Rouge(115)

“It isn’t good. I’m sorry if I did anything to make you—”

“Hey,” Tad says, turning around at last to face me. His eyes are rimmed red, shining with tears. He walks over and hugs me then. In the warmth of his arms, I feel his love for her. I smell her happiness in his scent of beach and bright days.

“Grief is a journey,” he says. “And everyone has their own way, you know?”

“Still,” I say, shaking my head. “That wasn’t the way I ever meant to go.”

He pulls away a little so we’re face-to-face. He brushes my hair away from my eyes. “There’s no one right way to ride a wave, Belle.”

“Thank you for being good to my mother. Thank you for loving her. I’m glad you were in her life.”

“I’m glad she was in mine. I’m only sorry I wasn’t there that night she…”

He looks away.

“Me too,” I say, tears in my own eyes now.

“The truth?” he whispers. “Is that I really didn’t know what was going on with her. She wouldn’t see me much toward the end. At all. She’d taken up with this… crowd. Fucking weird rich people. Really into skincare, I guess it was?” He laughs darkly, but his eyes look pained, helpless. “I wasn’t sure. She didn’t really let me in. Your mother was pretty secretive about that stuff. About a lot of stuff, honestly.”

I stare into his kind eyes, where once I thought I saw darkness. What was it I really saw there? Sorrow. Loss. Denial. A sunny attempt to sweep it all away.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Tad everything. Whisper it all into the shell of his ear.

Instead I say, “I hope you’ll come back. For the windows.”

He smiles. “Of course. I’ll come back anytime. I’ll be around. For the windows or not the windows.”

He leans in, and for a moment I feel a thrum of panic. Then he kisses my cheek. Ruffles my hair. No cold. Not a trace of cold do I feel from his touch. It feels like being warmed through. And then we’re parted.

“Oh hey, I didn’t know what to do with those.” He points to the two mannequins sitting at the table. “I guess they’re new?”

I stare at their white smiling faces. Red lips and hair. Golden eyes. One in a dress of starry midnight. One in a dress of gold.

“Oh no, not new. Old friends. Sisters, you might say.”

Tad looks at me. Sisters?

“You didn’t see a third one, did you?”

“A third one? No. There was a broken window though. I think someone might have tried to break in while you were gone. I fixed it for you. Reinforced them all too so you won’t have trouble like that again.”

He smiles at me. Taking me back to the child I once was, standing in Mother’s hallway. I picture him waving at me in the dark. A waver, he would have been for sure.

“Thank you.”

Through the window, I watch him leave the apartment. Get on his bike and drive away in a cloud of smoke and “God Only Knows.”

Hard not to tell him to come back. But I just stand there watching him disappear into the sun from the glass. So clear, you can’t even tell there’s a glass there. So clear, you would never believe there was anything at all between you and the sea.



* * *




At the windows, I sit looking out at the crashing water for a long time. I’m not afraid to look out at the water anymore. Above the waves, the sun is setting. The sunset is really a story all its own. A movie, Mother used to say when I’d first arrived here. The best one ever made, she said, taking my hand. It goes on and on, see? Many twists and turns of color. Magic, really. Like a fairy tale. It begins with a pinkening of the clouds. Then a reddening, so that they look like the underbellies of some great fish. Then a bluing, which can go on awhile, giving way at last to starry black. Then you can hear the water but can’t see it. You can only see yourself in the glass, looking out.

I pour myself some prosecco in one of Mother’s cappuccino cups. I light one of her cigarettes, the second-to-last one. I’ll keep the very last one. I watch the sunset with my sisters and Anjelica, her furry white body at my side, her pale eyes closing.

I think of Mother watching the sunset here. Alone, with a cigarette and a drink, just like this. She’d call me up some nights. I’d hear the waves crashing around behind her voice. I’d hear the wind and the gulls. I’d know she was looking at something other than herself by her voice. I’d hear all the sharp edges of it softened by what she saw happening through the glass, what I’m seeing now. Wind moving through blackening trees. White waves. That’s when she’d ask me, Are you happy? That’s when she’d say, I do love you. That’s when she’d say, Do you think you’ll be coming to visit soon?

Yes. I love you too. Soon, I’d answer, not even knowing if I meant it. But Mother pretended I did.

I’m glad.

The light changes and the moon and sun are in the sky together now. One falling light, one rising. They can be together like that in the sky? I asked Mother once. The moon and the sun? Of course, she said.

Of course they can be together like that. It doesn’t happen often. Most of the time they’re far apart. Sometimes at opposite ends of the earth. But sometimes—

Like tonight?