Page 51 of Exquisite Things

It’s dark when I hear the front door close. They sound happy. More than happy. Elated. If Lily wasn’t sober and didn’t forbid

music. Studying music. Playing music. Decoding its theories. Thinking about how it reveals our souls to us. And yet this is

the first time I’ve pondered music as a call to arms. As a conduit to the kind of heartbreak and wrath that frightens me.

Because it demands a response. They may be giddy from the rush of it now, but what of tomorrow? Of the day after? What song

will they be singing when Thatcher and her Black Rats have had time to devise their plan to fight back?

A knock on the door. Lily’s voice. “Oliver, may I come in now?” Changeling purrs.

I told her I needed a little time when she knocked earlier. But what’s a little time anyway?

“Oliver, please. I care about you. We all do.” Changeling’s eyes urge me to let Lily in. Shames me for shutting her out earlier.

I roll myself out of bed and open the door for her. “Hey,” I whisper.

She places a hand on my hot cheek. “May I come in?” she asks.

I nod and walk back to the bed. We sit on the edge of the mattress together. It feels like a boat. I’m afraid I might sink

into a dark ocean at any moment, and take Lily down with me. I feel like I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

To Bram. To Maud and Mother and Archie and Brendan and everyone who’s ever had the misfortune to cross my path.

“Bram loves you so—”

“I don’t want to talk about him!” I snap. I immediately feel spoiled and ungrateful for raising my voice.

“I love all my children equally,” she says. “I hope you know that.” Lily seems to understand what I’m feeling without my saying

it. Maybe all mothers do. Is that what being a parent is?

“He was your firstborn,” I say.

“So what?”

“You’re right. My brother Liam was my mother’s firstborn.” I can see her surprise at the mention of my previous life. She

doesn’t dare interrupt me when I’m finally letting her in. “And she loved me more than Liam. I know she did.”

Lily crosses her legs. Takes my hands in hers. “Perhaps it felt that way to you.” She pauses. “Perhaps it felt the same way

to your brother. A good mother makes every child feel like her favorite.”

I shake my head sadly. “She was the best mother. And I never—I didn’t—I’m sorry, I can’t...”

“Oliver, you can tell me everything or nothing.” She guides my head onto her shoulder. “But if your brain is busy convincing

itself that you let your mother down somehow, you need to stop. You’re a beautiful soul. Any mother would have been proud

to have you as her child.”

Tears roll down my cheeks. I didn’t feel them come. They gave me no warning. “I didn’t say goodbye to her.”

“What would you have said?” Lily asks. “If you could have said goodbye.”

My voice cracks. “I would have thanked her. For... for everything. And I would have begged her forgiveness. For... for

everything.”

“Oh, sweet child.” Lily strokes my hair. “She forgives you.”

“How?” I croak. “She’s gone. She’s dead.”

“Love doesn’t die,” she whispers with certainty. “Neither does forgiveness. And your mother... I think she’s here with

us. Perhaps not in body, but her soul is watching over you. You just have to learn how to feel her presence in a different

way.”

I raise my head and look at Lily. It’s like Mother is with me. They’re so different. And yet... they share something. A

purity. Looking into Lily’s eyes... I can feel Mother’s forgiveness. Her love. I let it envelop me. “I love you,” I whisper,

to Lily, and to Mother, and maybe even to myself.

“I love you too,” Lily says. She opens her arms up and I allow myself to deflate into her warm embrace. “And if you ever feel

sad, I’m here. But Oliver... If I’m not enough... If you think you need to talk to someone—”

“A head shrinker?” I ask dismissively.

She sighs. “I know they don’t have the best track record for our community, trust me, I know . But there are some good ones out there.”

“I’d rather talk to you,” I say. “Please don’t make me—”

“Hey, I’m not making you do anything. It’s a discussion. We’re a team. All of us. We all love you.” She takes a deep breath.

“Bram loves you. He’s downstairs. Afraid to come in. Afraid you’re mad at him.”

“Bram makes everything about him,” I say.

“Then teach him not to. We can only grow through honesty delivered with love.”

I nod. I take Changeling in my arms when Lily stands up. “Tell him to come upstairs. It’s his room too.” Changeling licks

the dry tears on my cheeks.

Bram steps into the bedroom quietly. “We missed you,” he declares.

“Maud isn’t angry with me?” I ask.

Bram peels his clothes off until he’s in nothing but his underwear. He jumps into bed. Straddles me. “Of course not. She even

raised a glass to you at the George.”

“The George?!” I sit up, alarmed that they would step into what we all know is enemy territory.

He laughs. Carefree. Drunk on nothing but his own righteousness. “It was fine. It was fantastic. If you were there, I would’ve

kissed you in front of every vile man who called us perverts.”

“Then I’m glad I wasn’t.”

He bends down and kisses me hard on the mouth.

“Bram, stop. I’m not in the mood.”

He throws himself off me. Lies next to me. “ Je t’aime ,” he whispers.

“Don’t remind me,” I say.

“That I love you?” His eyes are on the cracked ceiling. “Or of Paris...”

“Both.” I stare up at the ceiling too. “I saved for months. Booked our flights. Got us a little hotel on the Seine. Felt it

was time to walk along a new river.”

“That sounds beautiful,” he says. “Let’s do it another time. We can walk the Seine while eating a box of—”

“Macarons?” We look at each other. “That was already a part of the plan. Macarons and the Eiffel Tower. I even memorized a French poem to read to you on the Pont Neuf.”

“We don’t need to be in France for you to read me French poetry,” he says. Then, “Which poem?”

“ Romance .” I pronounce it en francais . “Rimbaud.”

“ When you are seventeen, you aren’t really serious. ” Of course, he knows it by heart already. Probably in multiple languages.

I echo his words in the poem’s original French. “ On n’est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans. ”

He smiles, impressed. Perhaps even moved. A love poem written just for him, my unserious seventeen-year-old taking all he

can from life, too lost in eternal youth to see the premonition of what’s to come.

“He’s one of my favorite poets,” Bram says. “So sad he was taken so young.”

“Is it?” I ask.

“Of course it is. He was, what, forty when he died?” he asks.

“Thirty-seven,” I say.

“Even worse.” He sighs. “Nothing is sadder to me than artists who die before they’ve expressed all they had to say.”

I shrug. “I spent years wandering foreign cities thinking of sadder things.”

“Hey,” he whispers as he holds me close. “I’m here for your happiness and for your sadness. I’m here for all of you. Just...

don’t push me away. Please.”

“I won’t,” I say, but I hear the uncertainty in my own voice. “I’m not... leaving you. That’s not what this is.”

He seems to exhale gratefully when I say this. “Then what’s going on?”

“I suppose I wanted a redo of Paris. I wanted the city of love to be something new for me. Not a place that houses lonely memories. I hated Paris when I lived there. I was all alone. It’s a terrible city to be alone in.

Lovers everywhere. I let myself believe life had cursed me. That you had cursed me.”

We rarely talk about the lives we led apart from each other. What is there to say, really, other than that they were lost

and lonely years for us both? Sometimes debauched. Often merely dull. A well of experience that amounts to nothing but more

longing.

He raises a curious eyebrow, wondering what I’ll say next.

“But then I came here,” I continue. “And we started this new life. And I felt... happy.”

“Past tense?” he asks.

I try to find the right words. What I come up with is, “I guess—I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel... haunted.”

“Haunted?” he repeats.

“By a premonition,” I say. “Don’t tell me I’m being silly. I feel something shifting.”

“In us? In you? In the world?”

I nod. “Yes. All of it. And it’s not... I know I can be melancholy... Lily sees it, I know it, I’m sure you’ve seen

it too. But this is different. This feels... like a warning inside me.”

He puts his head on my belly. I haven’t even gone downstairs to eat. I can only imagine what the rumbling of my stomach must

sound like to him. Perhaps like the avalanche of change I know is coming.

“All you’re saying is that things are changing,” he says. “I feel it too. It’s a new day. A new time. That’s just reality.

Things must change, but maybe for the better.”

“You’re not listening,” I say. “What I’m saying is that I’m scared. What I’m saying is I’m not ready for things to change. I liked us the way we were.”

“Then let’s be the way we were.” Bram raises a fist up like Rosie the Riveter. “We can do it!”

I almost laugh.

“Be sad, be angry, be scared,” he says. “But we’re still us. Lily is still Lily. Maud is still Maud. Don’t mourn the life

you love before it’s been taken from you.”

Those words wake something up in me. “I’m starving,” I say.

“Then let’s go warm up some food for you.”

Bram pulls me out of bed with a smile. We both throw clothes on.

Changeling follows us as we descend the stairs toward the sound of Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand singing together. Bram

takes my hand in his. “You know, perhaps it’s for the best we didn’t go. You know what Oscar Wilde said about Paris.”

“What?” I ask.

“ When good Americans die, they go to Paris. ” He holds my hand. “And you, Oliver, are definitely a good American. And I for one am very happy that you’re here, now, young

enough to enjoy this moment with me.”

“We’ll always not have Paris,” I say with a smile as I mangle the famous quote.

He laughs. “There he is. The Oliver I know and love is back. It was just a passing cloud.”

He’s right. I feel like myself again. But what happens if someday the cloud returns and never passes by me? Is that what happened

to Cyril all those years ago? Was he swallowed up by a storm cloud of sadness?

We join Lily and Maud in belting the song as I heat some food on the stove. Enough is enough is enough. Yes, the clouds will come back. Of course they will. They can’t all be sunny days. But that’s another day. Not this one.

Hopefully not tomorrow either. I smile, laugh, dance. I feel myself be the Oliver everyone loves. Sweet. The one who laughs

at their jokes and follows their leads.

And yet...

Thoughts swirl inside me, little dark premonitions that I know will grow in size with time. Premonitions and unanswerable

questions. If good Americans go to Paris when they die, then where do we go... not when we die, but when we’ve had enough

of this turning world? When we’re ready to rest in peace?

I can’t go on, I can’t go on no more, no.

Where do the immortal go when everything and everyone we love has deserted us? When we’re ready to stop being a body and to

be nothing but a soul?