The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

by Sally Koslow

  I’d fallen into what Sam has diagnosed as a hyperthermia of the soul; I’d crawled into a snow cave of amnesia. “It happens to people whose lives end the way yours did”—violently, recklessly, unforgivably. Young. “Feeling your father’s love, though, may unlock some memories.” Sam’s theory sounded like a mountain of psychocrap, but I began to see the truth in it. This made me want to return one last time, though my powers were like muscles hanging loose after a long illness.

  Then it wasn’t a choice, really. I begged my father to travel with me, but he said he wasn’t ready, that he may never be ready. Dan Divine can’t stand to see his Claire with another man.

  Two years after he died, my mother married her next-door neighbor, a widower who’d confessed that he’d always been nuts about her, which Lucy and I had guessed years ago from the way his admiring eyes hung on her like Christmas lights. Claire Divine is one for the books, a woman who’s twice found true love, with its purple passion, peachy tenderness, and bright white understanding. I don’t think my father begrudges my mother her play-it-again happiness, but he doesn’t care to hear it sigh and call her “Clairey babe.”

  Up until now, my complete British Isles experience has consisted only of London—antiquing, eating too many crumpets, and noting that people seem strangely attached to the word rubbish. Now here I am. A greenish sea by this coastal Scottish town is calm as ancient porcelain, and the first crocuses are pushing through rocky soil. If a flock of tiny, black-faced sheep wandered down the lane, herded by Little Bo Peep herself, I would not be surprised. In the distance, for some other occasion, bagpipes wail as if they themselves are grieving. Yet in this plain stone chapel, the mood is pumped with joy. I enter and feel at home here, as if I’ve taken a beloved book from the shelf and stepped inside an earmarked page. The source of this intimacy I cannot explain, but I have learned that just as life is a long, rolling sum of mysteries, death is no different.

  I turn and there she is, Annabel, a nasturtium encircled by hummingbirds, standing radiant and straight as she walks to her seat, turning right and left to acknowledge well-wishers. By her side is Ewan, sheltering a very young boy and girl with ruddy cheeks and hair the color of pralines. “The spitting image of their father,” someone whispers of the children. Annabel is their fairy stepmother. She is carrying a bundle wearing the Campbell family’s christening gown and bonnet, creamy old lace the color of eggnog, its fabric soft as feathers. The sweetly sleeping newborn, unaware of this dignified hoopla, has the other half of my attention.

  The chapel fills, its heavy wooden doors thrown open, the air catching a fresh sea breeze. Love flows round, Annabel gazing with warm disbelief at her child as I once looked at her. I drink in everyone, everything, and my emptiness begins to fill.

  A clergyman, bent and kindly, starts the service, giving thanks for this moment of gladness, the birth of a child. “Our God, we turn to Thee with full hearts for these thy children, Ewan and Annabel Campbell.” His r’s roll gently, water flowing over polished old rocks. “Help them, that they be wise and patient parents, understanding the care required of a young one’s growing body and mind. Give them courage in times of difficulty.”

  I begin to pray involuntarily, to a God with whom I’ve had my share of differences. Spare them from grief, I ask of God. Protect Annabel, protect her husband and his children. Protect this baby, this grandchild. I use that word in true wonder. It is grand that my child has a child, a child whom I do not know but who, too, is grand indeed.

  The minister goes on, his voice a melody, and I gaze around the room. There’s my mother, her face—to my eyes—young. She is leaning on her brand-new rock, a man not half as handsome as my father, but with a round, sympathetic face. He understands that even today’s happiness brings it all back. He strokes my mother’s hand, arthritic but soft to the touch. She can blink and it could be the February of my death, the future a shadow blocking her view. But she is wise enough to blink again and return to today, where fulfillment rules.

  Hicks and Brie whisper and laugh. Around her neck hangs the silver magnifying glass that I gave her long ago. Faint lines etch the decades. She is a queen, with dark hair twisted into a chignon. Hicks has retired his earring, started wearing glasses, and grown thicker, as befits an attorney of his stature. After my unresolved trial, which he took as a personal failure, he studied the law at night. Brie and he practice together, Lawson and Hicks, the go-to firm if you’re crawling with guilt. They are doing well, more together than many couples who have married. Yesterday, after golf, they decided that Scotland is so magnificent perhaps they should buy a home here. But how could they give up the hilly green of Columbia County, and where would Hicks keep his goats? Rich people’s problems, good to have.

  A late arrival, a tall, well-upholstered woman with a plump, unlined face and one white streak in her dark hair, slides into the row behind Annabel. She leans forward to kiss her cheeks and hold her close. Annabel surrenders herself to the embrace and snuggles next to this mother bear. “Aunt Moosey, you got here,” she says.

  “We’re all here now,” Lucy answers. We are.

  That includes a young, smiling rabbi who’s traveled in a red convertible from Edinburgh. A sunbeam bounces off the brocade of his silky square black yarmulke as he offers a shalom and calls Barry to pray over sacramental wine. Barry, who has traveled here without Stephanie, walks a bit stiffly—last month he had his knees replaced, the price for all that running on unforgiving pavement—but he smiles broadly and is the image of his father’s pictures. He is one of those rare men improved by his shaved head. Barry raises the family kiddush cup brought from New York, his surgeon’s hands still steady around the silvery stem, entwined with grapevines and memories. I hear the Hebrew words, chanted in his strong, sure voice, and wonder what he is thinking.

  I realize I no longer care or need to know. He belongs to another woman now.

  The minister calls Annabel and Ewan, who places his hand on his wife’s slender back and they walk slowly and carefully, she cradling their sleeping child. The two of them reach the front and kiss. Ewan flicks away a tear from Annabel’s eyes. I have nestled within her, and this touch returns my powers with a jolt. The emotion Annabel feels is crazy glee dusted with the slight despair she always tries to chase away when she wishes I were present. Today, I am. God, if you’re in this room, make her know that.

  “Will the godmother please come forward?” the minister asks.

  Salagadoola, mechicka boola, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. We have a godmother. She walks to the front. For this occasion, the proud great-aunt is wearing sensible shoes and flowing sapphire blue clothing. With her white streak and her husband’s ring on her finger, she is, finally, Lucy in the sky with diamonds. She stands next to Barry and yes, there is an embrace—nothing showy, but a real, albeit short, connection.

  “This child,” the minister asks, “does she have a name?”

  “She does,” Ewan answers. He smiles at Annabel. “Her name will be Molly,” he says. “Molly Divine.”

  Perhaps God is in the building.

  “Molly Divine Campbell,” the rabbi says to the sleeping baby. “For whom are you named, my wee bubbelah?”

  “For my mother,” Annabel says. Long gone, she thinks, but in my heart, never forgotten.

  “For my sister,” Lucy says. “And if my sister is in this room, I hope she won’t mind if I read a poem she wrote when she was a girl.”

  Will Lucy never cease to embarrass me? We’ll see about that.

  “‘Strip from me the dove velvet mantle,’” Lucy begins.

  Let the bay-pale corn silk glaze my shoulders

  As I sing a duet with God.

  Before it all, I did believe in God.

  The rivers echo choruses

  The stars, a silver descant,

  Pebbles garnish the sanctified mud

  The shells, the snails, the shadows of the starfish.

  Amid the crescendo, a plant grows

  Chanting the li
turgy of roots veining the loam

  Beginning to learn of toadstools and Russian olive trees.

  Where did Lucy find this? Was I ever really a moony sixteen, waiting for my life to happen? Lucy’s eyes pierce me and press me to the stone wall.

  My last dream lingers

  Now I wait only for spring’s kiss

  Go now. Let me fall in love.

  My sister removes her reading glasses, puts down the poem, and looks at Annabel and then her grandniece. “That’s what I wish for little Molly,” she says. “That she will fall in love.”

  Amen. Let her fall in love, young and for forever, the way it seems that her mother has.

  In deference to the mingling of two faiths, there will be no sprinkling of water on the baby’s head, though if Jesus were present, I’m sure he would be welcomed. He and I still have yet to meet, but others in the Duration, believers, have sightings all the time.

  “The godfather? Will he come forward?” the minister asks.

  He does, tall as ever, his eyes more deeply sunken than when they looked into mine. He has watched over Annabel all her life, cultivating the role of the witty, wandering uncle with the good stories and the good presents. He is a man who reveals little, a man nobody knows.

  I’d always hoped Lucy and Luke might wind up together, but that was my naiveté on overdrive. Once, when both of them drank far too much, they had an evening of unabridged, ill-considered passion, but afterward each admitted they felt my presence in the bed—even though I absolutely was not. Lucy and Luke sprang back to friendship before its statute of limitations expired. They stay in touch, largely through postcards annotated with cryptic messages. Lucy married many years ago. Her husband is a sculptor of some note and secretly jealous of the mystery his wife and Luke Delaney share, but this husband is not so envious that he would stop transforming Lucy into breathtaking art. My sister was born to be molded in clay, chiseled in marble, cast in bronze. Every piece he crafts shows her enduring strength and determination.

  And Luke? Is he happy? I look at him and know. Not yet.

  “Annabel has asked me to read a poem she has always recited on the anniversary of her mother’s death. Molly Marx,” he says, “was my dearest friend.” There’s no way Annabel could read this poem herself and keep a dry eye, he thinks, and wonders if he can. Annabel smiles, urges him to begin, and Luke and I both see my smile in hers.

  “We are loved by an unending love.” I know this poem, written by a rabbi.

  We are embraced by arms that find us.

  ven when we are hidden from ourselves

  We are touched by fingers that soothe us.

  Luke breathes these words in a half whisper. As if he himself is hiding, he wears a soft, trimmed beard, a charcoal smudge on his craggy face, which is beginning to settle into the softness of sixty, which will be his next birthday. He speaks the poem from memory.

  Even when we are too proud for soothing.

  We are counseled by voices that guide us.

  Even when we are too embittered to hear.

  We are loved by an unending love.

  Little Molly begins to stir. My daughter pushes back the bonnet to admire her baby’s face. She lifts the child so that Ewan can stroke her strands of pale blond hair. There are quiet words between them on which I do not want to intrude, and I have no need to, because seeing Molly and Annabel is all I want.

  Annabel, Ewan, and Molly walk down the middle aisle and through the opened doors, outside, where moss connects the old stones the way we connect with one another, our histories mingled. They chat with my mother and her husband, their friends, with Barry, with Hicks and Brie, with Lucy, with Luke, these people I have loved, brought together once again by, as Nana Phyllis would say, such a simcha.

  Suddenly, Annabel puts her hand on Ewan’s arm and stops. She and Molly turn toward where my essence lingers, alone, back by the chapel, peeking out from beside an ancient oak. She is struggling to see someone. She smiles my smile. Molly opens her sleepy eyelids, delicate as butterflies. All our eyes meet, and love joins us as surely as if it were a live current. I know Annabel knows, and it is enough. It is everything.

  Then Annabel blinks and returns to her life.

  I, the late, lamented Molly Marx, take one last, long look. I am done. Complete. I am rested now. I can return to the Duration, for whatever is to come.

  Can they feel it? I do not know.

  Acknowledgments

  Lucky me. I have had the privilege of working with a superb editor, Laura Ford, publishing’s rising star. I thank her along with Ballantine’s outstanding team, especially Susan Corcoran, Libby McGuire, Gina Centrello, Kim Hovey, Christine Cabello, Katie O’Callaghan, Alexandra Rudd, Rachel Kind, Rachel Bernstein, and Brian McLendon. Steve Messina, I am grateful to you and your colleague Sue Warga for the careful copyedit. Mary Wirth, Robbin Schiff, and Susan Turner, I applaud your choices for design.

  Much gratitude to Christy Fletcher and Melissa Chinchilla of Fletcher & Parry for their energy and enthusiasm, as well as Howard Saunders and Shana Eddy of United Talent Agency, whose confidence and creativity I value tremendously. A loud shout-out, too, to fellow novelist Elizabeth Ziemska, whose early, rousing reaction kept me going.

  Our Monday night writing workshop has been my steady pulse these last few years. Thank you, Charles Salzberg, for your leadership, structural brilliance, and deadlines, a writer’s most essential tool. Without them I’d still be staring at my computer in pajamas. I am indebted to Vivian Conan, Patricia Crevits, Sharon Gurwitz, Sally Hoskins, Paul Hundt, Marilyn Goldstein, Judy Gorfein, Erica Keirstadt, Margaret Kennedy, Patty Nasey, Leslie Nipkow, and Betty Wald. Your laughter and generous ideas are the Super Glue that keeps me together. Rabbi Rami Shapiro, thank you as well for your inspiring poetry.

  My family is my loving infrastructure. Robert, Jed, and Rory, I adore you and am immensely grateful for your sharp wit and tender support. Betsy and Vicki, sisters both, thanks for taking the time to read rough drafts. Last of all, I am beholden to my parents, Fritzie and Sam Platkin. I’d like to think they are in the Duration, smiling.

  A Conversation Between Molly Marx and Sally Koslow

  Molly Marx: Since you’re the author of The Late, Lamented Molly Marx, I thought it was high time for a conversation. Greetings, Sally Koslow, book-lady.

  Sally Koslow: Molly, it’s lovely to meet. Please allow me to say I’m sorry for your loss. I hope you don’t mind that instead of a condolence note, I wrote you a novel.

  MM: I’m flattered, but puzzled. Most authors write about the living. Where did you get the idea for my book? If you don’t mind me saying so, the concept’s kind of creepy.

  SK: I was attending the funeral of a neighbor and from what I knew of her, her eulogies didn’t add up. I began to wonder what the woman in the coffin might be thinking about these tributes. Would she be happy? Sad? Cynical? Shocked that hundreds of people turned out to say adios, given that she was a recluse? Whoops—I meant “very private person.” This led to my ruminating on how it’s a fundamental fantasy to be curious about who might attend our funeral and what would be said, both publicly and privately. I meant no disrespect to the deceased, but before I walked out of the service I knew I wanted to write a novel that flowered from this conceit.

  MM: Readers say this book is funny. “Witty” gets tossed about in reviews from bloggers and on Amazon.com, and Publishers Weekly notes the novel’s “hearty dose of hilarity.” But let’s face it, Sally, you are not a funny person.

  SK: Fair enough, though I’d like to point out that the epitaph my fellow high school creative writing students wrote for me was “slit her throat with her own tongue.” Or was it “pen?” Still, Polite Sally doesn’t feel she should repeat every rogue observation that flits across her brain. Fiction is different. Even your snarkiest thoughts—especially your snarkiest thoughts—have a chance of being pinned onto the page. Between us, I love that the book makes some people chuckle.

  MM: Why a myster
y, when your first novel, Little Pink Slips, wasn’t in that genre?

  SK: Your story had to be a mystery because when I started writing it I didn’t know how you died. As the novel unfolded you and I discovered the truth together. I like to create characters who slowly reveal themselves.

  MM: No anal-retentive plot outline? No stickies wallpapering your office? I’m disappointed.

  SK: Sorry, but I simply try to tune in to my imagination and let it lead the way. It helps to take myself for a run and wait for ideas to bubble up.

  MM: You mean you’re not a bike rider, like me?

  SK: You’re much braver than I am. City traffic scares the sunscreen right off me. I rode my bike once on that path by the Hudson River where you lost your life and I was terrified—it was so close to the water! No barriers! Someone could drown there!

  MM: You’re telling me the two of us are quite different.

  SK: Not at all. I put a lot of me in you, Molly.

  MM: Those flaws of mine you listed at the beginning—they’re your flaws, too?

  SK: Yes, except that I’d rather cook than buy takeout, and I subscribe to The New Yorker, not celebrity magazines—those I read at the manicurists’. I’m also diligent about removing my makeup before bed and always laugh at my husband’s jokes. He cracks me up.

  MM: Here’s another way that we’re different. You don’t have a daughter, and my Annabel is—was (the hardest part of no longer being alive is remembering to use the past tense)—the closest thing to my heart. How could you possibly know what being the mother of a daughter feels like?