I moved over to the spot where they’d been standing. The red padlock faced outward, toward the center of the bridge. That’s what had taken him so long, positioning the face just so. A rhinestone heart of red and white crystal gleamed in the sunlight and beside the symbol, their names, what appeared to be Biefke—or was that Bigke?—and Osi, or was the s an a? Murz, 2011, I could read, but I couldn’t make out the other words.
I reached out and traced the heart with my fingertip, but stopped when I became aware of the man who stood on my right, slightly behind me, his broad shoulders protecting me from the hustling, bustling crowd. Had the older gentleman returned? I straightened to look at him.
“Ash?”
You left yesterday with everyone else. Hadn’t he?
“What are you doing here?”
He moved to stand beside me. “When Jennifer and I came to Paris after she was diagnosed, we put a padlock on the Pont des Arts. They call them love locks there.” He looked up the river and then his gaze went back to the locks. “In the summer of 2015, after she’d passed, Paris city employees started to remove the railings loaded with locks. They had over seven hundred thousand locks by that time and the fencing had started to crumble under the combined weight. Picture twenty elephants standing on the bridge, that’s how heavy those locks were.”
I looked up and down the bridge. Nothing like that had happened here. “How many locks are here, do you think?”
“Thousands.” He reached into his pocket and drew out another padlock. “I don’t think one more will cause the bridge to collapse, do you?”
I turned to go, not wanting to see what I already knew would never be mine, but he stopped me. “Would you help me find a space?”
I squared my shoulders and turned back to him, pasting a smile on my face as if my heart weren’t breaking. “I wish I had a love like the one you shared with Jennifer.”
He winced, but he didn’t say anything.
“I never had what the two of you shared, not with any of the men in my life. My father loved me, but he loved the farm more. My husband—ex-husband—let me go when I asked him to. The very least he could have done was to fight for our relationship, but”—my hands gripped the railing—“I think he was as relieved as I was that we didn’t have to pretend.”
“He came home to you.”
The river flowed peacefully underneath us, and a boat whistle sounded over the babble of voices all around us. “He had nowhere else to go, and he knew I wouldn’t send him packing. I just couldn’t, even though I didn’t love him.”
“You sent me away.” His hand closed on the padlock he’d pulled from his pocket. It too was red, like the love lock the older couple had attached.
“You know why. I won’t use you like Emory used me.”
“You’re in the very early stages of FTD. That disease strikes down much younger people. You’re older, and you’re getting better. With luck, you’ll have a good nine, ten years before your symptoms worsen. I’ll die before you do, Dart.”
“Doesn’t matter. There’s no hope for me, Ash. You know that.” Let him refute what we both knew. I knew what was wrong with me even if he didn’t admit it.
“Robbie agrees with me, that you’re atypical. He says you’ve got nine or ten years before the symptoms interfere with your career, your life, with us.”
“My brain cells are dying, Ash. Nothing is going to stop that.”
“You’re right, but you’re compensating, Dart, and that big brain of yours isn’t going to quit finding other ways to keep working.”
“Even though there’s no hope, she kept keeping on—is that what they’ll say about me?” I turned away from him, to look upriver, unable to bear looking at his face because I had so wanted this relationship, this last chance at love with a man who made me feel alive in a way I never had before.
“I don’t know if I want them saying that about me. I rather they talked about how she found one man who loved her, like you love Jennifer.” But it wasn’t meant to be, and I should accept that.
“Your love lock would look nice beside the other red one.” If he had to have a memento of his love for Jennifer on this bridge, then I would help him find the best spot. “They were an older couple, you know, and looked to be very much in love like you and Jennifer were.” My hands were locked now around the railing, as I faced forward, looking up the river, searching for the composure to keep my heart from breaking.
“By the red one?” he asked in that deep voice I would miss for the rest of my life. I’d made up my mind while in Salzburg that I couldn’t stay at NCU in Wilmington because to see him every day and know what could have been made me miserable. It wasn’t Ash’s fault he didn’t love me, but oh, how I wished he did.
“You’ll have to help me,” he said in a soft voice, and I heard him turn the key in the lock and the hasp swung free.
“Here,” he said. “Hold this, will you?” He pressed the key into my hand.
My fist closed around it, first in reflex then in a desperate longing that flooded through me, a horrible hope welling within me that I forced back, my teeth clenched from the agony of turning away from what could never be.
The lock clicked into place. I looked down at the two red locks, both with rhinestone hearts. The rhinestones winked up at me. Only the names were different.
I looked away, my mind catching up to what my pounding heart already knew, and then I looked up into that dear beloved face. A gentle breeze blew several strands of hair across his forehead, and I reached up to brush them back into place. At my touch, he closed his eyes, and drew me close in an embrace I hoped would never end. Around us, the crowd surged but we weren’t jostled or shoved or pushed.
“Will you throw away the key, sweetheart?” he asked and raised my lips to his and kissed me. “Let go, Dart, of what you think your life should be. Take a chance and embrace what your life is right now.”
Oh, how I’d missed him, missed this. Maybe he was right. My brain might be dying, but in his arms, my heart could still live.
“Me, my heart, that’s what is here and now, so let go, Dart, and love me back.”
I kissed him, and then turned and threw the key. The bright silver tumbled and flashed in the waning sun and disappeared under the waves of the river.
This was a bridge for lovers, and that’s what we had become, for Ash had inscribed on the love lock, Ash, Dart, Salzburg, Forever.
Author’s Notes
ALTHOUGH DART’S STORY is a work of fiction, behavior vari- ant frontotemporal dementia is a very real disease. Unlike Alzheimers, FTD doesn’t erase memories. This disease takes away the moral self, that core of judgment and empathy that makes each human unique, that allows each of us to function in society, and that attracts others to us.
Researchers suspect genes may be at the root of FTD and there is a connection, researchers think, between ALS and FTD. The gene that triggers ALS in one family member can trigger FTD in another.
Unlike Dart’s story, most who succumb to FTD have no idea what is happening to them. Until they have a diagnosis, caretakers suffer as much or more than the individual afflicted with FTD. Marriages end. Careers are lost. Money disappears. Some with FTD run afoul of the law. Lives are shaken upside down by this disease. That’s why when I wrote this story, I had Ash care for his first wife who also had FTD. If he didn’t have prior knowledge, he would have reacted very differently to Dart’s symptoms.
There is no cure for FTD, but awareness of how this disease wastes the frontal lobes might ease the pain of coping with it. If you have a loved one who is not acting like himself or herself, consider researching bvFTD. It is one of a handful of diseases that can alter personality or judgment. For those of you who would like more information the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration has published a booklet The Doctor Thinks It’s FTD. Now What?
About the Author
JOANN FRANKLIN grew up in Illinois but now lives in North Carolina five miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
She is a wife, mother, and grandmother who dabbles in painting, who loves to read, and who enjoys learning new things. She’s fascinated with decision making and ethics and explored those many facets within The Raindrop Institute series.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
A Drop In The Ocean: A Novel by Jenni Ogden
$16.95, 978-1-63152-026-6
When middle-aged Anna Fergusson’s research lab is abruptly closed, she flees Boston to an island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef— where, amongst the seabirds, nesting turtles, and eccentric islanders, she finds a family and learns some bittersweet lessons about love.
Again and Again by Ellen Bravo $16.95, 978-1-63152-939-9
When the man who raped her roommate in college becomes a Senate candidate, women’s rights leader Deborah Borenstein must make a choice—one that could determine control of the Senate, the course of a friendship, and the fate of a marriage.
Anchor Out by Barbara Sapienza $16.95, 978-1631521652
Quirky Frances Pia was a feminist Catholic nun, artist, and beloved sister and mother until she fell from grace—but now, done nursing her aching mood swings offshore in a thirty-foot sailboat, she is ready to paint her way toward forgiveness.
Center Ring by Nicole Waggoner $17.95, 978-1-63152-034-1
When a startling confession rattles a group of tightly knit women to its core, the friends are left analyzing their own roads not taken and the vastly different choices they’ve made in life and love.
Play for Me by Céline Keating $16.95, 978-1-63152-972-6
Middle-aged Lily impulsively joins a touring folk-rock band, leaving her job and marriage behind in an attempt to find a second chance at life, passion, and art.
What is Found, What is Lost by Anne Leigh Parrish
$16.95, 978-1-938314-95-7
After her husband passes away, a series of family crises forces Freddie, a woman raised on religion, to confront long-held questions about her faith.
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