This Place of Wonder (52)

Sitting at the island, alone except for the dogs and cats, I am swamped with a vast longing to touch Augustus one more time. Smell him. Hear his voice. How is it possible I will never see him again? That he’ll never call me by one of the multiple nicknames he had for me? Meadowsweet, it was sometimes, or Knees for the fact that I’m a little knock-kneed, or Pumpkin, or Sweetmeat.

So many nicknames, for all of us, but we all only ever called him Augustus. Not even Gus, ever. I didn’t call him sweetheart or baby or honey. Only his full name.

Which might not even have been his real name. Just as Meadow is not mine. Now that I know the truth about his childhood, our deep connection makes all the more sense. We were both lost children, and came together to make sure our girls were not lost. We might have had a lot of flaws, the two of us, but we gave our children a good childhood, so much better than the ones we’d known.

Restless, aching, I wander outside to the patio. It’s very dark along the mountains, the trees and fields silent under a quarter moon. A breeze tangles around my ankles. It should be cool this time of night, but there’s still heat in it, a puff of exhausted day falling to the earth. Fire season is coming, and it’s something we’ve all learned to fear. The fires are hotter and fiercer than they ever were before, and we’re all in danger of going up in flames without much warning at all.

Not today. Elvis pads out behind me and slumps on the flagstones, ears twitching for a minute before he falls asleep.

Augustus, Augustus, Augustus.

I close my eyes, leaning back, and imagine he’s here. To the ghostly figure I say, “You know what I’ve been thinking about?”

“Tell me.”

“Mondays.”

“Picnics.” I imagine I can feel him stretching out his long legs in the chair next to mine, kicking off his shoes to let his aching feet, destroyed after so many years standing on them, get some air. “Those were good days.”

The restaurant was closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Often, he worked on Tuesdays anyway, as much of the staff did, doing maintenance tasks, experimenting with new dishes, doing paperwork, but Mondays in the summer were family day. We’d pile the girls into the car and drive to the mountains or a lake or the ocean and have picnics. Augustus packed them himself, taking great care to include strawberries for Rory and bananas for Maya, some runny cheese and a baguette for us, along with cold chicken or something fabulous from Peaches and Pork, all of which we’d wash down with a bottle of wine and lemonade for the girls. When we arrived home, we sometimes played board games or watched movies from the video store.

“Those were some of the happiest times of my life,” he says, and I don’t have to imagine this. He’s told me many times.

“You were so good at family building,” I say. “I wish we could have had more children.”

The imaginary Augustus disappears in a puff. This is not a conversation he would ever have wanted to have, not again. We had it so many, many times.

Although we shared our two daughters, I had been unable to have another child. We tried for years, and although I was pregnant four times, I could not carry a baby to term. The most heartbreaking loss was at five months, but usually it was less.

Not that my grief was any less shattering.

Four times. Four losses. Each one left me more depleted than the last until he refused to try again, ever. We had a spectacular fight, and he slammed out of the house. “I can’t do this, Meadow. It can’t be the only thing in our lives.”

It frightened me, the loneliness left in the wake of his fury. When he came in, very late, smelling of tequila, I reached for him, sliding my hand over his chest. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He opened the space beside his ribs and I crawled into it, pressing my flesh into his. “I’m sorry, too.” He kissed my head, and held me. “I love you. I want you to stop suffering.”

I closed my eyes. “It’s over. I gave it my best.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I pressed my cheek close to his heart, and spoke a soft truth. “I just hate that it might be all the damage that’s preventing a baby. I mean, how would that be fair?”

“Oh, Pumpkin, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that’s what you were thinking.” He enveloped me in his embrace, and I melted into him, disappearing into his gentleness.

But I never stopped wishing for a part of him to live inside me, our mingled DNA traveling on into the future.





Chapter Twenty-Four


Maya


Ayaz brought me home and saw me settled, then reluctantly left me. Comfortable on the couch with a pot of tea at my elbow, I look out the french doors and think of my dad. This is not my first broken arm.

When I was four, I fell down the stairs from the front door of our building to the sidewalk below. It was a head-over-heels tumble, and the miracle was that I broke only my arm in two places, not my head or my back or my legs or my neck. Four-year-olds have soft bones, which saved me, and I wore a hooded jacket that protected my head from the concrete, but my full body weight landed on my arm. I remember standing on the top stair, and then my father cradling me many days or hours later. I dreamed a tiny devil creature was chopping at my arm with an axe, and I howled, trying to get him to stop.

My father held me, rocked me, sang songs in his deep baritone voice. Silly songs in French and English. He read to me. He bathed my face with cold water and filled plastic bags with ice to pile on my arm, fixed by surgery and not yet in a cast because it would keep swelling for a full week. I remember waking up with him slumped in sleep against the couch, his head on the cushion below my legs. His black curls fell over his face. One hand rested on my shin, securing me to the world so I wouldn’t fly away.