3 People Say Time Heals All Wounds
3
People Say Time Heals All Wounds
I had agreed to meet Hayley at an Italian restaurant close to the Museum of Fine Arts. I got out of the taxi and saw my sister waiting for me by the entrance.
She looked stunning in her dark jeans, white shirt, and flats. She’d left her hair down, and it fell over her shoulders like a dark, shimmering cascade. My sister was beautiful, with a dark tan and eyes the color of obsidian. Her features were much more pronounced than mine: well-defined nose and cheekbones and a little dimple in her chin, just like Hoyt’s. Of course, they were twins.
I waved at her from the sidewalk, and we hugged when I reached her. I had never gotten used to how much I missed Hayley, no matter how many years we’d spent apart. We talked on the phone often about whatever—usually stupid stuff that helped us stop thinking about our worries at work and with life in general. But those calls didn’t make up for all the time we spent hundreds of miles away from each other.
“Hayley, you look great!”
“You, too, little sister.” She seemed worried. “You look thin, though.”
“Don’t start. I’m not dying of hunger.”
“Are you sure? Because you know your body needs a proper diet to feel happy.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I was worried they’d get stuck there.
My sister was like one of those mothers who can’t stop worrying about their children’s weight or whether they’re getting enough vitamins. But since she didn’t have kids, she focused on me.
“Hayley…” I warned her.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay. There’s nothing wrong with me wanting you to take care of yourself, eat right, get enough sleep… That’s an older sister’s job.”
I tried to look irritated, but the dam broke, and I said, “You know you’re the best sister in the world, right?”
“Someone reminds me of it from time to time.” She smiled and leaned her head on my shoulder.
The host told us we could be seated and guided us to a table on the patio courtyard. We sat there smiling, and it seemed strange to me that I’d never been to the place before. The patio was between two buildings and had cobblestone flooring and lots of brightly colored flowers: hanging baskets, hibiscus, oleander. Precious. I’d never have found it if it weren’t for Hayley. This is another secret in a city that’s full of them.
We ordered crepes with cheese and saffron sauce as an appetizer and pasta pomodoro for a main course, with red wine and olives and onion bread.
The waiter soon returned with our first course.
“Are you nervous?” I asked. The next day, my sister would no longer be a single woman.
“Incredibly. It’s been hard for me to sleep these past few days.”
“What are you doing here, then? You should be resting up for the big day.”
Hayley smirked and reached across the table to take my hand.
“No! I want to spend some time with you. I haven’t seen you since the funeral. Tomorrow I don’t have a second to spare and Sunday I’m taking a plane to French Polynesia with my brand-new husband. But this night is ours, Sister. Just for the two of us.”
Then, with a serious demeanor, she looked down into her glass.
“Hayley, are you okay?” I asked.
She looked almost mournful, and tears seemed about to fall from her eyes.
“I feel like it isn’t right for me to go ahead with the wedding. Like I should wait a while, leave it for later. It hasn’t even been a week since she died.”
I shook my head and bent over the table.
“Don’t say that. You know she wouldn’t want you to…”
“I know, but still…”
“It was her last wish, and you want to get married. You’ve been planning this day for months, Hayley. You shouldn’t feel bad for going ahead with it.”
“You really believe that?”
“Of course I do. Don’t let anything spoil one of the happiest days of your life. Grandma wouldn’t want that. You know how she is. I mean, how she was…”
She nodded and looked me in the eyes.
“What about you? Do you know what you’re going to do?”
I swirled my wine and thought it over.
“I don’t have the least idea what to do. It was so hard to make the decision to move to Toronto and study literature, and I convinced myself it was my life’s dream and no one would take it away from me. That city’s home now, and I have everything I need there.”
“But…?”
“I’m not sure anymore if what I need and what I want are the same thing. I try to imagine another life, getting up in the mornings and going to the bookstore. I see myself putting books on the shelf, making recommendations, and writing my own stories.”
Hayley smiled.
“It sounds nice. You could become a famous writer, sell millions of books, and turn them into a series on Netflix. Or a movie! And Charlie Hunnam could be the main character in all of them.”
“Yeah…or maybe not. It’s hard. Only very few people make it to that level. Most are just scraping by.”
“You could also be happy with a more modest vision. I still remember you pounding on that old typewriter of Mom’s and repeating like a parrot that you would be a writer one day. You wanted it with all your heart.”
“I know, but I’ve grown, and I see things differently now.” I took a sip of wine and tried to smile. “If I compare that with what I have now, I feel like I’d be taking a step backwards. I’ve struggled to make it to where I am now, Hayley. And if I keep going, I can do big things. In a few years, I could be working for one of the most important publishers in the world. If I’m lucky, I could really be someone.”
“You’ve never cared about a degree or a fancy job, though. You always appreciated less superficial things.”
“And I still do. It’s just that…” I closed my eyes a moment. “I think this is a big opportunity, the kind that only comes along once in a lifetime and that you have to grab hold of. I want to show I can be the best.”
“If you’re so certain, then what’s the worry?”
Good question. I was convinced I had some kind of syndrome that kept me from being a determined, decisive, resolute person.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s because of Dad?”
I clenched my teeth.
“I’ve been making my own decisions without thinking of Dad for a long time.”
“We both know you care what he thinks, though.”
I looked away.
“I really don’t care if it matters to him. I’ll never be the person he wants me to be. I could leave Toronto and come home, sell the bookstore, take a job in his company, and it still wouldn’t be enough for him. I could be the prime minister of Canada and it wouldn’t mean a thing to him. Because I’m the problem. I always have been.” I laughed mirthlessly. “What did I do, Hayley?”
I felt a tingle in my nose and had to blink to keep from crying. I was relieved when the waiter appeared with the pasta and saved me from breaking down. I could tell from Hayley’s stare that she understood.
“Honey, nothing, you did nothing. Dad’s a complicated man, and since he lost Mom…” She shook her head. “Listen, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re obviously upset and confused. Just forget all the rest and think about you and where you see yourself in ten or twenty years.”
It seemed simple when she put it like that. But it wasn’t.
“I don’t know, though. That’s the problem. I don’t know what I want and I don’t know where I see myself years from now. I thought I did, but now I don’t!”
I was frustrated.
“You think about things too much and you end up complicating matters for yourself, Harper. A coin only has two sides, and most questions are the same way: is it yes, or is it no?”
Hayley was my opposite, and I envied her for it. She was practical, methodical, and saw the whole world in primary colors. For me, there were infinite variations in tone, and they depended on the light, the shadows, the perspective… For Hayley, blue was blue. When I looked, I saw ice blue, grayish blue, indigo, turquoise…and in all those possibilities, I got lost.
When I pursed my lips, she set her fork down on her plate.
“Deep down, you do know. You know what you want, but you also know you’ll be disappointing someone who matters to you: Grandma, Dad, your teachers, the editor you work for… Whatever you decide, someone will end up angry with you.”
She rolled up some spaghetti and brought it to her mouth. I knew she was right, but no matter how deep inside myself I dug, I didn’t manage to feel anything that would tell me what path to take.
“Hayley, I don’t know, I swear. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, fortunately you don’t have to decide tonight. All you have to do is get drunk with your big sister.”
I grinned, happy the conversation had changed course. I adored Hayley. She knew me well enough to know when I needed a rest.
“We can’t get drunk. Imagine the bride and her maid of honor with hangovers.” I savored my pasta. “And poor Scott! You want that to be your husband’s memory of the big day?”
“Fine, no alcohol, but you’ll be wishing you’d ordered shots of Everclear when you hear what I’m about to tell you.”
I stopped chewing and raised an eyebrow.
“Which is…?”
“Dad sat you next to Dustin at dinner.”
“What? Why? He knows we broke up. I can’t sit there with my ex-boyfriend. He shouldn’t have even invited him!”
“I said that, too. But he thinks you’re acting like a fussy baby.”
“Fussy!” I couldn’t believe it.
“Remember what Dad said though: ‘That Dustin’s a smart cookie, and he’s got a promising future at the Weston Corporation. He suits you, and he’ll know how to take care of you the right way.’”
Evidently, my father and I hadn’t dealt with the same person.
I first met Dustin at a café close to college…
“Critical theory, sounds fascinating.”
I looked up from my notes and frowned at him. “Law, how original!”
“How do you know I’m studying law?”
“Your pleated pants gave you away.”
He laughed and sat at my table, raising his hand to get the server’s attention. He had blond hair, big green eyes, and a pleasant smile. “My name’s Dustin. Dustin Hodges.”
“Harper Weston. A pleasure,” I responded, shaking his hand.
Almost without realizing it, we started going out. I liked how I felt when I was with him. Everything was easy and natural. Comfortable. He was always so sweet. His kisses, his caresses, and the way he made love.
Until that moment, I had only really fooled around with people. And my one-night stands never turned out the way I’d hoped. With him, I thought I could break out of that pattern and open myself up to other things.
After a year, Dustin started talking about our future together. I wasn’t sure what that future meant, and I also didn’t feel we were ready for it.
“Just think it over. We sleep together almost every night. I have more clothes here than I do at home…”
“I’m only twenty-one, Dustin. I’m not ready to live together.”
“Not even to have a stable relationship,” he mumbled.
“Why can’t you just be happy with what we have?”
“Because I don’t feel like we have anything. Not anything solid, anyway. We’ve been going out for a year, and I don’t even know your family. I feel like you view what we have as a passing phase, and that worries me, because I do see you in my future.”
As always when I’m disappointing someone who matters to me, I gave in. “Would you feel better if I introduced you to my family?”
I took him home for Christmas, and Dustin met my father.
He went back to Toronto with a job offer that only a crazy person (or someone with principles) would turn down. That was how the distance between us started. His priorities, his dreams, his ideas all changed. Even the way he looked at me.
He pressured me for weeks to make our relationship official and move with him to Montreal. He wanted the whole shebang: rings, wedding, home, kids… I got tired of arguing, of having to defend my need for space and the life I’d chosen, and I broke up with him. Not that it did much for me. Dustin refused to accept that we were done, and he made up a different reality in which we were just taking a break before reconnecting.
Fortunately, he accepted the job at the beginning of April and left.
I couldn’t stand his insistence and his condescending attitude. Him looking at me with pity and his stupid belief that one day I’d recognize my errors and rush into his arms.
Well, he could keep waiting.
I poured us both a bit more wine. “So he suits me and he’ll know how to take care of me the right way,” I repeated.
My sister nodded and took a sip. “His words, not mine.”
“He thinks that because Dustin’s turned into his lapdog. Dustin wags his tail and sits every time Dad tells him to. Jesus, he’s probably in love with Dad instead of me. I’ll bet he looks at a photo of him when he masturbates.”
Hayley laughed so hard the spaghetti shot out of her mouth, and little pieces of it hit me in the face.
“Hayley!”
She laughed even harder as I tried to wipe myself off with my napkin.
“I…I’m sorry. You, uh…you’ve got a piece in your hair, too.” She hiccupped. “I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head. Dustin thinking of Dad while he… Ugh!”
I ended up laughing, too. We were both making a scene. But with that eternal smile, that eternal good cheer, what else could I do? I felt a tingle in my chest. She was my hero. When I was with her, everything seemed to fall into place. I stopped pretending to be someone else and could live as Harper.
After dinner, we went dancing at a fancy club. We wound up in the park looking up at the starry sky, listening to the music that wafted over from a nearby balcony, all alone for that instant. Until the sprinklers turned on and we got soaked as we ran barefoot through the grass, still laughing.
Hayley slipped. I tried to catch her, and we both fell and rolled over. We stayed there, immobile, holding hands under the fine mist.
“I wish so bad she’d be with me tomorrow, helping me dress, telling me everything would turn out okay.”
“You mean Grandma?”
“No…Mom.”
I bit my lip to keep from crying. Hayley was ten when our mother died, and her memories were clearer than my own. If her absence hurt me, I didn’t want to imagine what my sister must be feeling just then.
“She’ll be here,” I said, resting my hand on her chest.
Hayley turned on her side. “You look so much like her…”
Everyone who had known my mother said the same thing, that we were so much alike. But in my memories, her face was always blurred.
I licked the drops of sprinkler water from my lips and tried to push those distant memories away. They were so vague that they almost seemed to belong to someone else.
“I don’t want to be sad,” I said. “You shouldn’t, either.”
She smiled and squeezed my hand tight before lying on her back again and looking up. I did the same. The stars were twinkling in the dark sky.
It was late when my sister and I said goodbye. I watched her ride off in the taxi, and as I did so, I felt lonelier than ever. I recalled that life goes on, people come and go, they take detours, they grow distant… And there I was, still waiting. But for what? The saddest thing of all was that I had no idea.
I walked back to my grandmother’s house on Laval Avenue at a leisurely pace. It wasn’t far away. I had moved in there after the funeral because the idea of being in the same place as my father, if only for a few days, was unbearable.
Frances was asleep. I tried not to make noise as I brushed my teeth and undressed. I got into bed, too nervous to sleep, hugged my pillow, and closed my eyes.
A few seconds passed, and then he reappeared. He always did. Days, weeks, months… Sometimes he took a while, sometimes it was like he never left, but I could always count on the memory of him showing up to catch me off guard.
Trey.
People say time heals all wounds. It’s not true. Time is like the tide. Sometimes it’s low, soft, calm. Other times it rushes up and floods everything around it. That night, remembering our encounter, I felt it wash over me and drown me. In that dark room, the notion that I’d had him in front of me was so unreal that I hoped it had just been a bad dream.