“Maybe so,” said Rosalyn with a smile.
“Your attitude toward smoking, on the other hand...” She trailed off, popping a piece of Nicorette gum. “Can’t believe we can’t smoke on planes. Is there no civilization anymore? Did you know that the French are so antiauthoritarian that smoking rates wentupafter it was banned from public buildings? They also cut in lines. You Americans, on the other hand, are far too puritanical in that regard.”
“When it comes to line cutting or smoking?”
“Both, but I was thinking of smoking.”
“Not sure we can blame the Puritans for that one. I think it has more to do with lung cancer rates.”
Emma waved her off. “Never underestimate your history of puritanism. Like how obsessed you Yanks are with sex, but get freaked out at nudity.”
“We’re a puzzle, all right,” Rosalyn mumbled, then downed the last dregs of her wine and wished she had more. She had no desire to indulge in a battle of cultures, nor did she want to represent all Americans to the French—or to the Aussies, for that matter. Weren’t we all individuals, after all? And besides that... Rosalyn didn’t feel capable of representing anyone at the moment, much less an entire nation. She was a bubble-wrapped Christmas ornament, ready to shatter.
After dinner, the flight attendants whisked away all evidence of their meal, and the captain dimmed the lights.
“Well, then,” said Emma as she fetched earplugs and an eye mask from the pocket in the seat in front of her. “France is nine hours ahead of California, which means they’re asleep right now, and so should we be.” She popped a pill, then held the vial out to Rosalyn. “Want one?”
“Oh, no, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.Bonne nuit, Rosalyn. See you in Paris.”
Chapter Four
Rosalyn closed her eyes in hopes of getting some rest, but quickly gave up. It was a struggle for her to sleep in her own bed, let alone in public.
She read a novel for a while, but although the bestselling true story of a plucky woman’s fight against the violence and corruption in an inner-city school had Hollywood blockbuster written all over it, it failed to hold her interest. Then she scrolled through the selection of in-flight movies, but the stories seemed trivial: the comedies puerile, the dramas unremarkable.
Finally, Rosalyn eased Emma’s bright yellow folder of letters over to her tray. Peeking inside, she gently grasped a fat military envelope. It was foxed with mildew, the scent reminding Rosalyn of a used bookstore.
It dawned on her that sorting through musty old letters probably wasn’t routine in first class. As if on cue, the well-dressed man across the aisle glanced at her, his elegant nostrils flaring. Rosalyn ignored him.
The onionskin paper crackled as she slipped it out of the envelope. The handwriting was as before, with that peculiarly French upright script.
Rosalyn used her French travel dictionary as well as her computer to translate, but there were words she didn’t recognize and couldn’t find in the reference book or online—she imagined they were names of weapons or otherwise war related. The ink was faded in spots, and the stylized cursive was difficult to decipher. And with the occasional phrase cut out or blacked out, it was slow going.
Still, she managed a few paragraphs.
Lucie tells me that one morning the bombing began again, and the clock was chiming nine o’clock, but it did not have a chance to finish.... A xxx burst in through the wall, covering all in dust and chunks of plaster.... The tinkling of broken glass... The shock of concussion is so hard to describe; it makes one feel injured, even when whole.
Rosalyn perused the abused pages, struggling to understand the language, imagining a long-ago war-torn world, until her eyes grew heavy, and she slept.
?She dreamed of the medicine cabinet.
Kneeling on the aqua blue bath mat in front of the open cabinet, Rosalyn wondered if the medications within would be sufficient to kill her.
She felt strangely detached from the question, and even more so from its implications. When Dash died, Rosalyn had fractured. Something deep down had broken, fragmented, splintered intopointy, stabbing shards. She was a shattered mirror. She was seven years of bad luck.
If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.
The words of the old song came to Rosalyn’s mind, crooned in Dash’s husky voice. He wasn’t a morning person, but if she gave him his space, he would be humming by the time he emerged from the shower, singing disparate lines of old and new songs, mostly the blues, laughing at the absurdity of the lyrics because, as he had declared on their wedding day—an extravagant affair held outdoors among the grapevines—Dash considered himself to be the luckiest man alive.
His prescriptions were lined up in neat rows on the shelf: amber vials and bottles and bubble packs of painkillers that had cost every cent they had, and then some. All marked with the name of the man Rosalyn had married six years ago and lost two and a half years ago and still loved: Dashiell Anthony Acosta.
Take with food. Do not crush or chew. Take as needed.
What if she crushedandchewed them, popped handfuls into her mouth on an empty stomach,as needed? She could wash them down with a lovely bottle of Napa Cabernet, as Dash had suggested he do toward the end, when he was trying to celebrate his thirty-eighth birthday—knowing he would never have another birthday—but was too sick to hold anything down. Good reminder: Rosalyn should take an antinausea pill before the others.
This was the sort of thing a person learned when watching her husband struggling to survive, to eradicate murderous cancer cells through chemotherapy and radiation and surgery and drugs and prayer and sheer force of will. Not that any of it mattered in the end.
