Page 11 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“Goddammit, Mom, that doesn’t even make sense!”
Outside again, the temperature hasdipped with the sun, so I pull a blanket over my legs. Much to my mom’s horror, I stepped into my fleece-lined Crocs on the way out. She calls them my depression shoes, which…okay, I’ll give her that one.
“What was your wife’s name?” I ask.
“Brynn,” he says.
I remember that now, either from my mom or the news. “Pretty name.”
“Your husband?”
“Tim.”
Ian and Bella both look up from across the yard where they’re sitting with Harry Styles and drinking their juice boxes. I spoke softly, but their dad’s name carries.
“What was Brynn like?”
He hesitates, but I tell him to go ahead. “Don’t know if you’ve experienced this,” I say, “but people don’t want to talk about Tim anymore. I think it makes them uncomfortable.”
He nods. “She was lovely.”
“Yeah? Say more things. Rapid-fire. Go.”
“Oh,” he says. “Okay. Well, everyone thought she was shy. She wasn’t, though. She was just one of those people who had to get to know you. Once that happened, she’d talk all day. She was tall. Blondish. She told everyone she was allergic to seafood, but she wasn’t. She just hated it.”
“Yikes,” I say. “That’ll get a girl arrested in this town.”
“She was really good at math,” he says. “It was part of her job.”
As I watch the oranges and reds blend in the fire, I start to picture her. “A tall blonde with math skills, huh?” I say. “I would’ve hated her.”
A little botoxed smile, then he asks what Tim was like.
“Also lovely,” I say. “Can guys be lovely?”
“Sure.”
“Helovedseafood,” I say, “especially crabs, because he wasn’t a weirdo. He loved baseball, too, and his students, and…” I nod over at the kids. “Them. Me. Us.”
“That does sound lovely,” says Henry.
“Yep. I had a lovely husband, and he’s gone. It’s fine, though. I mean, now I’ve got a dog with a pop star’s name who sometimes humps my shoes.”
The fire crackles, weakening.
“Do you find that you’re tired a lot?” Henry asks.
“Oh my god, yeah,” I say. “In fairness, I have two kids, so I’ve been tired for like eleven years. The dead-husband thing, though, is extra exhausting.”
Ian and Bella are done with their juice boxes and are tossing the stick back and forth while Harry Styles runs between them. He may be dog-shaped chaos. He may regularly roll in gross things that he finds in the yard. And, yes, he really does sometimes hump my shoes. He’s also the thing that’s holding all this together.
Henry crosses his legs and sips his pink wine.
“You know, no offense,” I say, “but at work when dudes order rosé I secretly judge them. You, though? You’re pulling it off.”
He raises his glass, and I take a sip of my beer.
“I’m worried about these first holidays without her,” he says.
