Wished

Chapter 33

33

For the first time in days the hospital room is quiet. Emme is asleep, curled up on the blue vinyl chair in the corner of the room, her arms wrapped around Bijou, her stuffed dog. My mom stepped out for a breath of fresh air, citing the need for coffee.

I almost went with her, but I haven’t left the hospital in six days, and the thought of stepping outside and blinking into the bright sun, breathing in the early June heat, and facing the reality of Geneva without Max—I can’t.

It feels like if I stepped outside the unchanging constancy of the hospital and acknowledged the movement of the city, then ... I’d acknowledge that I have to move on too.

Geneva is moving, changing. In the week we’ve been here, the small window details a sky that has shifted from the wet blue of May to the blooming sunshine of June. The yellow tulips lining the sidewalk below have given way to a profusion of purple, fuchsia, and red petunias, spilling like a vibrant river over the flower beds.

I try not to look at them. Every time I glimpse the petunias I hear Max growling, “You’re not a damn petunia. You’re a woman.” And then, “Let’s promise each other that whatever happens, neither of us will regret anything.”

I’ve acknowledged that none of it was real, but all the same, it feels like it was.

I can still smell the petunias in Paris. I can taste the hazelnut macaron on my lips as Max kissed me. I can feel his mouth teasing mine and his hands scraping over my hips. I can hear him laughing as he rolls me beneath him and presses me into warm sand, daring me to break free and jump into the cool water. I can see it all, just as clearly as I can see the petunias blooming outside, the June blue of the sky, and the spare rectangular buildings rising around the hospital.

All the same, it wasn’t real.

What’s real is the small square of this hospital room. The sterile white walls, the cords and machines, the ammonia-like smell, and the dry air that steals all the moisture from your skin and lips and eyes. The nurses that come like clockwork to check on Dorene. The food tray delivered three times a day: banana, bread, yogurt, hardboiled egg, cheese, green beans, beef.

The sounds of the hallway: a squeaky wheel on a janitor’s cart, the heavy footsteps of an orderly, the whispers of a worried family, the loud hello of a phlebotomist come to draw blood.

Reality has winnowed down to a single room and the people inside it.

Max isn’t here. There isn’t any reason for him to be here, and there isn’t any reason for me to think of him.

Sometimes I check my phone, expecting a call or a text from him, but then I feel like a fool because it wasn’t real.

Even so, I look down at my phone. There’s a text from my mom: Black or with cream?

Cream and triple sugar please , I send back.

Dorene shifts on the narrow hospital bed and glances at my phone. I drop it into my purse and stretch out my legs, leaning back in the hard plastic chair.

“Have you made a decision?” I ask, keeping my voice quiet so I won’t wake Emme.

The poor kid hasn’t been sleeping well. Not since Dorene was admitted.

I guess none of us have.

Dorene looks better than she did a few days ago, but she’s still pale and worn-out, faded like an old black-and-white movie, tired around the edges. It could be the hospital gown. Even the healthiest person looks sickly in a hospital gown. Or it might be the rumpled bed, the taped IV line on the back of her hand—or maybe it’s just the fact that we’re all confronting—again—the frailty of life.

The last time I was in a hospital—fourteen years ago—I was scared of everything. This time around I was scared, at first, of losing Dorene. Then, when I realized she was going to be okay, I was only scared of not being there for her.

She only has me, my mom, and Emme. We’re her family.

“I have,” Dorene says, staring at the old portable television my mom brought from her apartment. It’s the ancient TV/VCR combo Dorene has always watched her husband’s movies on while sitting out in the courtyard, chain-smoking and quoting the rapid-fire dialogue.

For the past week she’s been playing his movies nonstop, from early morning through the long night. The flickering static of the screen wavers in streams of light. At dawn and at dusk, when the golden in-between bathes the room, that flickering light takes on a ghostly feel, as if her husband exists in that movie light, comforting her from afar.

“What did you decide?” I ask, wondering what the future holds.

“You’re still fired,” she says, taking her gaze off the screen long enough to give me a smile. It’s not as vibrant as it was in the past, but there’s more strength there than there was a few days ago.

I smile back and impulsively reach out to grab her hand. Her skin is cold and dry, but her grip is strong.

“And?” I ask, scooting my chair closer.

She clicks her tongue, turning back to the screen. On it, her husband’s most famous film, an angsty arthouse movie about a tragic love affair in the French Riviera, is at its climax. The hero is on the beach, frothing waves crashing behind him. He clutches his dead lover to his chest and shouts in torment and anguish at the heavens. Apparently, the week this film was released people were sobbing in the streets all across France.

“I told Julien he shouldn’t have killed her,” Dorene says, pursing her lips. “It’s a terrible idea, doomed love. But he was adamant. ‘ Oh no, Dorene. Love is only potent if it is bittersweet. We only want love if it is pain. It is a sickness! ’” She scoffs and rolls her eyes as if she had this argument only yesterday. But then she turns and grins at me and I see the woman who stole a Bugatti and drove through Paris naked. The daring, independent woman who lived all sixty-three years of her life with relish. “The fool won his argument by dying on me. Would I have loved him this long if instead he’d run off with one of his actresses? Or if he’d fallen on hard times and turned to drink and bitterness? I don’t think I would have. Although I can’t be sure.”

She shrugs and then scoffs again when the hero enters a bereaved soliloquy, berating the capriciousness of love.

“That isn’t love,” she says, pointing to the screen. “If Julien were here, I’d tell him that. Thirty years later, I understand. Perhaps if he’d made it this far he’d understand too. But it takes time ...” She shrugs. “When you’re young, it’s easy to think you know what love is. You feel it so strongly. But . . .” She lifts her shoulders again and then leans back against the gray headboard.

“What is it then?” I ask, watching the dark-haired man weep over his lover.

“That?” Dorene points to the screen. “Possession. They wanted to possess each other. Own the other. What else? Need. An endless hunger needing to be filled. Lust, of course. There’s nothing like a good swallow of some straight-up lust. Passion?—”

I look at her quickly and she cuts herself off.

At her raised eyebrow, I shift in the hard plastic chair and rub at my arms, chilled by the cold hospital air.

“What?” Dorene asks, her expression probing.

She knows me too well. Seven years of talking every day, working together, has left her able to read me like a book.

I glance over at Emme, making sure she’s still asleep. She’s tucked Bijou under her chin and her mouth is parted, her eyes closed, eyelids fluttering with dreams.

“I’m only surprised,” I say slowly, “that you’d say passion isn’t love.”

Dorene pats my hand. “Someday you’ll see.”

We’re quiet for a moment, Dorene watching the movie credits, me looking out the window at the petunias painted bright against the blue sky.

It was a dream, I tell myself. It was a dream.

Max never told me about his parents. He never told me how he felt about passion. He never asked me to?—

A chill hits me so hard that the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Then my heart flutters and starts to race.

Max asked me to find the letter he wrote, to bring it to him, and to tell him passion wasn’t love. What if ... what if the letter is real?

Am I crazy to think it?

Would it be crazy to look for it?

“Yes,” Dorene says.

I look back at her, my forehead wrinkled. I’m pulled back into the small hospital room with its white walls and sterile air.

Dorene looks at me curiously, waiting for my response.

“What?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says happily, “I’ve decided. This was a wake-up call. I’m retiring.” She waves her hand in the air as if she’s drawing a line between her old life and the new. “Tomorrow I’m leaving for Saint-Tropez.”

A flood of warmth, like sunshine on the beach, washes over me, replacing the cold. Dorene mentioned this, but I didn’t know if she’d actually do it. As soon as she’s discharged, she’s packing a bag, hopping on a train, and leaving everything behind. No warning, no dallying. Just leaving.

“That’s what we do when we die ,” she’d said. “ I’m just starting my stay in heaven a little early .”

I smile at her—a genuine, happy smile. “Good,” I say. “I’ll miss you, but I’m happy for you.”

“You’ll help me settle in?” she asks, worriedly smoothing the rumpled white hospital sheet. Maybe the clots in her legs, the clots in her lungs, forced her into a new perspective, but that doesn’t mean she wants to do it all on her own. And she shouldn’t have to.

“Of course I will,” I say, wondering if Saint-Tropez will look anything like it did in my dream.

Dorene isn’t the only one with a new perspective. For years I’ve been waiting for “someday.” For that moment when I can reach out and grasp freedom. A stone cottage outside the city. A holiday in the French Riviera. The courage to talk to Max.

After getting fired, after Max (the real Max) telling me to never set foot in his home again, after Dorene’s pulmonary embolism, and after my dream and my wish, I’m not the same. While Dorene was recovering and making her decision, I was making mine.

“We’ll help you settle in,” I tell Dorene. “We’ll stay a week. Then I start my new job.”

Dorene makes a disgruntled noise, but I shrug. I don’t want to keep cleaning, and I’m not going to continue Dorene’s business after she’s gone. Instead I’ve accepted a nightshift job in the stockroom at the market where my mom works. During the days, I’m going to start working on plans for the first Open Heart Kitchen, based on my family’s love of feeding anyone who needs a meal. I dreamed it, and I want it to be real.

“Well, a week it is,” Dorene says. Then she smiles over at Emme. “I’ll enjoy seeing what she paints. And you,”—she pats my hand again—“I’ll enjoy seeing you relax. Flirt. I can say this, as I nearly died?—”

“You did not,” I say.

She holds up her thumb and pointer finger, holding them a half-inch apart. “Nearly.”

I shake my head. “No.”

She smiles. “Ah, denial. How sweet you are! As I said, since I nearly died, I can tell you, stop tiptoeing around life. Live, Anna. Steal a car, naked. Stay up until sunrise, dancing on the beach. Kiss a man who doesn’t know your name.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Live with passion, love with your heart. Now go away—I’m tired and I want to watch this next movie alone.”

“Go away?” I ask.

She nods. “Go away. You’ve been here as long as I have, and I think that chair has attached itself to your rear.”

I almost start to argue, but then I think about passion and love and ... the letter. What if the letter is real? That would mean my wish was real. What happened was real.

I stand so quickly the chair squeaks against the linoleum. My muscles ache from sleeping in a pull-out vinyl chair/bed for the past week, my eyes are gritty, and I’ve not had a good long shower in days, but suddenly I’m exhilarated.

“I’m going,” I say, glancing at Emme.

“I’ll watch her.” Dorene waves her hand. “Besides, Janice will be back with the coffee in five minutes.”

“You’re right.” I grab my purse and rush toward the door. I turn back when I reach the threshold to smile at Dorene. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Don’t hurry,” she calls, shuffling through the VHS tapes next to her bed. “I don’t need you until tomorrow!”

I rush out of the room, down the long halls, through the lobby, and into the bright sun.

My heart races. My hands are sweating.

I grab a cab and then have it drop me off a quarter mile from the Barone Estate, where there’s only the rippling lake, tall grass blowing in the wind, and the deep, leafy green of the woods on the eastern edge of Max’s property.

Once the taxi is gone I hurry into the trees, picking my way through the loamy undergrowth shaded by thick pines. The cool air is full of evergreen and moss scents, the ground crackles beneath me, and an alpine thrush pipes a long, lone call through the muted woods.

I was right—the sights, sounds, and smells are all overwhelming after spending a week in the sterile confines of a hospital room. Even the snapping of a twig beneath my foot sounds loud. All the same, I hurry forward, hoping Max’s story of the folly in the woods was real.

Finally, my hands shaking, my breathing loud in my ears, I drop to my knees. The damp, loamy ground bleeds a cold wetness through my jeans.

It’s real.

I’m in the shade at the edge of a small ruin. There are eight stone columns, each about six feet tall, wide enough that you can barely circle your arms around them. They surround a twelve-foot-wide octagon with a mosaic floor. The gold, indigo, and azure tiles are faded and weathered, but the design is still clear. The mosaic is in the pattern of a lover’s knot, just like the pendant on the necklace. The folly is open to the sky, just like Max said. It’s surrounded by old pine trees and tall oaks, shaded by leaves and tall-reaching branches. Moss, pine needles, and leaves are littered over the folly.

“It’s real,” I say, my voice penetrating the hush of the woods.

Next to me, there’s a pile of moss-covered gray rocks, just like Max said there’d be.

I shove them aside and they topple noisily to the leafy ground. My hands scrape over the coarse stone as I move the last of them away.

Then I dig.

The soft ground gives easily. Moss. Soft, gnarled roots. Dry pine needles. Decomposing leaves. I dig through the layers, my bare hands pushing aside the cold dirt.

At first I hurriedly dig through the soil. It’s rich, mahogany-brown, and it smells like Christmas. I feel as if I’m unwrapping a present.

What will Max say when I bring him the letter?

Will he believe me?

Does he already remember?

The anticipation is almost too much to bear.

But then, after the hole is two feet wide and eight inches deep, I slow down. I slow my movements, calm my breathing, scrape aside the dirt, slower, slower, delaying the moment when I finally admit the truth.

Ten inches deep.

Twelve.

Fifteen.

And finally, I stop.

The soil is now dark brown, almost black, so hard-packed and full of thick, gnarled pine roots that I know no one buried anything beneath this point.

In fact, no one buried anything here at all.

The hole is empty.

So. It wasn’t real.

For a week I’ve known it wasn’t real. Since I woke up. I only let myself hope for a moment. But this confirms it. There is no bottle buried next to a folly in the woods.

I must have heard of these ruins from Dorene, or in an article about Max, or ... I don’t know. Somewhere, my subconscious picked up this tidbit and put it in my dream.

I lean back on my heels. My jeans are soaked and covered in black dirt and moss streaks. My hands are stained brown, my nails dirty. I hold out my hands and stare at them.

“What are you doing?” I ask them. “What did you expect to find?”

I shove the dirt back into the hole and then pile the rocks back on top. They clink together like markers for a tomb. This is me burying any last glimmer of my misguided hope.

I glance behind me, back through the woods, thickly leafed out and darkened by the shade. It’s early evening and the shadows are growing longer, crisscrossing over the forest floor. I can just barely make out the stark gray lines and the cold stone of Max’s home. Soon the setting sun will hit the walls and turn it a warm gold, but until then, it’s lonely and gray in its solitude.

Max is back to being all alone.

Just like he has been for the past ten years.

I make a decision—I’m here, I may as well go all in. I stand and wipe my hands on my jeans, leaving dirt streaks on my thighs. There’s a line of sweat on my forehead, so I quickly rebraid my hair and pat it down.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the courage to do this again—to talk to Max—so instead of thinking or second-guessing, I hurry through the woods. At the lawn, under the open sky, I feel exposed and small, like a mouse below a hawk, but I keep going.

The estate isn’t welcoming like it was when I saw it in my dream. There are no bright, blooming flowers, no gracefully curving beds, no glowing windows. It’s back to its stark, austere, isolated beauty.

What will you say? I ask myself, trying to think up the words to explain why I’m here. What will you say to him?

I knock on the door, flushing when I see how much dirt is still covering my hands. I put them behind my back, clasping them there.

Maybe I should go. I could run home, take a shower, put on a dress. Then come back.

But I know if I turn around now, I might not come back. Not ever. But I have to make sure. Because if there’s even a slim chance my wish was real, then I need to try. I promised.

But what will I say?

I’ll say ...

The tall wooden front door swings open. The hinges sigh, creaking as the door sweeps inward onto the marble tiles.

I stare, mouth open, eyes wide.

It’s Madame Blinken. The housekeeper from my dream. Except ... not.

She scowls at me, her eyes narrowing and her nose flaring. She’s just as neat and tidy as the last time I saw her, but she is not happy to see me.

“Is ... is Max here?” I ask. Then, more confidently, “I’m here to speak with Max.”

She sniffs and then looks me over, detailing every dirt smudge, every moss stain, and every drop of sweat and hair out of place.

“Monsieur Barone”—she emphasizes the “monsieur”—“is unavailable.”

“Unavailable or not here?” I ask, looking past her at the brightly lit marble entry. The chandelier is casting sparks over the floor, the lights are shining, and there’s a savory, herby smell coming from the kitchen.

Does that mean he’s home?

Madame Blinken sniffs again and begins to close the door.

“Wait!” I say, suddenly desperate. “Would you please tell him Anna Benoit is here?”

Madame Blinken stops, the door half-closed. When I say my name her eyes widen, and I know intuitively it isn’t because she’s happy to see me or because Max told her to let me in as soon as I arrived. Instead her grip tightens on the door and her knuckles turn white.

“When I entered this position, Monsieur Barone informed me to call the police if his former cleaner, a woman named Anna Benoit, came here again. Am I to understand you would like me to call the police?”

She gives me a hard stare.

And I go cold.

There was no letter.

There is no Max. At least, not the Max I love.

I knew it. I did. But now I really know it.

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t want that. Tell him ... please, tell him I’m sorry. I won’t come again.”

I stumble back, numb, cold.

I was wrong. I actually didn’t know it before. Somehow I was still soaring, flying on the belief that maybe ... maybe ...

I turn, hurrying down the steps into the darkening dusk. When my feet hit the last stone I’m jarred, aching, broken.

And even though I know all my wishes have been used up, I make one more.

I wish for Max to be happy.