Page 111 of Happiness for Beginners

I shut my eyes. “Because they have to figure it out themselves.”

“That’s right,” GiGi said. “And now you have.”

“But too late.”

“You broke a pattern,” she said. “That’s something. Maybe you lost Jake. Maybe he’ll never come back. Maybe he’ll marry this girl and have a hundred babies—”

“That’s enough of that.”

“But it’s okay. He taught you something. He taught you how to let somebody love you a little bit. That lesson right there is enough to change your life.”

Something about that idea brought a fresh sting of tears. Maybe she was right. Maybe I would change my life, and maybe I would get better at love, and maybe by the time the next person came along, I’d finally get it right at last. But I didn’t want the next person. I just wanted Jake.

I let out a little laugh. Then I wiped my eyes with the hem of my T-shirt. “It doesn’t matter. I just have to get through the bar mitzvah, go home, see my dog, pick myself up, and start a new-and-improved life.” The prospect of it all seemed awfully bleak. So, after a minute, I added, “Maybe I’ll take some dancing lessons.”

GiGi nodded. “That’s a brilliant idea, darling,” she said, as if that one idea would solve everything. “You were always a fantastic dancer.”

We let that idea sit with us in the room for a while as I digested all the things we’d just talked about. At last, after a long pause, I said, “Duncan tells you everything, huh?”

“Everything,” she said, with a little eye roll. “Far more than I want to know.”

“Do you think it makes you like him more than you would otherwise? Or less?”

“More,” she said. “Certainly more.”

“I’m not sure I’d have that same response.”

“You’ll get there,” she said. “Keep working on it.” Then she met my eyes and said, “He’s always better at trying than succeeding.”

“That’s a family trait.”

She smiled. “Keep that in mind when he shows you the cooler.”

I frowned. “What cooler?”

But she just shook her head and stood to take her plate to the sink. “I am not at liberty to say.”

***

The next morning, I woke up late. GiGi was in the kitchen, making coffee, barely awake herself. This was the bar mitzvah day. My day to face the future and the past at the same event. I had to get a haircut, assemble an outfit, and figure out a way to convince everybody—including myself—that, despite all the facts that argued otherwise, my life had turned out well.

I should have hopped up, showered, and headed out for errands. But I really just wanted to lounge around in my robe.

GiGi eyed me as we drank our coffee.

“Let me paint you,” she said, at last.

I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t want to be painted.”

“Yes,” she insisted. “You will curl up on the green sofa and tell me more about your trip, and I will captureyou in love.” She gestured at my aura.

“More like me in agony.”

“Same thing.”

What can I say? When your eighty-three-year-old grandmother wants to paint your portrait, you let her.

She kept all her paints and brushes and easels on the sun porch. She’d painted my portrait often when I was a kid, but then, after we came to live with her, she did it less. I guess kid-free grandmas have more time for projects like that. One exception was the portrait she did of me before my wedding, in my bridal gown, which hung above her fireplace. I loved that portrait best of all. She’d captured me exactly, but somehow made me much prettier than I was in real life. I’d asked her to give it to me many times, but she wouldn’t.

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