This Too Shall Pass Read Free Page A

Despite only being five years old, he’s so staunchly convinced that it’s true, he sometimes makes me wonder. From the height of my forty years, I may have known you infinitely more closely, but in the latter days I think the children were the only ones able to work the miracle of accessing you, seeing through the haze of illness to face the person you had been. They alone were truly caring and clever enough to resuscitate you. They are the lucky ones, they never hated you for a minute—I can’t imagine a better place for you. Now he draws you in his pictures flying over our heads, a blend of teasing witch and awkward fairy godmother, not very different from the way you were in real life.
    They just got back from spending a few days with Guillem, the father of my elder son. They’re suntanned, a little taller, and salad-laden, with tomatoes and cucumbers fresh from Guillem’s garden. I always accept these offerings of fruits and vegetables with a show of enthusiasm and end up throwing them all in the trash with the first insect that rears its ugly head when I’m cleaning them, especially given my scant interest in all things agrarian.
    —Guillem, the only apples for me are the kind Snow White eats. I don’t like organic apples because every time I go to take a bite, I feel like I’m about to decapitate a worm. It makes me queasy. Get it?
    —Sure, so you prefer poisoned apples, huh? Well, never fear, we’ll bring a few next time—they might just do the trick.
    He acts out the gesture of cutting his throat, with his eyes closed and tongue lolling, sending the children into a fit of giggles. They adore his mixture of silliness and common sense, how he can bring the events of the French Revolution to life, and then run out to the garden and plant tomatoes.
    Guillem is an archaeologist, a drinker, he’s cultivated, caring, and intelligent, a Catalan through and through, considerate, a cheat, strong, cagey, generous, a lot of fun, and very stubborn. His motto is “I’m not in the mood for kicking up shit” and except for the years when we were together, when his mood seemed perfect for kicking up a lot of shit, he pretty much adheres to it. We have a love-hate relationship. I love him and he pretends to hate me all the time. But his hatred brings more good things than the love of most of the people I’ve known. He kept Patum, my mother’s dog, since she’d been ours for a few years before we separated. We left her in my mother’s care once to go on a trip, and when I went to pick her up, she told me she was keeping her, that Patum would be better off with her mother and sister. So you kept our dog, Mom. You made her yours, like you did with everything you loved, with everyone, you took their lives away from them, and gave each one another life back, much larger and more carefree and fun than anything they’d known before or after. But it came with a price, it meant living under your relentless scrutiny, like prisoners of a love that as you yourself described would never, ever, in a million years, be blind. Except for the dogs, maybe, but only them. Patum outlived her mother and her sister. I knew the end was approaching the day you let us take her back and there was no argument about how she couldn’t stay with you anymore. If you were willing to let your dog go, you were willing to let everything go. We’d been in a free fall for two years, and the bottom of the precipice was nigh. That afternoon, with your hand still within my reach, I initiated the process to have you buried at the cemetery in Port Lligat. Patum came to your funeral, the only dog there. Guillem dressed her collar with a black ribbon—the kind of idea that would occur to him—and she behaved like a perfect lady. She didn’t sprawl with her legs out everywhere like she usually does, but sat up solemnly and primly in the shade sporting her black ribbon. Guillem wore his old jeans and a shirt, ironed especially for the occasion, that