The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [117]
I’d spent the day swimming and floating on the raft, filled with the images from the chapel, which lingered so powerfully, and the letters Rose had written. From time to time, I’d come inside, the kitchen dim after the brightness of the sun on the lake, to get a glass of iced tea and check my e-mail. There had been a brief, not very satisfying message from Yoshi, giving me his updated itinerary and not much more; I didn’t know how his meetings had gone or exactly when he planned to leave for the island. I was torn between feeling concerned and feeling relieved. That kiss with Keegan in the stream had left me unsettled, unsure of what I was doing or what I wanted, distrustful of even my own motivations. It was better, it seemed, not to talk to Yoshi across all those vast miles until I’d come to terms with whatever was going on in my own heart.
Each time I closed the computer, I noted my feelings of both disappointment and relief. I went back outside and read passages from Rose’s letters over again, trying to imagine myself into her story, into her dreams and struggles. She must have felt so angry and abandoned, standing alone in the church, the chalice heavy in her hands, so alone and frightened that she betrayed the one part of her life she’d held most dear, slipping the silver cup between the folds of her skirt, slipping away.
They had given up so much to make this journey—friends and family, everything they’d known. They’d come seeking prosperity, a chance to remake their lives, but as logical as that vision sounded from my place in history, it seemed that, for those early years at least, she and Joseph had been little more than servants. It was easy to imagine Rose sitting on the periphery of a meeting or a tea, the talk of equal rights stirring her heart even as she kept her head bent over the mending and the hemming. Perhaps she’d stayed awake late into the night to read, the pamphlets and magazines she’d collected both shocking and alluring, drawing her back again and again, until it all welled up within her that morning of the march, when she left her gloves on the bushes and joined that crowd of women without measuring the cost, knowing only that this was a chance for her voice to matter in the world.
“Here’s to your mother,” Andy said, putting the bottle down and raising his glass. “To being cast-free!” My mother laughed and shook her head, raising her glass with the arm that had healed, and we drank.
“Well, I’m glad to have it off,” she said, her fingers lingering on the delicate stem of the glass. Nets of light reflected from the water made patterns on the table. “But you know, Andy, if it weren’t for the accident, we wouldn’t have met, would we? So I can’t regret it completely.”
They shared a private smile. I took a long swallow of wine.
“Sweetheart,” my mother went on, turning to me. “Are you sure you don’t want to join us? It’ll be fun. Plus, I feel like I’ve hardly seen you, even though you’ve been here over a week. Before you know it, Yoshi will be here. I can’t wait to meet him, but then you’ll be gone again. When does he get in?”
“He’s supposed to come Saturday,” I said, deciding not to mention that Yoshi had been vacillating about this the last time we spoke. I’d been avoiding thinking about our last conversation, which had all the early marks of so many of my breakups, the way I allowed distance to bloom up until I could justify leaving for good. Still, this was Yoshi, and I’d imagined a different life with him. The time we’d shared together in Jakarta, the languorous romance and our lives in the river house, calm and interwoven, was the closest I’d ever come to being completely happy, even if things hadn’t been so tranquil in Japan. He said once that I was always running away from things, and maybe it was true. Since I’d been here, I’d certainly boxed up all my feelings about