The Butler(70)

“Maybe so,” he said, and they hung up a few minutes later. He texted her that night that the service was going to be in a small church near his mother’s apartment, and then she would be buried next to Javier. He said that her colleagues from work were going to come, and a few of her remaining friends. He said he thought his mother would like it if Olivia was there. He was especially glad now that Olivia had met her.

    She wrote back that she would like to come, if it wasn’t an intrusion. He didn’t answer for a long time, while he wrestled with the response and didn’t know what to say. He finally typed it out slowly half an hour later, weighing every word. Words were dangerous, they could commit you, and attach you to people, or hurt them. He looked at the message he had written, was satisfied with it, and finally pushed the send button. He knew his mother would have approved of what he’d written.

“I need you there with me. Please come.” He had never felt so naked in his life or so scared after he wrote it to her, and she responded immediately.

“I’ll be there. I’m here if you need me. Call anytime.”

He didn’t write to her again. She saw him as soon as she walked into the small church, holding a small white bouquet. He was wearing one of his dark suits, impeccably groomed, and his eyes met Olivia’s as she walked down the aisle toward him, and slipped into a pew, halfway down the church aisle, not too close to the front, since she didn’t know his mother well, and wanted to respect Joachim’s need for space and boundaries.

He came to find her a few minutes later. “Will you sit with me?” he asked in a whisper. She stood up and followed him to the front pew. The casket was in front of the altar. He hadn’t had her cremated. It was a simple, unpretentious white wood casket, and seemed right for Liese.

There were about thirty people in the church, and Joachim didn’t know many of them. He whispered to Olivia before the service started. “My mother and I came so far together. The years in Buenos Aires, and then we came here…Francois…She was so brave. She always moved forward. She never looked back. No matter what happened, she always kept going.” Without thinking, he had laced his fingers into Olivia’s. “I’ve never been as brave as she was.”

    “Yes, you have. You just don’t realize it,” she whispered. Olivia could feel Liese there with them, and she could feel her love for her son, and so could he.

The service was very brief. He shook hands afterward with the people who had come, whether he knew them or not. They each had something nice to say about his mother, and how extraordinary she was. He remembered how she had insisted on meeting Olivia. He wondered if she had sensed what was coming even then, and wanted to see Olivia before she left. She had always been intuitive, as well as wise.

They drove behind the hearse to the cemetery in Joachim’s station wagon, and some of the others followed. The priest read from the Bible at the cemetery, and said a few more words, and Olivia left the little bouquet of white flowers she had brought, and then they left Liese there next to Javier. Joachim’s whole history lay in the ground there now, his twin brother and his mother. He had loved them more than anyone on earth. He had never needed anyone else because of them, and Olivia could sense that.

He didn’t speak on the way back to the city, and then he turned to her. “Do you want to take a walk? I need some air.” She nodded, and they stopped at the Bois de Boulogne, parked the car, and started walking. She could feel him become more peaceful as they walked, and they finally sat down on a bench side by side. He was quiet and calm in the peaceful setting. He took a long breath of air.

    “I’d like to work with you on the chateau in Provence, if you need an assistant,” he said, and she smiled.

“No more butler?”

“That too, if you want.” He smiled and sat quietly staring into the distance, thinking. Olivia waited for what he would say next. “My mother said I was in love with you. She was right, as usual. She accused me of being a coward. And she was right about that too. I was afraid to say it, or even to feel it.” He was crossing the line between them to a place where he’d never been. He looked her in the eye then. “I’ve never told a woman I loved her. I’m not sure I’ve ever loved anyone, except the two of them. I was too afraid to care that much. I didn’t want to get hurt and lose someone I love. And now I’ve lost both of them.”

“Me too,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to be a prisoner like my mother. I didn’t want to let any man own me or destroy me.” She knew Joachim’s history, the good and the bad of it, the terrible grandfather and brother, weak father, and the powerful, brave, loving mother, a woman of integrity and courage. He was like her, not like the others. Olivia knew she was nothing like her weak, selfish mother, or the man who didn’t have the courage to be her father or even tell her that he was. Together, she and Joachim were so much better than the people who had hurt them. She wasn’t afraid now as she sat next to him, holding hands. They were on the brink of courage, willing to be there for each other, already attached in all the ways that mattered to both of them. It had happened effortlessly while they weren’t looking. “I love you, Joachim.” She was the first to say the words, and cross the line, to show him that she could. The sky didn’t fall in when she said it, and she smiled.