Chapter 95
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, I did what I could to help Laura get on her feet.
I didn’t have any experience with pregnancy loss, but I knew a little something about grief, so I vowed not to let one stupid platitude slip past my lips, and to get her out of her apartment as often as I could and by any means necessary.
On Wednesdays, I liked to hit the flea market in the Piazza Comando, so I started picking Laura up and taking her with me.
One week we bought these plastic contraptions that we were supposed to use to soak beans overnight; on another visit, we each bought a dustpan on a stick.
You know the kind that keeps you from having to bend over?
It turned out Italians loved those. Neither of us had much money to spare, so the stuff we bought was almost always practical and cheap, and since we were both terrible at haggling, the joke was that we preferred to pay full price for everything.
On Friday afternoons, I took Laura to Caprera and made her choose one of the two dozen trails that crisscrossed the island.
I’ve always found walking to be good therapy—even before I knew what therapy was.
There’s something about keeping the focus on your feet and maybe the scenery.
It makes it easy to talk about whatever’s on your mind.
On those hikes, Laura sometimes talked about the babies she’d lost and her fear that she’d never be a mother; when she got going, I tried not to say much, because the last thing she needed was me telling her to be patient or that the miscarriages hadn’t been her fault. She knew all that.
We went on a few day trips that spring. Once, we took the ferry to Palau and drove up into the hill towns, where I helped Laura pick out a trunk like the one Susan Jordan had received at her farewell.
Another time, we took the ferry to Corsica, where we wandered around Bonifacio’s old town and got to practice our high school French and eat moules-frites.
Laura was still sad, of course, but she was willing to be distracted, and in that way, she reminded me of my mother, who—after Lenny’s death—managed to get on with the business of living.
Those who knew her best knew she was going through the motions, but the funny thing about faking it is that eventually you’re not.