The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (14 page)

“I’ll wear it now. Thank you,” Charlotte said.

“Charlotte,” Elysius said. “Just take it off. I won’t buy it.”

“I’ll wear it now. Thank you,” Charlotte said.

“I’ll go back with her,” my mother offered.

“No, thank you,” Charlotte said.

It was this moment when I felt my loss lift slightly. Here was Charlotte in pain, and she was showing her pain, not hiding it. Although her pain wasn’t the same as mine, it was the same. It was dark and deep. It was beautiful. And what if the world has only so much suffering to offer? If so, Charlotte was shouldering more than her share, and it allowed me to take a breath.

The people at the front of the store were inching back toward us. Elysius glanced over her shoulder. “Damn it, Charlotte,” she whispered. It was obvious Elysius knew these
people—a perky young woman in a spiky haircut, pushing a stroller, talking to her husband—I could see only the beefy back of the man in a pink polo shirt.

“Okay,” Elysius said, fishing out her wallet, “we’ll just wear this home, then.” She put her card on the counter.

Pru looked at her and then began ringing it up. Rosellen disappeared and then reappeared with a bag of Charlotte’s clothes, retrieved from the dressing room. She handed it to Charlotte with more tenderness than I’d have given her credit for. Charlotte still wasn’t crying, an incredible act of restraint. She held her chin up high.

My mother took the bag from Charlotte. “I’ll hold this for you,” she said, trying to be helpful.

Elysius folded up the receipt and said, “Let’s go out this other way,” pointing in the opposite direction of the woman with the stroller.

The ride home was quiet. I sat next to Charlotte in the backseat.

At one point, I reached over and gave her shoulder a light pinch. “That was one way to cut the trip short.”

She gave me a sad half smile and pinched me back. “Forever elegant,” she said.

“Forever,” I said.

hat night when I was putting Abbot to bed—the dictionary back on his bedside table—he asked for a Henry story. It had been a long day and I wasn’t up for a long story. I said, “Well … when your dad was a kid, his parents would sometimes take them to their friend’s house on a lake in New Hampshire in the summer. There was a farm next door that had about six Great Pyrenees, huge white dogs that worked the farm. They dug little pits in the yard. And when he and his brother Jim rode by on their bikes, the dogs would come bounding out, howling, all joyfully. They were so happy to see them, but they were so big, and they skidded on the pavement. They were terrifying with all of their happiness, and your dad said it was like trying to ride a bike through a big-dog avalanche. Can you imagine all those massive white dogs coming at you all at once?”

“I know that story,” Abbot said solemnly.

“I already told it?”

“Yes,” Abbot said, “and Daddy told me it, too.”

“Oh,” I said.

He rubbed his hands together and said, “Tomorrow night, tell me a story that I don’t already know.”

This surprised me, but I paused only for a moment. “Okay,” I said, and I brushed back his bangs and kissed his forehead.

“Can I have a new pillowcase?” Abbot asked then.

“Why?”

“This one has germs in it from last night and the night before and the night before that.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He pushed the pillow out from under his head. “I don’t need a pillow.”

I stood up, turned on his Red Sox night-light, and walked to the playroom. I paced a lap and then another. Abbot wanted a new story? One he hadn’t heard before? I wasn’t inventing Henry Bartolozzi. I was keeping him
here
, alive with us. I felt a frantic, electric buzz in my chest.

I opened the front door. I wanted some night air. It was one of those late-spring nights when the house gets stuffy but the night air is cool. I was trying to rein in a growing sense of panic.

I looked at the yard, lit by a streetlamp. I thought of my
mother pressing me to change my life.
Every woman deserves a lost summer
. I thought of Elysius saying,
I’m trying. I am trying
. And Charlotte, so brave, standing up to everyone in Bitsy Bette’s Boutique in her fishing boots. Then I thought of the beluga whales in the aquarium and Abbot talking about their belly buttons.
They’re just like us
. I looked over my shoulder at the lit-up house. It struck me then that my life felt like a museum, a museum of loss, and I had created it. Whether I didn’t let myself linger or I was overcome with memory, everything reminded me of a story of Henry; everything deserved a plaque: a framed picture of Henry and me at a Japanese steak house with five-year-old Abbot wedged between us; Henry’s old Red Sox cap; his cleats from the over-thirty softball league tucked under a bench. There was a picture of Henry and Abbot standing next to Abbot’s half-eaten cake on his fourth birthday. That was the birthday that Abbot wished for a candle and then blew out the candle.

I hadn’t boxed up a single thing belonging to Henry—a task that seemed unfathomable.

I stared down at my stoop, as if seeing it the way a stranger might.
Because I am a stranger here
, I thought. There were pots that I had neglected for over a year. I picked one up and dumped the dirt in the bushes beside the house and then dumped another. I was crying by this point, my breaths choppy.

When I picked up the third clay pot, I found a purple plastic Easter egg. I picked it up and held it in my hands, as if it were a real egg, as if a baby bird were about to peck its way out.

The past spring, Abbot had gone on a hunt with friends at the local park, which meant that this egg had been hidden by Henry two years ago.

I popped the egg open—the small release of stale air. Inside were two stiff Gummi bears and a piece of hardened bubble gum.

This simple thing broke something inside of me. I was barely there. I was a little pop of air, then nothing.

That spring, Abbot had been obsessed with why the Easter Bunny left eggs and why we all used fake grass and baskets. What did it all mean? Henry wrote Abbot a letter from the Easter Bunny to go along with his chocolate bunny. In it, the Easter Bunny confessed that he had no idea how it all got started. Henry read the note aloud to me.
I’m just a bunny, you know. There’s only so much that I can understand
. “I think that we should be honest when the world doesn’t make sense.” I agreed. “We’re just bunnies,” I said. He slipped the note in the basket with the fake grass.

Unsteadily, I walked back in to the house. I placed the egg on the dining room table—its two halves, its Gummi bears, and little wrapped piece of hardened gum.

I missed Henry so keenly. This desire for him would well up in me in an unexpected rush. I missed the whole of him—the reality of him, not the stories. I missed his neck, the smell of aftershave that collected there. I sometimes put on his T-shirts after he took them off, still warm from his body, and slept in them. I missed laying my head on his chest and feeling his heartbeat. And I missed his shoulders, his
collarbones, his beautiful hands, the fan of his ribs. His body buoyant in the ocean, red with sun. His body in the tight cocoon of sheets. His body bent over tying Abbot’s shoes. I wanted to
adore
him. I missed how his face, in sleep, looked as young as the day I met him. I missed his stomach. He had what I called rapper abs. Of course, I missed having sex with him. I would have given anything to have sex with him again—summer sex, if I were allowed to choose—on the bed stripped of its blanket and top sheet, collapsing at the end, the rapt and dazed panting that came after, like two shipwreck survivors who’ve just crawled onto shore.

I didn’t need to go to Provence to appease my mother and sister, to become enchanted. I could learn the lessons I needed to learn right here.
From now on I will try not to lose or be lost. I will not fix my gaze solely on Abbot. I will relearn to live in the real world. Abbot and I don’t need a lost summer to learn to live. We’ve lost enough. We’ve been lost enough
. But even as I said this to myself, I knew it was probably a cop-out.

Now that I had the little purple plastic egg, I needed something more—a message from Henry. He would tell me not to go. He would tell me to stay with him, to be bound to this house, to let the fig vine that grew around the door actually weave me and Abbot in. Or would he want me to save Charlotte? I wanted to save her. Maybe I wanted to save her because I had the overwhelming desire to save
someone
, and I couldn’t save Abbot or myself.

That was when Abbot’s dictionary came to me. I walked
back to Abbot’s bedroom. There was the dictionary, lit by the dull glow of the Red Sox night-light. I looked at Abbot, his face softened by sleep. I picked up the dictionary, heavy in my hands, and I felt like a thief. But still, I took it.

I walked to the dining room, set it on the table, and sat down in front of it. I opened to the dedications, Henry’s father’s dedication to him and Henry’s dedication to Abbot. I thought of Henry’s father then, a tough guy, a man who played football in college, tight end, and was proud of how flimsy the helmets were back then, but at the same time, a romantic, tenderhearted. At Henry’s funeral, he broke down and cried. He grabbed my hand as I was getting into the backseat of some long, dark car, and said simply, “I can’t accept this. He’s my
boy
. He’s my
son
. It’s not right. I can’t get over it. I won’t.” It felt like he was making me a promise of some kind. Henry’s mother appeared then, over his shoulder. “Let her go, honey,” she said in her soft Southern drawl. “The cars need to move on.” I couldn’t bear to look at him. I nodded and slipped into the backseat next to Abbot. Henry’s father closed the door for me and then pressed his hand to the window—and that gesture I understood.
Hold on
, he was telling me.
Just hold on
.

Henry
, I thought to myself. I wanted to look up
Henry
. Would the word exist? Had he put a little picture of himself there?

I flipped through, found the right page, and let my finger slide down it. This is what I found.

Hennery, a poultry farm
.

Henotheism, the belief in one god without denying the existence of others
.

Henpeck, to dominate or harass (one’s husband) with persistent nagging
.

And then
henry. The unit of inductance in which an induced electromotive force of one volt is produced when the current is varied at the rate of one ampere per second
.

And next?

Hent, to take hold of; seize. Obs
. Obsolete.

I’m just a bunny, you know. There’s only so much that I can understand
.

But I did understand—this poultry farm, this henpecking, that I can believe in one god, but didn’t have to deny the existence of others. I understood the electromagnetic force of Henry and that he was saying one thing:
Seize it
.

Go
.