by Nancy Thayer
“Keely, sweetheart, I need you to come home.” Her voice broke. “Something’s happened.” Her mother sounded shaky, unlike her usual take-charge self.
“What’s going on?”
“Keely, I hate to tell you this on the phone, but…” Her mother’s voice choked. “Keely, your father died.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Keely. Your father…” Eloise choked on the words. “Your father died.”
For a moment Keely’s mind couldn’t decipher her mother’s words, but Keely’s heart thumped hard. Her hands went numb. She dropped the phone.
Her mother’s voice floated up from the floor.
“Wait, Mom, wait!” She bent over, scrabbling with her hands to pick up the phone.
“Keely?”
“Mom? Did you say that Daddy died?” That couldn’t be right. Her father couldn’t be dead. He was young. Wasn’t he? How old was he? She couldn’t remember. Guilt fell over her like a gray veil, blanking out the world around her. She hadn’t emailed him as much as she meant to—she was so busy, and he was always there, reliable, on the island. Maybe she could—
“He had a heart attack.”
“But you’re a nurse! Didn’t you—”
“Of course I tried to save him. I gave him CPR, I did my best to revive him, and I called the ambulance and they came right away.”
Her mother continued to speak. Keely crumpled onto her chair, shaking. She couldn’t get her breath.
“Keely, honey, are you okay?”
“How can I be? I don’t believe this. Oh, Mom. Are you all right?”
“I don’t know…I can’t think…” Her mother broke into wrenching sobs.
Her mother’s anguish made it real. Keely’s father had died. Keely wanted to throw back her head and howl with grief, with anger at the universe. But she knew her father would want her to be in control, to take care of her mother who had lost her husband, her companion, the love of her life. Keely couldn’t turn back time, but she could pull herself together and be there for her mother.
“When did this happen?”
“This morning. I’m still at the hospital.”
“Do you have someone with you?”
Keely’s mother laughed weakly. “Keely, I’m a nurse here. I have all my colleagues here.”
“But Brenda.” Brenda, Eloise’s best friend, lived on a small farm with her husband and their always-changing menagerie of rescued animals. “Can you call Brenda and have her help you?”
“Yes. I can do that. I will. But I need you to come home.”
“Of course, Mom. I’ll leave right now. I’ll be able to catch the seven o’clock fast ferry. If not that, the slow boat at eight.”
“Good. Let me know. I’ll meet you there.”
“Mom? Mom, I love you.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
Keely threw clothes in her duffel bag, grabbed her clutch and her backpack, and scribbled a note to her roommate. She didn’t say when she was coming back. She didn’t know.
As she drove, she knew she had to keep it together. She had to hold in her tears, she had to pay attention to the traffic, the exit signs, the stoplights. But her heart was swollen, almost bursting. She put on the radio, tuned in to heavy metal, and screamed along with the earsplitting, furious music. By the time she reached the ferry, her throat was sore.
* * *
—
Brenda was with Eloise to meet Keely’s boat.
“Keely,” Eloise cried, throwing her arms around Keely and hugging her close.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Keely said, knowing that nothing was okay right now.
They stood together, weeping, devastated, holding each other up. After a few moments, Keely gently pushed her mother away. “Let’s go home.” Keely tucked her arm into her mother’s arm and steered her toward Brenda’s car.
As soon as they were in the house, Brenda said, “I’ll leave you two alone. Call me tomorrow if you need anything.”
Brenda looked exhausted, Keely thought, and her mother seemed to have aged decades in a day.
“Sit down, Mom. I’m going to make us something to drink.”
She found a bottle of pinot noir in the kitchen and poured them both a healthy serving.
“Take your shoes off, Mom. You look shattered. I’ll sit here, put your feet on my lap. Now tell me. Tell me about Dad.”
Needing to talk, her mother let it all spill out. “We were having breakfast. You know how George loves his bacon and eggs. He was eating, and he clutched his chest, and oh, Keely, he made an agonizing noise. I said, ‘Oh, George, have you got indigestion again?’ But I knew he didn’t have indigestion. I knew he was having a heart attack. So I tried to get an aspirin down him, but everything happened too quickly. He couldn’t swallow. He didn’t say anything. He just made that horrible noise and then he slumped over.” Eloise began to weep.
“Oh, poor Daddy.” Sorrow wrenched Keely’s heart.
“Keely, he fell out of his chair. Onto the floor. I tried to break his fall. I cushioned his head with my arms. And when he was on the floor, I called 911, and then I tried CPR. I talked to him. I told him I loved him over and over until the ambulance came.”
“Oh, Mom, how terrible for you. How scary.”
“It was. It was scary.” Her mother put a handkerchief to her mouth to hold back sobs.
Keely waited for her mother to calm herself and listened as Eloise spoke about the rest of the day. The hospital room where her husband had a weak pulse, and then, in spite of the physician’s efforts, no pulse. Dr. Lewis pronouncing George dead. The nurses hugging Eloise, the long minutes when they left Eloise alone in the room with her dead husband, how Eloise had talked to him and wept. Kind people bringing her tea. Someone giving her the phone, telling her to call Keely.
Eloise looked up at Keely, suddenly wide-eyed. “You’ll stay with me awhile, won’t you?”
“Of course, Mom. Of course.” Keely looked around the room. “Daddy’s chair!” she cried, catching sight of his slightly worn, beloved recliner. It had pockets on the side. His book of crossword puzzles and his notebook of game statistics were there, quietly waiting for him. It was like a relic from when the world was good.
“I know, Keely. He’s everywhere.” Her mother let out a wail like nothing Keely had ever heard before. “Everywhere and nowhere.”
“Did the doctor give you anything to help you sleep?” Keely asked.
Her mother waved an arm toward the dining room table. “Yes. Ambien. You should take one, too.” Eloise stared at Keely, a desperate look in her eye. “I want to sleep. I need to sleep. I need to be with my darling George.”
A frisson of fear streaked through Keely’s emotions. “Mom, you won’t take too many pills, will you?”
Eloise swung her feet onto the floor. “No, darling. I’ll take only two at the most.”
They stumbled around the house like hunched, ancient crones, bent double with grief. Keely watched carefully as her mother took her pills. She tucked her mother in bed. She took two pills herself, knowing nothing could bring her the relief of sleep.
But she slept. When she woke in the morning, her grief was not shrill, not the urgent sorrow that felt like fear. It was slower. Heavier. It weighed her down.
* * *
—
Over the next few days, Keely helped her mother as they went through the necessary rituals of death. Rick Roberts still had his funeral home, and he was able to guide Eloise through the process of sending the body away to be cremated. Reverend Lisa from the Congregational Church held a brief service as Keely’s father’s ashes were interred in a handsome urn in a cemetery plot. Dr. Wayland had provided Eloise and Keely with a few low doses of Valium to help keep them calm during the funeral.
The day was dreary. The clouded sky was spitti
ng snow and the wind was blustering. Keely kept her arm linked through her mother’s during the service and at the cemetery.
“I’ve paid for the plot next to him,” Eloise murmured to Keely as they stood by the open grave. “I bought an urn just like your father’s, so when the time comes, you can put me next to him.”
“Okay, but not for a long time,” Keely assured her mother.
A black limo drove Keely and her mother to the reception at their home. Brenda was in the dining room, setting out the small sandwiches and finger foods. Brenda’s daughter Sharon was in the corner, behind a table holding a choice of liquor and soft drinks. Keely dealt with her coat and her mother’s, swiftly checked to see that their small house was as neat as it could be, then unlocked the front door for the friends.
Dozens of people—even their mailman, even the woman who sold tickets at the ferry—came into the house, quietly at first, to offer their condolences, and to tell Eloise how wonderful her husband had been. They hugged Eloise and Keely and went off to the living room and dining room, replaced by other people. Some part of Keely’s heart took pleasure in the sight of so many people showing up. Nantucket families clustered near. So many doctors and nurses arrived that Brenda leaned over to Eloise and whispered, “Good grief, who’s running the hospital?” Her words brought a small smile to Eloise’s face, and Keely was grateful.
The Maxwells were there, too. Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell, not Sebastian, of course. He was in Sweden. Isabelle and Tommy had intended to come, but a blizzard hit that area of the state, making driving impossible. Isabelle had called and cried with Keely. It was fine, really, that she wasn’t there. Keely was numb, dumb with grief.
She was grateful that the Maxwells came, but secretly she resented how chic Donna Maxwell looked in her black silk dress, her blond hair perfectly styled to show the tastefully small cluster of diamonds in her earlobes. She seemed arrogant, malicious, flaunting her beauty in front of Keely and Eloise, who were in mourning.
“Call me if there’s anything we can do,” Al Maxwell told Eloise, his deep voice booming through the room.
“I will. Thank you.” Eloise’s voice was hoarse.
Donna Maxwell put her hands on Keely’s shoulders and brushed her cheek with an air kiss, leaving behind a cloud of Joy perfume.
* * *
—
Keely said “thank you” for the seven hundredth time and closed the front door on the back of the last person to leave.
“Well, that was exhausting,” she said to her mother.
“So many people attended,” Eloise said. “George would have been so proud.”
“Maybe he is proud, Mom. Maybe he’s somewhere up there looking down at us.”
“That’s a lovely thought, dear.”
Eloise had been restrained and gracious during the reception. Now she sagged with exhaustion.
“Here,” Keely said, leading her mother to “her” recliner, which only a few days ago had been “his” recliner. “Did you get anything to eat? Anything substantial?”
“I’m not hungry, dear.”
Keely turned the television to the Hallmark Channel. “I’m getting us both some of Brenda’s casserole.”
Keely joined her mother in front of the television with plates of comfort food. Until midnight, they watched beautiful people fall in love in beautiful places. Unreal, but soothing.
* * *
—
“Keely, are you ready?”
“In a minute.”
Isabelle’s father had been Keely’s father’s lawyer, although Keely had never known that until her mother told her they had an appointment with Mr. Maxwell for the reading of the will. Keely found herself stalling, panicking, searching for an earring that matched the pair she wanted to wear, an opal earring, the most expensive jewelry she possessed. Why it mattered to her so much she didn’t know—but of course she did know.
All her life she had been privy to the secrets of Isabelle’s life and house and family. And Isabelle had known about hers. Where the cookie sheet was stored, and the clean towels, and for that matter, the tampons. The mildly pornographic magazines Sebastian had hidden under his mattress on the side of his bed next to the wall. Donna Maxwell’s birth control pills were in the drawer of her bedside table, beneath a box of allergy tablets.
And Isabelle knew the same things about Keely’s house, although not as much, since Keely had no sibling. She knew the left back burner on the stove didn’t work anymore. She knew what Keely’s mother’s bras looked like—formidably built for support, not seduction. Keely and Isabelle had actually tried them on when they were thirteen and Eloise was at the hospital, working—they’d nearly peed themselves laughing. And of course Isabelle knew that Keely’s family didn’t have as much money as hers. Keely was well aware that the Maxwells were, in her judgment, rich. The big house, the trips abroad, the nice cars.
But Keely never knew that Mr. Maxwell was her father’s lawyer. When her mother told her, Keely cringed. This was embarrassing. Mr. Maxwell was so rich, and her father had been so, well, not rich. Besides, it was such an intrusion into Keely’s family’s personal life! Her father and Mr. Maxwell had never been friends. What had her father been thinking?
Well, of course, he certainly hadn’t been thinking that he would die of a heart attack at sixty. He hadn’t been thinking that having Aloysius Maxwell for a lawyer might embarrass Keely.
Keely dragged herself from the sanctuary of the bathroom. “I’m ready. Want me to drive?”
“Please,” Eloise said, her voice still hoarse from crying.
Mr. Maxwell’s office was on the second floor of a handsome white building on Centre Street. Keely found a parking spot on India Street and walked with her mother to the office. A heat wave had melted the March snow and brought sunshine to the island. People window-shopped, children laughed, dogs barked. The world seemed like a bright, happy, reasonable place.
Eloise and Keely went up the stairs and into the law office of Maxwell and Dunstan.
Courtney Paget, ten years older than Keely, sat behind the receptionist’s desk. She smiled professionally and ushered them into Mr. Maxwell’s private domain. Mr. Maxwell came around from behind his enormous mahogany partner’s desk, and briefly embraced them both.
“Eloise, Keely. This is such a sad time for all of us.”
Eloise nodded agreement.
“Please sit.” He indicated the handsome leather chairs in front of his desk.
“Would you like coffee or tea?” Courtney asked.
Eloise shook her head.
“No, thanks, Courtney,” Keely said, managing a polite smile.
Courtney left the room, gently pulling the door shut after her.
Mr. Maxwell wore a handsome pin-striped suit. A striped tie. He was older than her father had been, but looked ten years younger.
Mr. Maxwell leaned over the table to hand a folder to Eloise. “You both know how sorry I am that we’ve lost George. It’s a tragedy. He was so young. Too young to go.”
“Thank you,” Eloise whispered.
Keely could tell her mother was gripping the folder with all her might, as if that was the only thing keeping her from wailing.
“But now we have to speak about estate matters. Are you ready to do this, Eloise?”
Her mother cleared her throat before saying, “Yes.”
“Thank you. I won’t waste time. Eloise, you asked me to review your financial statements, and I have. George has willed his entire estate to you. Unfortunately, when George died, his finances were not as healthy as one might have wished.”
Eloise asked, “What does that mean?”
Mr. Maxwell sighed. “To be blunt, George had no savings. He wasn’t able to leave you any money. He had no life insurance. You understand you had to borrow against the mortgage on the house to pay for the cremat
ion expenses. You have a good job at the hospital, Eloise. You’re senior staff. But after studying your finances, I have to advise you that alone, without George’s income, you won’t be able to make the mortgage payments. Or pay the homeowners’ insurance or real estate taxes.” He handed Eloise a sheet of numbers.
Eloise stared at the pages blindly. “Do I have to sell the house?”
Mr. Maxwell steepled his fingers. “If you sold it, you could only remain on the island if you bought a less expensive, which means much smaller, place. You know how real estate prices have changed in the past few years. Houses cost much more now than they used to.”
Keely cut in. “So Mom would get a good amount of money if she sold.”
Mr. Maxwell nodded. “True, Keely. You’re absolutely right. But you need to think about where your mother could find another suitable home. Also, your father left a substantial debt to the mortgage. There wouldn’t be much profit to put toward a down payment somewhere new.”
Keely thought quickly. “We could leave the island. Mom, you could have a house as nice as ours for much less money. And you’re a nurse, you can get a job anywhere.”
Her mother spoke, her voice cracking. “I don’t want to leave the island. I was born here. You were born here. My friends are here. My work is here.”
Mr. Maxwell didn’t speak, but he focused his attention on Keely, waiting for her to understand what she had to do. She looked at Mr. Maxwell, who had treated her as one of his own for so many years, or if not as one of his own, definitely the favorite of all his children’s friends. He’d carried her on his shoulders. He’d pulled up a chair for her at their dining room table. He’d invited her out to dinner with the rest of the family for his daughter’s birthday. They had a past between them, and wasn’t that some kind of bridge?
“Maybe, a loan…” Keely began. She didn’t know how exactly to say the words. “If we could have a loan, and of course we’d pay back the interest…”
Mr. Maxwell’s mouth turned down, as if she’d disappointed him.
“Keely, no bank would consider giving you or your mother a loan. You have no collateral.”
