Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

“Mom?”

“Hi, Julia,” said Edie.

“Valentina?” said Jack.

“Hi, Dad,” said Valentina. She tried to make her voice sound normal but the effort sent her into a coughing fit.

“Oh my God,” said Edie. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s just bronchitis,” said Julia. “We went to the doctor.”

“I’m better today,” Valentina said. She put her phone down and went into the bathroom to cough. Julia watched her standing bent over, elbows on the sink, hand over her mouth to suppress the sound of the coughing.

“Did they give you antibiotics? Are you taking that mucus-reducing stuff Dr. Brooks gave you?” Edie and Julia embarked on a leisurely and detailed discussion of everything they could and should do for Valentina’s bronchitis. Eventually Valentina came back to the phone.

“We met Robert Fanshaw,” she said, mostly in order to change the subject.

“Finally,” said Jack. “Where’s he been all this time?”

“He’s helping us get signed up for the NHS,” Julia said.

“Oh,” said Edie. “Huh. What’s he like?”

“Mopey,” said Julia. “Kind of freaky and weird. If he was our age he’d probably be a Goth, you know, all pierced and tattooed.”

“No,” said Valentina. “He’s nice. He’s kind of shy, and you can tell he misses Elspeth. He has little glasses like John Lennon.” She wanted to say more, but had to put the phone down and cough.

“Valentina has a crush on him,” Julia informed them. Valentina drew her finger across her throat. Don’t, Julia.

“Surely he’s a bit old for her. He must be our age?” Jack said.

“I think he’s younger. Mid-thirties, maybe?”

Valentina came back to the phone. “I don’t have a crush on him. But he’s nice .” Edie thought, Uh-oh, but she knew better than to say anything. The conversation turned to the weather, movies, politics. After they all hung up Valentina said crossly, “Now they’re going to obsess. Why did you say that?”

“It will distract them from you being sick,” Julia replied.

“It’s not true, though.”

Julia just laughed.

Edie and Jack hung up simultaneously and met in the hallway. “Don’t look so worried,” Jack said. “She says it’s nothing.”

Edie snorted. “That’s exactly when you should get very worried.”

He put his arm around her. “She did sound awful.”

“Maybe we should go there. We wouldn’t actually go to the flat, but just be in London. We could rent a flat nearby…” Edie nestled into him. She loved how big Jack was, how small she felt next to him. It was very comforting.

He stroked her head. “How would you have felt if your mom followed you across the ocean and moved in across the street from us?”

“That was different.”

“They’re managing. Let them be.”

Edie shook her head, but smiled at him. That’s it, just smile and be my Edie, that’s enough for me. He kissed the top of her head. “It’ll be all right.”

Robert and Jessica were having their afternoon tea in the upstairs office at Highgate Cemetery. Jessica fixed Robert with a Purposeful Look, and he steeled himself for one of her Talks. He expected the Talk to be about Not Letting the Tourists Slow Down the Tour by Taking Endless Videos, or even possibly Please Remember Not to Go About With Your Hands Thrust into Your Pockets as It Looks Undignified, but she surprised him.

“Don’t you think,” asked Jessica, “that she is a bit too young for you?”

“A bit?”

“Ridiculously young for you?”

“Maybe,” Robert said. “How young is too young?”

“Not so much in years, because I have known many people at twenty-one to be quite mature-but both of them seem so very young. They remind me of my girls at sixteen.”

“That has a certain appeal, Jessica.”

She waved her hand at him. “You understand me. It seems strange that after Elspeth, who was such a dear girl, so level-headed and not a flibbertigibbet-Valentina seems an odd match for you.”

“Some people thought I was too young for Elspeth.”

“Did I say that?”

“I believe you did, actually. Here in this very office, as I recall.”

“Surely not.”

“I’m nine years younger than Elspeth. I’m catching her up, though.”

“Yes…”

“You’re younger than James.”

“James is ninety-four. I’m eighty-six this July.”

“I wonder why it’s more socially acceptable for the man to be older?”

“I believe the men arranged it that way.”

“Ah. I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned how you and James met?”

Jessica hesitated before she answered. Robert thought, It must be something rather risqué. She looks as though I’ve asked for her bra size. “We met during the war. I was James’s assistant at Bletchley Park.”

“No kidding? I’d no idea. You were code breakers?”

“Actually, what we did was more…administrative.” Jessica pursed her mouth, as though she had said more than she thought strictly necessary.

“I thought you read law.”

“One may do many things in a long life. I also played a great deal of tennis and brought up three children. There’s time for all sorts of adventures.”

“And you saved the cemetery.”

“Not single-handedly, as you well know. Molly and Catherine, Edward…we had help from a great many dear people. Though of course there’s never enough help for all the little things that need doing. That reminds me, would you take these with you up the hill on your way home and just drop them in Anthony and Lacey’s letterboxes? It will save the stamps.”

“Of course.”

Jessica sighed. “I must say, I do feel just a tiny bit fatigued thinking of all the letters I have to write.” She put her teacup on the desk and held out both hands to him. “Come on, help the old thing out of her chair.”

Robert spent the afternoon sitting in the Strathcona mausoleum by the Eastern Cemetery gates, selling tickets and watching the landscaping team trimming trees. It was a slow day, and he had time to wonder if Jessica was right. Perhaps Valentina was too young for him. Perhaps he should let her be and go back to mourning Elspeth. Not that he had stopped; the thought of Elspeth was a sharp ache. But Robert had to admit that he didn’t think of her quite as often as before, and that the arrival of the twins had coincided with this slackening of Elspeth’s presence in his every waking thought. He felt ashamed, as though he were a sentinel who had abandoned a guard tower to the enemy. But Elspeth wouldn’t want me to spend the rest of my life mourning her. Would she? It was not exactly something they had discussed, but he felt wrong whether he devoted himself to her memory or allowed Valentina to waft into reveries that would have once featured Elspeth. He lived in a state of aroused guilt. It was very confusing, but somewhat pleasurable.

Early one morning Robert found Valentina sitting in the back garden with a thermos of tea. He was letting himself in through the green door and had no idea she was there until she said, “Good morning.”

“Good lord,” he said, after he’d stepped backwards and nearly broken his ankle on a gravestone. “I mean, good morning.”

Valentina was sitting on the low stone bench and wearing a quilted dressing gown. Her feet were bare. “Oh-I’m sorry!”

“Aren’t you cold?” It was going to be a warm day, but the dawn was chilly.

“Yes, I am now. My tea’s gotten cold.”

“Come in, why don’t you?”

She glanced up at the first-floor windows. “Julia’s still asleep.”

Valentina picked her way across the damp moss and Robert held his door open for her. When she went in under his arm he felt as though he’d caught a bird.