Page 98 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
She supposes she could talk to him. Or talk to the headstone. People do it – she’s seen them pull up camp chairs and sit with thermoses. Who knows what they say. Maybe it’s a form of therapy with a relative who can’t talk back. For all she knows they’re sitting there saying, ‘You were a wretched so-and-so and I couldn’t say it while you were alive so I’m saying it now.’ She doubts it, though. Rage isn’t as powerful as love. No one canmake her believe it is. And it’s love that brings a person to a gravesite with a camp chair and a thermos.
The only people she understands visiting regularly are parents of children who have died. That’s a grief you could never comprehend, and she can see how visiting the grave might help you inch toward acceptance, at least. If you see the evidence that your child is dead, maybe you start to believe it.Maybe. She doesn’t think she ever could. She hopes she never has to find out. Her son is strong and healthy, or so she believes. He’s also walking with her to his father’s grave.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she says, then she regrets it, because she shouldn’t be thanking him for doing something that is the normal duty of a son: to show respect to his parents. It’s a reflex to thank him because he does so little, but she shouldn’t reward that. She should just say nothing.
‘No worries,’ he replies.
They’re walking slowly, which befits being in a cemetery – what’s the hurry when everyone around you is going nowhere?
‘Here he is,’ Dylan says, and he surprises Trudy by reaching down and tapping the headstone. ‘Hi, Dad.’
She supposes she’s now meant to greet her dead husband but she’s not going to. She talks to Laurie all the time, wherever he is.
‘It’s weird that he’s gone, isn’t it?’ Dylan crouches and scrutinises the headstone, as if he’s never seen it before. It’s possible he didn’t read it at the time it was installed.
‘It is.’
‘Two years.’
‘Yes.’
‘There will never be anyone like him.’
Does she imagine there’s a certain edge to his voice? As if he’s warning her off thinking of another man? He couldn’t have known that she wants to broach the subject of Sol with him.Ideally it wouldn’t have been in this location but she hasn’t seen him otherwise.
‘No, there won’t,’ she says.
He stands up and gives her a funny look. ‘But?’ he says.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t need to.’
How could he have guessed? It’s been years since they’ve known each other well enough for him to read her like this. It makes her almost lose her nerve. Except she wants to have this conversation, no matter how uncomfortable it may turn out to be.
‘I’m not looking to marry again,’ she says, and it’s true. ‘But I need companionship.’
‘You have friends.’ There’s definitely a certain tone in his voice now.
‘Yes, but they have their own lives. I miss having someone who is inmylife.’
‘What – you want a boyfriend?’
He’s laughing, and she knows he’s laughing at her and she really doesn’t like it.
‘I didn’t say that, Dylan,’ she snaps. ‘But I do have a friend.’
‘Youwhat?’
‘I have a gentleman friend. Sol. He is very fond of me and I …’ She folds her arms and half turns away from him, thinking about how to phrase this. ‘I am becoming fond of him.’
‘That’s not right.’ Dylan’s face is thunderous. ‘No, that’s not right. You can’t replace Dad.’
‘I’m not trying to.’
‘You are! Why can’t you just stay faithful to him? Why isn’t that enough?’
She has, of course, asked herself this question several times. Why isn’t she satisfied being on her own, with Laurie’s memory? Isn’t it greedy of her to want to squeeze more from this life?
