The Forgetting Time(85)

She knew that most people couldn’t follow her where she’d gone. Would think, like Henry, that she’d gone off the deep end. How could anyone understand what she herself didn’t understand?

Her heart—something had happened to it. That’s what she would say, if she thought he could listen. She’d known it had been cracked for good. Shattered beyond repair. But she hadn’t counted on it cracking open.

She would never get over losing Tommy. She knew that.

Neither could she go back to the person she’d been. There was no resistance left, nothing held back, after a lifetime of holding back. She could feel every stray breeze penetrating to her core. It was terrifying, but there was nothing to be done. Her heart was cracked open now and the whole world could come on through.

*

Henry pulled her aside after the burial. The others were standing by their cars in the heat, giving the two of them a moment to grieve alone. They stood by the turned earth and scattered flowers, that surreal yet familiar tableau which called out, Believe it. Denise squinted her eyes in the sun at all the graves running in orderly rows and the trees arching over them. Trees and stones and earth and sky, as far as she could see.

Henry took her hand in his and she felt her skin jump with the relief of feeling his flesh against hers again. He squeezed her fingers and said, “I’m not coming to the house.” Everyone was gathering at her house for the reception after the funeral. She had hired a caterer. She felt too overwhelmed at the moment to handle Henry’s resistance. He had to come.

“Just for a little while, Henry. Please.”

He was holding her hand, but he was glowering. “I can’t stand to be in the same room with those people.”

She knew which people he meant. “They won’t bother you. It doesn’t matter, Henry.”

He let go of her hand. “What do you mean, ‘It doesn’t matter’?” He raised his voice. “And it doesn’t matter that they’re crazy, that doesn’t matter, either, I suppose?”

She had hoped that if he could spend a few moments with Noah, it might be good for both of them: Henry might see what was there to be seen and take it whatever way he wished. And she knew Henry’s coldness hurt Noah. During the funeral service she’d noticed the boy glancing up at him with wounded eyes.

“It might help you, to talk to him. And I think it would help the child.…”

“I cannot believe that you, of all people, Denise…” Henry’s voice was raspy. He bent his head down, and she wanted to touch that familiar haze of black and gray she knew so well, but stopped herself. His eyes, when he looked up again, were beseeching. “I know it’s hard, it’s brutal,” he said. “But I never thought you’d fall for something like this. Maybe I should’ve known, the way you thought Tommy’d still come back to us. And now you found yourself a way to continue to believe that, didn’t you? In the face of everything.”

“You think it’s all a fantasy.”

“I think you’re doing everything you can to believe Tommy is still alive. You think I don’t want that, too? You think I don’t look for him everywhere, you think that I haven’t been seeing my son in every child’s face in a crowd? But we need to hang on to reality.”

Reality. The word stung her like a slap. “You think I don’t know Tommy’s dead? We’re standing at my son’s grave. I know he’s dead. I know he’s not coming back.”

“Do you?”

“Not as Tommy. But—” She groped for the words. “There’s some piece of him here. Oh, Henry. I don’t know how to say it, and even if I did you wouldn’t believe me. But, I swear, if you spent some time with him. The doctor—”

Henry snorted.

“Dr. Anderson says the boy can score baseball games. Nobody taught him that. You taught him that, Henry.”

Henry was shaking his head.

“Otherwise how could he know something like that, without being taught?” It was not the argument she meant to have, but the real argument wasn’t made up of facts, no matter how many Dr. Anderson collected. The facts were important, she knew that, but she also knew no long list of traits or statements was going to sway this man. She didn’t know what would.

“I don’t know,” Henry said. She could tell from the heaviness in his voice that she was losing him, that his stamina for the conversation was running out. If only she could find the right words. She felt keenly that her marriage, what was left of it, was hanging in the balance.

Henry turned to her, the lines of his face sagging, as if grief had increased the pull of gravity. “I know my son is dead. I know it because I’ve held his bones in my hands. And I know it in my soul, if there is such a thing, which I highly doubt. To be honest, Denise, I’m disappointed in you. You always were one of the most reasonable people I knew. And now you’re leaving me alone with it. Our son is dead, and you’re leaving me alone with it to go listen to some crazy little white boy.”

“He’s not crazy. If you could only—”

“You’re killing me with this shit. You know that? You’re murdering me right here where I’m standing. You’ve lost your damn mind.”

She looked at the man who was still her husband. He was suffering, and she couldn’t help him. She was making it worse. She put her hand on his shoulder and felt his muscles tense beneath her fingers, the pain running from his body to hers like water finding a new vessel.