“An oak maybe?” Petra twirled her spoon around in her hands. “He was so strong. He always seemed immovable to me.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye, singly delicate as it traversed her cheek. Bridget studied her perfect hair, her lined lips, her spidery made-up eyelashes, and couldn’t help but wonder how she did it. How she got up every day, made salon and nail appointments. Why didn’t it all feel pointless and stupid? The only possible conclusion was that Bridget loved Holden more than Petra did.
“Plant a maple tree,” Bridget said wearily. Petra looked surprised because she was. She had no idea that once Bridget and Holden stayed at some bed-and-breakfast in Vermont, the home of maple syrup. Holden, in his infinite enthusiasm for almost everything to the point of annoyance, bubbled over the way maple syrup, real maple syrup, tasted different from any syrup he’d ever had in his entire life. Bridget hadn’t thought about that trip in a while, but nothing was more classic Holden than his ridiculous excitement over nothing more than a breakfast condiment. And it was just a thing, a small thing in the grand scheme of all things, but it suddenly felt incredibly important that they plant a maple tree that could be tapped. There were probably different kinds of maple trees, but Bridget didn’t know, so she’d have to do research. Or someone would.
Petra regarded her with one eyebrow and a dubious look. “This is Pennsylvania.”
“If you plant a maple tree that can make syrup, I will come to your memorial.”
“I was hoping we could plan it together, dear,” Petra said quietly.
Everyone grieved differently, of course. Bridget realized that Petra’s grief looked like fund-raisers, ribbon cuttings, golf-clapping crowds, and planted trees. It was an admirable grief. Bridget knew that people in Mt. Oanoke thought she held too tightly to her sadness, wrapped herself in it like a security blanket, hot and sweating.
“Tell me what you want me to do.” Bridget sighed and Petra smiled, leaned forward, and patted her hand.
?????
School was opened again, teachers and kids shuttling between classes like nothing had happened. Bridget told Nate about the tree and the memorial on Monday during their break period. He’d popped in, a few days a week, to chat, catch up, stretched out in the front-row desk, his feet resting up on the desk next to him, crossed at the ankles. Sometimes he gave her leftover bagels, hard from the morning but still soft and doughy in the middle. They’d tear them apart while they talked, her elbows resting on half-graded tests scattered all over her desk.
Nate bought bagels from the bakery on the corner to keep on his desk. When she asked why, he gave her a funny look, his head turned sideways, his mouth twisting. “Half these kids don’t eat breakfast, Bridge. The rich parents are gone by 5 a.m., trying to beat the bridge and tunnel traffic. The old mill families, well, half of them can’t even afford the weekly groceries.” Nate believed he could rescue the whole bright world.
He had long legs and big feet, awkward as an adolescent but with thick thighs and a burgeoning middle that Bridget thought was adorable, but mostly in the way he was newly aware of it, his palms perpetually smoothing the front of his shirt down. She’d always thought it strange that she and Nate were friends first, instantly, the way kids are in elementary school because you both like banana fluff sandwiches or wear matching purple socks, but she’d never felt a thing for him outside of friendship. Once, Holden had asked her in his easy, open way if she’d ever fantasized about Nate and she’d burst out laughing because the idea was so out there, so ludicrous. Holden defended him at the time: he’s a good-looking guy, charming, funny. These things were all true, but Nate was firmly slotted in the brother or close cousin category. Even in her most private moments, Bridget couldn’t imagine kissing him. Holden thought she was lying, covering up for any seedling attraction because men and women cannot be friends, and nothing Bridget could say seemed to assuage him. It would be natural, he insisted, people fantasize, that’s what they do. Until Bridget had narrowed her eyes at him and asked him point blank if he had a thing for Alecia. Blond, organized, angular, type-A Alecia, and Holden snorted a laugh through his nose. There were no two women further apart than Bridget and Alecia.
Women can tell these things, too. Bridget strongly suspected that Nate held no spark for her, either. He liked his women gangly, and Bridget was all soft curves and curls. Or at least, she used to be.
“I think a tree is a great idea. Holden loved being outside.” Nate clasped his fingers behind his head and leaned back.
This was true; he was a hiker, a woods walker, and the twenty-five hundred square miles of state game lands surrounding Mt. Oanoke more than scratched his itch to commune with nature. She told Nate about the maple tree idea and he laughed. “He even gave us one of those small bottles. He gave one to everyone, remember? Nurses, other doctors. He must have bought, what, fifty of them?”
The real answer was thirty-seven, because it was all they had in the store, and they were four dollars apiece.
Bridget feigned laughter because she couldn’t do this thing that seemed to come so easily to Nate and Petra, this talking about Holden, remembering him, with a faraway look and crinkled eyes. He still felt too alive. Nate stood up, came behind her, and rested a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“It gets better, Bridge. I miss him, too.”
Bridget wanted to say not like me, where the sadness felt interminable and resolute, like a living, breathing person had moved in and made himself comfortable, an overstayed houseguest. Instead, she did what she always did when people offered their “advice”: she nodded and gave a smile, an I can put on a brave face smile, because people want you to rally. They want to think they’re the ones who talked you out of grief, as if grief were something you could be talked out of like a bad pantsuit in a discount dressing room.
The bell rang and Nate stood aside, his hand still resting between her shoulder blades while students shuffled in. Lucia halted in the doorway, staring hard at Nate and Bridget, shifting her backpack from one shoulder to the other while Nate gave Bridget a quick smile and headed to the door.
“What are you doing here?” Lucia smiled, but her eyes were narrowed, and Bridget stopped shuffling papers long enough to watch the exchange.
“Are you in creative writing this period, Lucia?” Nate’s voice was friendly, teacherlike, almost condescending.