So Near

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  He was in his early forties when he married my mother: a stunning but, from what I know, demanding and headstrong twenty-two-year-old who forced my father’s hasty departure from the small Maryland community where he’d been ministering. Covington gave him a chance to start over and rebuild his reputation, which, with my mother’s charismatic presence, he’d started to do. But within five years of settling here, my mother ran away again, leaving his church with a lot of unanswered questions, and obliging him to raise two unruly daughters on his own. His congregation soon began to abandon him, as well. More gradually, it’s true, but no less decisively. And the rejection must have been that much more humiliating because so many of his former parishioners gravitated to the livelier and more tolerant Congregational church just down the street.

  Despite these many setbacks, something makes me believe he was always headed this way, blinkered on his straight-and-narrow course. His convictions seem so bredin-the-bone and calcified. And he wears his many disappointments with a kind of martyrish pride. I sometimes think that he considers his unpopularity proof positive of his own righteousness.

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t seen you for a while,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. Did I need to remind him that my daughter had recently died? You’re a minister, I longed to tell him. Shouldn’t you be dropping by to see how I’m doing? And yet, I remember when he had come to the house the day after Betsy was killed and forced me to pray with him, I couldn’t wait for him to be gone again. I’ve always felt this kind of ambivalence toward him: needing and wanting his love, then bitterly rejecting whatever feeble gestures he tries to make in that direction.

  “Judith isn’t here,” he replied. “She’s down in Hudson at some crafts fair.”

  “Yes, I know.” I’m not sure why my father has never called Jude or me by our nicknames, but I suspect it’s because it would force him to acknowledge that we’ve long been our own independent selves. Both a far cry from the sweet, submissive offspring he had probably hoped for. “I spoke to her on the phone this morning. No, I came by to talk to you.”

  “Oh?” he said, looking from me to the papers on the desk. I’m sure he wished he could claim that he was too busy. That he had a sermon to write, or letters to answer. I’ve been aware for many years now that my father dislikes dealing one-on-one with people. His ideal form of discourse is speaking down to a congregation, preferably from an altar. He’s even uncomfortable having to mingle with the crowd at the monthly church teas and potluck suppers. It doesn’t help that I’m his own daughter. It actually makes it much worse. The two of us have a long history of bruising confrontations in this very room. I could almost see him bracing for combat.

  “Well, come in, then,” he said, moving a pile of books off a chair and onto his desk. He pushed the chair several feet away from him and waved me into it. He crossed his legs and steepled his hands on his knee. “What can I do for you?”

  “Ah—,” I began, but then almost immediately realized that I didn’t really know how to put my question into words. I’d fled the house a few minutes after Daniel had driven off, knowing only that I needed guidance. I couldn’t turn to Cal for this—or Tessa, my usual confidante. Oddly, I sensed the only person who might remotely understand what I was experiencing would be my sister-in-law Kristin, with whom I have zero rapport.

  “Daddy,” I began again. “What happens when someone dies? Where do they go exactly?”

  “Are you asking because of Betsy?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Well, I can promise you that she’s in heaven. Our Betsy went right to heaven.”

  “Yes, but what does that mean? Where is that in relation to where we are on earth?”

  “Now, you know there’s no definitive answer to that. We no longer think of heaven as somewhere above us—like the stars, say. Because it’s eternal, it’s not something the human mind can really conceptualize.”

  “So it could be right here,” I said. “Like in a parallel kind of universe we can’t see but can sometimes sense.”

  “No, that’s really not the right way to think about it, Jennifer. Heaven isn’t parallel to earth—it’s infinite, far beyond any sort of relation to this small, finite globe.”

  “I see,” I said, seeing only that we could go around in circles endlessly with the question. “I guess what I’m asking is—well, sometimes I feel like Betsy’s right here still. I mean, in the next room, or just on the other side of that wall. Sometimes I feel that, if I only knew how to do it, I could push through whatever’s separating us. And I could pick her up. I could—pick her up again.”

  Did he see my eyes fill with tears? Did he hear them in my voice? All I know is that he started to shake his head and look past me down the hall as he said:

  “No. I’m sorry, but, no, you can’t. And the sooner you realize that and accept it, the easier it will be for you to move on. To pretend otherwise is wrong and possibly even damaging. Because it will only worsen and extend your sorrow, and keep you from finding—closure.”

  Last summer, my father was forced to participate in a church-sponsored sensitivity seminar up in Albany. He returned sporting a new politically correct vocabulary. He now “reached out” to his congregation and tried to “connect” with those who needed his help. “Closure” was one of his favorite new words. Meaningless to anyone in real pain. An insult, really, to someone crying out for help, like “time heals all wounds.” Perhaps I should have argued with him more. We could have gone at least a few more rounds before retreating to our separate corners. But I was quick to decide he’d failed me once again. Though I think a part of me realized I’d actually set him up to do just that.

  The house was filled with people when Daniel stopped by with the plans for the new garden. It was my birthday, and Cal had insisted on throwing me a big party. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to entertain, to say the least, but I also didn’t think I could stand spending that particular night alone with Cal. In my mind, Betsy’s absence was becoming an almost palpable presence between us—as suffocating and pervasive as smoke. But Cal pretended not to notice. He refused to take offense at my sulks or react to my angry outbursts. I could see how hard he was struggling to make believe everything was normal. That we were okay. Despite the fact that I’d moved out of our bedroom and had taken to sleeping on an Aerobed in Betsy’s old room. Or that, even if we brushed together accidentally in the bathroom, I flinched.

  “I’m really glad you guys decided to go ahead and do this—,” Tessa was saying to me when I saw Cal open the front door. I knew just by Cal’s greeting who it was:

  “Hey, this is great! I thought you said—Well, sure, but come in for a minute anyway. You’ll at least want to say hello to the birthday girl.”

  “Who’s that?” I heard Tessa ask, as Cal led Daniel down the hallway toward us. He had his arm around Daniel’s shoulder. Daniel had a bouquet of white roses and a mailing tube under his arm.

  “What—?” I asked, turning back to Tessa and trying to pick up the thread of our conversation.

  “The man with Cal. That’s the landscape architect guy, isn’t it? I see what Kurt means.”

  “What did Kurt say about him?”

  “That he’s”—Tessa lowered her voice and leaned in toward me—“totally full of himself. I can see why, though. I guess he is kind of attractive.”

  “Jenny!” Cal was calling over people’s heads as he attempted to steer Daniel through the crowd that had formed in the kitchen. “Look who’s here!”

  Cal eagerly introduced Daniel around to our friends and family. When he explained that Daniel’s redesign for our gardens was actually my birthday gift, I saw Tessa look over at me sharply. I don’t know why I hadn’t told her about any of this. But I realized now that my reluctance to do so was connected somehow with my asking her not to come by so often.

  Jude, on the other hand, greeted Daniel like an old friend. She went right up to him and asked him what he wanted to drink.

 
; “Sorry, I can’t stay.”

  “But that’s crazy,” Jude said. “You just got here.”

  “No, really,” he said, stepping toward me with the flowers and tube. “I just wanted to drop these off.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the gifts from him.

  “Tell him he has to stay a while,” Jude told me.

  “You have to stay a while,” I said, looking past him as I spoke. I knew my tone wasn’t particularly welcoming.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I really can’t.”

  “Okay, then,” Cal intervened, slapping him on the back. “Let’s try to get you out of here. Come on, Jenny.”

  People were still arriving as we made our way back down the hall. Cal and I had to stop a couple of times to greet the new guests:

  “Paul, Maddie, great to see you.”

  “Hey there, Lori. Food and drinks out back.”

  I noticed that Daniel quietly pushed ahead of us through the crowd. He was waiting for us on the front porch. If anything, it was even warmer outside, the night air thick with humidity and the thrumming of insects. It was too overcast to see any stars, but I could feel them there above the cloud cover, the millions of invisible universes, pulsing with life.

  “Thanks for coming,” Cal said again. “And for the plans, too, of course.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Who knows? You may not like what I’ve done.”

  “Why do I doubt that?” Cal said, laughing.

  “Well, it’s actually Mrs. Horigan I’m worried about.”

  “Mrs. Horigan?” Cal asked, turning from Daniel to me. “Honestly! Aren’t you two up to first names yet? Here, let me introduce you: Jenny, this is Daniel.”

  Oh, he was so pleased with himself. So happy. Standing there between Daniel and myself, not understanding anything.

  “Hello,” I said. “Daniel.”

  “Happy birthday, Jenny,” he replied, leaning forward. I lifted my hand to try to ward him off, but instead I felt my fingers brushing against his shirt front. I had to steady myself, leaning against him for support, my fingers closing around his upper arm. All Cal saw was Daniel kissing me on the cheek. Though, in fact, Daniel’s lips managed to graze mine—so quickly that at first I didn’t quite realize what had happened. I just felt the shock. I looked at him. Yes, he’d done it on purpose. Though it had the feeling of an accident. A moment of thoughtlessness. Something that in retrospect seemed to unfold in slow motion. But, in fact, was actually so fast. In the blink of an eye, really—but that’s all it takes. How easily your whole world can be overturned.

  Part Two

  9

  Cal

  I told Jenny I was going to the baseball game. At that point, it didn’t bother me that I was lying. We’d had a fight about Daniel’s designs for the garden, and I was so pissed off that my decision to meet with Edmund and the lawyer he’d lined up suddenly seemed totally justified. I really think I’m doing everything I can to cater to Jenny’s moods, but she’s just becoming more and more impossible to live with. When we looked at Daniel’s blueprints together that morning, she kept finding all these nitpicky little things to complain about. I’m starting to think that maybe there’s nothing in the world I can do to please her.

  “Okay, I get it,” I finally told her. I was supposed to see Edmund at three o’clock, and I didn’t have time for any more of her craziness. “Okay. We’ll just shelve the whole business for now. I’ll tell Daniel that we’re not ready.”

  She seemed a little startled by my sudden capitulation, maybe even contrite. Well, let her suffer a little, I told myself as I slid the blueprints back into the storage tube. But, like so many of our arguments these days, I suspected this one wasn’t over yet. Since Betsy’s death, Jenny’s usual self-control and equilibrium have gone totally to hell. And she’s grown so combative and outspoken. Sometimes I feel like she’s actually spoiling for a fight—that she’ll grab onto any excuse to lash out at me.

  I’d already stashed Betsy’s car seat, wrapped in a big black plastic garbage bag, in the trunk of my dad’s Oldsmobile. A couple of nights after Kurt had turned the seat over to me, and an hour or two after Jenny had gone up to bed, I took a series of photos of it from different angles with my digital camera. A part of me actually did want to hold on to the thing, just as I’d told Kurt. But that was before I really focused on the seat itself: the straps were mangled. I was a little drunk at the time I took the photos, and I had the weirdest feeling that I was being watched. At one point, I even pulled open the door from the garage to the kitchen—thinking I’d catch Jenny there. Obviously, I had been imagining things, or letting my conscience work me over again.

  Because that’s the thing: no matter what I tell myself, or how hard I try to listen to what other people say, I still feel guilty about how Betsy died. And I believe Jenny thinks I’m guilty, too. What else could it be, after all, the way she’s been treating me? The sulks. The turning away from me when I make even the slightest attempt to touch her. That nasty, biting temper. I think she must look across the table at me and see the person who let her baby daughter die. The fox, the Jeep overturning, the car seat—Jenny still doesn’t want to hear about any of it. And why is that? I’m alive. Betsy’s not. I think Jenny’s just making a simple equation.

  “Hey there, little brother,” Edmund said, coming across the lawn to meet me as I pulled up in front of his house near Hudson. He and Kristin have gussied up an old Victorian, and its maroon and pink-trimmed facade dominates their suburban neighborhood. Edmund, lord of the manor, was wearing a blue blazer and pressed chinos.

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to dress up,” I said. I had on my Horigan Builders baseball jersey and a pair of jeans.

  “You look fine. Where’s the seat?” he asked, peering into the back of the Olds. “Didn’t I tell you they—”

  “In the trunk, Eddie,” I replied. “Where the hell else would it be? You actually think I’d leave it out where Jenny could see it? She doesn’t know I’m doing this, remember? She’d throw a total fit if she knew.”

  “Calm down, Cal. Grab the seat and we’re off. We’ll take my Beamer.”

  Driving from Edmund’s place to Albany takes about an hour. My older brother spent the time filling me in about all the work he’d been doing on my behalf. Except for quick cell phone calls on the subject, I haven’t had much of an opportunity to talk to him about any of this, and I actually did have a lot of catching up to do. For one thing, it turned out the original lawyer he’d contacted—his old Cornell buddy—wasn’t whom we were going to be meeting with that afternoon.

  “But I thought you were so high on him,” I said.

  “Gerry? He’s a good guy, but frankly, he doesn’t have the expertise we need. Law firms tend to specialize. Some outfit wins a big suit, or scores a major settlement in a particular area, and it suddenly becomes the go-to firm for that thing.”

  “And Gerry doesn’t do our ‘thing’?” I asked, looking out over the fallow fields and broken-down farmhouses. Summer heat—or some kind of smog—blurred the horizon.

  “No. He’s more in the personal-injury area. He actually told me that dead kids aren’t worth all that much. I mean in terms of payouts, of course.”

  “Jesus!” I said. “We’re talking about Betsy here. You know, I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Sorry,” Edmund said, glancing over at me. “Look, I’m really sorry. But I’ve been having to sort through a lot of stuff—things I didn’t want you to have to deal with. I’ve been looking around, talking to different firms. I don’t think there’s any sense in pursuing this if the right people don’t have our backs. And, from everything I could learn, Stephens, Stokes, Kline—these guys—bring the experience we need to the table. They’re supposed to be the best in the state in terms of product-liability litigation. They handled a case similar to ours a few years back and, well—” He paused and looked over at me again when he realized that I wasn’t responding to any of this. Then he sighed and sai
d, “In the future, I want you to tell me to just shut the fuck up when I touch on something you find painful. Okay?”

  “Listen,” I said, letting my head fall back against the headrest. I closed my eyes. I’m not sure why I feel the need to fight Edmund every step of the way—but then, we’ve always had such an adversarial relationship. And there’s something about his eagerness to help me now that seems forced. Unnatural. But, to be fair, I wasn’t really feeling all that great. I’d stayed up too late the night before and probably drank a little too much at the party. Then there was that scene with Jenny. Frankly, I was pretty wiped out.

  “I just want to be clear,” I told him. “I’m still not sure I want to go ahead with any of this.”

  “Understood,” Edmund replied firmly. “And Stephens, Stokes get that, too. This is all just very preliminary. A meet and greet.”

  The law firm took up the top three floors of one of the old ornate granite buildings downtown. The interior design was sleek and contemporary, though, with tinted glass partitions and custom-built mahogany workstations. I think to keep me from any further misgivings, Edmund insisted on carrying the car seat. When he told the receptionist who we were, she nodded, got up from her desk, and walked us down a carpeted hallway to a corner conference room. The floor-to-ceiling windows faced west and north over downtown Albany and out to the distant green of the summer suburbs.

  There were two men and a woman waiting for us at the end of a long table. As we entered, the older of the two men stood up and walked across the room to greet us. He’d obviously met Edmund before, because he came right up to me.

  “Cal,” he said, both hands closing over mine. “We’re all so very, very sorry to learn about your loss. I’m Lester Stephens. And these are my associates”—he took my elbow as he led me back to the table—“Janet Graystone and Carl Zeyer. Please take a seat. There’s coffee, tea, soda, bottled water—help yourselves to whatever you want.”