Elin Hilderbrand - The Love Season

Renata shrugged.

What words did Marguerite have left at her disposal to describe the days after Candace died?

Daniel flew in from Colorado. Marguerite picked him up at the airport, and during the twenty-minute ride in the dark car, she tried to explain what had happened.

This whole thing with Porter , she said, took me by surprise…

You made her feel like she had to come here , Daniel said. With my daughter. In the middle of a goddamned blizzard. Who does that?

Marguerite didn’t answer. They were in the Jeep, with the wind whining through the zippered windows like an angry mosquito. Even with the heat turned up full blast, it was freezing. Marguerite’s face was frozen, her fingers were frozen to the steering wheel. Her heart was frozen.

Daniel repeated himself in a louder voice. Who does that, Margo? Who asks her best friend and her godchild, age five, to travel in a blizzard?

I’m sorry , Marguerite said.

You’re sorry? Daniel said. He spat out a mouthful of air, incredulous. You spent all these years making her feel like she owed you something, but what you got in the end was her pity. She pitied you, Margo .

The words were awful to hear. But how could Marguerite deny them? You’re right , she said. She pitied me. And I frightened her . Here, she swallowed. If he were going to condemn her, he should condemn her for all of it. Someone should know what Marguerite had done, and a part of her held out hope that Daniel would understand. And so she told him about how she’d confessed her love, how confused Candace was by the confession, how addled. She was desperate to get out of the house , Marguerite said. There was no stopping her .

That’s twisted , Daniel said. It’s sick. You made her sick. You make me sick .

There was nothing sick about it , Marguerite said. It was a revelation to me-how I felt, how important she was to me. I wanted her to know .

Revelation? Daniel said. Revelation? She’s dead, Margo. My wife. Renata’s mother. Candace is dead. Because of you .

Yes , Marguerite said. It was almost a relief, hearing it spoken out loud. Marguerite blamed herself, others who learned the whole story or part of the story would blame her silently, but Daniel was angry enough to blame her openly. It was like a slap in the face-it hurt, but she deserved it.

When they reached the house on Quince Street, Dan snatched Renata away from the babysitter and marched upstairs, returning with Candace’s suitcase.

Every last thing that belonged to her , he said. Put it in here. You will keep nothing for yourself . He bundled up Renata and hurried her out the door. Marguerite believed she would never see the girl again.

She had lost everyone who mattered, making it that much easier to give up. After the funeral, she saw no one, spoke to no one-not Porter, not Dusty, not Ethan… She decided immediately that she would close the restaurant, but that didn’t seem like enough of a sacrifice.

“After your mother died,” Marguerite said, “I considered suicide. I did more than consider it. I tried it on like it was a dress, imagining how I would do it, and when. Eating the Valium was too much like falling asleep. I wanted to drive my Jeep into the ocean, or throw myself off the ferry with a weighted suitcase chained to my leg. I wanted to set myself on fire, like the women in India. I felt so guilty , so monstrous, so bereft, so empty. And then at some point it came to me that dying would be too easy. So I set out to destroy the part of myself that I valued the most.”

“Which was?” Renata was almost afraid to ask.

“My sense of taste.” Marguerite brought a spoonful of creamy chocolate to her mouth. “I can taste nothing. This could be pureed peas for all I know.”

“So how…?”

“I branded my tongue.” She had been very scientific about maiming herself; she had been meticulous. She made a fire of hickory, which burns hotter than other woods, and she set one of her prized French utensils among the embers until it glowed pinkish white. “I burned my taste buds so profoundly that I knew I would never taste a thing again.”

“Didn’t it hurt?” Renata asked.

Hurt? Marguerite hadn’t been concerned about the pain; nothing could hurt more than… But there had been nights in the past fourteen years when she’d awoken, terrified of glowing metal, of the hiss, the stink.

“When it happened, my tongue swelled up. I can remember it filling my mouth, suffocating me. I nearly lost consciousness, and if I had, I probably would have died. But I got to a phone, dialed the police. I couldn’t speak, but they found me anyway, took me to the hospital.” Insidious pain, yes, she remembered it now, but also a kind of numbness, the numbness of something newly dead. “A day later, stories were everywhere. Some people said I’d cut my tongue out with a knife; others said I went into convulsions and swallowed my tongue. Everyone said I had lost my mind. Some believed Candace and I were lovers; others thought I’d done it because of Porter. Self-mortification, they called it at the hospital. They weren’t willing to release me. They said I was a danger to myself. I spent three months in a psychiatric hospital in Boston. Posttraumatic stress disorder-that’s what they would call it now. Eventually, the doctors realized I was sane. My lawyer helped a lot; he fought to get me released. But even once I returned home, I couldn’t go back out into the world. I sold the restaurant and made a fortune, but I knew I was destined to spend my days alone and dreadfully misunderstood. And I was right. My life”-here Marguerite lifted a hand-“is very small. And very quiet. But that is my choice. I am not insane. Some days, believe me, I wish I were.”

Renata didn’t know how to respond, but like everything with Marguerite, this seemed to be okay. Silence seemed preferable; it seemed correct. And so, they sat-for a few minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty; Renata wasn’t sure. Renata was tired, but her mind wouldn’t rest. She had heard the whole story for the first time and yet what she found was that she knew it already. Inside, she’d known it all along.

The clock struck midnight. Marguerite snapped to attention; Renata realized that for a second or two she’d drifted off to sleep.

“We should go to bed,” Renata said. She stood up and collected the dessert dishes.

“Leave them in the sink,” Marguerite said. “I’ll do them in the morning.” Marguerite blew the candles out and inhaled the smell of them, extinguished. Dinner over , she thought. But before Marguerite could feel anything resembling relief or sadness or peace, there was a knock at the door. This time there was no mistaking it for something else; there was no wondering if it was a figment of her imagination. The knock was strong, authoritative. Renata heard it, too. Her eyes grew round; the dishes wobbled in her hands.

“We should hardly be surprised,” Marguerite whispered, ushering Renata into the kitchen. “We knew someone would come looking for you.”

Right , Renata thought. Still, she felt hunted down. “What should we do?” she said.

“What would you like to do?” Marguerite asked. “We can answer, or we can pretend to be asleep and hope whoever it is gives up and comes back in the morning.”

“Pretend to be asleep,” Renata said.

“All right.” Marguerite flipped off the kitchen light. There was no way anyone could see in the kitchen windows unless he scaled a solid eight-foot fence onto the garden patio. Marguerite reached out for Renata’s hand. “Let’s wait for a minute. Then we’ll sneak you upstairs.”