Page 53 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“Was she pretty?” Grace asks. “Nice?”
“Both,” I say, “But…”
Grace lets me trail off because she gets it. “Yeah,” she says.
Along with the reindeer, Grace’s neighbors have added three elves to their yard since the last time I was here. Two blink, one doesn’t. The non-blinker leans precariously, like it could tip any second.
“Do you see him, too?” I ask. “Tim? Is that part of it when you, you know, talk to him?”
“I do,” she says. “And yeah, it is, most of the time.”
“It’s funny,” I say. “I remember exactly what Brynn was wearing the last time I saw her. Her flight to L.A. was insanely early, so she was going for comfort. A purplish sweater-hoodie thing, and a black North Face vest because she was always cold on planes. White Adidas sneakers that she liked. And she had on these jeans that weren’t really jeans. They were sweatpants, actually, that were made to look like denim.”
Grace smiles. “Sounds like my kinda jeans.”
“Her outfit is crystal clear in my head,” I say. “The rest of her though…it’s like the specifics are fading, like her face is going blurry. I worry that it’s just gonna get worse. It’s one of the reasons I want to talk to her again, so I cansee her,you know?”
“Makes sense,” Grace says. “This’ll help with that.”
“So, how do you…?”
“Breathing is a big part of it,” she says. “Like yoga. I breathe until I’m relaxed, then I just start talking, and there he is.”
“You justtalk?”
“Yeah. There’s no big trick to it. I don’t hypnotize myself or do shrooms or anything.”
“What do you tell him?”
“Little things.”
“Little things?”
She sips her beer and turns to face me. “You and I, Henry, our Great and Terrible Sadnesses have a lot in common. One difference, though, is mine happened slowly, so I got to tell him all the big things before he was gone. Goodbye, for example. That was a big one. And it sucked, by the way. I know you probably hate that you didn’t get to say goodbye to Brynn, and I get that. But, Jesus, Henry…”
I can only imagine, so I tell her I’m sorry.
“Anyway,” she says. “Since I got the big things out of the way, I focus on the day-to-day stuff now. Those things are better anyway.”
“How so?”
“You used to tell each other about your days, right?” she asks. “What happened at work, who annoyed you, how shitty traffic was.”
“Sure.”
“That’s what I miss talking to him about the most. It seems so trivial, right? Just this nonstop marital blah blah blah. But you’d kill to hear her tell you about her day just one more time, wouldn’t you?”
She’s right, I would.
“The little things make it feel less like he’s gone,” she says.
Above us an airplane cruises over Baltimore. But for the grace of good fortune and sheer randomness, it’ll sink slowly to the ground on a runway over at BWI, and I curse myself for the times I let my mind wander while Brynn talked about an article she’d read or the mathematical complexities of an ad buy. I should’ve hung on every word.
“The other reason I want to talk to her,” I say. We dip again into silence. Wilco turns to Hall and Oates. Grace waits.
“That last time I saw her,” I say. “It wasn’t…well, it wasn’t great.” I clear my throat. “I really want to tell her I’m sorry.”
“Are you gonna keep beinglike this?” Brynn asked me on that last morning.
