Gennie didn’t have a black dress with her, so she drove to the hotel and borrowed one of Page’s. It looked a little small, but luckily, it fit. Page gave her a strand of pearls and put her hair into what she termed ‘a power bun’.
“Hey, you look like you’re finally fit for high society,” Page commented.
“As opposed to you?” Gennie said, looking at Page’s reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“I didn’t say you were fit for high society, I said you just look like you are. As long as you look the part, you can BS your way into everything else. Trust me, I know.”
“This is going to be so hard.”
“Tell me about it. I’m not looking forward to it either, but we’ll get through it somehow.”
Page drove Gennie to the funeral home in her black Mercedes. Ben was just getting out of his car when they parked. They entered the funeral parlor together.
As expected, the funeral home seemed to belong in the Victorian era, with elaborately flowered wallpaper, overstuffed chairs and the cloying smell of lilies.
Ben looked devastated when he saw Charlene lying in the casket. She was as white as the satin pillow her head rested on. Gennie noticed her face was fuller and she looked a little younger than the last time she saw her. It was probably because she was wearing makeup and they filled her with embalming fluid. She was wearing a blue floral print dress, and it was so loose on her she looked like a ten-year-old girl playing dress up. Gennie felt sadness rise in her chest. She had so much promise at one time, and now she would never get a chance to have a better life.
While Gennie and Page stood back, Ben walked toward the casket, ignoring the protocol of waiting in line to express sympathy to the family. He kneeled down next to her and put his hand on top of hers. After a few minutes, he returned to Gennie and Page, his eyes red and watering.
“Are you okay?” Gennie asked.
“Sure,” he whispered in reply. “You go ahead.”
Gennie, along with Page, decided to forgo the line also, and approached the casket.
Gennie knelt down first. “Charlene…” she said, “I am so sorry for what happened to you. We may not have been best buddies, but you meant a whole lot to my brother. I hope you find the peace and happiness up there that you couldn’t find down here. I promise we will take care of Lauren for you.”
Page then knelt down. “I’m sorry I wasn’t nicer to you, Charlene. Well, I guess it’s too late to do anything about it now, but I hope you can forgive me. I promise I’ll be a good wife to Foster.”
Then, Page and Gennie joined the sympathy line. Gennie shook hands with members of the Conrad family she had never met and then the last two that she did.
Foster stood up and hugged Gennie.
“Thank you so much for coming,” he said.
“No problem,” she replied. “I’m so sorry about Charlene.”
She then approached Charlene’s mother. Gennie, for some reason, thought she would look the same as she did twenty years ago, but she had changed dramatically. Though she looked stylish in her black suit coat and dress, her once blonde hair was thin and silvery, her alert eyes were now faded, her smooth skin was now as thin as onion paper and instead of the proud posture, she was now slumped over and frail. Gennie thought Addie would be shocked to see her again, but instead she looked at her as if she had been expecting her all along.
“Mrs. Conrad, I am so sorry for what happened to Charlene. Both Ben and I were devastated when we heard the news. I realize we’re not your most favorite people in the world, but we felt it was our duty to come here and say goodbye to Charlene. We promise to do all we can to help Lauren recover.”
She assumed Charlene’s mother would just nod or perhaps shake her hand. Instead, she stood up unsteadily and embraced her.
“I was hoping you would come,” she said, her voice as frail as she was. “Please stay for the whole funeral.”
“All right,” Gennie said, feeling off-kilter. She realized that this was the first time her own mother had held her.
“Thank you,” she replied, one hand holding onto her cane as she sat back down. “I’m inviting everyone back to the house afterwards. I want you and your brother to come too.”
“Oh…okay,” Gennie said. “I’ll tell Ben about it.”
Gennie went to the back to the room where Ben was waiting and told him what happened. To her surprise, Ben sat down. Gennie sat next to him.
Page kissed Foster, hugged Charlene’s mother, then took a seat, where Foster joined her. The service was about an hour. Then everyone left the funeral home and drove to the cemetery.
The burial was the hardest part. Everyone was crying as Charlene was laid to rest, even Page, who hardly ever cried. Gennie felt awful about leaving her when it ended. The wind was very cold and brisk and it was hard to think about Charlene being exposed to the elements. But, in spite of her misgivings, she returned to Page’s car and left for Mrs. Conrad’s house.
Strangely enough, even though Charlene’s mother had changed, her house had not. When she and Page walked through the front door, everything was exactly as she remembered it, except the décor now looked odd and very dated. She went into the dining room, where there was a spread of hors d’oeuvres and canapés, along with coffee, tea and soda.
Gennie figured since she was there, she wanted to get personal matters straightened out once and for all. About an hour later, she approached Addie.
“Uh, is it okay if Ben and I talk to you alone for a moment? We have something to ask you.”
“Oh, all right,” she replied, looking a little nervous. “You can come in my bedroom. Nobody will bother us there.”
Gennie had never seen the Conrad’s bedroom before, but like the rest of house, it looked like it hadn’t been touched since the sixties. Even Mr. Conrad’s glasses and watch were on one of the nightstands and he had been dead for at least ten years.
Charlene’s mother lowered herself wearily on the end of her king-sized bed.
“You can sit down,” she directed them.
Gennie sat on the stool in front of the vanity and Ben sat down on a chair a few feet away.
“Well, what do you want to ask me?”
Gennie pulled the letter out of her purse. She left it in her suitcase ever since she showed it to Ben and she was glad she did.
“Did you write this?”
Addie looked perplexed. She put on her reading glasses and took the letter from Gennie.
She sighed. “Uh, well…”
“Did you write the letter or not?” Ben said stiffly.
“Who gave you this?” Addie asked. She glanced at both of them anxiously.
“Bryan,” Gennie said.
“I suppose he told you everything.”
“No,” Ben replied, hostility now evident in his voice, “we had to find out for ourselves.”
“We thought you were dead,” Gennie explained. “Last year I went back to Alaska to get you and Daddy and bring you both down here. I found Daddy, but I didn’t find you. When I went to confront Bryan about it, he gave me that letter you had written to Daddy.”
“You know, I had no say in what your father told you about me. Obviously, he went to great lengths to cover up the truth. And this letter…”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Ben shouted. “You dumped us like we were garbage! What kind of a mother are you? And the worse part of this is, all this time, while we were mourning your loss, you’re out here raising someone else’s children! You don’t know what we went through after Dad died. It would blow your mind! All the while, you’re here taking care of two perfect refined specimens, the kids you wished you had. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
Addie lowered her head. “I don’t know what to say to that. It’s been forty years…there’s nothing I can do to make things better now. At the time, I loved your father, but I wasn’t happy about the way we were living. I suppose I thought we could do be
tter. I hate to say it, but when I found out I was pregnant with both of you, I cried. I really wanted to get an abortion, but your father was against it. I knew I should have been happy when you were both born, but I was more miserable than ever. I guess it was the hormones. What do they call it now…uh, post-partum depression? I wasn’t exactly thinking straight at the time, but I knew if I had to spend another day in that glorified igloo, I was going to hang myself.
Trust me, I had no intention of raising other people’s children. I wanted to be a movie star, you know. I was a little old to be starting out, but I still had the looks. Well, on the way to Hollywood, I met Loren. I felt so sorry for him because his wife had died the year before. We started dating, and I never made it to Hollywood, unfortunately. But I had my catering business and I was happy with that until the depression came back. Of course, you know about everything else, and here we are now.”
After a very long silence, Ben spoke.
“So, what are we supposed to do about this, now that you’ve totally screwed up our lives?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can start fresh. The whole family knows that you are my children. Foster has told me a lot about the both of you. Perhaps we can have a get-together sometime, in order to get to know each other better. I heard you’re both married and have children. I’d like to meet them. Hopefully, I can be a better grandmother to them than I was a mother to you.”
Ben’s face was bright red and he looked like he was about to explode. Addie looked over at him sadly.
“You have every right to be furious, Ben. What I did was wrong. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I can imagine that it was trying. If I could go back and start all over, I would not have left your father.”
Ben’s rage seemed to die down. Gennie had to admit it was hard to be mad at someone who looked like a kindly old grandmother.
“It would be nice to get know you,” Gennie said. “I would really like to get together sometime.”
Ben stood up and sighed tiredly. “Gennie can do whatever she wants, but…I have to think about it.”
Chapter 94: June 23, 1990
What They Left Behind Page 95
