“I’ll believe it when I see it.” In twenty-nine years, according to Oliver.
“You visited the Crystal Palace,” he says. “Why is a glass pyramid so hard to believe?”
“It’s not hard to believe,” Beatrix says. The world has changed around her, sometimes in ways she never imagined possible, like airplanes and rockets and sending satellites into space. “It’s just at odds with all this.” She gestures to the Louvre. It is a beautiful, old, grand building rising four stories above her, surrounding her on three sides with walls of windows and arches and columns. A former palace built of warm, cut stone that has seen as much history as she has.
“That’s what people said about the Eiffel Tower, and now look at it,” Oliver says. “Times change.”
“They never stop changing.”
“Wait until you see the giant Ferris wheel they build in London,” he says. “Right on the Thames.”
Beatrix hits him playfully on the arm. “Now I know you’re lying.”
Oliver can’t keep a straight face. He takes her hand and twines his fingers through hers. “Is it weird to visit a museum with you?”
“Why? Because I’m older than some of the exhibits?” She shakes her head. “I think it’s weirder for you to visit a museum. You could watch da Vinci paint theMona Lisainstead of looking at it hanging on the wall with the rest of us.”
“I could,” Oliver concedes. He pulls her close. “But I can think of better things to do than watch paint dry. Even exceptionally famous paint.”
They tour the museum, hand in hand, exploring the galleries of paintings and sculptures and artifacts. Beatrix finds comfort in the rooms, in the crowds of people from all over the world wandering through them. It is proof the past existed, that it is valued, that it is remembered, even as the world evolves around her. By the time they stroll through the gallery of neoclassical exhibits, she has lost all track of the day.
“?‘Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss,’?” Oliver reads from a black-and-white placard.
The sculpture stops Beatrix’s breath: love and desire and passion exquisitely captured in pristine white marble. Cupid cradles Psyche in his arms as she reaches for him, his feathered wings spread wide above them. She tips her head back, a moment away from kissing her immortal lover. Beatrix can’t fathom how the artist carved so much life from stone.
“Do you know the story?” Beatrix asks.
Oliver shakes his head.
“Psyche fell in love with Cupid before she knew who he was,” she says. “Before she even saw him. He would only come to her in the dark, and he forbade her to look at him. He always left her chambers before the sun rose.”
“He’d only ever stay the night?” Oliver asks.
Beatrix nods. “She loved him. Thought she loved him. She doubted him, too. Soon, she was bearing his child, and yet she had never seen his face. She thought he must be a hideous monster. Why else would he hide from her? So, one night, after he fell asleep next to her, she looked. And she saw him.” Beatrix gestures to the sculpture of Cupid.
“Not a hideous monster, then,” Oliver says.
Beatrix shakes her head. “He woke and saw that she had betrayed his trust, so he left her. Psyche wandered the world and the Underworld,searching for him. She completed impossible task after impossible task, all the while despairing, believing that she would never succeed, would never find him.”
“Did she?”
“She fell into an endless sleep after failing a task in the Underworld. Cupid found her. He saved her. Married her. He even made her immortal, just like him.”
“And they lived happily ever after?” Oliver asks.
Beatrix nods, afraid if she speaks another word, her voice will betray her.
Oliver puts his arm around her and pulls her close. “Then why do you look so sad?”
“Because I am sad,” she whispers. So suddenly and deeply, it frightens her.
“Why?”
Because it is a beautiful sculpture and a beautiful story, built on a beautiful lie that still breaks her heart. Because she so desperately wants it to be true, even now. Especially now.
Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all.
Because Oliver is wrong. It isn’t a happy ending. It’s an impossible one.
