Forgetting Francesca

Chapter 14

"So, you're ready to talk?" Aafa braces her hands on the table and looks at me gently. She doesn't say it unkindly, or even remotely rudely. It's purely for my benefit, it seems.

"Very ready, I promise." I respond evenly, folding my hands on my lap. I'm really freaking nervous and worried that I'll break down, but I know that I'm finally ready. I guess it takes a little pain to realize that you need to be sad to heal.

"Let's start at the beginning then."

So I did.

~~~~

When I finish, down the last detail on her eyes and her laugh and her movement, Aafa stares at me carefully. I had tried to get everything in, like her eyes and the golden layers within the hazel, how her hair was too curly to brush. How her smile was even and perfect, and even how she walked. How she made me feel was something different than anything I'll offer feel. She made me feel like I was everything, even when I put her soul over mine, even when I convinced myself that I was nothing because she was my everything, she filled me up. How is it possible for any living being to do that? I wrote a short description of her in my notebook once, and I still have it memorized.

My heart is beating so strongly and so colourfully in my chest, and now I finally know the musical veins well, like a familiar stranger in a crowded street. It's because of her. How a girl can make my head so light, my soul so colourful? I didn't know it was possible, and I have forgotten how vibrant being in love is. She is my homecoming, and if anything, my heart belongs to her and her alone. 

I recited that description at one point to Aafa, who had smiled when I was finished. Weirdly enough, no one else had ever heard those words of mine before, I felt it only fitting that Aafa would hear them first.

"You loved her so much," she says after a moment. I nod quietly, feeling clean and not quite free but...open. "How do you feel when you think about her?" Aafa responds to my nod, leaning forward curiously.

I sort through my emotions and pick one out. "Empty. Like there's something that should be here."

Aafa nods solemnly and talks me through it. It couldn't have been that easy to forget her, and I say so.

"Why would you want to forget her?"

"Because I don't want to feel like I'm always waiting for someone." I respond shortly, surprising myself. I never even know the reason until now, which scares me. How could anyone want to do something without knowing why?

"Maybe you'll always wait for her, Marcy. But forgetting her will never help, not with this. You forget that she almost made the same mistake with her brothers. If you died, would you want her to bury her feelings and drown herself in guilt and false happiness? Or accept that you're gone and move on with you in her heart?"

I wait for a moment, picturing Francesca in her bed, her unwashed hair and her dull eyes. The way she barely looked at me. And where she was now, in the ground with her hands crossed over her locket, wearing a floral pattern dress. Her hair would have faded into that grey I see in movies, it would have lost the soft texture, the waves, and it would probably now be the wiry texture.

"She would have wanted me to be happy, Aafa. She remembered and look where that got her."

"She was depressed, was she not?" Aafa responds, and she leans forward with her eyebrows lingering around her hairline. I nod curtly, I'm not in the mod to think about it.

"Maybe she ended up where she did because of her depression. She needed help, Marcy. And you helped her. Now you need help, and I think she could help you too, if you let yourself think about her."

"I'm done thinking. I think too much, I feel too much. I just need a break."

Aafa only nods.

"I understand, Marcy."

"How?" I stand up and look at her, and I fear that my anger is boiling over again. 

She looks at me with the same calmness, those steady dark eyes stripping my soul bare. I know what she was thinking, but I never expected her response.

"My sister and my best friend were killed in 9/11. They were coming to visit me when I was writing my novel in some dingy apartment downtown NYC. They were on the plane that crashed into the twin towers." It's the first time I've ever heard Aafa sound less than sure of herself. "I know the pain well. I know your frustration and desperate isolation well, and I can promise you that detaching yourself from her memory will never help."

I stay silent long after that.