Chapter Five #3
She was watching his lips closely. “Eighty years!” she repeated with a little bubble of a laugh.
It was the same laugh he remembered from 1943, and hearing it brought tears to his eyes.
So much had changed, but so much had stayed the same, too.
Her eyes were a brilliant blue, though they were foggier now, and though her hair had gone from raven black to snow white, it was still long and loose, and he yearned to run his fingers through it.
On her skin, the smoothness of youth had been erased by the creases of age, but her cheeks were still pink, her mouth still a perfect rosebud that he longed to kiss.
“If that’s a joke, I don’t understand it, I’m afraid,” she said.
She had switched seamlessly to English, which gave him a little surge of hope. If she could remember another language that she’d learned so long ago, surely she could remember him.
“Celeste,” he said again, staring at her, willing her to remember him.
“I know I must look very different to you now. We knew each other when I was nineteen, and you were eighteen. You were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.
It was during the Second World War, and you saved my life.
You sheltered me in your apartment and…” He swallowed hard. “Celeste, we fell in love.”
“I remember the war…” She continued to gaze at his lips as he spoke, as if she was having trouble following him. “But love? How did you say we knew each other?”
The knots in Henry’s stomach were twisting tighter, and he fought back tears. “I was a gunner shot down over northern France and—”
“How terrible,” she breathed, clapping a hand over her mouth.
“But it led me to you. You were working with the French Resistance, and—”
“Me?” Her eyes widened.
“You were a hero.” His voice cracked. “Later, after I left you—”
She cut him off again, her voice slicing into him. “But why did you leave me?”
“I was an American soldier. I was trying to get home.” It sounded like a feeble excuse, the biggest mistake of his life. “I had no choice, I—”
Just then, a young care worker in faded black scrubs came up behind him. Henry was still standing in Celeste’s doorway; she hadn’t invited him in, and he hadn’t wanted to ask, for fear she’d say no.
“Madame Didier, you have a visitor, I see,” the care worker said loudly in French, giving Henry a small smile.
“It’s all right, you can speak English,” Celeste said, and the nurse’s eyes widened.
“You speak English, Madame Didier?” the care worker asked, switching to English, her accent clearly American. “But I’ve known you for two months and you’ve never—”
“Of course I speak English. So does my visitor, who insists I know him.”
Henry’s spirits were sinking by the second.
He turned to the care worker, whose name tag read KAYLA.
She was perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, with brown curls that fell to her shoulders and the kind of gleaming, rosy cheeks that only came with youth.
“Celeste was the love of my life,” he said, his throat constricting, “and it seems she has forgotten me.”
The worker gave him a look of sympathy. “I’m very sorry, sir. Some of our residents struggle to remember things.”
“But we were everything to each other.” Henry knew he sounded desperate. He looked back at Celeste. “I’ve spent a lifetime writing songs for you, Celeste.”
“For me?”
“I wrote the first of them when we were together in your apartment. I was watching you sleep, and I—”
“Well, sing it, then,” Celeste said.
The care worker gave Henry an encouraging smile. “Studies have found that music does sometimes break through the fog, sir.”
“But you see, I—I can’t sing anymore, Celeste,” Henry said. “My vocal cords are damaged.”
She blinked at him a few times and harrumphed. “That sounds like a convenient excuse.”
And before Henry knew what was happening, she had shut the door in his face, leaving him alone in the hallway with the care worker. He stared at the floor for a moment, blinking back tears, then he looked up at her in astonishment.
“How can she not know me?” he whispered. “She’s the love of my life.”
The young woman put a hand on his arm. “It’s the disease, sir. The memories are there. She just can’t always access them.”
“But… I thought that… with the way we loved each other…” He stopped abruptly, worried that he’d gotten it all wrong. Had she forgotten him the moment he’d left her apartment? Had he carried a flame for eighty years for a woman who’d never given him a second thought?
An uncomfortable silence settled over them as the care worker shifted from foot to foot.
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir,” she said.
“But I do know that music has been known to jog the memories of dementia patients. Maybe you could come back tomorrow and try the best you can to sing it to her, even if it’s not perfect?
Or is there anyone else who knows the song? ”
Henry laughed through his tears. It was one of the biggest hit songs of the past thirty years, though the young woman couldn’t know that. “There is a recording of the song, actually.”
“Wonderful! Maybe if you play it for her, she’ll remember.”
Henry felt a small flicker of hope. “I’ll try tomorrow, then. Thank you very much.”
The care worker smiled. “Can I show you the way to the exit, sir?”
Henry glanced once more at Celeste’s door. “I—I suppose so.” He coughed to cover the sob that threatened to escape. “Maybe tomorrow will be better.”