Chapter 20
ANNA
Holly snaps up a brochure at the entrance to the museum, and we move briskly through the exhibit room toward the gardens where many of Rodin’s sculptures are displayed.
We pass gorgeous, smaller works encased in glass.
I resist stopping when a fleeting moment of nostalgia comes over me because, believe it or not, Francois Auguste René Rodin is one thing Cosima and I have in common.
We both adore his work. My mother even has a replica of his Young Girl with Roses on Her Hat which she displays in the grand foyer of their New York penthouse.
She’d bought it on a rare trip I went on with them, saying the girl reminded her of me.
“Eternal Spring still your favorite?” Holly asks as we exit the museum’s main building into the late-afternoon sun.
I stare at her. “You remember that?” I could stare at those forbidden lovers locked in an eternal kiss that’s equally sensual and erotic, but no less powerful.
A bolt of desire hits me with a mental image of me in Leo’s arms and I immediately realize what I’m feeling is more than desire.
It’s the terrifying want of something permanent.
A connection with someone who knows all my broken pieces and chooses to stay.
“There are a lot of things I remember.”
Something about the way she says it, and my heart stops mid-beat as my brain trips over the events in Greece because that has to be what she’s alluding to.
But she gives me a mischievous wink, something I haven’t seen her do in years, and says, “Like that time when you stood next to Torso of a Young Woman, mimicking her pose, and started comparing who had larger boobs right when two nuns walked by.” She’s giggling as she describes it, arching her back and studying her breasts, and I burst out laughing.
“Oh, my god. That’s right. I thought Zoe was going to snort the water she was drinking out her nose, she was laughing so hard.” Then I remember why we’re here today and pull myself together. “Hurry, we don’t want to run out of time.”
We rush along the pathway.
The Thinker sits atop a pillar among boxwoods tightly pruned into triangular Christmas tree shapes.
It is the closest statue to the garden’s entrance, and usually the most crowded.
But since it’s almost closing, there are only a few stragglers.
We get in line behind an Italian family to do as Zoe instructed.
“We’ll make this quick.” Holly may be going along with this, but I know she’s sensitive about social media. The whole idea of taking a selfie and posting it online must be torture for her. She’ll want this over and done with.
Holly hides her face behind the brochure she’s pretending to read and rolls her eyes at the family ahead of us squabbling over who sits where on the pillar’s steps. The father yells at his three boys to strike the infamous pose. Holly mouths, “Surprise.” Everyone does it.
I giggle and the dad turns to glare at me.
“Posso farti una foto?” I offer to take their picture to move them along, but he ignores me. I sigh and glance up at the statue. “Do you ever wonder what he’s thinking?”
Holly tilts her head. “He looks like Jack when he’s taking a shit, so probably nothing too deep.”
“Holly.” I gawk at her and playfully smack her arm.
The corner of her mouth tips into a half-smile.
She then clears her throat and reads from the brochure.
“‘When conceived in 1880 in its original size as the crowning element of the Gates of Hell…’” She doesn’t get the chance to finish the first sentence because somewhere between the boys’ crossed eyes and silly clown faces, the dad has captured the photo he wants and the mom is waving for them to move along.
I grab the dad before he leaves. “Ci fai una foto, per favore?”
“Sì.” He takes my phone, ignoring his wife’s impatient huff. I join Holly in front of the statue.
“You know Italian?”
“A little. I’ve picked some up while traveling.”
“That’s cool.”
The man holds up my phone to take a picture and we strike the same pose everyone has done for ages when they stand next to this sculpture.
“Pronta?” the dad asks.
“Sì,” I tell him. And to Holly, “Smile!”
She does, stiffly, and I deflate like a winded balloon. I don’t have to look at the picture to know Zoe would hate it. We probably look like cardboard cutouts of ourselves. It sure felt that way when we posed.
The dad tries to give back my phone.
“Ancora uno.” I ask him to take one more and smile at his wife, who’s impatiently tapping her foot. She scowls in return.
Oh, dear.
I turn quickly to Holly. “One more, for Zoe.”
Holly nods, and I get the feeling she knows exactly what I mean without saying it outright.
“Are you done yet?” The Italian mom asks.
“You speak English?” I’m surprised.
“Finisci. Andiamo.” The woman claps at her husband as their three sons run off to the next statue.
“We’re almost done.” I tug Holly’s pant leg to get her to sit down. “Please?”
She once again strikes the pose, her lips pursed, and I suddenly realize she’s not annoyed, she’s trying not to laugh.
“Be serious,” I say.
“I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about Jack on the toilet.”
We stare at each other then bust up laughing.
“Ecco qui.” Here you go. The dad presses my phone into my hand and takes off after his family.
“Oh no. He took our picture before we were ready.” I launch my photo app as Holly grabs my elbow and moves us aside so the next couple can take their photo with the statue.
I scroll through the photos, amazed and impressed at the number of images he took while we weren’t paying attention.
There are many to choose from, except Holly won’t approve of any.
The first is exactly what I expected: me posing dramatically and Holly stiff as a stale stick of gum, looking fake happy.
Same with the second photo, both of us striking the same pose.
More fake happiness. But in the rest, we’re overcome with laughter.
There isn’t one picture where we’re looking at the camera.
I stop on one photo and feel unbearably light.
This is real happiness. Real friendship.
It’s how we used to be together, how I want us to be again.
This is the photo I want to upload.
“I want to see the picture first and what you write before you post,” Holly reminds me.
“I already promised I would.” I told her so on the plane after she’d read Zoe’s letter. But I’m worried she’ll nix whatever I choose.
“You pick.” I thrust the phone at her. I know which is my favorite, but I want Holly to see how happy we can be together when we let down our guard.
Holly scrolls forward and back then forward again, then stops. I nibble my bottom lip, hoping, praying, she likes the same photo. She returns my phone. “This one.”
I look at the image and my heart bursts with bliss. It’s the one I wanted. Our eyes are closed and mouths wide open in laughter. Totally unflattering. But our happiness is raw and unfiltered, our heads tilted together in a shared joke. It’s perfect.
But history has me double-checking.
“Are you sure?”
“Post it to Luxe Vacation’s handle like you’ve been doing. It’s a nice add to your hashtag-goodbye-Zoe story.”
“It is.” My eyes sting with budding tears.
Oh, for fudge sake, Anna. Don’t you dare cry.
I blink away the burn and upload the photo, adding a caption. The sun always appears after the rain. So does happiness after pain. #museerodin #paris #grievingbuthealing #goodbyezoe.
I started typing friendship but swapped it out for happiness. Both are true, but I don’t want to assume too much and be let down.
I tilt the phone toward Holly for her to read.
“May I?” She takes the phone again and types something. When she gives it back, I notice she’s added to the caption. And friendship after loss.
I open my mouth to ask if she’s sure, but words fail me. Those budding tears flood my eyes.
I feel like I’m watching a real-life sappy commercial.
No, I’m living a real-life Friends meme, the one where Phoebe and Rachel are jumping and shrieking with excitement because that’s how I feel.
“Don’t overthink it, and don’t you dare cry. We have a letter to get through,” Holly says.
“Right.” I tap the button to share the photo to my feed and put away the phone.
“Let’s go find a place to sit down.”
The garden of Musée Rodin is almost two acres of bushes, trees, lawns, flowerbeds, and a pond.
Statues and benches are scattered throughout.
We take one of the two main walking paths and find a secluded teak bench in a grove of trees.
Exactly what Zoe wanted. Perfect for us to read her letter in privacy and not get arrested when we upend one of my compacts filled with her remains.
I cross my fingers just as a precaution.
“Was there anything else she wanted us to do before we read?” I remove the letter from its envelope.
“No, just the photo we took together.” Holly settles beside me and looks at her watch. “Fifteen minutes until closing.”
“Hopefully she doesn’t ask us to do something kooky with her ashes because I don’t think we’ll have time.” I unfold the stationery and press a hand to my racing heart. “I’m nervous about this one.”
“Same. She made it sound so ominous.” Holly glances at the trail behind us. “Okay. Nobody’s around. Go for it.”
My business coach advises me that the quickest method to ease stress is equal breathing. Breathe in the same number of counts as you breathe out. I do that twice. It doesn’t help.
“‘Dear Anna and Holly,’” I start reading only to abruptly stop. “Not cool of her to open so formal. I don’t like this, Holly.”
Wide-eyed with agreement, she chews on a cuticle.
This is Zoe’s eighth letter. They should be getting easier to read, not harder. I almost give it to Holly, but she pats my knee. “You’ve got this.”
I pull myself together. “‘Dear Anna and Holly, if I calculated correctly, you made it to Musée Rodin with just enough time to spare before closing, so I’ll keep this as brief as possible. You only have a few hours in Paris, and the City of Light is meant to be explored and enjoyed. But before you run off, and before you discreetly sprinkle me right where you’re sitting, I want to tell you about Ava, my other best friend.
“‘I don’t talk about her, but I think about her constantly. There are reminders of her everywhere, like the little daisies outside my bedroom window. Those were her favorite type of flower, the ones with the pink petals and yellow center. Leo helped me plant them when we first moved to California.
“‘Ava loved chocolate croissants. It’s why I always ordered one with my coffee despite not being a huge fan of chocolate. I’ll read a book and think of her because I’d want her to read it.
Sometimes, I’ll bookmark a recipe because if she’d seen it, she would have baked that cake or made those cookies. Her sweet tooth was bigger than mine.
“‘Don’t laugh, Holly, but the Jonas Brothers were her absolute fave. I hear “Sucker” and I’m immediately thrown back to my childhood and the two of us belting the lyrics into our Disney toy microphones.
She’d listen to that song on repeat; I grew so sick of it.
Took me years to listen to it again. It wasn’t until the Jonas Brothers went back on tour that I could.
I bought two tickets to their last concert knowing I was too sick to go.
But I imagined us there on the floor in General Admission, pushing our way to the front.
“‘Ava was sensational in sports. She ran circles around me on the soccer field. She was brilliant, too. Math and science were easy for her. Ironic since I could barely do basic math without a calculator.
“‘You’d think I would have been jealous. She was easy-going with a magnetic personality. She was popular in school, and kind and funny with everyone. All she had to do was make a face and I’d laugh.
She’d pass me silly notes in class, and I’d bust into giggles.
Of course, she got me into trouble a lot, but that was part of the fun.
She always took some of the blame and spent those hours in detention right beside me.
“‘But I was never jealous of her. She was my everything, and you would have loved her. But she too got sick when we were twelve. I survived. She did not. And I’ve lived with that guilt and this gnawing emptiness every day since.
“‘You see, she was more than my best friend. She was my sister, my twin. And I worry that, once I’m gone, she’ll be forgotten completely. Some days, I feel like my family already has.
“‘That’s why I hope you never forget me. If you don’t then she won’t be forgotten either.
“‘Kisses and hugs, Z.’”