Standing there in her special room, I allow the sense of her to take over. I’m so hungry for her, for her wisdom, her cackling laugh. She smelled of apples and oil paint. She loved Joel and believed he was the best artist of the three of us, even though she tried to pretend she didn’t. I see her bending over his work, pointing out some small thing.
I see her standing on the beach on a cloudy day, wind blowing her long hair, her eyes closed, hands raised in praise and love. To God, to nature, to all the things so much bigger than us. She believed in the holiness of things. She believed in nature. She believed in art and creativity and being kind.
She was unfailingly kind. It’s a quality that’s been lost in the modern world. But without her genuine kindness, her love, Suze would have had nowhere to go.
And I, her granddaughter, who loved her as if she had created the earth and everything in it, became the opposite of everything she was. I have become tight and small and guarded and mean. How did I keep that letter for so many years? How much pain did that single act cause in the lives of two people I loved?
How does love act that way?
I bend over, feeling that failure in my every cell. It surges and burns, and breaks the stiffness in my spine. Something inside me, bound tight and hard as a package tied with string, tears open. Dark matter spills from it, and dark thoughts, and mean words.
“Amma!” I cry, and give in to my grief. I sink to the floor and wail. “I’m so sorry!”
I cry for so long that my eyes are grainy and my face burns with salt. When I’m done, I can only take myself to the fainting couch and sleep, feeling something dark and heavy dissolving.
In my imagination, Amma strokes my hair. I love you, child, just as you are.
Just as you are.
“Phoebe,” says a voice. Ben’s voice. I’m sleeping so deeply that my brain spins a dream out of the single word, and we’re off on an adventure, rambling around Europe together. Maybe even the pyramids. I’d love to see the pyramids. How would that influence my work?
My brain registers his warm hand on my arm, and with a sense of swimming back to earth from another planet, I struggle to open my eyes. It’s dark with only moonlight or cloud light coming through the window. It falls on his face, a face that’s become so important to me even if I didn’t want it to. “Hi,” I manage. “What time is it?”
“Nearly seven. You’ve been here all day. Stephanie sent me down here to see if you want dinner.”
I test my stomach and realize it is dead empty. “That might be good.” Rolling to a sitting position, I brush my hair out of my face. “I was really sleeping.”
He sits next to me, brushes a lock of hair behind my ear. “You were. You needed it.”
A swift longing moves through me, for this to come to something, to be something. I’m lonely and I have been for a long time. I want a partner, as we all do. Maybe it’s really okay to want things. Want this. “I’m really glad to see you.”
“Me too.” He lifts my hand and kisses the palm, and a shiver moves through me.
If I’m going to be a better version of me, I have to start here. “You know that I’m hoping for something real here. I really like you.”
“I really like you, too,” he says.
My throat feels raw from crying. “I did something terrible, a long time ago.”
“Did you?”
“I was in love with Joel. He was always in love with Suze.”
He nods. “They were the couple everybody envied in school.”
I look at him, my vision of the world shifting to accommodate this version of life, a version I would never have seen, obviously. “Really?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I wasn’t in school with all of you, so I never saw that.”
He smiles gently. “I’m sorry you had a crush on him. That must have sucked.”
“It did.” I brush a fingertip over his broad thumbnail. “Realizing that they were a thing back then makes me feel even worse.” I take a breath. “Because he gave me a letter for her, and I never gave it to her. I only did it this morning.”
He says lightly, “Better late than never, huh?”
“I’m so ashamed of myself.” I bend into his shoulder, and he strokes my hair. “It had real consequences, and I can never make it right.”
“We’ve all done terrible things, Phoebe. Sometimes you just have to live with them.”
I take a breath and straighten. “I guess. But I’d like to make amends somehow if I can.”