Page 53 of The Holiday

“Banks,” I said, remembering the trip in more detail. “Her Secret Service agent.”

“Right. Banks. He found me throwing up in the garden after a night out drinking. I was a kid—maybe fifteen?—and he talked to me the way a father might. He sat with me. Comforted me. I held that in my mind for a long time, wondering whether that might be what it’s like to have a real dad. Someone to listen and guide me. To be there, and not just when he breezed into town to stay for a few days.” Julien shook his head. “I missed out on all of that. And then I spent years wondering if everyone, even my mother, would have been better off without me.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what to say to that, but I wanted to listen. A man needs to be heard, and in this day and age, I think that finding someone to hear your fears and worries is hard to come by. So I just listened.

“Until I met Quinn, and until I became a father, really, I wasn’t sure that I mattered.”

Quinn walked into the room quietly then, set a happy, smiling Lex in Julien’s arms, and walked out again. I could hear her puttering in the kitchen, finishing up the details of lunch.

“You matter, Julien,” I said.

He looked down at his son, who looked up into his eyes. I saw a connection happen between them that was so primal, so biological, so real, that it caused a physical pain in my chest. Julien stuck out a finger and Lex wrapped his own tiny hand around it, tugging on his father’s hand as he giggled.

Julien looked away from Lex as the baby held onto his finger. “I want to be a different kind of father,” he said. “Obviously. I want to be here and be available in all the ways that count. Lex needs to know he matters, and that there are no secrets. He will always know who he is, where he came from, and where I came from. Those things are important.”

“Of course.”

“All we can do is create a new generation of humans who have it better than we ever did, right?” He looked at me hopefully. “All we can do is be the parents we needed someone to be for us when we were kids.”

I nodded, looking towards the window now myself. I realized as I sat there, watching fat raindrops start to fall on the ground around that suburban house in France, that my purpose for being there—for bringing Ruby to Julien—wasn’t to get closure on her feelings about Etienne or vice versa, and it wasn’t to find something more to write about her for my book. It was simply to bring some sort of peace and contentment to a man who had always been a lost little boy on the inside. To let Ruby’s words reassure him once and for all, and then to let him go on and raise his son the way he needed to.

I looked back at Julien. “One time, when we were very first married, Ruby and I were walking on the beach,” I said. Julien bounced Lex as he stood there, listening. “We were talking about life and love, and how fortunate we were to find each other in this big world.” My eyes stung as I recalled this moment, and I felt again the things I felt on that walk: good fortune, wild love, respect, and deep caring for a woman so whole and complete that I knew I’d never find anyone else quite like her. “And she stopped at the water’s edge and stared at the sea. Finally, she looked up at me and said, ‘I’m glad Jack had that kind of love in his life, even if it wasn’t with me. And I’m glad that Etienne has Julien now, because losing someone can leave a giant hole in your heart if you’re all alone. My mom had me when my dad died, I had my girls when Jack died, and Etienne has her son.’ It was simple, but she meant it.”

Julien looked puzzled. “How could she not have hated my mother? How could she have wished her well?”

I shook my head slowly, watching now as the rain spattered the windowpane. “I don’t know, Julien. I watched her and learned from her all the years we were together. I always hoped to be her equal when it came to understanding and patience, but I’m sure it will come as no shock to you that I never mastered it.”

“I always figured she hated the fact of me. That she wanted me and my mother to fall off the face of the earth.”

“Nah,” I said, making a face. “Not her style. Not at all. And I’ll tell you what, Julien: I think her life was better for it. Ruby didn’t have a bitter bone in her body, so when it was her time to go, she looked peaceful. She seemed to understand her mission, which was to leave us all with one final image of her at ease with herself. And she did.”

As I talked, and as I felt Julien and Lex’s presence there in the room with me, I realized that I’d done it: I’d spoken to all the people who mattered, and I’d gotten as many stories about Ruby as I was going to get. I’d also learned about love, about forgiveness, and about what it meant to really live. I’d laughed and cried listening to people talk about my amazing wife, and now, here at the end, I discovered that the journey was as much about me telling people the things they needed to hear about her to bring them closure, as it was aboutmehearing the things I needed to hear to say goodbye to Ruby the right way.

And now I was done.

Julien watched me as he stood there holding his young son, his beautiful wife bustling around their kitchen, and I’m sure he was unable to put himself in my shoes, to imagine himself at fifty-five and alone. And maybe, if he raised his children right, he never would be alone, no matter what else happened to him. I wished that for him—the sheer pleasure and joy of happiness and love.

“I’ll miss her for the rest of my life,” I said simply. “I’ll miss every single thing about Ruby until the day I die.”

We sat there for a moment, the rain ticking against the glass, Lex looking at me wide-eyed, Julien watching me with sympathy.

Quinn poked her head into the room almost apologetically. “Lunch is ready,” she said gently.

And so we had soup, and we laughed as Lex chattered at us in baby language, and I closed another chapter of my life with Ruby. It was time to go home and write.

In the End, the Love You Take

I’d just gotten off the phone with my old friend, Theo Harris, one sunny December day at the end of Ruby’s life. For a brief moment, Theo had made me laugh—he’d taken me away from the current reality of my existence, which was Ruby in a hospital bed facing the window in the dining room. I’d moved the table and chairs away and had her bed installed there, and now she spent her days with tubes and gadgets around her, watching the ocean just beyond her reach.

We had nurses coming and going from the island, each staying for a three-day stint, and my only job was to keep Ruby in the center of things. Placed where she was, she could hear and see all that went on in the kitchen, though food no longer held any appeal, and she could be pushed a few feet on the rolling wheels of her bed so that she was in the living room, facing the television if we chose to watch an old movie (80s John Hughes classics were always her favorite; we must have watchedPretty in Pinka hundred times or more, and every time she’d crow, “But how did she end up withBlane, and notDuckie?” to which I had no good answer).

But that day I’d sat outside, talking to Theo, recalling a journey to Amsterdam that we’d made together right after college. Our inside jokes were intricate, and our memories far-reaching; at this point in our lives one of our favorite pastimes had become taking trips down memory lane together.

I came inside and set my phone on the kitchen island. Ruby was asleep—or at least her eyes were closed. We had a Christmas tree set up in the front room, which was visible from where I stood in the kitchen, and the nurse had put on a playlist of Ruby’s favorite holiday songs. “Last Christmas” by Wham! was playing softly as she dozed.

“Hey,” she said, her eyes opening and focusing on me right away. “How is Theo?” Her voice had grown softer as the pain grew more intense, and I knew she was hurting, because the nurses had reported her ever-growing requests for medication to hold back the onslaught of the disease.

“He’s good,” I said, walking over to her and motioning with my head for her to scoot over. We’d established right away when she got ill that no matter what, we’d maintain physical contact. Sleeping in different beds was now a necessity, but if we were in the same room, we were holding hands, or I was sitting next to her with my head resting on her arm and her hand in my hair. And if she was awake and not in too much pain, she’d inch over and make room for me on the bed so that we could lie side by side, watching the waves together.

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