. Francis pulls up next to the sidewalk.

“I don’t know about having children,” Francis says.

“Oh, you’ll have kids,” she says. “Georgina is too pretty not to have a child. You’re too pretty not to have a child.”

He looks at her. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. They both laugh.

“I’m proud of you, Francis,” she says. “Always proud of you.”

“Hey, you two! Are you coming in?” Patty Ann calls from the porch.

Another aftershock hits, bouncing the convertible just a little. They wait to be sure it’s not the big one, then walk toward the porch together. She slips her hand through his arm. It feels like something she’s been waiting to do since forever.

EVERYONE’S ELBOWING SOMEONE FOR something in New York City. Two women in skintight jogging clothes, pushing three-wheeled strollers down West 81st Street, practically knock her over. A cluster of fat-bodied pigeons fights over a scrap of pizza. And there’s that woman standing on the same corner as yesterday evening: missing one of her front teeth, sticking her dirty hand out into the path of every person who passes.

Twelve hours since she arrived at Kennedy Airport. In another three days, she’ll be back on a plane again, heading home to Phoenix. The backyard immaculately landscaped, the small clean pool — everything spotless, even more so now that she’s the only one living in the town house in Scottsdale. Are you going to move back to California? the kids asked after Ronnie’s funeral. But move to where? Southern California, where back in the 1960s, she lost the first of her husbands? Northern California, where half a century ago she left behind the unmarried version of herself? What did the kids think the twenty years she’d spent in Arizona had been? An extended visit?

All of life is an extended visit. There’s no visiting within the visit.

She reaches the corner. She might have returned to Southern California had Patty Ann really needed her. She might even have moved into that big house in Venice with her and Glenn, helping out with the two younger boys. But even if Isaiah hadn’t joined his father, living in that canyon, he still would have grown up. Lucas would have grown up, too. And where would that have left her? An old lady living with her middle-aged daughter, nothing to do, no one to do it for?

The beggar woman is muttering something, moving toward her. A yellow car beams up Amsterdam Avenue — a taxi. She thrusts a hand out, like she’s seen on television and in the movies. The taxi swerves dangerously to the left, cutting off other traffic, screeching to a stop beside her. She opens the door and slides in before the begging woman can get any closer.

“Broadway and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street,” she says. “And try to drive less like a crazy person, please.”

The driver — a dark-skinned man with a turban wrapped around his head — turns to look at her. “Okay, lady.” He peels back into traffic. She takes hold of her armrest as they dart uptown along the streets of New York City.

At least she won’t be late for Kenny’s graduation ceremony. They all offered to come fetch her: Kenny, his girlfriend — although she hasn’t met her yet — and even Molly, in her own fashion. I can’t get free before noon myself, Aunt Barbara, but I can have a car waiting right in front of your hotel. I’ll give instructions to the driver. Sweet of them, of course, but she can get there on time and in one piece by herself.

Don’t worry about me, dear, she told Molly. I made it to seventy years old. I can make it two miles north in New York City.

The cab veers wildly to the curb and jerks to a stop in front of Columbia University’s tall main gates. The sidewalk teems with people. She pays the cabdriver, tipping him what she hopes is a correct amount, and picks her way through the gaggles of girls, tippy in high-heeled sandals beneath graduation robes, and anxious parents. Everyone graduating from Columbia’s undergraduate and graduate schools is part of this morning ceremony. There will be a second, private ceremony for the medical school this afternoon.

Dr. Kennedy Gannon Rosetti.

Just thinking those four words makes her heart leap. She’s come two miles uptown and a lot further than that to get her grandson here today.

She parts friend from friend, husband from wife, making her way toward a campus guard, her entrance ticket safely tucked inside the navy blue purse she bought special for this occasion. It’s been years since she had a flock of kids following her, but, like living through earthquakes, the physical memory of those decades never leaves her. How much easier it is to move through crowds as just one person! A warm hand lands on her shoulder.

“Grandma!”

Kenny’s face is flushed and happy. In his free hand, he wields an outlandishly oversize latex glove, some sort of totem for the graduation ceremony.

“Kenny! How in the world did you find me in this mess of people?” His light blue gown with black trim, the emerald green sash around his neck, and the velvety black mortarboard set off his clear eyes. The robe accentuates his height — the one physical attribute he clearly got from his Gannon genes. But he inherited something still more important from them. She has to catch her breath. Four generations of doctors, starting with Michael’s father. She straightens his cap. “My, my, don’t you look like a swell!”

A tall girl with close-set blue eyes and olive skin homes in on them. “It’s kismet!” the girl says, revealing a set of showily perfect teeth.

“Grandma,” Kenny says, “This is Jennifer Cohen. Jennifer, this is my grandma.”

She takes Jennifer’s hand. So this is the girl her grandson likes.