1
Dominique
Cosette skipped merrily alongthe uneven terrain, pigtails bouncing off her slender shoulders. Her incongruous joy, viewed against a backdrop of dying winter grass, low, slate gray clouds heavy with the promise of snow, and long rows of marble headstones stretching toward a distant corpse of trees, widened the hole in my chest.
Every Sunday without fail.
It shouldn’t be like this.
But she needed to know about the mother she’d barely met.
Cosette sang tunelessly, a ditty learned at Miss Heather’s, no doubt, as she aimed for the ashen flecked headstone in the distance. Twice she tripped in her winter boots but caught her balance and journeyed on. The chrysanthemums she’d chosen at the flower shop remained firmly clutched against her chest, stems and petals suffering under the careless hands of a toddler determined to keep them safe. She always picked chrysanthemums because the name had the word mum in it. Yellow because it was her favorite color.
“Like dandelions, too, Papa?”
“Oui, yellow like dandelions.”
The wind howled, fluttering the ends of my open coat and numbing my cheeks. The bitter scent of melancholy tickled my nose. The shells of my ears ached. Misery was the long, stretching shadows chained to my ankles and hindering my every step.
My sensibilities started and ended with ensuring Cosette was appropriately dressed for the weather while I suffered under the brisk assault of early winter, drawing my shoulders higher and wishing I was anywhere else.
A squeal of delight pierced the mournful silence of the cemetery. Cosette turned, radiating glee as she pointed into the distance. “Elle est là, Papa. You see? Hurry.”
She ran ahead, but I kept my steps even, in no rush to revisit the agony brought on by the onslaught of memories I suffered every time we visited. It wasn’t the same for Cosette. She had no recollection of the mother who had given her life. To her, Angelique was an idea no different than the characters in the books we read. She was a story. A fable.
Hands buried deep in my coat pockets, I clutched my silent phone in a sweat-dampened palm, urging it to ring, to save me from this weekly nightmare. From the pain of remembering. I would rather confront death in an autopsy room than a cemetery, heartbroken over someone I loved who had been taken too soon. I was on call this weekend, but the phone remained inordinately soundless. Ottawa was a big enough city; it should not have been so.
Under the sheltered boughs of an ancient weeping willow, Cosette stopped and dropped to her knees at Angelique’s final resting place. The yellow flowers tumbled over the brown winter grass at the base of the headstone, where a few crisp leaves had gathered. My brain struggled to process the contrast of both thecheery child and the bright blossoms in such a dreary, colorless place of death.
I stopped several feet away. My misery stopped too, forever on my heels, never letting go.
As always, Cosette hugged the granite marker in greeting and babbled as only a toddler, untouched by loss and grief, can do. “Hi, Maman. Je suis revenue. Did you miss me?”
Carefully, cautiously, she lined up the yellow chrysanthemums along the top edge of the stone as she sang the same tune from before, nothing more than a repeated verse and bits of a chorus about an elephant on a spider’s web.
When she finished, she took my hand and forced me closer. “Your turn, Papa. Put yours ici.”
She always left a spot for the blossom I carried, so I laid it amid the vibrant yellow collection as instructed.
Crouching, I wrapped an arm around Cosette and tucked her against my side. “Are you going to tell her about the new house?”
“Oui! We have a new house, Maman. In…” Cosette’s brow crinkled. “What’s the name, Papa?”
“In Ottawa.”
“In Ottawa,” she repeated. It came outAhwahwah. I didn’t correct her. “I go to a new school with Miss Heather.” To me, she asked, “Je peux tu chanter?”
“Of course. Sing to your heart’s content, ma belle. I think Maman would like that.”
So she sang. Most lyrics were jumbled. Some were in French and others were in English. At times, they came out in a combination of both languages. Cosette clapped and did the actions. At one point, she peeled free from my side to dance, a bum wiggle that melted my heart and blurred my vision.
As she performed, I grieved, wanting to close my eyes yet never wanting to look away. This child. Her innocence. Her purity. She brought me such comfort, yet boundless pain. Aprecious porcelain doll with perpetually rosy cheeks, chestnut brown ringlets, wide brown eyes, and a cupid bow mouth. So like her mother, I ached with the unfairness.
Two and a half years. Time slipped irrevocably away as it is wont to do. First, days and weeks. Then, months and years. People moved on with their lives. They forgot. Those of us who suffered the most were always left behind. I desperately clung to the past, wishing for something that could never be. Day by day, the crushing weight of time stole my humanity until I wasn’t sure I recognized the man in the mirror any longer.
Cosette finished her song and dance and sat cross-legged on her mother’s grave, facing the stone as she traced the letters of Angelique’s name.
Unwilling to remain a wispy shadow in this verbose child’s life, I approached, kneeling on the frozen ground behind her and kissing her cheek. “Tell Papa the letters. Do you remember?”
