“Remind me in the years to come how happy I was in this moment,” she said to us. “Remember it for me in case I ever forget. Never let me color it with any other emotion. Whatever happens between Raef and me, this moment is a true, I know it in my heart, and I’m asking you to know it, too.”
“I promise,” I said, and so did Amy.
Then it was time. Gloria came in and smiled at us.
“We’re ready,” she said simply.
Amy and I walked down the aisle together. Constance did not want the bridal march to be a long, drawn-out affair. She came down the aisle shortly after we did. She clung to her father’s arm, and she kept her eyes on Raef. Raef stood near Mr. Jefferson, Paul, who had been asked to preside over the ceremony.
The jazz quartet did not play when Constance came down the aisle. Instead she walked to a recording of Yo-Yo Ma playing the music of Ennio Morricone. The delicate sounds came from all around us. Constance, I knew, loved the cello and loved Yo-Yo Ma more than nearly anything else in the world. She owned all his recordings and played them often in her apartment at school and sometimes, when she was a little tipsy, she made everyone stop and listen and marvel to the beauty of his haunting music before letting us resume our drunkenness.
Constance walked down the aisle gently, sweetly, her smile passing over each person there and warming whichever person it fell on. At the altar, she kissed her father, and they had a tender moment where he whispered something to her, then he kissed her again. She went to her mother and kissed her. Then she gave her hand to Raef, and for a moment nothing else mattered in the world.
* * *
Xavier Box asked me to dance. We were well into the reception, and we had both had plenty to drink. His tie had come loose; his hair stood up like a shoeshine brush turned upside down. His eyes glittered with moisture, not from emotion but from the straight line of booze he had been drinking. I had kicked off my shoes and liked walking on the smooth, slippery wood of the dance floor. I felt … good. Pretty darn good. I had searched all over for Johnny and his mom, but I hadn’t caught sight of them.
I hadn’t caught sight of Jack, either, but that was another thing altogether.
Remarkably, Xavier was one of those guys who could actually swing dance.
And he wasn’t show-offy about it, either. He grabbed my right wrist and shot it to the side, and I spun and he caught me around the waist, bent me back a little, then shot me out the other way. I felt like a yo-yo. Like a Yo-Yo Ma. Like a paper party horn, rolling out with a wheezy blast, then rolling up again. His icy blue eyes followed me everywhere, and I was aware of him being kind of cute, kind of honestly cute, and I wondered, in a distant part of my brain—as I went shooting off again with the whiplash of his arm—why I was so resistant to his charms. Why was I so resistant to every man’s charms for the past nine or ten months? It was useless and pointless, and so when Xavier pulled me back in and held me close, I thought, Hmmmm. I thought double hmmmm.
When I happened to look over at the head table, I saw Amy nodding happily at me. She had obviously given her blessing to whatever was going to happen between Xavier and me.
“Where did you learn to dance like that?” I asked Xavier when we finished. “You’re really very good.”
He put his arm around my waist and led me off the dance floor. Was this it, then? Did I lean into him, swing my hair a little, look up into his polar-blue eyes with a smile and a come-hither glance? I felt out of practice. It felt wooden and absurd. It felt artificial and false. I told myself not to have another drink. I told myself another drink would cloud things horribly.
“Oh, round about,” he said, escorting me to the bar. “My mother taught me some of it in our kitchen. She loved to dance, my mother did. We had dance parties to liven things up when my father was away on business, and he was away a good deal. My sisters had lessons, and they could be quite severe teachers. They bullied me into it, but I’m glad they did.”
“The lessons took.”
“I’ll be sure to tell them.”
Then we exchanged a little look. It wasn’t that look, but it was a look. I broke it off with difficulty.
“I’m going to run to the loo,” I said, using a sheep riff … looooo. “Be right back.”
“Okay, don’t be too long. You’ll be missed.”
I went to find Amy.
“Bridesmaids are supposed to get laid at weddings!” Amy said when I found her and told her about my confusion over Xavier. She held a drink in her hand, her hair slightly mussed from dancing with one of Raef’s many cousins. They had found her early in the reception and kept her moving. “I mean, isn’t that the point of dolling everyone up? Everyone’s here to get a little something. Heather, you’re not a nun!”
“Oh, good grief, Amy. I never said I was a nun.”
“It’s a decision you don’t have to make right now. You’re not a Roman emperor giving a thumbs-up or -down. You could just go with it and see where it takes you.”
“I know where it will take me, Amy. That’s the point.”
“I wish I had someone around here! I wish I had someone to decide about.”
“Those cousins would oblige you,” I said. “The ones you’ve been dancing with.”
“Wouldn’t they ever? Horny little toads. Australian boys have a lot of energy. I’ll give them that. But I don’t see any men here. Not eligible men. Men at weddings are either too young or too old. Otherwise, they’re married themselves.”
“You’re not helping me a damn bit with the Xavier question,” I said. “He’s honestly not my type.”
“What is your type? Never mind, I know, I know. Jack. Yes, okay, Jack is your type. I get it. But Jack took off for the hills, honey. Jack is doing his boy walkabout or whatever the hell he thinks he’s doing. He’s a great guy, I like him a lot, but he’s no longer around. Poof. He disappeared. That woman who did massage on me always said to get over a man, get under a man.”
“You’re horrible, Amy. That’s obscene.”
She smiled. She wiggled her eyebrows. She had had a lot to drink, I realized. But then she waxed philosophical.
“Here’s the thing. If you sleep with Xavier, you’ll wake up with a headache and probably the same heartache. Plus, you run the risk of him thinking you hit it off, so he will call and want to talk, and every time you hear the phone ring, you will be hurt that it’s not Jack.”
“I thought you wanted me to sleep with him!”
“Just someone, Heather. I want you to return to life. You can sleep with anyone you like, of course, but I don’t want you to hold that hurt, that Jack stuff, so close to you anymore. It’s time to let some of it go. I know it’s hard, honey, but you need to let it slip away.”
I nodded. My eyes filled. She put her arm through mine. We stood for a while and didn’t talk. It was a gorgeous early evening. I wondered if I should go find Xavier. I wondered if I should go to the loo. I felt all sixes and sevens, as my mother used to say when she was out of sorts.
We were still standing there when Raef came by.
“I want to have a dance with you, Heather,” he said. “Would you dance with the groom?”
“I’d be flattered.”
“What am I? Swiss cheese?” Amy asked, releasing my arm.
“You’re down the road. Just hold your horses.”
Amy grumbled and went off. I stood with Raef.
“I’d love to dance with you, Raef,” I said.
“I’m not much of a dancer. Not like my friend Xavier.”
“Xavier has many talents, it seems.”
“Oh, you don’t know half of them. Do you like him?”
“I do. I like him a lot. He’s a character.”
“He’s actually quite a good man. We’ve been friends a long time. Since boyhood, really. You two would make a nice couple.”
“Are you in the matchmaking game now, Raef?”
“I’ve become an expert now that I’m married. Didn’t you know? Married people always know
exactly what single people should do, who they should see, how they should live.”
He smiled and held out his arms, and I stepped into them. I realized, moving close to him and beginning to step after his lead, that I was enormously fond of Raef.
“You know that you have the best girl in the whole world,” I said, finding it the tiniest bit strange to dance with my friend’s husband. Her husband! “She’s like a light that the world needs.”
“Yes, I do know that. That’s a good way to put it. I’m a lucky man.”
“She’s even more beautiful than you might know, Raef. Her beauty touches everything. Her love and feeling for beauty. I don’t know anyone else like her, honestly.”
He nodded. We danced clockwise around the floor, but his body felt tight and nervous. I almost spoke to ask him if he was all right, when he leaned close and whispered into my ear. He gave me the real reason he had asked me to dance.
“I wanted to talk to you about Jack,” he said. “Our Jack. Your Jack Vermont. I thought on this day of all days I might be given permission to speak.”
He pushed me away a little so he could look me eye to eye. I felt my heart drop to the ground. He had kind, warm eyes. The band played a nice, gentle beat that seemed out of keeping with the expression on Raef’s face.
“Is it okay if I talk a little about Jack?” he asked. “I need to say something, and I’ve been holding on to it too long.”
I nodded. My body felt as if it had lost its bones.
“Go ahead.”
“First, I have to ask for your understanding, and maybe your forgiveness. I made a promise to Jack that I would not speak of this matter to you. I’ve never mentioned it to Constance, either. No one in the world knows except Jack and me and his parents. He confided it in me.”
“What is it, Raef? Tell me. You sound terribly formal.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to be. I feel funny about saying anything at all.”
“Go ahead and tell me.”
The music shifted time and slowed to a soft, brushy beat. We danced on the parquet floor. I was conscious of every detail: the music, the firmness of the floor, Raef’s handsomeness, the color and texture of his suit, my own gown, tea length, touching the skin beneath my knee. Raef seemed to be caught on what he needed to say. He started to speak, then stopped.
“What is it, Raef?” I asked again. “Please tell me.”
He took a deep breath, seemed to think one last time if he had made the correct choice to tell me, then spoke softly.
“That day in Paris, here—I should say, here in Paris—do you remember that day?”
“Which day, Raef?”
“The one when Jack and I disappeared for a day. We played it off. We tried to make it mysterious. I think you and Constance went to Notre Dame to see the Mary statues. That’s where she always likes to go.”
“Yes, of course, yes, I remember it. Jack never explained where he went. We didn’t press it, because we thought maybe you were planning a surprise of some sort. We didn’t want to spoil things.”
He nodded. My recollection apparently conformed to his.
“That’s just the thing. That day when Jack and I went off on a mysterious mission and we joked about it and refused to tell you two about what we were up to … that day we went to a hospital.”
“What hospital?” I managed. “What are you saying, Raef?”
“I don’t even remember the name, Heather. Saint Boniface, I think. It was on the outskirts of Paris. Jack didn’t tell me everything, but he has a condition of some sort. Something he needed to check on, I guess. He didn’t explain the details. He wanted me along because my French was better than his.”
“He’s ill? Are you telling me he’s ill?”
Raef looked carefully at me. I saw how much it pained him to break Jack’s confidence, how much it pained him to injure me. Part of me held sympathy for Raef’s position, but another part of me, a wild, feral side, wanted to jump at his mouth and pull it apart and swim down to wherever the words were kept and then dig through them until I found what I required. He could not speak quickly enough; he could not break the news rapidly enough to satisfy me. But I held on and let him speak. I did not want to frighten him off or cut short his explanation by rushing at him.
“I think Jack’s symptoms had reappeared. He was sick before he came to Europe. I think that’s it. He never came right out and explained everything. I can’t say whether or not that was the reason he decided not to go home with you, but I’ve always thought it was. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I reckon he wanted you to think poorly of him, to let him go, because whatever he found out at the hospital maybe confirmed something he suspected. I don’t know the timing on all this, but he had to wait for some test results to come in. That’s what he told me.”
“But Jack wasn’t sick,” I said, though now doubt had begun to spill into my brain. “He told me about his friend Tom, but he never—”
“It wasn’t Tom. There was no one named Tom, Heather.”
“His friend. A man he worked with. What are saying, Raef?”
“There was no friend named Tom. Sometimes he referred to his condition as ‘old Tom.’ He turned it into a joke. He’d say things like, ‘Old Tom’s not letting me sleep.’ I don’t know where he dreamed that up, but that was the name he used.”
“I can’t understand what you’re saying to me, Raef. I hear the words, but they don’t add up.”
“Tom was something he made up so that he could talk about the need to experience everything without going into the exact reason. He gave the illness to an imaginary friend. Maybe it wasn’t fair. I don’t know. He didn’t want people to pity him. He didn’t want to be treated differently, to answer all the questions his condition would raise. I’m sorry, Heather. I’ve wanted to tell you many times, but I can’t stand by and see you suffer any longer.”
I couldn’t think. A thousand questions flooded into my brain. It was the one explanation that fit all the various questions and objections. Hearing Raef’s confession, tiny pieces began clicking together.
“He’s sick, then?” I asked, remembering, remembering every word, every glance and gesture that shed any light on Jack’s condition. “Is that what you’re telling me, Raef? Please, I need to know.”
Raef nodded, then he made a face to indicate he didn’t know what Jack had intended. He couldn’t say because he truly didn’t know. The music stopped. We stood for a moment facing each other.
“I don’t know if it’s true or not. I don’t know if he’s sick,” Raef said. “I don’t know what it means, even, but it was important to Jack. That day, I mean, and the visit to the hospital. It would explain why he disappeared. He didn’t want to be a burden to you, and the only way he could get a distance, so to speak, was to disappear entirely. And probably to make you hate him in the bargain.”
“Are you serious, Raef? Are you kidding me? This is just too much.”
“Please forgive me, Heather. I don’t even know if I should be saying anything now. I have divided loyalty on this. Jack made me give him my word, and I did, and now I’m violating that. I couldn’t hold it as a secret anymore and watch you go through it over and over.”
We stood looking at each other. He reached and took my hands in his.
“You have suffered, haven’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I have.”
“I’m sorry, Heather. I wish I had more to tell you.”
“Was it cancer? Did his symptoms return? Is that why he went to the hospital? Was he Tom all this time?”
“I don’t know. I think it was leukemia. Probably whatever symptoms he attributed to Tom actually belonged to him. Yes, probably that.”
Then he was called away by one of Constance’s cousins. Cake to cut, something. Raef dropped my hands slowly, still holding my eyes with his. He didn’t leave, though.
“Let me find Amy,” he said. “Let her sit with you awhile until you’ve had a chance to digest all this.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t stand to think of talking with anyone. Not now.
“You should take a minute to absorb this. A lot of minutes, actually. I’m sorry, Heather. I hope you don’t think I was cruel to withhold this information. It was Jack’s story to tell, not mine. That’s what I told myself. Then I saw you dancing with Xavier, and I saw that you were unhappy, and I knew I had to say something.”
“I’m glad you did. Thank you.”
“I know Jack pretty well, Heather. He loved you. He told me that more than once. He refused to be the sick invalid with you. He wouldn’t want to put that on you. That’s how I put it together, anyway.”
“No,” I agreed, “Jack wouldn’t want that.”
Raef reached over and hugged me. He hugged me hard. Then he held me by the shoulders and looked directly at me.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t believe you. Take a minute, though, please. Take some time to get your mind around it. I feel terrible springing it on you like this.”
“It’s okay, Raef. Go ahead. You need to cut some cake. I’m all right. In some ways, I’m better now. You were right to tell me.”
“I don’t know, Heather. I hope I didn’t make a mistake in telling you,” he said, and then one of his cousins came over and insisted he come along. She grabbed him by the hand and dragged him away. I stood and watched and felt that I might lift and float away like the smoke of a candle drifting upward a moment after it dies as a flame.
50
At two in the morning, I went to find the Esche, the tree we had planted together in the Jardin du Luxembourg.
I brought along a fork from the hotel. To dig. To defend myself. Because I had nothing else.
I could not think or speak or plan in a linear way. I took a cab from the reception. Amy had gone to bed. Constance and Raef had left on their lune de miel. Their month of honey. Their married life. I had told no one what Raef had told me.
The cab driver was from Burkina Faso, Africa. He wore a black, red, and green hat swollen with his dreadlocks beneath. I counted six pine tree car fresheners dangling from the rearview mirror. According to his license, his name was Bormo. Zungo, Bormo. He looked at me in the mirror whenever we stopped.
The Map That Leads to You Page 26