Illuminated (15 page)

Read Illuminated Online

Authors: Erica Orloff

He nodded. “Yes. I proposed to her in Paris.”
I shut my mouth. But . . . I had to ask.
“Did you ever go to see the grave of Heloise and Abelard?”
My father looked at me as if it was a revelation. “That is the oddest question, Calliope, but we did. The lovers. There’s apparently a myth associated with leaving a letter on their grave. I don’t remember it. It was something your mother was into. She was very superstitious. She liked getting her palm read.
She
believed in fate.”
“So how did it go all wrong?”
Did anyone make it work? Really? Could you start from napalm and fire and attraction and not ruin it somehow?
“Mostly it was my fault. I think I confused love with ownership. And when she . . . truly rejected me, I . . .” He looked away. “I know you’re very angry right now, but I want you to know that before she died, I visited her in her hospital room. We forgave each other, you know. That’s why the papers are unsigned. I wish I could undo those last months.”
“Did she know she was going to die?”
He nodded. “Right after we got married, it was obvious that your mother and I had made a huge mistake. Opposites attract, but in our case, we were so unhealthy for each other. I wanted her to change. I wanted her to understand that the reason I was never home was for her—that I was building something for
us.
And she was sure that if I loved her enough, I would change. I hurt her. She hurt me. And I guess I didn’t see how desperate she was for me to understand her.” He looked so sad, but continued on. “You’re right. I make the people around me unhappy. It’s how I am. It’s what I do. And at the end when she needed me to stop fighting her, I . . . couldn’t.”
I suddenly felt this crushing guilt settling like a rock in my rib cage.
“I didn’t mean that when I said you make the people around you unhappy.”
“Yes, you did. And you’re not totally wrong. After your mother died, I just stopped being the human being I could have been if she were alive.”
I blinked back tears. “Even if you two were a disaster, I wish . . . I wish I had her here.”
His chin trembled slightly. “Some people are like shooting stars. They burst through our lives in a spectacular arc, but they don’t stay long. They just leave a trail.”
14
 
I knew her as I knew my own face.
—A.
 
O
n Sunday, my father and I had brunch together. Dad had asked me to bring August, but I didn’t think we had made
that
much progress. Baby steps. When I said good-bye to Dad, I hugged him a little harder. “Have a good trip.”
“Are you going back to Harry’s or over to that boy’s house?”
“You mean August? You can say his name, Dad. We have plans, and I’m going to Harry’s later.”
He picked up his suitcase in the lobby of his hotel and turned to go. Then he stopped, his back still to me. “I promise to try a little harder, Calliope. Maybe we can each try.”
I watched him walk away from me. We had a long way to go, but maybe now with truth, we would have a chance.
August and I were meeting at his house. My father had made his stance on a trip to Paris crystal clear. I had tried reasoning (well, begging would be more like it) with Uncle Harry about going to Paris, but he insisted that the museum would use contacts in Europe to follow the trail. The break-in, in his opinion, made it too dangerous for us to continue in our quest for information about the palimpsest. Notes that Dr. Sokolov had scribbled about it had vanished along with
Leaves of Grass
. And though he was an absentminded professor, both he and August insisted the palimpsest was far too important for him to have misplaced his notes.
According to Harry, given the circumstances, August and I were officially “off the case.”
But August and I had other ideas.
I took the subway, the subterranean station hot and causing my hair to curl into even tighter ringlets. When the car whooshed into the station, I stepped on, grateful for the blast of air-conditioning. I found a seat easily—it was nearly empty on a Sunday afternoon—and rode it to Greenwich Village. I walked hurriedly to August’s house and decided not to ring the bell. Instead, I walked around the block and found the wrought-iron gate, covered with a trellis of ivy, leading to his garden. Cautiously, I opened the gate. I saw him, feeding the finches, whispering to them. I felt like my insides dropped to the ground, this rush of wanting his arms around me, of wanting everything to be okay.
I think he felt me staring at him, because he turned and looked right at me. He dropped the dish he was cleaning and came to me. I don’t remember running to him, but I know we were together in an instant, my arms around his neck, his mouth on mine.
We kissed so hard, we literally sank to our knees. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I just wanted to kiss him harder. I hadn’t seen him in days, and I surprised myself with the intensity of feeling I had for him. How much I’d missed him in that short time.
“I’m sorry about everything,” he said finally, pulling his mouth from mine and instead pressing it against my ear. “I was worried if you saw your dad that he would somehow talk you out of our being together.”
“No. My father couldn’t talk me out of anything. He tried, for about half a minute,” I said.
“I was worried that you would doubt us—that either my behavior or something he said would make you not believe in us. Make you think that crazy-love always turns spiteful and hateful. That people can’t be together without ruining it.”
“I thought that, too. For a second. Though our going to Paris will . . .” I had a moment of regret. “It’ll definitely make my dad and Harry really angry.”
“We don’t have to go, Calliope. We don’t. Deep down, I feel positive it’s Astrolabe’s book. That’s enough for me.”
“I can’t explain it, but I have to know more about the book. I have to know in my heart that Astrolabe existed and wrote it, and that he somehow survived his parents’ tragedy. That I’ll survive my parents’ insanity. That you will survive your mother’s leaving and your father’s phobias.”
“Callie.” He kissed my neck, and I felt his hands slide slightly into the waistband of my jeans. “I know it’s crazy, but I’m falling for you.”
“Me, too.”
Saying it made sense to me. I wanted to say it. I wanted it to be real.
He pushed my curls back from my face. “I’ve got leads in Paris. This is your last chance. I can go alone and you won’t have to upset Harry. Or maybe you can talk him into it.”
“No. His mind is made up, and so is mine. I’m going. This has been
ours
from the start.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“That settles it then.”
“Who’s going to watch your dad while you’re gone? And the birds and the garden?”
“Well . . . the last two days I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I need to let go a little bit. My father’s got a graduate student. His name’s Khalil. He said he would check on my father every day. Handle the things I do. I’m going with you, Calliope. We’re going to their tomb.”
“Okay,” I said. And even though it was really hot in the garden, I shivered slightly.
Paris.
The secrets of the book.
 
I didn’t get home to Harry’s until almost eleven. He was sitting with Gabe, drinking red wine.
“If it isn’t our wayward niece,” Harry said. “Where have you been? As if I have to ask.”
“I went to see August.”
Harry grinned. “My matchmaking skills remain unsurpassed. I’m assuming your father made it off all right. Otherwise, I know we would have heard. And you’ll be happy to know, on the good-news front, I left you some books on your bed.”
“What about?”
“What do you think? Them. Heloise, Abelard. You may not be going to Paris, but you can read about her. Their letters. You know she was quite racy for her time.”
“Really?”
I sat next to the two of them. I always marveled at how every line on Uncle Harry’s face relaxed when he was around Gabe. They never argued. They still, years later, did little things for each other. Gabe prepared lunch for Harry every day and walked over to the auction house. They ate together and then took a stroll. Harry always laid out Gabe’s orange juice and this pill he took for his cholesterol every day, just so, on the counter. They still left each other these ridiculous love notes on Post-its on the bathroom mirror.
“Yes,” Harry said. “She and Abelard were . . . how shall I put this . . . absolutely naughty in the rectory of a convent.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“No. Everyone thinks this generation is so sex-crazed. Well, they were wild a thousand years ago—absolutely crazy in love. Anyway, I thought you might want to read some more about them.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry about Paris, but we’ll get there eventually.”
The guilt pinged at my heart, but I leaned down to kiss each of them and then went to my room to read about Heloise. Before she entered the convent, her religion was love. She lived and breathed for Abelard, and thought of him even when she was supposed to be praying.
I read their letters—over and over again. Eight of them originally survived, and then a secret cache of letters was found years later. Their passion was woven on the pages, each writing of a love that burned bright. She wrote of Abelard as a blood-red rose. She was his precious jewel.
She said men thought her chaste, but secretly she wanted and longed for her tutor, Abelard, who moved into her home, where they shared their passion while hiding it from her uncle. When Abelard became a hermit, she was relentless in trying to lure him back into society—and back into her life.
Twelve years later, they resumed correspondence. By then, she probed his mind about religious and doctrinal questions, chastising him occasionally for his morose nature. I thought about how serious August was, how super-responsible. Maybe he was a bit like Abelard.
But it also sounded like Abelard went a little crazy. He was paranoid—he had become hated by some of the monks in his order, and he thought they were trying to poison him. Heloise sought his friendship; he sought her wise counsel. The passion had cooled.
Cooled, but I was certain an ember remained. He made it clear—agonizingly clear—all those years later, that he wanted to be buried beside her. To rest forever next to her, side by side, in a way they hadn’t been able to in life.
I wondered about them, the jewel and the rose. I couldn’t imagine any love surviving a lack of communication for twelve years. I couldn’t imagine, now that I was so certain of how I felt about August, going a
day
without seeing him, let alone years. Every time I thought of going back to Boston, it seemed dark and dreary. So how could Heloise be so certain of how she felt? My cell phone rang.
“You there?” August asked when I connected.
“Yeah.”
“I wish you were still here. I miss you.”
“Me, too. I’ve been reading about Heloise. Do you know they were wild before their time?”
He laughed. “Yeah. I’ve been Googling them and checking out their story. And my dad has a few books.”
“What about Astrolabe? Can you imagine being their child? Of this love story that was so powerful, that they were famous—
literally
famous—in their time. And everyone would know. You’d carry this burden of being the child of this tragic love affair. And now your mother’s a nun, and your father’s a hermit. Heck, it makes my parents’ love story sound like a bed of roses. And Astrolabe would grow up knowing that once—for this period of time—they loved each other so much that it was obsession. And what they lost. I mean, if I were him, I would never want to love anyone. It would scare me too much.”
“Or you might be the opposite.”
“How?”
“You’d want to find a love that rivaled that. How many people get to find that kind of love? That insane, risk-everything love? Maybe he would have been thinking that . . . unless it was a passion like theirs, why fall in love? When you have their love affair as your model . . . wouldn’t you want that?”

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