by Nina George
“Good? What next?” I ask her.
Now I would love to watch a film, Sam.
“With pleasure, Maddie. How about a dance movie?”
Is it romantic?
“I think so. Yes, I guess so. Why, is that a problem?”
No! I’m so happy you thought of it, but I do hope it isn’t soppy.
“Do you know this film, Dirty Dancing? I’ve no idea if it’s soppy, but we can give it a go.”
I sit down gently on the bed beside her. I search the iPad, start the film, and hold up the screen so that we both have a good view.
“Can you see properly?”
She says nothing, but she’s watching with rapt attention.
Okay, here we go. Oh my God. “What’s she doing? Are those melons? Maddie?”
Girls are like that, Sam. We’re shy.
“Maybe, but that shy?”
The plot is really peculiar.
“The guy isn’t too bad, is he? He wears strange clothes, and what have they done to his hair? Do girls like that look? Is ‘Baby’ a real name?”
Most girls I know—and, to be honest, there aren’t very many—always talk in such an affected fashion and roll their eyes at this and say, “Oh, come on!” But that’s what I like about Maddie: she stays completely cool.
Then the dancing starts. Okay. Whoa. This is the kind of thing girls like? What would Scott say? “You don’t have to understand women to like them. We don’t understand cats or hippos, but we still think they’re great.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was this romantic.”
Well, Sam, I guess you’re going to have to make up for your mistake. Can you dance the way they just did?
“No.”
Oh, please!
“Maddie, I can’t sing. And I can’t dance either.”
Please, Sam!
I gaze into Maddie’s gorgeous, expressionless eyes. I’m sure she’s with me right now and is merely keeping still so as not to spoil the moment. Yes, that must be it. But I’ve decided she’s not going to be able to keep this up for much longer.
“Okay, I’ll do it, but don’t you dare laugh.” Oh, please do laugh! I would gladly make a total fool of myself if you would only laugh, just once.
I place the iPad on the small table next to the bed, pivot it so that Maddie has a good view, and replay the scene in which Baby walks up the steps, practicing her dance steps and waggling her behind. Then I try to do the same.
“Like that, Maddie?”
I put my hands on my hips and wiggle my bottom. At least, that’s what I try to do. I dance to Dirty Dancing in my peach pajamas, Batman slippers, and blue eye shadow. I think Maddie is cracking up with laughter.
I’m really getting into the swing of this now. As I dance, moving more stupidly and more freely than I’ve ever done before, I fall in love with Maddie. I fall in love with her as if she were the song of my life, which I will hear over and over again. She’ll be the soundtrack to my life.
It’s no wonder I don’t notice the door open.
“Hi, Sam? Or should I say: ‘Hi, boy-who-looks-a-bit-like-Sam?’ Have you got blue eye shadow on?”
Nurse Marion comes into the room. I trip over my Batman shoes and go all red in the face. Again.
“Think green might suit me better?” I ask breathlessly.
“Now, don’t be cheeky. What are you doing in here?”
“We’re celebrating Maddie’s birthday.”
“Oh yeah?”
“This is how girls like to party.”
“Oh, sure. Yeah. Right.” She eyes me up and down, and I take a peek at the wardrobe mirror to my left and am amazed at how ridiculous you can make yourself if you’re willing to put a little thought and effort into it.
Marion points at the iPad. “What are you watching?”
“Dirty Dancing. It’s a film about melons.”
“Is that so? Did you tread on Batman?”
“Hmm.”
Nurse Marion picks up the eye drop bottle, moistens Maddie’s pupils with a practiced gesture, and sits down on the other side of the bed to watch the film with us. I take up my former position on the bed and hold up the screen, even if it’ll make my arms go numb. It doesn’t matter.
I notice that I blush from time to time when they start snogging.
“It’s healthy,” Marion explains. “Exchanging bacteria is good for the immune system.”
“Yuck,” I exclaim.
Maddie giggles. Well, I think she does.
Dramatic twists and turns come thick and fast.
“Hey, why doesn’t he tell Baby’s dad he didn’t make her pregnant?”
Because then the film would be over.
“Oh right! Wow!” I’m thrilled because Maddie continues to talk to me despite Marion’s presence. Only in my head, of course, but I don’t think anyone can really object to a little bit of craziness.
Don’t you think Johnny’s cute? Maddie asks.
“Me? No. Why, do you?”
No, I don’t either. I think you’re cute, Sam.
“Knock, knock. A little bird told us you were serving tart in here.” Two female doctors come in with Liz the physiotherapist. They’re all wearing the kind of tiny, ridiculous paper hats you only usually find in Christmas crackers. Liz hands Marion one, and as cool as a cucumber, she puts it on. I no longer feel like the only idiot.
“What are you up to? Sam, are you wearing—”
“Yeah, it’s Batman. You can get Superman ones too.”
“I’m sure you can,” says one of the two doctors in a deep voice, and the other women, including Marion, burst into giggles. Women can be really weird.
Now there are five of us sitting with Maddie on the bed watching Dirty Dancing, and everyone, apart from Maddie and me, is soon sniveling.
Okay, I do admit it’s a bit moving.
“Did you bake that tart yourself, Sam?” Marion asks after the closing credits.
I nod.
“That’s a tarte tatin!” Liz shouts excitedly. “But where are the candles?”
“Not yet. Karaoke first,” I explain, taking the pink toy microphone out of my rucksack.
“Oh no, just as things are really heating up I have to go,” says one of the doctors, peeping at her pager. Liz also says goodbye, casting a longing glance over her shoulder at the tart.
“Well, I’m off duty now and I love karaoke,” says the other doctor.
Nurse Marion checks her patient’s monitors and after a couple of minutes, she mutters, “Oh all right then, but only because it’s you. Maddie’s fine, although she’s sweating a little. Are you enjoying yourself, darling?”
“What’s on your playlist?” the doctor asks. Her badge reads, BEN. Sheerin. Ben? She studies the iPad. “Oh, by the way, my name’s Benny,” she says. “It’s short for Benedicta. My full name wouldn’t fit on the badge.”
“Oh. I’m Sam. Samuel Noam Valentiner. That wouldn’t fit on a badge either.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” says Dr. Benny, scrolling through the songs on my mother’s iPad. “Oh wow, ‘Dancing Queen’!” she squeals. “Do you know that one, Marion?”
“I’m fifty-one, not a hundred and one. Of course I know Abba!”
Benny fumbles with the iPad, turns up the volume, and announces, “All right, Maddie. This is especially for you.”
She takes the pink microphone from my hand, and the two women line up at the end of Maddie’s bed and give a cringeworthy yet completely awesome performance of “Dancing Queen,” with Benny singing the tune and Marion on backing vocals.
I dance to it like the woman from Dirty Dancing and try to style my hair like Patrick What’s-His-Name, the guy who played Johnny. I’m pretty sure Maddie’s almost peeing her knickers with laughter. I hop around
a little more, and the girl with the ice-blue eyes lies there in her bed as we dance and sing for her.
After the song has finished, Marion gets out a lighter, sticks the twelve candles into the tart, and lights them. I also have a sparkler shaped like the figure 12. It tingles and sparkles and makes crackling noises as if a star has fallen into the room.
Maddie’s present is still lying, fully wrapped, on the table.
“Let’s sing something else,” Nurse Marion says, laughing, her ginger curls clinging to her lovely, kindly face.
“Let’s sing ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,’ ” Benny suggests.
So we sing and Nurse Marion turns off the bright ceiling light, leaving only the tart with twelve candles on it, the crackling of a little sparkler, the three of us, and Maddie. That’s how we celebrate her twelfth birthday.
“You have to blow them out, Maddie,” I whisper when we’ve finished singing the song and hold up my apple tart with the little flame on top in front of her face. “And make a wish. Wish hard, and then it’ll come true.”
For one crazy instant I think I glimpse the fleeing raven and its black feathers swooping across her eyes. But she doesn’t blow out the candles, of course she doesn’t. Her ventilator is breathing for her, but her pulse does seem to accelerate slightly.
“Okay,” I say, surprised by my profound, exhausted disappointment. “Well, in that case I’ll blow them out for you and make a wish.”
I fill my lungs and as I blow out the candles, I reflect that I’d like to argue with Maddie one day—argue and then make up. I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than having her glare at me and then hugging her until she has to laugh.
She doesn’t look at me, though. Not even her greatest wish has been sufficient to bring her back.
I place the two oak leaves on the table beside her bed.
Henri
Day breaks with mild sunshine, which gently tempts me from sleep.
I see Eddie dip her forefinger into the pan of milk on the stove to test if it is hot enough for her coffee. She’s been doing this for so long that it’s now completely automatic. She would do it even if the milk were already boiling.
She turns, and I hold her gaze, her bright wintry eyes. Her bare legs below her shirt, her furrowed brow, and her mouth as she blows on the milk. I never want to be without her.
I can feel myself sliding into trouble, as if the bed were a grassy slope. I feel such an overwhelming urge to throw back the covers and invite her to lie down beside me with her back against my tummy that I say to her, quite simply, “Come!”
I sense her shadow as she comes over to the bed in her bare feet, the slight cooling effect as it falls on my face. It’s one of those days when life could tip either way.
“I love you,” she says. “I love you and I want you forever and beyond, in this life and every other.”
“And I love you, Edwina Tomlin.”
I feel growing relief, and now I recognize the feeling that causes this relief. So this is love!
Seven days later, we know that we shall get married in Brittany later in the summer.
* * *
—
Eddie has bent over to drink from the fairy-tale spring. That’s what we called it when we were kids, the point on the D127 to Trémazan near Saint Samson’s chapel. The water flows directly out of the rock. An old stone tub and a sculpted standing stone stand beside the old spring, which is said to have made children’s wishes come true. The gorse blazes yellow nearby.
“Let’s have a baby, Henri,” she says to me. She’s beautiful in her white dress. A little earlier, as we stood in the eight-hundred-year-old chapel of Saint Samson, the goose pimples formed a magnificent pattern on her skin.
“Time weighs less here,” she whispers.
“Time is thinner here,” I reply. “Places like this have a greater concentration of miracles than anywhere else in the world.”
“If we ever get lost between different dimensions of time, let’s meet up again here,” Eddie whispers into my ear. “Deal?”
“Yes,” I answer. “I love you. Please forgive me if I don’t always get everything right.”
“Stop thinking in terms of right and wrong,” she says. “Those categories don’t exist. Just live your life, won’t you? Just live your life.”
We take another sip from the spring. Today the sea is dressed in a dark turquoise robe embroidered with little white foaming crests. The wind is driving the Atlantic and the Channel into headlong collision, and the Iroise Sea swells and froths between the two. It is the world’s most beautiful sea, and I’m with the world’s most beautiful woman.
Tomorrow we shall drive on along the coast. I want to show Eddie everything: Le Conquet, the Pointe Saint Mathieu, the Baie des Trépassés, and the Île de Sein, where time is at its most permeable and all unlived lives meet with virtually nothing to separate them.
We walk hand in hand along the cliff-top path trodden into the bumpy fields hundreds of years ago by customs officials and smugglers. We climb down from the cliffs.
We’re alone. It’s lunchtime, and everyone else is sitting down to their meals, relishing the pleasures of being alive and the chance to eat such wonderful things as moules marinières, lobster, wrasse, and cod.
I touch my lips to hers, and the tip of her tongue feels soft and flirtatious. I embrace my bride and whisper into her ear that I know some spots along this steep coast where nobody but diving black-backed gulls will be able to see us.
We seek out a smooth, flat, warm stone. Eddie half lies, half leans against it and opens her sun-kissed legs to me. I turn my back to the sea. The sun is shining warmly on my shoulders and the back of my neck. And then I’m fully inside her, so deeply that I can no longer feel where her body begins and mine ends. I taste salt and the thirst comes. I lean forward to kiss Eddie, and she holds me tightly inside her. She’s soft and warm and slippery, and I begin to make love to her in time to the waves breaking against the cliffs below us, firmly and not too fast.
“I love you,” I say to her open eyes. “I love you and I want you forever and beyond, in this life and every other.”
She merely gazes at me as if it were not me taking her, but she taking me. She takes me, takes me in, takes me into her life and molds it around me. She pulls me into her and receives me, and it feels as if my entire soul is streaming into her.
As I release myself into her, I suddenly sense a great, cold wall looming behind me, and then the shadow comes crashing down on me like a giant hand, swiping me into the sea.
I’m falling, I’m being washed away, lights and colors and voices envelop me. I’m sliding down a pipe, I’m dissolving, I’m falling ever faster. I’m falling and…
Eddie
Henri!
I awake as the final ripples of the orgasm shake my body. I’m lying on my back, my hands up beside my head. Arousal built up slowly in me like an invisible wave gliding along the bottom of the sea and then rising gradually to the surface, up and up, before something exploded in my body. I don’t know what it was—it’s the only orgasm I’ve ever had while I’ve been asleep. I’m forty-four and for the first time ever I’ve fallen out of an erotic dream into reality.
Wilder is lying alongside me. He’s sleeping, while between my legs a soft fist of desire is clenching and relaxing, clenching and relaxing. The muscles of my upper thighs are taut. I can taste salt on my lips. I’ve been making love with Henri. That’s what my body tells me, and it also says, “This isn’t a dream. This is real.” I can still feel Henri’s weight on me and inside me. I feel loved.
Is Wilder still sleeping, or did I wake him?
I cried Henri’s name. I know it from the sensation in my mouth. It’s as if I can still feel him. The warmth his lips have left on mine, their pressure and his breath. He was always so warm, like an oven or a fire. Certain st
ones are also capable of storing up the heat of millennia.
The images from my dream fade, leaving an abrupt feeling that he was torn from me and washed away.
What a ridiculous thought!
This is the real world, where Henri is lying in a coma, contracting repeated bouts of pneumonia that are carrying him farther from life and closer to death. Closer to the edge of this disc world.
Fear haunts me now, and yet I try to hide it from Wilder. I know that I’m in the process of destroying our future together, but I cannot do anything about it. Or rather: I do not want to do anything about it.
In the real world, I live with a man who doesn’t know that I have visited Henri every day for almost five weeks now. I barely know how each new day is going to turn out. I’m filled with an intense and malignant sensation of having lost something vital, so vital that no laughter or beautiful place or new day means anything anymore. Infinite grief has taken hold of my chest, my stomach, and my neck. A blackness has engulfed me, and I am drowning in a great, dark, deep lake.
Is Henri dead?
I listen out for Wilder’s breathing, but he’s lying quietly beside me in bed, one of his legs on top of mine. I bite my fist to stifle the sobs. I push Wilder’s leg off mine as carefully as I can and get up.
The pain is more piercing than last time, when for months I didn’t know how I would survive if I couldn’t see Henri again, touch him, talk to him, see his smile, and feel his eyes and his hands on my skin. If I no longer felt loved. To be lovesick is to die, leaving only a husk of oneself in suspended animation.
I walk across the waxed wooden floorboards in my bare feet. I take a large mug, hold it under the tap to fill it, and then greedily drink the cold water. It tastes of the salt that was on Henri’s lips when he kissed me just now.
My husband is dead.
I don’t have the faintest idea why that word came into my mind. Henri isn’t my husband.
It stems from that extraordinarily intense dream. We were married, and everything was different. The chapel with the red door stood on a grassy cliff above the sea. Samson was the sea chapel’s patron saint. We promised to meet there if we ever lost contact. That was the deal.
