Page 37 of My Favorite Lost Cause
So I go. I walk into her room and reach toward the curling paper on the wall with its tiny lavender violets. When I give it a small tug, I’m half-braced for a scream from the room, a popping lightbulb, a shattering window, but nothing happens.
“Sorry, Margaret,” I whisper to the wall. “I don’t mean to destroy your room. I’m sure it was really pretty in your day.”
There’s a smell in the air, suddenly, though the windows are shut. I close my eyes to place it. Roses—not the way they smell in a hand lotion but the way they smell fresh from the garden. And that’s when I feel it again. That giddy, adolescent thrill, as if I’m about to hit the high point of a roller coaster, as if I’m Cinderella climbing the stairs to meet Prince Charming for thefirst time, as if my entire life lies ahead of me and I know it’s going to be perfect.
And then it doesn’t just fade…it bottoms out. I drop to my knees, racked by sorrow. A tidal wave of grief, unlike anything I’ve ever known.
When my eyes open, my hands are pressed flat to the wall. There are tears sliding down my face, and I don’t know if the tears are mine or Margaret’s. Perhaps she was sad, but I’m sad too.
I don’t want to leave the house.
More than that, I don’t want to leave Charlie, and it’s never going to be like this again.
I crawl from the room on my hands and knees, gasping, and sit in the hallway until my hands stop shaking.
Grief is instructive in mythology. Demeter’s grief creates the seasons. Achilles’ grief over Patroclus’s death is what makes him recognize his pride and stubbornness.
This grief…it’s meant to teach me something. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not leaving until I’ve figured it out.
I text Harvey with shaking hands.
Hey, something’s come up here. I’m not going to make my flight. Sorry about the party, but I’ll be back Monday.
Under normal circumstances, I’d be terrified. I’d be holding my stomach, waiting for him to explode.
But it’s as if I’ve emerged from the room a little wiser than I was when I entered: nothing Harvey can do to me comes close to what I just went through. If he left me, if he died…it wouldn’t approach the sorrow I just felt.
And it probably should, shouldn’t it? Maybe that’s what I was meant to learn…that I don’t feel enough to stay with him. I suspect I already knew that, but I can’t leave Harvey now. Not when Kit’s on Everest getting engaged, perhaps at this very moment. This is her summer, and it needs to remain her summer, rather than having it overshadowed by my divorce.
I rise on weak legs, yawning. Tears always tire me, but this is excessive—I need to lie down. I stumble out of the house, gripping the rail to maintain my balance just as Charlie emerges from the basement.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod, suppressing a yawn. “Yep, just feeling a little off. I’m staying until Monday, by the way.”
He bites his lower lip, cautious as he meets my gaze. “What changed?”
I can’t tell him about the room. He’ll never let me go in there again. And while a part of me doesn’twantto go in there again after what happened, I suspect I’ll go anyway. Maybe it’s Margaret or maybe it’s just a wiser part of my subconscious, but if it wants to teach me something this much—it’s something I need to hear.
“If I attended every party where Harvey wanted to make an impression, I’d be attending parties every night of every year. I’ve paid my dues. It’s enough.”
His tongue prods his cheek. “I’m glad you found your backbone,” he says softly, his brow furrowed as he studies my face. “I’m just not quite sure why it took you thirty-two years.”
Yeah, me either.
Harvey rage-textsfor most of the afternoon. The further I get from the weird thing I went through upstairs, the more my guilt starts to bother me until I finally tell him I’m turning off my phone.
In the evening there’s a party Elijah invited us to, on what was supposed to be my final night here. It’s a rare night out for Elijah, whose mom has been sick, and it sounded nice enoughat the time—some deck overlooking the water, a live band. I beg off at the last minute, telling Charlie I still don’t feel great, which is true enough. Even though I napped, I’m drooping with exhaustion.
He suggests that maybe he should stay home with me, but I send him off. “I’m going straight to sleep,” I promise. “Honestly, I’m fine. I just need some rest.”
Once he’s gone, I take a shower and climb into bed. I’m dying to sleep, but I told Harvey I’d call, and if he doesn’t hear from me after the day we’ve had, God knows what he’ll do.
“Hey,” he says when he answers. His tone is almost cordial, a pleasant surprise.
Perhaps my show of backbone actually helped. Maybe he finally saw exactly how far he could push and yell before I just stopped listening.
“Hi,” I reply. “Sorry about the party.”
