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.
“You okay, miss?” he asked in French.
I nodded.
He studied me.
“You sure?” he asked.
I nodded again.
“It’s late to be around the park,” he said. “The jardin is better during the day.”
I nodded.
He pulled forward when the light changed. We drove a long time in silence. His eyes checked on me frequently in the rearview mirror.
“This is not the best place,” Bormo said when he pulled to the curb outside the jardin and flicked off the register. “Forty-seven euros. It can be dangerous at this time of night.”
He turned around in his seat so he could speak to me directly.
“It would be my honor to take you for coffee … to bring you someplace with lights.”
“I’m fine,” I said, paying him. “?a va.”
He took the money. I gave him an extra twenty euros. One of the good things about working tirelessly and having no social life was that I always found money in my pockets. He took the twenty euros and slid them into the brim of his lumpy hat.
“It’s very late,” he said. “You were in a nice hotel, and now … it’s not good out here.”
I smiled and climbed out of the cab. Then I stood for a time facing the iron gate of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Bormo pulled away from the curb.
He was correct about everything.
The jardin was better during the day.
*
I had no light except the flashlight on my cell phone. Park lights did not quite illuminate the bed where the Esche was located. It grew in a shadow. It took me surprisingly little time to recall precisely where the tree lived.
I used the fork to dig in the soil. The soil was damp and cold.
You can visit it whenever you come to Paris. Everything else in the world will go along, sometimes failing, sometimes prospering, but your tree—our tree—it will keep growing.
When I struck the clear plastic container holding our braided locks of hair, I pulled it slowly from the earth. I saw the new note—the note from Jack—immediately. It had been placed inside the plastic container after we had buried it. It was clear that he had dug it up and placed a note for me inside. He had used our own secret mailbox to leave me a message I would find if not today, then tomorrow, then a thousand tomorrows later. No one else in the world would know to look for it. And the Esche, the honorable Esche, had stood guard over it until I could come for it—had stood next to it in the winter, through the long, gray days of autumn and bursting fruits of spring. Hadley and Hemingway had been here, as we had been, and it did not surprise me to see his careful handwriting.
Heather, the writing said.
A plain business envelope enclosed whatever note he had written. A little dirt had soiled the bottom-right corner. For a moment I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything.
In that instant I knew he had not forgotten me, not forsaken me. He would not have written a note, not bothered to return to the mighty, mighty Esche if he had not cared. I knew he had thought of me kneeling in the same place that I now knelt. I knew that he understood I would search for him, that I would come looking until I found him at last. I felt an enormous torrent of love and hate and every emotion under the sky. I lifted the absurd plastic container and kissed it. I removed the letter carefully and then closed the plastic box again and buried it once more. I thought of Mr. Periwinkle and of all those creatures that try to go on bravely. I knew about Jack now. I knew he had left me for all the reasons Raef had explained.
And I also knew he was dying.
*
“Drove past here twice and wasn’t going to come back,” Bormo said, “but I had a feeling something was going on.”
I opened the door and climbed in.
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“You got dirty.”
I nodded.
He regarded me in the rearview mirror.
Then he shook his head, apparently unable to figure it out.
“Back to the hotel?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Love,” he said. “That’s the only thing makes people act that crazy.”
I smiled. He smiled back. Then he drove off, and my heart felt empty and frightened. I held the letter against my chest. I could not open it. Not yet. Not until I could breathe again.
51
Amy called me before we made it back.
“Where the hell are you, Heather? I woke up and you weren’t here.”
“I’m okay, Amy.”
“That is just not fucking cool! To leave without saying anything—”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I apologize.”
“I thought … I don’t know what I thought. That is so, so, so not cool, Heather. It rings some bells for me when people disappear like that. You’re not with Xavier, are you?”
“I apologize. No, I’m not with Xavier. I wouldn’t have left if it hadn’t been important.”
“What was so goddamn important that you had to leave the hotel in the middle of the night? We have to be on a plane at noon, Heather. Have you left the hotel? Are you in someone’s room?”
“I had to go look at something. Something Jack related,” I said.
Amy didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Where are you?” she said eventually.
“On my way back.”
“I’ll wait up.”
“Thank you, Amy. And I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Hurry.”
Dawn light pushed from behind low-hanging clouds by the time I arrived back at the hotel. Bormo swung the cab into the porte cochere, and a doorman stepped forward to handle my door.
“Thank you, Bormo,” I said, paying him.
He would not accept a tip.
“The fee, that’s business. But the tip, that’s between us.”
“Thank you.”
“Hope it was worth it.”
“I hope so, too.”
He flipped down the meter and drove off.
I went in and found Amy sitting in the lobby.
She stood when she saw me and crossed the lobby floor and hugged me hard. Then she pushed me away, examined me, and hugged me again. I couldn’t raise my arms. I couldn’t dare lose sight of Jack’s note. I put my forehead against Amy’s shoulder and wept. She pushed me away, looked again at my face, then hugged me as hard as I had ever been hugged in my life. For the life of me, I could not stop weeping.
*