“The Waiter” (Conclusion)

The widow’s back was to him as she puttered about making tea. François sat straight with his hands on his knees, politely resisting the urge to inspect his shabby surroundings. He had only visited once or twice since becoming her neighbour. Bringing Odette to stay had encouraged the old dear to leave her musty rooms and rejoin society, such as it was in this small company. A passing acquaintance had grown into friendship—more for Odette than François, though he had appreciated Mme. Bernier’s generosity from the beginning. Anxious that he would starve for leaving his mother, she had brought him leftovers every evening, setting them on a tray outside his door to await his return from work. The soup was always thin and the bread inevitably stale, but the dishes were dutifully washed and returned each day, set on their tray outside her door when he left for work. He did not know how long he had been in residence before they had actually spoken to each other.

She brought empty cups and a biscuit tin to the table. “There was an accident at the factory,” she said out of nowhere. “An explosion of some sort, they never did tell me exactly how it happened. They brought M. Bernier to the hospital first, of course, but the hospital sent him home to die. The doctor said it was more merciful to let him perish in his own bed. I was distraught. I am no nurse. I had no idea how to tend a dying man. He was angry, I was angry. It was a mess! A mess,” she repeated, shaking her head at the memory. She put her hands to her cheeks and continued to shake her head.

François fetched the teapot. He poured her cup first, then pried off the lid of the biscuit tin. He was astonished to find it stuffed full of samples from the boulangerie: crunchy hazelnut fingers and sugar-sprinkled discs, cream-filled cones and tiny almond tarts.

“Stéphanie,” said Mme. Bernier, though he had already deduced as much. She tapped his arm and indicated a piped shortbread dipped in chocolate. “A man won’t go hungry with a wife who bakes.”

“Do you bake, Madame?”

“I did,” she replied. “My plum clafoutie was famous on our street. I made it for every occasion. I even made it for M. Bernier’s funeral. He preferred apple, but he was not there to complain. I was still angry, you see. Even after he accepted his fate, I kept on—for his sake, I believed, but it was really for my own. I was angry at the doctors and the factory manager, and at God. Oh, I was angry at God. I was furious with Him, absolutely enraged. Do you think God cared? Do you think He suffered for my anger? He did not—but M. Bernier did. His last words were a plea, not to God, but to me. ‘Forgive me, Marie,’ he said, as if death was his wish, his fault.

“That was twenty years ago, young man. For twenty years, I have regretted that my husband died begging my forgiveness. He spent his last days fighting my anger when he should have been nurtured by my love.” Mme. Bernier paused for a trembling sip of tea. She swallowed with an effort and all but waved her wizened finger under her guest’s nose. “If you love her, François, love her. Save your anger until she is gone.”

“What then, Madame? What do I do with it then?”

The old dear sighed and stared sadly into the leaves at the bottom of her teacup. “Let it go, young man. Forgive, and let it go.”

* * *

“You’ll take care of her, won’t you?” Odette asked. She had slept well past noon, well past his shift at the boulangerie, almost well into twilight. She looked no stronger for the rest, and on his way up the stairs, he had heard her coughing before he reached the top.

He managed a smile that was not wholly false. “We shall take care of each other—won’t we, Marie?”

“I’ll be the envy of Paris,” Mme. Bernier replied with a wink.

Odette laughed. It was a mistake, for her breath caught in her throat and became a volley that she promptly tried to catch in her cupped hands. The cough had radically changed. Now it was deep and hoarse and racking, the blood occasionally accompanied by small clots, as if bits of lung were escaping her chest with every heave.

Mme. Bernier passed a handkerchief to François. He sat with an arm about Odette’s shoulders, waiting for the fit to subside before he dried her mouth and reached to wipe her hands. She curled them into fists atop the blanket and pressed her head hard into his shoulder. She was crying. “I want to be at the Moulin; I want to dance!”

He hushed her in a soft murmur, having learned that keeping his voice low eventually calmed her. More and more often, a moment’s hysteria erupted in the wake of an attack. It might be brief, but brief was no less violent and her strength was better employed in the space between bouts.

She fell to weeping in his arms, her sobs mingling with ill-suppressed spasms until his patience won out and she went lax against him. He stroked her hair with his fingertips. Mme. Bernier relieved him of the handkerchief and applied it to the task herself. She took special care to polish Odette’s wedding ring, sliding it along the finger to clean beneath it. François noticed that it went with alarming ease; she was skin and bone in his embrace, but he hadn’t thought a hand so slender could lose that much substance.

“I want to dance. François, I want to dance.”

He brushed his lips over her hair. “Don’t you hear the music?”

“I do,” said Mme. Bernier.

François smiled at the old dear. “A waltz, I think.”

Mme. Bernier began to hum in three-quarter time. Her voice was creaky with disuse and cracked on the higher notes. François, recognizing the tune, joined her. His voice was better. Stronger and more resonant; the pleasant tone of a natural tenor.

Odette whispered. “I hear it.” She plucked excitedly at his shirtfront. “I hear it, François!”

“Then dance with me, demoiselle.”

“Yes, oh, yes!”

He stood. He lifted her from the bed. She slid her arms about his neck and closed her eyes. Mme. Bernier played the concertina. François played the violin. He waltzed about the tiny apartment with his wife cradled in his arms, spinning and swirling in a Sunday scene of watercolour silks and black bowler hats, of white-aproned waiters and cut-glass claret. He closed his eyes as he moved through the steps, remembering.

The sun warm on his back. The melody soaring above the rhythm. Skirts brushing against his trouser legs, rasping as they went. The lingering taste of coffee on his tongue. The bliss in Odette’s smile when she tipped her face toward his. Her smile changing; melting, her eyes darkening as her gaze fell into his. “I love you, François.”

The violin ceased. The concertina became the wheezy echo of an old woman’s breath. The sun went down and bitterness formed at the back of his tongue. The weight in his arms was no weight at all and yet his chest ached as if he carried a block of stone.

He stopped circling the room. Slowly, he opened his eyes. Odette’s head lay in the hollow of his shoulder, her curls tumbling over his sleeve. He did not look down. He looked to Mme. Bernier instead, seeing the future in her hands pressed to her lips and her eyes meeting his through a thickening veil of tears.

“Did you hear what she said, Marie? Did you hear her say she loved me?”

The old dear nodded quickly, spilling tears over her cheeks and between the fingers of her clasped hands.

He did not ask again.

* * *

Months later, after Odette had been laid to rest in the churchyard of her childhood and her father had invited her husband to supper, he found the basket beneath the bed. A dropped cufflink had bounced from sight, and on hands and knees, François reached into the shadows to feel for it. Brushing his fingertips against something else, he closed his hand and sat back on his heels to inspect his discovery.

It was a length of bright green wool, hopelessly snarled in a brave attempt at knitting that measured at least a yard when stretched. Mystified, he poked his fingers through the larger holes and marveled at the knots in between.

“I’m off to the church, François,” Mme. Bernier announced from his door. “Don’t tarry too long; you mustn’t be late for your own wedding.”

He turned. “Is this yours, Marie?”

The old dear, dressed in her Sunday best though it was the day before, looked stricken. “Oh, my.” She ventured a few steps toward him, wringing her hands. “Oh, my,” she repeated.

François smiled wistfully. “She couldn’t knit, either, could she?”

“She tried,” Mme. Bernier sighed. “Night after night, I sat with her and showed her the stitches, but she never quite understood them. It was meant to be a scarf. She wanted to make it for your birthday.”

“Today is my birthday,” François murmured, looking at the wool in his hands.

“Is it?”

He nodded.

“Well, then.” The old dear fell speechless. François continued to study the impossible wreck of knotted yarn, and a radiant smile slowly formed as it dawned on him that she had loved him after all.

It was the colour of absinthe.

THE END

 May 23, 2016