he snuck into a dress rehearsal yesterday, that he and Addie lurked in the last row of seats, slouched low so he could watch Robbie on the stage, brilliant, and beautiful, and in his element, lounging on his throne with Bowie’s flare, and a devil’s grin, and a magic all his own.
And at last, Henry lies, and tells them he is going out of town.
Upstate, to see his parents. No, it is not time, he says, but he has cousins visiting, his mother asked. Just for the weekend, he says.
He asks Bea if she can work the store.
Asks Robbie if he will feed the cat.
And they say yes, as simple as that, because they do not know it is good-bye. Henry pays the tab, and Robbie jokes, and Bea complains about her undergrads, and Henry tells them he’ll call when he gets back.
And when he gets up to go, Bea kisses his cheek, and he pulls Robbie in for a hug, and Robbie says he better not miss his show, and Henry promises he won’t, and then they are going, they are gone.
And this, he decides, is what a good-bye should be.
Not a period, but an ellipsis, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up.
It is a door left open.
It is drifting off to sleep.
And he tells himself he is not afraid.
Tells himself it is okay, he is okay.
And just when he begins to doubt, Addie’s hand is there, soft and steady on his arm, leading him back home. And they climb into bed, and curl into each other against the storm.
And sometime in the middle of the night, he feels her get up, hears her padding down the hall.
But it is late, and he thinks nothing of it.
He rolls over, and goes back to sleep, and when he wakes again it is still dark, and she is back beside him in the bed.
And the watch on the table twitches one step closer to midnight.
New York City
September 4, 2014
XVII
It is such an ordinary day.
They stay in bed, curled together in the nest of sheets, head to head and hands trailing over arms, along cheeks, fingers memorizing skin. He whispers her name, over and over, as if she can save the sound, bottle it up to use when he is gone.
Addie, Addie, Addie.
And despite it all, Henry is happy.
Or at least, he tells himself he is happy, tells himself he is ready, tells himself he isn’t afraid. And he tells himself that if they just stay here, in the bed, the day will last. If he holds his breath, he can keep the seconds from moving forward, pin the minutes between their tangled fingers.
It is an unspoken plea but Addie seems to sense it, because she makes no motion to get up. Instead, she stays with him in bed, and tells him stories.
Not of anniversaries—they have run out of July 29ths—but of Septembers and Mays, of quiet days, the kind no one else would remember. She tells him of fairy pools on the Isle of Skye, and the Northern Lights in Iceland, of swimming in a lake so clear she could see the bottom ten meters down, in Portugal—or was it Spain?
These are the only stories he will never write down.
It is his own failing; he cannot bring himself to unfold, to let go of Addie’s hands and climb out of the bed, and grab the latest notebook from the shelf—there are six of them now, the last only half-filled, and he realizes it will stay that way, those last blank pages, his cramped cursive like a wall, a false end to an ongoing story, and his heart skips a little, a tiny stutter of panic, but he can’t let it start, knows it will tear through him, the way a shiver turns a momentary chill into teeth-chattering cold, and he cannot lose his hold, not yet, not yet.
Not yet.
So Addie talks, and he listens, letting the stories slide like fingers through his hair. And every time the panic tries to fight its way to the surface, he fights it back, holds his breath and tells himself he is fine, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t get up. He cannot, because if he does, it will break the spell, and time will race forward and it will be over too fast.
It is a silly thing, he knows, a strange surge of superstition, but the fear is there now, real now, and the bed is safe, and Addie is