Dante Johnson's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The olive tree took root over the following weeks. Dante visited it each morning. He told Charity about his mother, his childhood, even the person he pushed away years ago. He held nothing back. But one worry stayed. He had told her everything, and yet he had never once given her a true romantic gesture. He feared she doubted him. He feared she thought he only leaned on her because he was grieving. One evening he said it plainly. "You've carried me for months. I've given you words. I've never given you anything that proves this is real." Charity set down her coffee. "Dante. I don't need a—" "I know." He stopped her. "That's the problem. I've never done a single romantic thing in my life. I don't know how to start without it sounding fake." She watched his hands. They were still. "Then don't perform," she said. "Just do the truest thing you can think of." He thought about it all night. The truest thing was not flowers. It was the tree. It was his mother. It was the place he came to speak the things he had never spoken. The next morning he walked Charity out to the olive tree. He took her hand there, at the roots where Ruth's ashes lay. "This is where I finally told the truth," he said. "I want to tell one more. I love you. Not because I'm sad. Because you stayed when I gave you every reason to go." His voice held. "Marry me. Here. With her." Charity's eyes filled. For once she had no quick words. She drummed her fingers once against his, then went still. "Yeah," she said. "That's the whole idea." They planned a small wedding at the town's old church. The building had tall windows and colored glass that threw light across the floor. Dante asked the mayor to officiate, since the town had no other soul who could. Bryan Garrison agreed without much warmth. He was the man who moved to town years ago and ran it like a project. He studied Dante the way he studied everyone, measuring. "You sure about this," he said. Not a question. "Weddings are easy. Staying is the hard part." "I know the hard part," Dante said. "I've done nothing but the hard part." Garrison almost smiled. "Then I'll keep it short. Short weddings. Those are the real ones." A year passed. Charity painted again, finally, canvases full of the fire-colored light she had crossed the whole country chasing. She found it, in the end, at home. On the wedding day the church filled with the few friends the town had given them. Light came through the tall windows and lay across the aisle in bands of red and gold. Dante waited at the front in a dark suit. For the first time the clothes were not a trick. They did not hide anything. There was nothing left to hide. Charity walked toward him. He watched her hands, the old habit, searching for stillness under pressure. Her hands were steady. They had always been steady. Garrison kept it short, as promised. He spoke a few dry lines, then nodded at Dante to say his own. Dante did not pull out a card. He looked at her and said what was true. "I poured two cups of tea every night for a woman who didn't exist yet. Then you moved in and noticed the second cup. You've been noticing me ever since." His throat tightened and he let it. "I spent my whole life keeping the sorrow in. You're the one who got it out. I'm not sad anymore. I'm just yours." Charity wiped her face with the back of her hand. "That'll do," she said, and laughed through the tears. Garrison closed the book. "Then it's done." They married under the colored light, and when it was over Dante drove his wife home to the house next door to where she'd started. The olive tree stood in the yard, taller now, its silver leaves turning in the wind. Dante stopped and looked at it. He had carried his grief alone for six months, then let one person see it, tend it, and finally outlast it. The wound he never spoke of had a place now. So did he. He went inside and poured two cups of tea. This time both of them were for someone there to drink it.