If I Forget You(39)

Of course, it is more complicated than that, and she knows it. Her parents will never actually say it, but to Margot, it is clear that they believe they had no business being together, and it is not lost on Margot that, yes, this is about money, but it is also about the fact that he is a Jew, for this is the thing about the truly wealthy: Old prejudices fade slowly.

All Margot wants to do is stay in her room. She wants to sleep, but the sleep doesn’t come easily, so she lies in her bed and in her mind she turns over all the time she spent with Henry, and just as she once thought she could never love another person with this kind of intensity, she also didn’t know it was possible to grieve with this kind of intensity. The anger gives way to abject sadness, and despite the coaxing of her mother, she doesn’t want to eat, doesn’t want to play, doesn’t want to swim in the ocean or go to the many parties the idle rich kids hold at the place where the beach meets the tidal river most every evening.

It is as if she has forgotten how to crave anything at all, and she wonders if it will ever be possible to be whole again.

One morning, Margot lies in her bed, her head pressed between two pillows, when a loud knocking comes at the door.

“Honey,” her mother says. “May I come in?”

“Go away,” Margot grumbles, though she sits up and rubs her eyes. What time is it? she wonders. Bright sun streams through the windows.

“You have mail,” her mother says.

“Come in,” Margot says.

The door swings open and her mother marches in and comes over to the bed. She hands her a letter. “I thought you might want this.”

Margot takes it from her and, seeing the handwriting, she is suddenly wide-awake and yet dreaming at the same time. She wants to peel it open, but not in front of her mother. She looks at her mom and says, “Can you leave?”

“Of course,” her mother says, and then departs.

Margot opens the seal with her fingernail and reaches in and pulls out the folded piece of paper. And there in Henry’s precise handwriting, it says:

Dear Margot,

I tried to call, but I don’t really know what to say. I am sorry for what happened. I didn’t know it was your father—I thought you were being hurt, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. It was like I lost my mind and then it was over.

I would be lying if I didn’t say I miss you like I miss spring in the middle of a snowstorm. But I also am a realist and try to be as practical as a poet can ever be.

It is clear to me that something changed between us that morning. Maybe everything changed. And that we can never have back whatever we had for the time that we had it. We don’t belong together, I realized, and this is harsh to say, but it is true, and I know you know it as well as I do. I just felt the need to say it.

Whatever happens as a result of that day, I now know two things to be true. First is that I won’t be returning to Bannister. I don’t know what I will be doing, but I will never be there again. It has too many memories for me, and I don’t belong there, either.

The second thing I know is that I won’t be seeing you again. That pains me to no end, and maybe it doesn’t pain you because you have already decided the same thing, but in case you haven’t, it’s the right thing for both of us.

I have had time now to think about all of this and I am clear-minded about it. I don’t love you anymore. And suspect you don’t love me. It is time for us to move forward with our lives and forget, as much as we can, that this ever happened. I wish you all the best.



Love,

Henry


Margot stops reading. And then, as if she didn’t understand it, she reads it again. And then she lets out something like a yell, though different, more of a primitive yawp, and then slumps over on her bed and begins to cry.

She doesn’t leave her room that entire day. But the next morning, she comes down and without a word to her parents or her sister, she walks the entire length of the beach. The sky above her is mottled with clouds and a strong wind is coming from the south, and as she walks, the surf is higher than usual, the kind that they would post warnings about at the public beaches on the other side of the island. It is just what she needs. The sound of it tumbling over and over is almost deafening, and as she walks, she feels it all begin to lift off her, Henry, her father, all of it. The way she was raised to deal with matters like this. The sea somehow gives her a sense of her own capability to get through things.

That night after dinner, Margot is up in her room when her sister, Katherine, comes in.

“Hey,” Katherine says, and Margot is reminded of how little they do this, how much they have been avoiding each other, when as children they were inseparable. It pangs her a little to think of how growing older often means growing apart.

“Hi,” Margot says as Katherine sits down on the edge of her bed.

“I just wanted to say I am sorry about what happened,” Katherine says.

“It’s okay.”

“No, I mean it. You remember when I was dating Doug? Then found out he slept with Anne out on the boat?”

Margot nods. She remembers Doug, and that summer, and she thinks that the situation has nothing in common with her and Henry, and this is what she came to terms to with this morning, the fact that no one will ever understand, that despite what anyone can say about heartache being universal, the truth is that it is entirely particular, too. It is entirely relative.