Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [124]
40
Valerie
Valerie can never decide whether New Year’s Eve is more about looking backward or ahead, but this year, both make her think of Nick, both make her equally miserable. She misses him terribly, and is certain she still loves him. But she is angry, too, especially tonight. She feels sure he never confessed a thing to his wife, and can’t shake the romantic, cozy images of the two of them, ushering in the new year with champagne toasts and lingering kisses and grand plans for their future—perhaps a new baby so that Nick can really wipe last year’s slate clean.
At one point, she becomes so convinced that he has forgotten her altogether, that she nearly breaks down and sends him a text, an innocuous one-line happy-new-year greeting, if only to spoil his evening and remind him of what he did.
But she decides against it, both because she is too proud and because she doesn’t really mean it. She doesn’t want his new year to be happy. She wants him to suffer as much as she does. She is ashamed of this, and ponders whether you can truly love someone you wish misery upon. She is not sure of the answer, but decides it doesn’t much matter, because the answer won’t change anything. There is nothing she can do to change anything, she thinks, as she sits down at the kitchen table with Charlie and suggests that they write down resolutions for the coming year.
“What’s a resolution?” Charlie asks, as she slides a sheet of lined yellow notebook paper toward him.
“It’s like a goal... A promise to yourself,” she says.
“Like promising to practice the piano?” he asks, something he hasn’t done much since the accident.
“Sure,” she says. “Or resolving to keep your room clean. Or make new friends. Or work really hard in therapy.”
He nods, gripping his pencil and asking her how to spell therapy. She helps him sound out the word, then writes on her own paper: Eat fewer processed foods, more fruits and vegetables.
For the next thirty minutes, they continue like this, concentrating, spelling, discussing, until they’ve each come up with five resolutions—all practical and predictable and utterly doable. Yet as she tapes their lists to the refrigerator, she knows that the exercise, while productive, was something of a sham—that there is only one resolution that matters to both of them right now: get over Nick.
To that end, she makes the night as fun and festive as possible, playing endless rounds of go fish, watching Star Wars, and letting Charlie stay up until midnight for the first time ever. As the ball drops in Times Square, they drink sparkling cider out of crystal flutes and toss handfuls of confetti that they made with a hole punch and construction paper. Yet all the while, she can feel the hollow, forced joy in her efforts, and worse, she senses it in Charlie, too, especially as she tucks him into bed that night. His expression is too earnest, his hug around her neck too tight, his words too formal as he tells her how much fun he had, actually thanking her.
“Oh, sweetie,” she says, thinking that she must be the only mother in the world who wishes her son would forget to say thank you. “I love spending time with you. More than anything.”
“Me too,” he says.
She pulls the covers up to his chin and kisses both of his cheeks and his forehead. Then she says good night and goes to her own bed, checking her phone one last time before she falls asleep and wakes up to the new year.
***
She has always hated January for all the usual reasons—the postholiday letdown, the short, dark days, and the miserable Boston weather that, despite having never lived elsewhere, she knows she will never get used to. She hates the nor’easter gales, the ankle-deep gray slush, the endless stretches