The seconds ticked away and I remembered us waiting in the wrecked car, the arrival of the ambulance, the race to the hospital, Aidan being rushed into the operating room…
Closer and closer I got to the time he died and I have to admit that I was desperately—crazily—hoping, that when the clock reached the exact second he’d left his body, a portal would open between his world and mine and that he might appear to me, maybe even speak. But nothing happened. No burst of energy in the room, no sudden heat, no rushing wind. Nothing.
Straight-backed, I sat staring at nothing and wondered: Now what happens?
The phone rang, that’s what. People who’d remembered what day it was, checking that I was okay.
Mum rang from Ireland and made sympathetic noises. “How are you sleeping these days?” she asked.
“Not so good. I never get more than a couple of unbroken hours.”
“God love you. Well, I’ve good news. Me, your father, and Helen are coming to New York on the first of March.”
“So soon? That’s more than two weeks before the wedding.” Oh God.
“We thought we’d have a little holiday while we were at it.”
Mum and Dad loved New York. Dad was still mourning the end of Sex and the City; he said it was “a marvelous show,” and Mum’s favorite joke of all time was “Can you tell me the way to Forty-second Street or should I just go fuck myself?”
“Where are you staying?” I asked.
“We’ll farm ourselves out. We’ll spend the first week with you, then we’ll see if we’ve made any new friends who’ll put us up.”
“With me! But my apartment is tiny.”
“It’s not that small.”
That wasn’t what she’d said the first time she’d seen it. She’d said it was like Floor 7 1/2 in Being John Malkovich.
“And we’ll hardly be there. We’ll be out all day shopping.” In Daffy’s and Conway’s and all the other manky discount stores that Jacqui and I wouldn’t go to if you put a gun to our heads.
“But where will you all sleep?” I asked.
“Me and Dad will sleep in your bed. And Helen can sleep on the couch.”
“But what about me? Where will I sleep?”
“Aren’t you just after telling me that you hardly sleep at all? So it doesn’t matter, does it? Have you an armchair or something?”
“Yes. But—”
“Ha-ha, I’m only having you on! As if we’d stay in your place; there isn’t room to swing a mouse, never mind a cat. It’s like that Floor Seven and a Half in Seeing Joe Mankivick. We’re staying in the Gramercy Lodge.”
“The Gramercy Lodge? But didn’t Dad get food poisoning the last time you stayed there?”
“He did, I suppose. But they know us there. And it’s handy.”
“Handy for what? Catching food poisoning?”
“You don’t catch food poisoning.”
“Fine, fine, whatever.” Old dogs, new tricks.
A couple of days later I woke up and felt…different.
I didn’t know what it was. I lay under my duvet and wondered. The light outside had altered: pale lemon, springlike, after the gray drear of winter. Was that it? I wasn’t sure. Then I noticed that I wasn’t in pain; for the first morning in over a year I hadn’t been woken by aches in my bones. But it wasn’t that either and suddenly I knew what the difference was: today was the day that I’d completed the long journey from my head to my heart—finally I understood that Aidan wouldn’t be coming back.
I’d heard the old wives’ tale that we need a year and a day to know, really know, at our core, that someone has died. We need to live through an entire year without the person, to experience every part of our lives without them—my birthday, his birthday, our wedding anniversary, the anniversary of his death—and it’s only when that’s done and we’re still alive that we begin to understand.
For so long I’d kept telling myself and trying to make myself believe that he would come back, that somehow he’d manage it because he loved me so much. Even when I was so angry over little Jack that I’d stopped talking to him, I’d still held out hope. Now I knew, really knew, like the last part of a jigsaw locking into place: Aidan wouldn’t be coming back.
For the first time in a long time I cried. After months of being frozen to my very center, warm tears began to flow.
Slowly I got ready for work, taking much longer than I usually did, and as I pulled the door behind me to leave, Aidan’s voice said, in my head, Put some hurtin’ on them L’Oréal girls.
I’d completely forgotten how every morning he used to say something similar, a rousing “go team” form of encouragment. And now I’d remembered.
96
The bags containing our dinner had arrived. Rachel plonked a stack of mismatched plates onto the middle of the table and began dishing it up.
“Helen, you’re lasagne.” She handed her a plate. “Dad, pork chop. Mum, lasagne.”
She slid Mum’s plate in front of her, but instead of thanking her, Mum stuck out her bottom lip.
“What?” Rachel asked.
Mum said something into her chest.
“What?” Rachel asked again.
“I don’t like my plate,” Mum said, this time a lot louder.
“You haven’t tried it yet.”
“Not the food. The plate.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Rachel was frozen in position with her serving spoon.
“I want one with flowers on it. She got one.” Mum indicated Helen with a savage twist of her head.
“But your plate is nice, too.”
“It’s not. It’s horrible. It’s brown glass. I want white china with blue flowers, like she got.”
“But…” Rachel was perplexed. “Helen, I don’t suppose…?”
“Not a chance.”
Rachel was at a loss. This was only Mum, Dad, and Helen’s first night in New York. There were another two weeks to get through and already they were acting up. “There aren’t any of the blue-flowers ones left. Dad has the only other one.”
“She can have mine,” Dad offered. “But I don’t want the horrible brown glass one either.”
“Will a plain white one do?”