The Light of Paris(79)

That seemed like a terrifying leap to make without a net.

Because what if I were to leave Phillip, the world my mother had promised would keep me safe, and there was nothing out there? What if no one fell in love with me and I spent the rest of my life alone? What if no one wanted to look at, let alone buy, my paintings? What if painting didn’t fill the hole inside me? What if, without having Sharon or Henry by my side, no one wanted to know me, and I ended up just as lonely as I had been? What if I took a risk and where I landed was no better than how I had been living?

The devil you know, my mother always used to say, is better than the devil you don’t. And what I was thinking of doing was completely unknown. It was the social equivalent of closing my eyes and taking a step off a cliff. But now that I knew what it felt like to be surrounded by life, by laughter and good food and art and the people I wanted to be with, how could I go back to the way things had been, the way I had been?

? ? ?

Late that night, Henry and I were in my mother’s back yard, on a small patch of grass between the rose garden and the orchard, the only space that had been spared from my mother’s determined horticultural onslaught. The grass beneath my back was lush and soft, and the roses released their rich, sweet scent into the air above us, testaments to my mother’s gentle hand. The spring bulbs had burst into blossom in the past few weeks, and the daffodils and tulips stood in pretty bouquets in the flower garden, drowning in the smell of the hyacinths between them.

Above us, the sky was bright with ambient light, and beyond that, the infinite sparkle of stars. I had been in the back yard, lying on the cool grass, when Henry had come padding through the soft dirt of his garden and jumped over the low fence to sit beside me.

There was a nervous flutter inside me, as though we were on a first date, as though something had shifted between us, or maybe it was just my thoughts, maybe it was just that I was imagining a future with space for someone like him—maybe even him—in it.

“So can I ask you a question?” he asked. His knees were drawn up and his arms draped over them casually, and I was marveling at the size of his hands. As always, he smelled delicious—like rosemary and soap and wine, and when he moved, the scent wafted toward me and I closed my eyes and inhaled.

“Of course.”

“You’re married, right?”

“Right.”

“But you’ve been here a long time. And you don’t wear a wedding ring. And you never talk about your husband.”

Closing the tips of my fingers around the space where my rings had rested, I felt only the skin, smooth and pale and bare. It felt vulnerable, like the tender underbelly of an animal. “Is that a question?”

“Technically, no. I guess I was just wondering what’s going on. If you need to talk about it or something. If I’m prying . . .”

“No, no, it’s okay. It’s—things are complicated. Being here has been a break, I guess.”

He nodded. “So it’s a good thing, then? Taking a break?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. I couldn’t explain it. There was too much. I couldn’t explain how leaving Chicago had felt like releasing a weight from my shoulders, how the constant thrum of anxiety in my bones had faded, how I slept better at night and didn’t feel the pull of exhaustion during the day, how I didn’t wake up with a feeling of dread hanging low in my chest, how the stomachaches I had grown to accept as a constant in my life had disappeared since I had come here. It was odd, that the place I had avoided for so long, this town with all its ghosts and memories of my disappointments and my failures, with my mother’s presence looming over it like a threat, odd that this place would feel like a relief. Odd that because of Henry in particular I would have discovered there was so much more to this place than I had ever anticipated.

“Have you ever been married?”

Henry nodded slowly. “I was. A long time ago. Didn’t last.”

“What happened?”

“We were young. Too young. Young and stupid. I don’t think either one of us knew what we were getting into.”

“Were you in love?”

“Of course,” Henry said, turning to me and giving me a confused look. “Or at least I thought I was. No, that’s not fair. I was. Just because I didn’t recognize the import of what I was doing doesn’t mean I wasn’t in love. There’s different kinds of love, you know? And we were in the kind of love you can only be in when you’re so young you don’t know any better.”

I had never been in love like that. I had never been in love before Phillip, really. I’d had tremendous crushes, but had never had a relationship last long enough to call it love. And I had always attributed it to some failing on my part, proof I wasn’t lovable, but what if that hadn’t been the way of it at all? What if I had pushed them away? I had known falling in love would lead to marriage, and maybe I had known I didn’t want to get married. My grandmother had been the same way, hadn’t she? Swearing she would live in Paris and write and have a life different from the one she had been born into. And I had thought I would be the same way. And yet, both of us had ended up with exactly what we had promised we wouldn’t have. I might have avoided falling in love because I knew what would follow after.

Henry continued his story. “We got married and we both realized very quickly it wasn’t what we wanted. She wanted to travel, and I wanted to work. I wanted to make a name for myself quickly, and she wanted to explore.”