The pristine white envelope gleams under the pile of unopened mail like a relic buried in trash. I run my fingers over the bold calligraphy inscription. The Lucca Family. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of us as a family. Four years, three months, and four days, to be precise.
I break the seal to reveal the Lowe’s holiday card. I’m tempted to toss it back into the pile of outdated Christmas catalogs. But it’s not Helene’s fault I’ve ignored the mail for over a month. I slide the family picture under a refrigerator magnet and crumble the handwritten insert where Helene would have distilled their yearly adventures into a few curated sentences. Their oldest son, Aiden’s classmate since kindergarten, would have graduated college in May. The twins were no doubt attending Ivy Leagues by now.
Nick and I used to joke about those holiday cards, harmless but mean-spirited digs. I never told my husband about the bitter taste they left. Envy was an emotion I could never tolerate back then. Now, as Helene and Brad smile at me, their kids standing safely by their side, I feel nothing.
My phone keeps blowing up, as my daughter Norah would say. I have sixteen messages from the group of friends who remained after the divorce. They keep inviting me to dinner, yoga classes, even a cooking trip to Tuscany.
‘You need to put yourself out there’ seems to be the unspoken consensus.
In those first days, when I refused to get out of bed, these same friends took turns bringing us dinner, sometimes spoon feeding me chicken broth and gently, then not so gently, reminding me I had another child who needed me. They meant well. They still do.
I ignore the phone and stand in front of the open refrigerator, trying to recall what I was looking for but I doubt it was the sad pieces of languishing fruit in there. I consider placing an online order but I don’t want to take any chances tonight. Norah is coming home from school for the long weekend and I promised her beef curry. I need every ingredient for that recipe. No choice but to get out of my pajamas and go in person.
Upstairs, I pause at Aiden’s door, the evergreen ache in my chest sharpening. When he was a baby, I’d stand with my ear pressed to the door until I heard his breath before tiptoeing back to my room. I listen hard now for his sing song little boy voice, but I am met with only cold silence. My hand reaches for the door knob. I close my eyes, picturing the boxes sitting by the window waiting for someone to tape them shut. Before he moved out, Nick had filled them with Aiden’s preschool artwork, his track medals, and different generations of Nintendo consoles. His unused cap and gown, would still be laid out on his bed. I release my grip and turn away.
In my room, I scan my closet for something clean to wear. A heaviness spreads from my limbs to the rest of my body and I crawl under the covers where I lie curled up on my side with my eyes open. The doctor cut off my Lunesta prescription last month and I have the feeling of being both exhausted and wide awake.
I turn to Nick’s side, his boxers still under the pillow, and take our framed wedding picture from his nightstand drawer. I search our faces, young and eager for the life that unfurled before us like a plush carpet. He was sitting on this same bed when I came out of the bathroom, holding the stick with the two pink lines in trembling hands.
After we lost Aiden, I couldn’t stand to be touched. The same hands that had once made my knees soft felt like sandpaper on my skin. We were drowning on opposite sides of the same ocean. For three years, Nick tried to save us: grief support groups, couples therapy, meetings with our priest. When he asked for a divorce, I felt only relief.
I remember the pain pills from Norah’s knee surgery that I’d stashed in my nightstand. I swallow two. Next door, someone starts the leaf blower as I fall into the arms of oblivion.
I must have gotten up to pee because suddenly I am standing in front of the bathroom mirror. I don’t recognize the image staring back at me. My hair, once darker than midnight, is now streaked with white. I have a sudden urge to take the scissors to it.
“Don’t mom, I like your hair like that.”
I turn, startled. The bathroom is empty. When I turn back to my reflection, it’s Aiden’s face instead, cheeks. I blink twice. When I open my eyes, he’s still there, cheeks flushed, the same cowlick he used to push down with gel before school. I reach my hand out, try to find my voice.
“I haven’t seen you in so long. Where have you been?”
“You have to stop being so sad Mom.” His voice is gentle but serious.
“How can you ask that?”
“Do you remember what you told me when Maddie broke up with me?”
I search my memory. He would have been a freshman in high school.
“You said that everything always worked out. I got mad and said they don’t always work out and you said that they do, in the end. That even if we don’t like it, life works out the way it’s meant to.”
“Well, I was wrong about that, wasn’t I? In what world is me being here without you ok?” My voice cracks.
“It’s ok Mom, you were right. I’m ok now and you will be too. You just need to let me go.”
Our images commingle briefly before his disappears. I steady my breath. I’ve dreamt of my son many times but the images have always been ones I want to forget. But this was no dream, I’m wide awake.
I’m stirring saffron into the curry when Norah comes home. I study my daughter’s profile while she sets the table. She parts her hair on the side now and it makes her look more mature, sophisticated. She’s old enough for a glass of wine from the bottle I chilled earlier.
Over dinner, she tells me about her favorite professors, the internship at the London gallery she’s applied for. I laugh hard at a funny story about her roommate and she looks startled by the sound. I’m even more startled.
“I was thinking that tomorrow you could help me clear out your brother’s room,” I say, filling her glass.
MUST LOVE CHOCOLATE 