Chapter XV #2
“Well, yeah. Actually . . . about that . . .” I’ve been avoiding the disclosure all day, as if speaking it aloud confirms its reality.
Or as if delivering the news to anyone before Henri is an act of disloyalty.
“Alec emailed me. I’ve only got about two days left.
” Two days. I can’t believe the reality of such a finite block of time.
“No! I won’t have it!” she cries over the music and flings her arms around my neck. “No, no, no.”
I nod into her shoulder. “I’m not ready either.”
“And what about Henri?”
“I don’t know . . .” Merely hearing his name brings the simmering apprehension in my gut to a boil. “I haven’t told him yet. Haven’t seen him all day. Since dinner last night. I . . . I, yeah . . . I don’t know.”
“I get it, honeybee.” She pulls back to take in my face and must sense something fragile in what she sees there. “Why don’t we talk about it later, huh? Tonight’s our last hurrah, and I’ll be damned if we both don’t enjoy it.”
I nod, grateful for the diversion. I know she’s right: I’ll be endlessly disappointed if I squander my final big night. But my eyes are damp anyway. Leaking ever so slightly.
“Let’s get down to business. What are you gonna wear?” She squeezes my shoulder gently.
“I have no idea. You?”
Ruby holds up a vintage-looking button-down top with cap sleeves and large, spirited polka dots along with a pair of black wide-leg trousers.
“I’m thinking these and, well, any shoes at all that aren’t work boots. Might skew a touch primary school art teacher, but alas. C’est la vie.”
“I love it; it suits you.”
“Wait!” She holds up a hand, flinging her own clothes onto the bed. “I have something for you!”
She reaches into the armoire and produces a gauzy white nightgown with thin straps and a pleated panel down the front. “My ginger ass can only wear this to sleep—makes me look like a proper ghost. But you’re so tan now, you’ll look like a little angel.”
In this house of so few mirrors, I’ve hardly been aware of the slow-warming color of my skin, the deepening hue.
I pull the dress over my head, my wet hair dripping coolly down my back, and it falls just right, the hem landing a book’s width above my knees, the body hanging loose with just a suggestion of silhouette.
“How’s it look?”
“It’s special—angelic, indeed. Wear it. You’ve got no choice.”
She finds her phone to take a picture—our mirror substitute in all sartorial matters—and I see that she’s right.
It fits well, makes me look more feminine than I have in weeks.
I like it, this reassurance of my own form.
This ability to shift so swiftly from sturdy, capable, and soil dusted to young lady.
And of course, I see Henri seeing me in it.
I know he’ll like it—know the way his eyes will gleam, the corner of his mouth stretching to the left.
Ruby and I do each other’s makeup—one more solve for our lack of reflective surfaces.
A light, bruisey eyeshadow for each of us; mascara (“Blink onto the wand,” she tells me); a mauve lipstick.
Ruby plaits her hair with nimble fingers into a tidy French braid, while I let mine air dry, falling long and wavy to the midpoint of my back.
After weeks of having the mass of it tied up in some knot of efficiency, it feels indulgent to let it breathe this way, so unrestrained.
“His jaw will drop when he sees you,” she whispers, not bothering to clarify the he. I’m grateful for her soft reassurance, her acknowledgment of the Henri Conundrum—even if we aren’t going to discuss l’éléphant in the room.
As Ruby spritzes herself with perfume, Pietro arrives, knocking softly before pushing the door open enough to peek his head inside hesitantly. “Ah, ragazzi! My God!”
He nudges the door the rest of the way open with his hip and presents three flutes of something sparkling balanced in his hands. “I come with a small treat for the girls!”
He distributes the wine among us, and we clink our glasses together with a sweet, small chime.
“Grazie, Pietro, just what we needed.” I kiss him on both cheeks.
A tenderness toward him dilutes my gloom as I take in his wild getup—an excellent stand-in for his personality—and I worry that I haven’t gotten enough of him while I’ve been here.
That ultimately, my Big Experience has rested far too squarely on the shoulders of some precarious romance.
“You both look so beautiful. Like models!” He gesticulates effusively with his wineless hand. “So much eleganza!”
“What can we say, we clean up nice.” Ruby pops a hip and reaches an arm in the air so as to properly display her outfit. “Well . . . it helps when we clean up at all. But look at you, Pietro!”
He’s wearing his typical collection of gold chains, which hang at different lengths across his chest like rivulets. On this occasion, they’re offset by a leopard-print shirt with one lone button in use near his navel.
His hair isn’t nearly long enough to make use of Ruby’s braiding talents, but nonetheless, he demands a hairdo of any genre. The three of us kneel together in a circle on the hardwood floor, and Ruby sets to work, storing a spray of bobby pins in her teeth while she divides his mane into sections.
As I pass her a comb, another knock. “Entrez!” I call out. “Come in!”
The door swings open to reveal Henri, stepping forward with a measured trepidation. Can everything revealed be called a revelation? I wonder. Or is that term specific to moments like this one?
In brown pants and a navy linen button-down, the sleeves rolled up just above his elbows, he looks like some masculine advertisement for vacation—a case for time spent, without cell service, in sunshine.
God, I am relieved to see him. Meeting his eyes feels like encountering a spring .
. . and it has only been how long now since my last drink?
“Welcome, mio fratello! The girls are beautifying!” Pietro gestures for him to come in and sit.
He pauses as if some barrier prevents his passage. “I . . . was hoping I could talk to Alice for a moment.”
We hold one another’s gaze, and the incongruous weight of the seemingly plain request makes my heart race. Will I ever tire of my name in his mouth? Does it ring differently knowing there is a dwindling supply of his Alices left?
“Oui, let’s go for a walk?” I stand up, leaving my wine propped carefully next to Ruby, doing my best to avoid the knowing glances between my floor companions. “Don’t let Pietro drink my glass.”
Pietro rolls his eyes, and Henri holds the door open for me.
Instinctively, we walk around to the back of the house and toward his truck, traipsing along in a high-decibel silence.
I catch sight of myself in the rearview mirror, and I pause.
Perhaps it has something to do with how rarely I’ve encountered my own reflection.
Maybe it’s the mottled freckles on my skin; the sun-bleached, loosened quality of my hair; the Alsatian light.
Perhaps it’s the berry-stain lip color in this land of smashed fruit.
Maybe it’s just the distinct experience of moving about in a dress that doesn’t belong to me.
Whatever the cause, all of the pieces of me seem to fit together in a way they never have before.
“You look really beautiful,” Henri says quietly as if reading my own surprise and slicing through it with accuracy.
“You do too,” I respond. Problematically so, I want to say. But then . . . he seems jittery, anticipatory, as if overcaffeinated. The space between us—more space than usual—almost vibrates, as if he’s emitting a low, humming sound undetectable to my ears.
We stand in silence, our stilted compliments clouding the air. I exhale. “Are you OK? You seem . . . a little agitated.”
“No, no, I’m good. Excellent, actually.” His voice is a notch higher than usual. “Genial!” He leans forward, kissing me hard on the mouth, and I don’t see it coming. When we collide, it’s more car crash than connection. An aberration. I press my fingers to my lips.
He scans my face. “Sorry . . . was just very excited to see you.” He clutches his hands together. “I, um, I have something to tell you.”
He trails off, and I raise my eyebrows. My stomach clenches as I wait anxiously for him to explain last night’s disappearance, his off-brand, frenetic energy. Why the drawn-out preface? I wonder. We’ve never required verbal on-ramps before.
“I did it. I left her. Fully.” His voice wavers as if he, himself, is shocked to hear his vocal cords shaped into those particular sounds. “We talked last night, for many hours, and I . . . I ended things. Not a break anymore. Just an ending.”
Something swells up in me—quick and violent, like an electric shock.
I’ve wanted to hear those words, haven’t I?
Have dreaded anything but those words. And yet the fierce reality of our particular scenario is glaring.
I am leaving. He is demolishing the scaffolding of his life.
And we, well. We are two people now in a position to be a we, should we so choose—with all the burdens that entails. I haven’t asked for this. Have I?
He leans forward to kiss me again, but I take two steps backward. “Alice?” he says with audible concern, and I hear the metallic ring of his voice somewhere deep in my chest—as if he’s speaking not at me but into me.
I can see the hurt as it flashes across his face—confusion at my reluctance, at my lack of immediate and flagrant enthusiasm. And really, why am I reluctant? Where is my immediate and flagrant enthusiasm?
“I wanted to tell you right away. To thank you. I’ve been ready to do it for some time,” he presses onward.
“The breaking up, not the telling you. For a long time, actually. But I was too . . . I don’t know.
Just couldn’t make myself do it—until now.
I needed a reason that I couldn’t talk myself out of. ”
His voice shakes softly, and I watch as his hands move toward me and retreat repeatedly—endless false starts.
I can feel the weight of his admission simmering somewhere in my stomach, the acid twinge of guilt as it spreads like contagion throughout my gut, coats my esophagus.
Am I the cause—the reason this man to whom I’ve promised nothing, who has promised nothing to me, is upending his life?
Charlotte, this living, breathing woman, is exhaling, folding laundry, salting her food, processing the end of her relationship somewhere in Lyon, and I am returning to New York. To Emma. To my own alternate reality.
He reaches for my hand and this time holds it between his, looking at me pleadingly. My heart rate quickens—and not in the way it normally does when the two of us touch. This is an alarm sounding, an alert from the nervous system.
“What’s wrong?” he prods, his apprehensive glee fully transformed into something panic-adjacent. “I thought this would be good news. It means that this—us—is not so complicated. I don’t understand why you’re not smiling?”
I push my tongue around my gums, hoping certain words might bubble up, wanting to recover his shaky, eager joy in some form.
But my mouth is full of a citric, iron anxiety.
Does he not understand that some portion of the fragile, tentative bliss of us—of all of this—relies on the fact that it can’t exist in the real world?
That it can’t survive outside of whatever magical dimension in which we presently stand?
And now, here we are, properly dressed, as our actual selves. I have the odd sense that time is no longer moving in its militant march forward. It’s hitting me sideways, at an angle.
I look down at the hem of my dress, and it strikes me as too revealing of everything underneath. “I just . . . we never talked about the future. I thought there was some tacit agreement that this was all we had. I didn’t ask you to make any choices around me.”
“Alice . . . what are you talking about?” His hands go to his hair.
“I’m not, like, asking you to marry me, OK?
” Something harsh creeps into his eyes—an impatience I’ve never detected in him before.
“I mean . . . forgive me for thinking we weren’t gonna high-five and go our separate ways when harvest ended. Is that so crazy?”
“Viens, my dears!” Bea calls from the front of the house. “Come now, much to do!”
She’s stationed mere yards away, and there is no ignoring her. She stands, hands on her hips; there’s no time to be bought.
As we amble over, I find myself wishing desperately for Emma’s presence. Surely she’d have some idea about what is so disastrously wrong with me. Why I’m so allergic to romantic plausibility. Why the loose ends of this conversation with Henri scratch at my throat like a choking hazard.