When she and Eitan arrived at her father’s house in Lexington that morning, it was as though showing up to a distant relative’s house—an aunt and uncle she sees once in a while at holidays and family gatherings. Tanya attempted to hold it together, but when Simone tried to hug her, murmuring something sympathetic, Tanya pulled away from her stepmother, disgusted by the smell of Rose Noir, the sound of Simone’s voice, the way her stepmother had worn her hair that day, clipped back with a tortoiseshell barrette.
Simone had made a small noise—shock or distress—and Jonathan had quietly suggested she wait inside.
“I can’t look at her right now,” Tanya told her father, and Jonathan had said he understood.
Nessa was the only person Tanya had wanted to see.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Tanya whispers to Nessa that night in bed.
“Me neither,” Nessa whispers back.
“I’d kill myself,” Tanya says. For so long Tanya has been scared of turning into her mother, but now that her mother is gone, Tanya feels unhinged, free-floating. She feels that she barely knows herself.
Nessa turns over and looks at her. In the dark, her sister’s eyes glint. “Don’t, Tanya,” she says. “Promise me.”
“I won’t,” Tanya says. “I promise. You too.”
“I promise,” says Nessa.
“I can’t even look at Simone.”
Nessa nods. “Don’t punish yourself by cutting yourself off from her.”
“It’s not that I’m punishing myself,” Tanya says. “I feel guilty.”
“Guilty about what?” asks Nessa.
Tanya pauses. She wonders how she could possibly explain to Nessa everything she feels guilty about.
“I know you guys are close,” Nessa offers. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“I’m not any closer to her than I am to you or Mom. She’s more of a friend. It’s something totally different.”
“I know,” Nessa says.
“She’s never going to be a mom to me. She never was one and she never will be.” Tanya can feel herself start to cry again.
“I know,” Nessa says. “It’s okay to be close to her. It’s a good thing.”
It’s a lie, though. Tanya has fantasized about having Simone for a mother ever since she was in high school.
Tanya allows Nessa to put her arms around her. For a few minutes they lie quietly, listening to the house hum. Eitan is downstairs sleeping on the pull-out couch and Ben’s asleep in his bedroom next door. The master bedroom is at the end of the hall. Tanya’s been inside only a handful of times, usually to get toilet paper from underneath the bathroom sink, or to use the full-length mirror on Simone’s closet door.
She imagines knocking on their bedroom door, Simone opening it, wearing her pajamas, something expensive and feminine. Would Simone take her in her arms? Would they crawl in bed together? No, of course not. They hug but never for more than a few seconds, and always with space between their bodies. They’ve sat on a bed together, but never under the covers and never lying down. When Tanya was a girl, Lorraine used to sleep with her in the bottom bunk on nights she didn’t want to sleep alone. Tanya used to resent her mother for those nights. “It wasn’t normal,” she remembers complaining to a Smith friend. “She had no boundaries.”
On the nightstand Nessa’s phone vibrates and Nessa untangles herself from Tanya to reach for it.
“Who is it?” Tanya asks, though she can tell by the expression on Nessa’s face that it’s Henry.
“Henry,” Nessa answers.
“What’d he say?”
“How’s it going.”
“What are you going to say back?”
“Nothing.” Nessa puts her phone back on the nightstand.
“How was he last night?”
“He was good,” Nessa says, though she sounds uncertain. “He stayed with me the entire time.”
Tanya is about to ask why he isn’t here now, but she stops herself. “Did you sleep last night?” she asks instead.
“In and out. Did you?”
“Barely. No.”
“Just close your eyes,” Nessa says. “And every time you wake up, just squeeze me.”
“Okay,” Tanya agrees. It seems an odd plan, but somehow it also makes sense.
When Tanya was younger and couldn’t sleep, Lorraine used to rub her back and play with her hair. There was once a time when being touched by her mother wasn’t unbearable, but soothing. Tanya would give anything to be comforted by her mom right now—to let Lorraine know it was alright to hold her.
The next day, when they step inside their house on Winter Street, the smell of their childhood—their mother—hits Tanya with a force that’s physical. “Fuck,” she says, fighting tears. “How the fuck are we supposed to do this?”
“We just do it,” says Nessa.
Together, they go straight upstairs, avoiding the living room and kitchen, where there’s still yellow caution tape up from two nights ago when the police showed up to the house after the O’Briens called 911.
The door to their mother’s bedroom is open and Lorraine’s room looks like it always does. The bed is made, but hastily, and there’s a pile of clean laundry at the foot of the bed, still waiting to be folded. The shades on the windows are open and afternoon sunlight pours in, illuminating free-floating dust in the air. Lorraine’s purse sits slumped in the chair next to her bed. Her laptop, left open, is beneath it, the screen black and smudged.
Nessa walks bravely over to Lorraine’s closet. “What do you think she would want to wear?”
Tanya joins Nessa, dreading the smell of her mother’s clothing.
“What about this?” Nessa asks, holding up a blue dress. It’s short-sleeved and linen; comfortable looking.
Tanya takes the dress from Nessa and examines it, glances at the tag inside. “It’s Gap. We’re not burying Mom in Gap.”
“Oh,” says Nessa. “Let me look for her Chanel and Gucci then.”
“Shut up,” Tanya says. “What about this one?” She fingers the skirt of another dress, this one long and emerald, a silky fabric. It’s elegant even on the hanger.
Nessa’s eyes grow wide as she reaches out to touch it. “Jesse bought it for her.”
“Then fuck it,” Tanya says, anger detonating in her chest. She yanks the dress off the hanger and throws it as hard as she can against the wall, but it’s airy and lands in a calm, whispery heap, so she hurls the hanger across the room instead, where it hits the window with a dull thud and then clatters to the floor. “I fucking hate him. I hate him so much.”
Nessa nods. “I know.”
“Why the fuck did he do this?” Tanya wipes at her eyes and nose. She is so tired of crying. Her face hurts from it; the flesh on her cheeks stings.
“Let’s take a break,” Nessa says.
“And do what?” Tanya says, irritated by her sister’s composure, and at the same time grateful for it.
“I don’t know, get some air. Maybe you want to call Eitan?”
“Who will you call?” Tanya asks, and though she doesn’t intend it to be cruel, it comes out sounding that way.
Nessa shrugs. “Henry,” she says—and this, more than the stupid dress, is what sends Tanya over the edge.
“Okay,” she says through tears, “I’m going to go outside and talk to him for a few minutes.”
“Good,” Nessa says. “I’ll be up here.”
* * *
—
OUTSIDE, Tanya walks down their driveway and surveys the neighbors’ houses. It doesn’t look like a street where a homicide would happen. There are gardens out front and signs of children in the yards: bicycles, sidewalk chalk in driveways. Tanya finds herself climbing their own porch again, but this time, ringing the O’Briens’ bell.
As kids, Tanya and Nessa
used to prank the O’Briens, ringing their doorbell and then running away, hiding behind trees and watching them open the door, look sternly down at their front stoop where she and Nessa had left a little object: a block of moldy cheese, a maxi pad, one time a demonic-looking rubber mask of George W. Bush’s face.
When Tanya goes to ring the O’Briens’ bell, she has the ridiculous idea that the doorbell might be some sort of portal—that by pressing it, she’ll transport herself back in time, to when she and Nessa were girls and Lorraine was still alive. She presses it—the same white rectangle of plastic—then hears the familiar chime from inside the house. This time she doesn’t run away but stands on the doorstep and waits for the door to open. When it does, it’s Mrs. O’Brien who’s standing there, and when she sees that it’s Tanya, the old woman blinks and then wordlessly opens her arms.
Tanya hesitates but allows her neighbor to embrace her.
“Tanya,” Mrs. O’Brien says, and it occurs to Tanya that it’s the first time they’ve had a conversation as two adults. “Come in,” she says.
“I can’t stay for very long,” Tanya says, following Mrs. O’Brien inside. “My sister is waiting for me.”
“Of course. Sit, please,” she says, motioning to the kitchen table. “Tea?”
“Thank you,” says Tanya. She sits and looks around as Mrs. O’Brien puts the kettle on the stove. She’s never actually been inside the O’Briens’ house, and she’s surprised by how different their house looks from her own. It’s meticulously clean and decorated in deep greens and reds, like a hunting lodge. Mrs. O’Brien sets out several boxes of tea on the table and then sits across from Tanya to wait for the water to boil.
“I just wanted to ask . . . ,” Tanya starts to say, but Mrs. O’Brien nods and puts a firm hand over Tanya’s.
“I know,” she says. “Oh gosh, I’ve gone over the night a million times in my head.”
“What happened?”
“Bob and I were in bed. Honey, we’ve heard noises before, coming from your mother’s house, but not like that.”
“What did you hear?” Tanya asks.
Mrs. O’Brien looks at her and seems to be contemplating whether or not to answer. “Yelling,” she says. “A lot of yelling. Both of them. And the dog. I told Bob to go over there and I called the police.”
“Bob went over there?”
Mrs. O’Brien looks down at the table. When she looks back up, her eyes are rimmed red, and Tanya has the sense that Mrs. O’Brien has been crying a fair amount about this. “He did. Not fast enough. I’m so terribly sorry.
“He tried CPR. Chest compressions. Mouth-to-mouth. Everything he could.”
“Was he still there? When Bob arrived?”
“Jesse, you mean?”
Tanya nods.
Mrs. O’Brien’s eyes flash. “He was.”
“What was he doing when Bob got there?”
“I don’t know that you want to hear this.”
“I do.”
Mrs. O’Brien squints, as if in pain. “He . . . what Bob said was that Jesse had . . . injured himself. He was bleeding out.”
“Where? Where had he injured himself?”
Mrs. O’Brien touches her wrist. “Here,” she says. “And his throat.” She clears her throat.
Tanya’s stomach clenches with this new information. “Jesse tried to commit suicide?”
“Well, I can’t say for sure. But it appeared to Bob that, yes, he attempted to.”
Tanya laughs but the sound is strange and humorless, and Mrs. O’Brien looks startled. “I’m glad it didn’t work,” Tanya says. “I’m glad he didn’t get out of it so easily.”
“It’s terrible,” Mrs. O’Brien says. “It’s the most terrible thing.”
“What happened when the police showed up?”
“Bob says they revived him. He left in an ambulance almost immediately.”
Tanya feels jumpy. Almost giddy. That Jesse tried to kill himself further indicates his guilt; his cowardliness. She feels the way she does when she discovers a new piece of evidence, or a particular argument, when working on a case. Though it’s not joy that she feels, thinking about Jesse sitting in a jail cell without access to a razor or a gun or a rope, it’s relative to joy—relief, vindication.
The kettle boils then, and Mrs. O’Brien stands.
“I’m sorry,” Tanya says, standing, too. “I should get back to my sister.”
“I hope I haven’t upset you. Oh dear, it was a tragic thing that happened to your mother. It should never have happened.”
“Thank you for calling the police,” Tanya says. “And Bob. Please thank him for going over there. For trying.”
“I wish more than anything we had gotten there sooner.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tanya says firmly.
“Still . . .”
Together they walk to the door and Tanya turns to look at her before leaving. “Will you come to the funeral on Monday?”
“Bob and I will both be there.”
Tanya nods. “I’m sorry about ringing your doorbell when we were kids. You must have hated us.”
For the first time, Mrs. O’Brien smiles. “Honey, there are so many things to hate in this world, and you kids playing wasn’t one of them.”
“Still, we must have driven you crazy.”
“A little. Nothing we couldn’t handle. We still have that George Bush mask somewhere. Sometimes Bob wears it on Halloween when he answers the door for the trick-or-treaters.” She laughs, though her eyes are sad.
* * *
—
TANYA RETURNS TO THEIR HOUSE, and this time when she walks inside, the smell doesn’t bother her as much. The news about Jesse has filled her up. She walks upstairs, burning with new anger and energy, ready to tell Nessa, but she stops short in the doorway of her mother’s bedroom.
Her sister is across the room, standing in front of the full-length mirror, though her eyes are closed. She’s wearing Lorraine’s emerald dress.
“Ness?”
Nessa opens her eyes and they look at each other in the reflection.
“Do you mind?” Nessa asks. “If I keep it?”
Tanya goes over to the bed, suddenly exhausted. She lies down. “I don’t mind.”
Nessa comes and stretches out next to her. For several moments they lie without talking. Tanya wants to tell her about Jesse, but she knows her sister will only be more upset by the news.
“You look pretty,” Tanya says instead.
Nessa opens her eyes and for the first time that day, she tears up. “Really?” she asks.
Tanya nods and Nessa looks away, embarrassed.
“You’re pretty, Nessa. You’ve always been pretty.”
Nessa squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “Mom thought you were so pretty. I could tell when she looked at you she was always kind of amazed.” Nessa is crying freely now. “When you got married she was in awe. You should’ve seen her face, Tanya. She couldn’t stop looking at you.”
Tanya looks at Nessa. “Mom thought you were beautiful, too, Ness.”
Nessa shrugs and stares up at the ceiling. “How am I supposed to get married without her here? How am I supposed to have kids?”
Tanya thinks about her own child, a tiny secret the size of a raspberry in her belly, and wonders if this is the moment she’s supposed to tell Nessa. But she pushes the thought away and rolls over to look at her sister. “I’ll be here. I’ll be here for all of that.”
Nessa blinks, her eyelashes slick. “I think I found an outfit. It’s not a dress.”
“Can I see?”
They sit up and Nessa retrieves a pair of olive-green pants and a black cashmere sweater from Lorraine’s closet. “It’s casual, I guess,” Nessa says. “But it’s really nice.”
“I like it,” says Tanya
. “I think she’d like it, too.”
“Yeah,” Nessa says, wiping her nose. “Me too.”
Tanya pulls the blue woolen throw blanket at the foot of the bed over herself, even though it’s warm that day, especially upstairs. They’ve had the blanket forever. It’s as familiar to her as the smell of their house, as the feel of the stairs beneath her feet.
She rolls over and looks at Nessa. “Can I have this blanket?” she asks.
A strange expression comes over Nessa’s face and for a moment it looks like she might say no, and the thought horrifies Tanya—that they could possibly fight over their mother’s belongings. But Nessa only nods.
The morning of the funeral, Tanya wakes suddenly from an old recurring nightmare she hasn’t had in years. In the dream she’s walking up an endlessly high staircase with no risers. She keeps slipping, each time coming dangerously close to plunging through the open space. The nightmare usually ends when she does finally slip, flailing awake with a gasp.
This morning, though, there’s no relief in waking up. Her life has become a nightmare. The stairs—she’d choose that over her mother’s funeral, any day.
Beside her, Nessa is also up, staring at the ceiling, a look of disbelief on her face.
“I want this day to be over,” Nessa says.
The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity and planning, and it makes sense to Tanya now, why people have funerals. The funeral, in actuality, has little to do with Lorraine. It’s for the people still alive. It gives them structure, a to-do list. In the last seventy-two hours they’ve met with a funeral home director, they’ve met with the rabbi, they’ve selected a casket for Lorraine to be buried in, they’ve ordered bagels and cream cheese and two hundred dollars’ worth of lox for the shiva, they’ve made countless phone calls, they’ve had arguments over which flowers to order, ordered the flowers.
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