SAUDADE

Georgie had the restless energy and unapologetic enthusiasm Lennox had misplaced when her mom died. She’d only known Georgie a month, but the ease between them was like finding long-lost family. Lennox often forgot they had a twenty-year age gap. The older woman had swiftly taken Lennox under her wing while also becoming the best friend she wasn’t looking for. After renting a house with the $20,000 from her mother’s life insurance, Lennox had no idea her only neighbor would become a constant in her life. She’d been so intentional about keeping the world at arm’s length, but Georgie was a force. She was fireworks and sunshine, and the dark cloud that was Lennox ebbed with every interaction.

Grief was a different story in the way it recognized itself in another person. Georgie’s face, when Lennox caught her looking at old pictures, was a mirror to her own. But this person still took up space in Georgie’s home in a loving way. She and Georgie had been together five short years, but Lennox knew from her stories they’d met long before that.

“In some ways, we were still strangers to each other. She was fifteen years older than me. She’d had her own family once. I never told her much about mine. It’s like we created this tiny, safe bubble and bringing in the past would make it disappear.” Georgie’s family never accepted her sexuality, and so, for too many years Georgie couldn’t either. “Nearly twenty years I loved in secret and denial. I was 38 when I met Grace again, and I finally stopped being ashamed. She was my freedom and happiness for five amazing years.”

“What happened?” Lennox could easily imagine what it felt like to be given a second chance and have it snatched back.

Georgie’s sigh was like preparing for death all over again. “A heart attack. A stupid, fucking heart attack.”

“Why is life so shit?”

“You can’t spend your days expecting an answer to that, sweetheart.” Lennox never had a mother in her life, and whatever held her hostage inside loosened its grip whenever Georgie was affectionate towards her.

“Will you tell me about her?” Georgie asked gently, understanding why she’d asked the question. She knew Lennox’s mom left when she was young, and they’d recently connected before she suddenly passed away.

“There’s not much to tell or show. Her name was Ellis. I have one picture of her. When I was two, she told my dad she was leaving. I don’t actually know the right story to tell, but he says she left with a woman and wanted nothing to do with us. Her version is he knew about her sexuality and agreed to marry her so she could live how she wanted, and her family would never know. I don’t think she even took his last name. His only stipulation was he wanted a kid. That’s why I even exist. And my dad was the one that wouldn’t let her see me.”

Georgie was careful with her response. Though she could understand both sides, she wasn’t sure which parent Lennox held a grudge for more. “That’s a lot of pain between two people who shared a child. Regardless of who was telling the truth, they unknowingly gave you all their pain, too. And you’re still carrying it on top of the other shit life threw at you.” The expression tripped across Lennox’s face, allowing the sadness to surface briefly. She wore her anger so well, like a favorite shirt she refused to take off. It wasn’t that long ago that Georgie had been wearing the same armor.

“The fucked up thing is, I’ll never know the truth. They both literally took it with them to their graves.”

Georgie couldn’t stop her tears, but kept herself from hugging Lennox, knowing she wasn’t comfortable with affection. Georgie only held back when they were having a heart-to-heart. She understood how overwhelming one could get. She was also fully aware of the trust Lennox had to share these stories.

“Did she leave a will? Anything?”

Lennox scrunched her face up. “Could I really trust her version, though? I mean, despite my dad keeping her from me, I feel like she could’ve tried harder to be in my life if she’d really wanted to. I don’t know,” Lennox mumbled, picking at her shorts. “Maybe I don’t want to know the truth. I can just believe whatever my imagination comes up with that I like best.”

“It won’t always hurt like this.”

The sarcasm came off Lennox effortlessly. “I’ll just get used to it?”

Georgie gave her a look, disapproving and pity. “It will get better, Lennox.”

“How can you say that? You’ve had just as much shit happen to you.”

“And that doesn’t prove it’s ok to just breathe and let life happen?”

“It proves it’s always gonna be like this. Because that’s the kind of people we are.” Lennox gave a heavy shrug that Georgie felt on her own shoulders. “The bad will always outweigh the good. That’s what you’re proof of.”

Pity lingered in Georgie’s eyes. “We can stay bitter and pessimistic at all that life has taken from us. If that’s what you want, Lennox, that can be how you exist. I’ve been there, I know how safe it feels. But nothing feels as powerful as telling life to go fuck itself when you decide to keep looking for the good. Because it’s still out there, I promise.”

They shared a sad, fleeting smile before Georgie couldn’t take it. She pulled Lennox to her fiercely, relishing at how relaxed Lennox felt each time she held her. She still had so much love bursting from her and it had to go somewhere. Lennox was just going to have to get used to being the recipient.

“You are an incredibly brave woman, Lennox. I can’t speak for your mama, but if you were my kid, I’d be so fucking proud of you.” She planted a loud smack on Lennox’s face, and the laughter she was rewarded with was like pennies in her pocket.

“Stop, mom, you’re embarrassing me,” Lennox played along, wiping her cheek dramatically.

Georgie took it all in, these moments she was seized by a maternal connection she’d never yearned for. Having Lennox around brought realizations of all the hypotheticals she’d been too scared to consider with Grace, as if asking for anything more than what they’d been given was being too selfish. “I love you, kid. There’s a reason you’re in my life, and I’m going to keep you.”

“Love you, too, Georgie.” She couldn’t say I’ve never felt like I belonged to anyone, but I feel like I belong to you. And it feels both safe and thrilling.

...

Lennox wasn’t sure what she expected when she finally showed Georgie the picture of her mom. It certainly wasn’t for her to turn white and stumble backwards into the bed behind her. Panicked, Lennox was sure something was about to take away another person important to her.

“Georgie, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”

The vulnerability in Lennox’s voice made Georgie come to. Still, she couldn’t find the words. Instead, she clutched the picture to her and wept, reaching for Lennox.

“I don’t understand. What’s the matter?” Georgie’s grip was frightening, and it forced Lennox to kneel in front of her.

Georgie’s voice cracked with her next word.

“Grace.”

One hand gripped the photograph to her chest, the other on Lennox’s face. Confusion sat between them as Lennox watched Georgie transform in front of her, sobbing uncontrollably. The space around them shifted, all sorts of agony and angst colliding. When Georgie finally made a move, it was to simply reach over to her bedside table.

“Lennox, I don’t know how this happened,” she started as she pulled out a small, black notebook. “But sweetheart - this belonged to your mother.” She opened it, as if she knew Lennox would be too stunned to do anything. Looking back was the very picture Georgie held to her frantically beating heart.

“What the FUCK.” Lennox backed away quickly, her mind moving a fraction slower. “You knew her? You were together? The last five years...” Lennox can’t put it all together. “No. That’s not right. My mom died in a car accident. You said your girlfriend had a heart attack.”

Georgie nodded, still rooted to the bed. “The heart attack caused the accident. Sweetheart, I’m trying to make sense of this, same as you. I had no idea about Grace’s family. She wouldn’t talk to me about it. I never could’ve imagined I’ve spent the last month watching over her daughter. Please don’t be mad at me. I swear I had no idea.” Her earlier reaction proved this, but Georgie’s visible torment at Lennox being upset with her was somehow more devastating.

“I’m not mad, Georgie. I don’t know what I am, but it’s not anger.” They held each other, lifelines to the person they’d viewed so differently. They didn’t know it, but it was all written in there, questions they didn’t know to ask, answers that would ease the anguish. The small, black notebook had fallen under the bed at some point, waiting to be discovered when Georgie dropped her phone one morning. She hadn’t recognized the photo, having never seen it before. When she’d realized it was Grace’s journal, she’d tucked it away, not quite ready to read her thoughts.

It seemed there would be no better moment than now.

The second page revealed one answer, and that was Grace’s full name: Ellis Grace Hirsch. Random thoughts jotted down, words and their meanings scribbled in between quotes and musings took up the pages before Grace’s entries. There were no dates, but it was easy to know who or what Grace was writing about. Georgie read them all aloud, never once trying to hide her reactions. She cried, laughed, and blushed. They captivated Lennox when they weren’t making her uncomfortable. The notebook was like an enchanting love story being read to her at bedtime. For the first time, she ached for Georgie, the enormity of the love she’d lost so obvious to her now. It didn’t belittle the love her mom had unquestionably held for her, coming out of the pages in words she’d always anticipated but never expected to hear. The picture Grace kept of herself had been taken when she’d found out she was pregnant with Lennox.

“I always thought she regretted me.”

Georgie had never heard Lennox’s voice so soft. “She had many regrets, sweetheart, but you weren’t one of them.”

“Whenever I dream about her, she’s always angry at me.”

“That’s not your mama in those dreams. It’s your father’s pain.”

The shadows traded positions as the light left one window and appeared through another. Lennox had fallen asleep, heavy and content against Georgie’s shoulder as she read every page over and over. One entry she kept coming back to, reading under her breath until it finally made sense.

The world is full of kids who don’t know any better because of the stories they’ve inherited. They watch them and say that anger doesn’t suit them until I say, “That’s not anger. It’s grief.”

It happened before she could fully experience it, but Georgie knew what she’d felt. Grace smiling over them, the woman she’d loved desperately and their daughter, the one Georgie sheltered without a second thought. Overwhelmed, she brought Lennox closer, her warmth a comfort she’d lost with Grace. How right she’d been in sensing that this wounded young woman belonged to her, like a gift Grace had sent her when she’d been alive, only it was lost in the mail and had finally been delivered.

The last entry was one word and its meaning.

Saudade: a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant or that has been loved and then lost; the love that remains.