The Color of Home: A Novel (26 page)

A noise snapped her out of a dream about moving to Paris and studying French cooking with Joel Robuchon. A fish jumping? A woman in cement shoes? The water around the boat stilled, revealing nothing. Calmly, she reached for a journal Nick had given her years earlier. Still mostly empty, she took it with her almost everywhere, waiting for the invisible ink to materialize. A little sleepy, she turned to a fresh page.

FAMILY. When I was young, I connected through simple things. We worked. We loved. We ate. We danced. Then death locked it all up, made it somehow inaccessible. After that, I lost myself on the path of least resistance for a long time. Drugs. Men. I shriveled instead of blossoming. I forgot what Mom taught me. Until Nick came along.

NICK. I loved him as openly as I could that first year, but I was scared by big love, by truth without masks. We were two halves, but not two wholes. I know now what I didn’t know then—there was really no choice but to start our separate and together journey.

CAMBRIDGE. Three months alone to think, to remember, to finds pieces I lost along the way. I made peace with my father, my mother, and my sister. I forgave myself for living, and forgave them for dying. I stopped acting out, at least for a time. And then Brayden came along. What a good man. He’s gentle and kind and compassionate. He taught me a great deal without any strings attached. I love him. Always will. And Chloe was like a sister. I love her. Always will. They are chosen family.

MATT AND MYRINA. They’re going to make it fifty years. They showed me that love really is workable. And that work is love and community. They showed me that it’s possible to have it all as long as you don’t get caught up, as long as you don’t bow to the many gods of numb for too long.

WORK. The Green Angel in Portand. That was what I had loved. The size. The city. The community. If I had known then, I would have stayed there, stayed small, stayed humble. FoodNation. Too much money, growth, and profit. Too much vegetarian cookbook fame. Those things are so seductive, but don’t really matter in the end. They were lines crossed. Now that I know, I can pull back.

RACHEL. She was good for Nick. That’s hard to admit, but true. I even liked her when we met in New York. But in Portland, in death, she changed everything. I needed Nick to pick me when she was still alive. I can’t be second choice. Once she died, there was no way to know, no way for him to show me who he would have chosen down the road. She’s on her own pedestal now, a beautiful one built from songs, right next to Nick’s dad. And she always will be. When I heard
Songs of Love and Loss
a month ago, I numbed, I acted out. For a full month! The worst bout I’ve had since college. I can’t believe I fired that chef. There was too much work, too much Vicodin, too much sex with strangers. Too much, period. Maybe those things, all my different ways of numbing, were the ultimate lines crossed. Once you go the first time, it’s easier to go again. The last time with Noah really scared me. I had to go cold turkey. If only there was a way now for Nick to show what he would have done, who he would have chosen. But there isn’t.

She tossed the journal on the deck and dove off the back of the boat. She swam out a long way from the boat, a long way from anything. For a moment, before swimming back, she wondered if she could stay there forever.

NICK. He was the catalyst for everything. He started me down this path toward truth with no masks, toward becoming whole. He is my true love. He always will be. But from the beginning, I knew one of us might end up with a different partner. I guess that was the risk we had to take to find our way to whole, to home. I must admit I didn’t think it would be him. He loves Rachel. He will always love Rachel. I will forever love him, but I’m letting him go. I can’t be second choice. I hope that he finds another love down the road that makes him as happy as I did once, as Rachel did until her death.

WHOLE. Whole was about two halves in the beginning, but that wasn’t enough for me. It’s not enough for anyone, really, though you’d never know it in the world we live in. There were so many years wandering down the wrong path, so much learned by doing so, so much forgiven. Or maybe there is no wrong path. Maybe it’s all part of the way toward whole. And what is whole? In the end, it came down to one simple act—I learned to love, honestly, openly, directly, without masks . . . myself.

She put down her pen and reread what she’d written. The pain in her body lifted, as if an invisible full-body cast of jagged metal had been cut away. She dove off the boat and floated for a long time.

Sassa set foot in her home for the first time in a month. Immediately, she turned on the cell phone she’d left behind and found hundreds of voicemail messages. Scanning down the list, she noticed multiple messages from Brayden. She phoned him. “It’s me. I just got your message. I’ve been out of town. What’s up?”

“I thought you might want to talk about Nick after his performance on
Conan
.”

“Not much to say. He loves Rachel.”

“That’s all you got out of it?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’ve talked with a lot of people, men and women, about the performance. All of the women wanted to know about you. Hell, they wanted to be you. And all of the men, including me, admired Nick’s perseverance. He loves you.”

“The song was about Rachel, not me.”

“The first song, yes, but not the second song.”

“What second song? I switched the television off after the first song.”

“Oh my, what a Romeo and Juliet moment! You need to get a copy of the entire performance right away and watch it.”

“There are two songs?”

Sassa found Nick’s entire performance on YouTube right after she hung up. She made herself sit through another performance of “Love,” which confirmed her original decision to move on. Then she trembled through “When Light Passes Through.” A house on North Lake. Red summer dress. Safe, healed, blessed. Love of my life. You are not alone. As we grow old. What a song.

She sobbed for a long time, yet resolved to do nothing rash. She wouldn’t call Nick and tell him she had watched his performance. She wouldn’t tell him how she felt about the song. And she certainly wouldn’t tell him that she’d changed her mind and wanted him back. She would do none of those things, at least not until she let her feelings settle for a few days. What was a few more days after so many years?

Her resolve lasted until the middle of the night, when a dream woke her. In the dream, her sister, still alive and much older, looked like their mother. She was rocking in a painted wooden chair on the porch at their Mackinac Island summer hotel. Nick had driven all the way from New York to see her and ask her for advice. “Is there anything I can do to get Sassa back?” Nick asked. “No,” her sister replied. “She has a mind of her own and it’s closed. All she cares about is work, Vicodin, and sex with foreigners. She’ll die alone. There’s nothing you can do. Let go and find someone new, someone more like Rachel.” In a pool of sweat, sheets and blankets in a tangle, Sassa reached for her phone. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Nick replied warmly.

“I saw you on
Conan
. I watched the whole thing for the first time tonight.”

“I hoped you’d see it.”

“Can you come over now?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She found one of Nick’s old Beatles T-shirts, tossed it on, and paced back and forth in front of the mirror. She didn’t brush her hair, and didn’t put on any make-up. By the time Nick buzzed, their years of searching, of steps forward and backward, of trying to deny what they had, were over. She let him in, gave him a long, deep hug, and let her lips touch his for a second before she whispered, “I opened a bottle of wine, an Amarone.”

He glanced at the coffee table. “The same Amarone we had when we first met, I see.”

“It seemed right.” She took his hand and led him to the sofa. She poured the Amarone.

“I’m glad you called.”

“Quite the show you put on. Playing both songs with the interview in between.”

“I didn’t hear from you last month, so I figured you probably didn’t see it. Either that or you hated the song.”

“You really got to me.”

“Good.”

“It must have taken a long time to come up with that plan.”

“It was more of an accident. I planned to only play “When Light Passes Through,” but another guest cancelled, so I got to do both.”

“I needed to see all of it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gotten through.”

“The universe, I guess.”

“I loved the song.”

“It turned out okay.”

“More than okay. I believe you now, Nick. I’m not sure why I needed to see you perform both songs, but I did. All I know is that I understand now where you’ve been, and I think you were telling me the truth about coming home.”

“I’m sure that every convoluted thing that happened during the past five years moved us toward this place.”

“Do you want to go into my bedroom?”

“Yes.”

They made their way, slowly, arm in arm, to Sassa’s bed. There, they held each other for a long time, fingers and legs intertwined. They didn’t speak. Joy and sadness passed between them freely, through their bodies, their eyes, their fingertips. She understood him as never before, as someone whole joined with her by choice and commitment. Without expectation, wholeness guided her as they made love. It was unlike anything she’d experienced before. An endless amount of love flowed out of her and carried them higher, over a steep wall that neither of them had been able to scale previously. Who knew that the ultimate leap was inward.

“How do you feel?” he asked afterward.

“Whole. How about you?”

“Home.”

“You know, I’ve been whole the entire time. I just couldn’t see it until recently. There were too many clouds in the way, too many old patterns.”

“Same for me.”

“Was she there with us?”

“No. She’ll be with me on occasion elsewhere, but never with us here. We made this place together, and only we can be here.”

“I feel like I should thank her.”

“I have.”

Hours later, when the first light poured across their faces, he nestled against her shoulder, gently stroking her stomach, and wept. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“It was so difficult to get here.”

“No need for that. We made it back to each other. Everything is going to be okay.”

Nick flipped over onto his back and opened his eyes. Sassa, propped up on one arm, contently watching him sleep, met his gaze with a smile. She stroked his whorls with graceful movements up and down the side of his head, pausing on occasion to caress the back of his ear. The bedroom pulsed. Each object, composed from billions of granules activated by the morning sun, danced an imperceptible dance. So this was home.

“Do you believe this has happened before?” she asked.

“Opening my eyes to you?”

“We overcame a lot to get to this place.”

She was right about that. There were many points along the way where doubt almost won. The one-year break-up. The first time he heard about Brayden. Rachel’s death. The cabin.
Songs of Love and Loss
. But, in the end, it didn’t. “I’m sure it’s happened before.”

“How come no one talks about this place?”

“Finding a distant home scares people.”

“Like swimming out into the ocean looking for land when you can only see water.”

“And you’ve gone too far to turn around.”

Staring out the window, adrift in the city’s concrete, glass, and steel, she didn’t come back to him for a long time. He loved when she searched for shiny new things. Sometimes a new idea. Sometimes a new place. Sometimes a new recipe or dance move or gentle caress. He was never sure what she would find and that was somehow better.

“A lot happened in the middle,” she said.

“It did.”

“We need to paint a picture. If we take things for granted, everything we’ve gone through might end up wasted.”

“That won’t happen.”

“We need to put what we’ve learned into practice.”

“Just look at our past several months.”

“We’ve been riding a wave. It won’t last forever.” She pulled the extra blanket from the base of the bed up over her shoulders until only one side of her face, flush against the pillow, remained visible. She smiled.

There were so many looks, so many ways she could take his breath away. Infinite, really. Under the covers, he reached out and pulled her toward him. He loved the warmth and the smell of their bodies together under the sheets. Like nothing else. He kissed her; there would be no planning today.

“You’ve got that look on your face.”

“Let’s go dancing, but first . . .”

“I’m serious, Nick. I want to talk more now.”

“Let’s go dancing this afternoon. We can talk about painting pictures later. Give me a chance to think.”

“Sometimes I want to punch you.”

“That’s a good start.”

Nick devoted their subway ride to the dance studio to mulling over their earlier conversation. They’d devoured years searching for home, and now that they’d found it, how could they make sure they thrived? How could they create a future reassured by everything they’d gone through? How could they stay happy? Sassa was onto something: they had to practice for the rest of their lives. They would never finish.

“Hi, guys. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Shall I queue up the regular list?” Adrienne asked.

“No, surprise us.”

They positioned themselves on the dance floor and waited. They had the entire studio to themselves. Sassa kicked off her sandals. She was wearing a yellow sleeveless dress that matched both her hair and the light pouring in through the windows. Just beautiful. Like Yoko, she was in the sun.

“You’re deep in thought,” she said.

“Still processing.”

“Let’s move for a bit and see if we can shake something loose.”

Sade’s “By Your Side” started, and Nick slow-danced Sassa around the studio. The music carried him off until his thoughts evaporated, and he lost himself in movement, in touch, in her eyes. After moving straight through the playlist, sweating and happy, they collapsed on the floor, and leaned up against the wall. Through the mirrored ceiling, the reflected auras around each of them seemed to touch.

“We do need to paint our picture,” he said.

She smiled. “I like it when you come around.”

“We do some of our best work here.” He reached over and interlaced his hand with hers. “I’m sorry I didn’t get it this morning. I’ve invested so much time trying to find this place.”

“I know.”

“I’m ready now.”

She nodded. She crossed her legs under her and straightened up. “Here goes. Without a picture, I’m worried that stuff might trip us up.”

“And pictures are static.”

“Right. What we need is more like a movie.”

“And in most movies, so much is unspoken.”

“Don’t.”

He smiled. “Just playing. Sorry. Go on.”

“We need scenes, guidelines, where everything is said out loud.”

Truth said out loud. When he summed up everything they’d gone through, that’s what had taken them home. That’s what would keep things from clogging up in the future. Truth: Omega-3 for the soul. Connection guaranteed. He would print a few T-shirts.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. Let’s name the scenes.”

“You start.”

“The honesty scene, where there’s honesty between us no matter what,” he said. He ran his fingers down her sweat-covered forearm.

“Are you having fun?”

“Finger painting.” Her skin. Smooth. Like the finish on his Martin. Like nylon strings on a Spanish guitar. Like hope realized.

“Picasso?”

“Satterborn. More on honesty. When we’re hesitant to talk about something, we figure out why fear has boxed us in, and then knock down the walls.”
Fear to Fearless in Ten Not-so-Easy Steps
, by Nick and Sassa. Fearless: that was the operative word. It wasn’t that he no longer experienced fear. More that the fear didn’t stick for long; it rolled off.

“How about the wedge scene? Any time something happens that drives a wedge between us, we need to flip the wedge and use it as a way to build deeper and deeper trust,” she said.

“Wedges are juicy.”

“That’s when we’re our most vulnerable.”

Those eyes. He ran his fingers through her hair and tangled them until they attached. Maybe in the end being vulnerable, staying open to whatever popped up, even when the wedge tried to push him away, taught him the most. Or not. Maybe it was just her. “I love you.”

She reached over and rubbed his leg with her foot. “You better.”

“Better stop if you want to finish.”

“A preview.”

“Let’s go for a walk and find something cold to drink.”

Nick stood up and pulled Sassa off the floor. A moment later on the street, she looped her arm around his as they strolled through the tree-lined cross streets and admired the brownstones.

Stepping behind her, he wrapped his arms around her waist. “Look at that one.” A restored three-story brownstone with bay windows on each floor had a “For Sale” sign in front of it.

“Beautiful. . . Then there’s the ‘I’ scene, or better yet, the less and less ‘I’ scene. I plan to practice standing in others’ shoes as much as possible,” she said.

“That’s a good one. How about the spinning-out scene? Can you imagine a world where people have learned how to catch and manage spinning out?”

She pranced across the street to a bicycle chained to a wrought-iron fence delineating the front yard of a brownstone. She double-checked to make sure Nick was watching, then jiggled the chain. When she played, the world was as good as it could ever be. “It just takes two to start a chain reaction.”

He crossed the street and joined her. On opposite sides of the chain, they sent waves back and forth for a while.

“Scenes are harder when we get to the practical stuff. I’ll start. The work scene. I feel like the studio has somehow run its course. It might have been a means to an end for me.”

“You did that all for me?”

“I did. And for me. And for my father. And for Rachel.”

She reached her arm around him and slipped her hand into his back pocket.

“Did that bother you?”

“No.”

Rachel. What would she think of where he’d ended up? Happy? Sad? Both. Would they have stayed close? Yes. Or no. They would have figured it out.

“Did you just go there?”

“Yes.”

“Say ‘hi’ for me.”

He stopped walking, turned to Sassa, and kissed her gently. “Continue?”

“With scenes.”

He stopped at the street vendor on the corner and bought an extra large soft pretzel. For the next several blocks, he broke off pieces and shared them with her. By the time they’d finished eating, they were both thirsty and stopped at their favorite juice bar for their favorite kale and spinach smoothie. Back on the sidewalk, they passed the juice back and forth until it was gone.

“Okay, here’s the location scene. I’m not so sure about the city. Even in one of these brownstones, the city is a hard place to raise children. Not to mention Fellini,” he said.

“We don’t need to be here anymore.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He put his arm around her and pulled her off balance toward him. “What about the restaurant?”

“I didn’t know I had running a restaurant in me.”

“I did. You were always meant to run your own show.”

“The money and exposure have been, well, addictive.”

“I worry any time you mention addiction.”

“On the road last month, I took Vicodin.”

“You what?” He pulled a few feet away from her and stopped. He tried to catch himself as he started to spin out. Something pre-verbal ballooned to just short of bursting. He took a deep breath. And another one. He’d checked in a few times about Vicodin over the years, but she’d done such a stellar job of staying away from drugs that he’d written addiction off as a real risk.

“I’ve stopped. The drugs seemed to go with the guys. I went through a bad spell and acted out after our blow-up, that’s all. It won’t happen again.”

Heat surged through his body. Beads of sweat. Vicodin? Guys? In his mind, he banned all white pills. Then he squashed the fuckers. “Both guys and the Vicodin? How do you know?”

“I found home.”

“Not the first time one of us has acted out.”

“Part of being home means I stopped acting out and I stopped repressing stuff.”

He paced between the street and sidewalk, balancing on the curb each time for a second. He wanted to scream at her. About Vicodin. About the guys. How could she go down that path again? No. He wasn’t doing this. He wasn’t going to spin out. This was just a scene, a wedge, an on-the-spot test. He slowed down, studied her face for signs. Did he believe her? Did he? Yes. There would be no wedges today. There would be no more acting out. There would be no more repressing feelings for either of them. Or at least a lot less. “Back to business.”

Sassa stared at Nick for a long second, hugged him. “Thank you.”

“Sometimes I wish things were more black and white.”

“That would be boring. Should we keep going?”

“Okay.”

“I guess I’d like to be a chef-owner of my own restaurant without all of the other stuff. I’d like to grow my own vegetables, raise a few cattle, and serve the food I produce. I guess somewhere out in the country would be best.”

“How about a country compound with a restaurant, a music studio, a small farm so we can grow our own food, and a house big enough for our family? We can raise our five kids there.”

“Four. A compound? Figures.”

“I can’t help myself.”

Avoiding the cracks on the sidewalk, Sassa gamboled a few yards ahead; then she turned back to Nick. “The inevitable money scene. We’re both making money now, which is hard to walk away from, especially when we need cash to build the future.”

“Walking away will always be hard.”

“That’s what folks count on. More isn’t better,” she said.

“Do you like the compound idea?” He hopped ahead, failing to avoid all the cracks, until he caught up to her.

“It needs to be on a lake.”

“North Lake.”

“Is there a North Lake?” she asked.

“There must be one somewhere.” He drifted off on the idea of the compound. A small country town with Sassa. Lots of kids. Fellini. A restaurant. A studio. Home. A rush of warmth swept through him.

“One hundred dollars for your thoughts.”

“Do you want to get married?”

“Is that a proposal?”

“Just testing the waters.”

“I don’t respond to hypotheticals.”

On a sunny October day, Sassa watched Fellini prance down the aisle, well out in front of the wedding procession, as a live band played “All You Need Is Love.” He loped right to Halfa, who stood waiting for him, biscuit in hand, in front of a raised black wooden altar. From a distance, the altar, placed at the end of the white rose petal-covered aisle, appeared to widen the above-ground roots of a 200-year-old oak tree overlooking Loon Lake. The tree fronted a grass amphitheater sloping down to the water, and stood on six acres of land with over 500 feet of lake frontage. Sassa’s boss had offered her the place for the ceremony and reception a few months earlier.

Nick and Sassa had recruited Halfa to marry them on a call one afternoon during which Sassa detailed why a shaman was best suited to perform the ceremony. “Shamans connect the vulnerable,” she’d said. “Well, I’m not sure about that, but I am honored that you asked me, so I’ll do it,” Halfa had said. She was ordained online.

“Sit,” Halfa commanded. Fellini complied, chomped on his biscuit, then raced over to the oak tree to chase a squirrel. He trotted back to Halfa and waited for the rest of the wedding party.

Sassa loved that dog.

Two hundred chairs, filled with relatives and friends, lined the grass on both sides of the aisle. A lake breeze swept over the attendees, inundating them with the smell of flowers, perfume, and warmth. Heads turned back toward the procession.

Each member of the wedding party walked down the aisle. The women— Sarah, Jackie, Myrina, Jessie, Adrienne, and Chloe—wore red satin dresses complemented by a single strand of pearls. The men—Matt, Brayden, Joe, Nick’s band members—donned gray suits identical to the ones the Beatles wore on the cover of
Please Please Me
. Joe, Nick’s best man, and Chloe, Sassa’s maid of honor, walked down the aisle together holding hands.