And suddenly I couldn’t remember. “But I wasn’t by her bedside. She hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. She hadn’t slipped into a coma. She didn’t get rushed back to the hospital.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t work like that.”
“I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“You did,” said Ethan, but I wasn’t convinced. “In lots of ways, she was lucky. It was fast. She was sleeping. She didn’t suffer much. She missed the misery of watching her family watch her die. I can’t imagine it wasn’t better this way.”
“So . . . what? She was old. She died in her sleep. This is a blessing? I should feel grateful?”
“It’s very sad and very terrible for you, Janey. You will miss her. Her absence will be huge. But she didn’t have to linger in pain. She knew it was coming but didn’t have to live with that knowledge very long. And that is a kind of blessing.”
I couldn’t look at him. “She didn’t know it was coming. She wrote herself a note to give me a package the next time she saw me.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
We walked in silence the rest of the way. Just as I was going into the house, he grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“Janey, I’m sorry. I was trying to make you feel better, not worse. I don’t know what I’m saying. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just talking.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“I only meant—You said you envied how happy everyone else seemed, and I only meant everyone’s lost someone they loved and recovered from it. You will too. Atlas and your grandmother.”
“I haven’t lost Atlas,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant. Look, I’m just making things worse. I’m sorry. That’s all I wanted to say.”
He tried to hug me, but I pulled away and went inside to take a shower.
Late that night, I took my grandmother’s box into the bathroom. Katie and I were together in the double bed in the guest room. I didn’t want to disturb her. But also, suddenly, I had to know. I closed the toilet lid, sat down on it, and tried to hold in my hands the last present she’d ever give me, her last intention on my behalf, but it kept slipping away—not the box itself, just my head around the moment. I put the Post-it note carefully into the pocket of my robe. I untied the ribbon and put it away as well. The lid was on a hinge. I rocked it gently gently slowly carefully back and looked inside. There was another note. It was in its own tiny envelope, like a gift card. It had my name again on the outside. Inside was a small square of green and white paper, folded neatly in half. It looked like it used to be wrapping paper. On it, in my grandmother’s scrawling hand, it said cheerfully, “See? I told you so. You’ll have to pass these on for me. Miss you, honey! Guess who?”
Under the tiny envelope were my grandfather’s cufflinks and his everyday watch.
Thirty-six
I snuck into my own bedroom where Ethan was sleeping in the twin bed I’d grown up in. Sneaking into your childhood room feels wrong in every way. First, you are only used to sneaking out of it. Second, it has the unsettling suggestion of trying to climb back into the womb or at least back into your childhood. Being five again certainly held some appeal at that moment. I coveted my own past life. So simple. I looked around the room and remembered my mother and grandmother laughing at me while I looked, painstakingly, through every wallpaper sample in the wallpaper store. Then I remembered when they stopped thinking it was cute and went across the street to have lunch and leave me to my own miserable indecision. It had paid off in the end though. Red and purple tulips on a cream background were still cute now. The little girl next to me who had insisted on her first instinct, despite her mother’s protestations, was presumably stuck with pink and green My Little Ponies on her wall forever. Or maybe her parents wallpapered more often than mine did.
My very own room. And my very own bed. One of my first memories is of my parents bringing that bed home to me, trading me for my crib. I had been reluctant to give up the crib, thinking my stuffed animals, who lived there, would disappear with it. Then my father demonstrated that I could get in and out of this bed on my own whenever I wanted like a big girl. My parents must have quickly regretted this point as I spent many of the wee hours of the next three years in their bedroom, but I loved the bed straightaway. Always, coming home from vacations, coming back from college, even from school now, the best part was climbing back into this bed.
Now with a boy in it. This was unsettling. I am only five! I shook him awake.
He shot upright in bed. “Janey?” he whispered, frantic.
“Obviously.”
“You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry. Scoot over.”
“Over where?”
“Just over.”
“I’m pretty over. It’s a really small bed.”
I shoved him more over anyway, took off my robe, climbed in next to him in the T-shirt I was wearing underneath.
“This is what my grandmother left me,” I whispered, sitting up against the headboard and holding the box out in front of us.
“What is it?”
“Well, it’s cufflinks for Atlas and something for you.”
“For me?”
“Something she thought you’d like. You will.”
“Why me?”
“She thinks we’re getting married.”
“Right, I forgot.” Then Ethan said nothing, processing this I guess or trying to decide what to say in response. “Well,” he said finally, “I guess I should look.”
He opened the box, took out the watch, held it up to the light coming in off the street. “Wow,” he said. “I do love it. She was absolutely right.”
“She wanted me to hold on to it because she didn’t think she’d be around anymore when you were ready to have it.” I shrugged. “She was right. So were you.”
“How was I right?”
“It wasn’t sudden. She knew.” I showed him the note.
“I’m sorry, Janey,” he said.
“Why? I was the one who was angry and mean and wrong. You were kind and nice and right.”
“Well, I’m sorry for being right.”
We sat like that for a while in the dark, saying nothing, sort of floating.
“We should go to bed,” he whispered, startling me. I had almost forgotten he was there. Maybe I even fell asleep sitting up against the headboard.
“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t go anywhere. I was already in my bed after all.
He put his hands on either side of my face and rested his forehead against mine.
“You have not had a good week,” he said.
“No,” I agreed.
“Next week might not be much better.”
“No,” I said again.
“Maybe the one after that.”
“Let’s hope so.”
And then he kissed me. Soft a very little bit at first just barely so at first I wasn’t even sure it was kissing and then a little more and a little more and it definitely was. And then the part where he opened his mouth and I opened mine and then we closed them again right away like we changed our minds about saying something we shouldn’t and then open again to explore that way a little bit and see what happened next. And then little small tastes of kisses and sideways ones and ones where he moved his hands from my face to my neck and back again. And then where he paused for a bit and drew away and put his hand on my hair and looked at me for a long time and touched me again softly and a little bit sad and looked and looked. And where we smiled at each other. And then the part where we started kissing again, like kiss number two, like this time we know about it beforehand and we mean it and it didn’t just happen. And that way for a while, for a long while, because you never get to do the first night over again, and secret whispered middle of the night kisses don’t happen often enough to rush. And waiting and breathing and breathing and listening, aware of my heartbeat (too fast) and my breath (too shallow) and not thinking of anything at all. Nothing at all.