In the ensuing silence, I hear Jack call out something about beach plum, then Mike shout something to Joy, but their words are swallowed by the surf. I’m thinking of taking up my camera again, when Paul says a quiet, “You look like your mother, you know.”
It is at the same time a most flattering and frustrating statement. “Yeah, well, that’s one of the problems. If I looked like Tom, we’d know.”
“None of you look like Tom. Your daughter is beautiful, by the way.”
“She is,” I say with a helpless little smile that is erased in the next instant by a sharp, loud noise inside the house. For a breath, I remember the gun in the shed that did not kill my dad. But no. This is the clatter of a dish or a pot, and I feel a twinge at not helping Lina. What I’m doing out here on the steps is selfish. But I’m not ready for it to end.
Neither, apparently, is Paul. “If not Tom, who?” he asks.
“Beats me,” I say in an attempt to lighten the charge. “Jack says there were rumors.”
“About your mom?”
I nod. “Kind of horrifying, I know. But Jack heard them. You never heard any?”
He looks frustrated, my mother’s champion even now. “I’m on the far side of Westerly. I don’t hear much of what’s said on this side. Who are the possibilities?”
“Pharmacist,” I say. “Roofer. Gardener.”
He winces. “Roberto Aiello?”
“You know the name?”
“Definitely. Tom was so jealous of the man that he made Ellie let him go midway through the summer season. Aiello was known for liking women, so your dad had cause. But he shared his suspicion with the wrong person, and it got back to Aiello, who threatened to sue for libel. Your mother asked me whether he had a case. That’s how I know the name.”
“Did Mom say whether she was ever involved with him?”
“She was not,” he says with certainty.
I’m about to ask how he can be so sure about this after being circumspect about the rest—whether he asked Mom outright about Aiello—when his eyes shoot to the road. A car has appeared on the cusp of the hill and pulls onto the berm at the very start of the large open circle, as far from Mike Hartley’s truck as possible. The couple who climb out are casually dressed and carry foil-covered plates. I draw a blank on their names.
“Chief Justice Walker and his wife,” Paul reminds me and, standing, extends a hand for mine.
I hesitate, feeling instant panic, thinking that greeting mourners will make this real, that I’m not ready and don’t know what to say and would rather be anywhere else. I’m that child again, a child of the late Tom Aldiss.
But Paul’s warm hand firmly draws me up. Close to my ear, he says, “When a sick person dies, we see them at their worst. Then friends come to share good memories, and it helps. Let’s remember Tom at his best.”
Chapter 23
Sad news travels fast. We’ve decided to wake Dad here at the house, since it’s the place that he most loved, and though we designated tomorrow for formal visiting, that doesn’t stop others from coming today. After the judge and his wife leave, two of Dad’s former law clerks drop by, as do several of his law partners and, as the afternoon progresses, a steady trickle of locals.
I tell myself that this keeps us from dwelling on the mechanics of death. Paul is certainly right about people wanting to share good memories. Does it help? At a time when you need to smile but can’t? Margo can do it. She is the ultimate grown-up. Anne is the ultimate child and, as such, is allowed to break down and be coddled by these people she has known forever. And me?
Ideally, I’d be on the beach with the waves. Was it just yesterday morning that I’d been there with Dad, when he was short of breath, and I did nothing? Would it have mattered if I’d dragged him to the local ER? Would he have allowed it?
This last question is a crock, of course. It puts the blame elsewhere to ease my guilt.
But I’ll always wonder, which is why I need time alone to process what was and will be. If I talk, I want it to be with Margo and Anne about our issues—or with Joy about death and her grandfather—or with Jack about truths that Tom Aldiss now takes to his grave. I want to talk about the future.
But death defines its own moments, and mourning with friends is where we have to be now.
* * *
It isn’t until eight in the evening that we’re alone, by which point we’re too tired to talk about ourselves or anything else. It’s just the four of us nibbling bits of a chicken-ziti casserole from a neighbor, and the farro-and-vegetable dish that Anne’s assistant manager brought with Joy in mind. Not that Joy eats much more than we do. Hunger isn’t a priority, any more than working through our differences is. We’re respectful in a hands-off kind of way. We give each other space.
Margo goes upstairs as soon as the kitchen is clean. Anne takes off for Bill’s. That leaves me alone in the living room listening to Joy, who is in the sunroom picking out pieces on the piano. They’re slow, sad ones, a few strains of “Someone Like You,” then strains of “Fix You.” After a silence comes the opening of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, which I never thought of as sad but which grows more so as allegro slows to adagio. Then nothing.
I wait for her to join me. When she doesn’t, I cross to the sunroom door. Elbows on the keys, face in her hands, and shoulders hunched, my Joy is joyless.
“Oh, baby,” I breathe, rushing to the bench. As soon as my arms are around her, she begins to sob. Swaying, as we did when she was a baby, I rub her back until the tears slow. She wipes them with the heels of both hands. After a ragged exhalation, she regards me with tragic resignation.
“I almost had a grandfather.”
My heart breaks. She so, so wanted this. I could kill Tom Aldiss for stealing it from her—which is a ridiculous thought, but I’m that upset for her. Death is a life lesson none of us escape. I know that. I just wish it had come later.
Then I remember Margo’s words. Accept what you can’t change by changing what you can’t accept. My father may have died nearly in front of my daughter’s nose, but I won’t have her thinking the timing was all bad. I can change the narrative. Can’t I?
Touching her cheek, I say with vehemence, “You did have a grandfather, Joy. You do. You’ll always have memories of this time with him. You made his last days happier.”
Her nose and cheeks are red from planting that morning on the bluff in the sun, and her eyes are swollen and damp, but they hold hope. “Did I?”
“Absolutely. You played the piano for him. He loved that. He loved that you served him breakfast at the shop and made him breakfast at home. He loved that you look like an Aldiss woman. He even loved thinking you were Margo.”
“Until Margo showed up.”
“But you brought her to him first. He was so happy seeing you, Joy. I will never, ever forget the look on his face when he saw you at the clinic last Friday, and when he reached for your hand and then didn’t take his eyes off you the whole way home. You’ll always have that memory. Papa wasn’t naturally a happy person, not in the sense of being cheery or jovial and lighthearted. But when you played this piano for him, when he was sitting here beside you, he was peaceful. You gave him that.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I say with the confidence of a new memory now inked in. And if that memory is an exaggeration of the truth? It doesn’t matter. Joy isn’t the only one who needs it. The idea that my daughter helped my father in his last days comforts me as well.
Unfortunately, my thirteen-year-old needs more. “But why did he die so soon after I came? And why like that? He was supposed to die of Alzheimer’s.”
Well, I’ve thought about that, too. “There’s an upside to it,” I reason. “He didn’t want to live to be a vegetable. This was cleaner.”
“Did he know it was happening?”
“He knew his heart was weak.”
“But when it happened, did he know?”
“That he was having a heart attack? I do
n’t know.”
“Was he in pain?”
“He was unconscious when we reached the shed, so I’m guessing no.”
“But we were here,” she argues, sounding hurt. “Didn’t he want to spend time with us? I thought he liked being with me.”
“He did. Oh, baby. He didn’t choose to have a heart attack. It just happened.”
“Does that mean it could happen to you?”
A heart attack can happen to anyone. But that isn’t what she means. She means, if my father had a heart attack, might I one day, too? Genetically speaking, yes, if I am Tom’s biological daughter. But am I? For a split second, I think of the scrap of gauze that I’ve squirreled away. It has bits of blood on it, and while I didn’t think corpses could bleed, ongoing CPR must have caused leakage when they inserted an IV line.
Will I use it? I can’t go there yet. As for what Joy heard, we haven’t discussed Anne’s accusations, and now isn’t the time.
Framing her face with both hands, I look her in the eye. “Anything can happen to anyone, but if I have trouble breathing, I’ll see a doctor. I am not going anywhere, Joy. Got that?” When she nods, I thumb the last tears from her cheeks and smile. “Want to read?”
The switch takes her off-guard, but the new light in her eyes says I’ve hit the jackpot. She wags a finger between us. “Together? Tonight?”
“Papa would want that,” I say, and the thought is a good one, if, again, more wishful than true. My father never read to me. He never read to any of us. Despot that he was, he thought we should read to ourselves. But I do like to think he approved of my reading to Joy. It plants another memory for my daughter that may not be based on fact, but that will benefit her in life. “Yes. Papa would want it.”
So we read. Though we haven’t finished The Art of Racing in the Rain, Joy picks Number the Stars from the bookshelf in my room. She isn’t as familiar with Lois Lowry as I was at her age, and there is an argument to be made that reading about the Holocaust is no more appropriate than the other after the day this has been. But the book, which made such a deep impression on me that I remember it to this day, is about bravery, heroism, and ultimate triumph. So we climb into bed and start.
It’s a distraction for Joy. Likewise for me, but only at first. As her head grows heavy on my shoulder, I feel the weight of our future and, with it, the same confusion I felt earlier. We’re not facing a World War, certainly not one in which Joy can be snatched from me. Still, I feel fear. I want to see the future but can’t—not about my daughter, not about my sisters, not about an ongoing role of Bay Bluff in my life.
Midway through chapter three, she falls asleep. Closing the book, I treasure the weight of her head on my shoulder for a while. Then she turns away onto her side, breaking the contact, and my tether is gone. The night is dark, the sea sounds powerful through the open window. I am insignificant against it. I feel lost.
Slipping deeper into the sheets, I listen for movement in the rest of the house, but the utter stillness only reminds me that Tom Aldiss is dead. How to process that, when my feelings for the man are so mixed? I try to distract myself thinking of the people who came by today, but their faces blur. Jack, my parentage, new info on Elizabeth, Anne pregnant—these issues have been put on hold by death. I don’t even feel better when I think of New York. Job, condo, friends—all seem like another world, distant and distinct.
The ocean floods the darkened room with the rumble of the tide. I might as well be out there, floundering in the night waves, because I can’t see a freaking thing. Always before in my life, I’ve had direction. I’ve known where I wanted to go. Hell, five days ago I did. But something has upset the balance. Dad’s death? Being in this place again with Margo and Anne? Seeing faces from the past? Being with Jack?
Being. With. Jack.
I’m trying not to think about him, but it isn’t working. I can push thoughts of him to the back of my mind, but they slip forward again. That’s what this place does to me. He’s always in my head, hovering like a gnat.
After swatting him away yet again, I cave. I’m tired of fighting. With all else that’s going on, I want to be weak.
Slipping from bed, I pull on my sweatshirt and run quietly down the stairs. Minutes later, I’m on the beach, that much closer to both the ocean and his house. The latter is dark, save the kitchen light. I could cross the sand, climb the steps, and open the door.
But my feet don’t budge. They’re asking me why I would go there. And they’re right. I have to get through this myself. It’s what I’ve done all these years. It’s what I’ll do again when I leave this place.
Resolved, I settle into the lounge chair. I’ve no sooner tucked my feet under my bottom, though, when he comes out of the shadows. I’m not sure where he was hidden, but here he is, sliding a hand from my head down my neck to gesture me forward. Resist, a tiny voice cries. But that quickly I’m lost. Once I’m forward, he swings a leg over the lounge behind me, lowers himself, and draws me back between his raised knees. My head fits into the crook of his neck, but, having surrendered, that isn’t enough for me. I know what’s coming tomorrow and need an infusion of strength. Jack has always offered that. Turning sideways, I wrap my arms around his middle and press my face to the spot under his jaw where stubble ends. The scent of his skin is as familiar to me as my own, memory and reality for once just the same.
* * *
I’m right to dread Tuesday. It is as grueling as I imagined. I’ve always thought myself to be socially adept, certainly when it comes to making small talk. Isn’t that what a peacemaker does? Or a mom sitting with other moms at the Spring Sing at school? Or a photographer whose client trails her from room to room to room?
But endless hours of small talk with a steady stream of people coming to pay respects to my father? Exhausting. Years later, thinking back on this day, I will remember the most glowing of the comments—the people Tom helped, the friendships he held, the justice he served. Paul was right about that. They did capture Tom at his best.
Today, though, it all blurs. As crystal clear as memory and reality were on the lounge chair with Jack last night, not so in the house on Tuesday. Whether I’m in the living room with the pastor, in the kitchen with a high school friend—of whom there were a bunch—or on the front porch with the woman who served as U.S. Attorney for the State of Rhode Island while Dad was on the bench, the moments run together like streaks of sand swamped under an incoming wave. I remember Joy being by my side much of the time. And Paul maintaining a low profile while serving as the impromptu facilitator of the event. And Jack, whose presence may be controversial for Anne but acceptable for the rest of the town.
By evening, when the last of the visitors have left, we are too exhausted to think about burying Dad the next day. That’s the point, I guess. The kitchen is packed with food that Lina has efficiently stored, but she, too, has left. And Anne, who needs to reclaim a semblance of control, decides to grill chicken. No matter that there is more chicken than anything else in the fridge, she can’t fathom eating any of that, she declares in distaste, and sets to work.
I’m not about to argue. The truce between us is fragile. Far be it from me to risk breaking it.
We let her direct us—salad bowl there, she orders Joy with the hitch of her chin, and thin-slice that zucchini, she instructs me with a nod at the cutting block. She sends Margo to the market for fingerling potatoes, sends Bill to the package store for beer. Then she spots tall, tousle-haired, stubble-jawed Jack planted against the dining room jamb, and when he asks what he can do, she stares.
Leave, she’s about to say when I step in front of her. Truce or not, I can’t be silent. Jack is here for me, maybe even for Joy. “Please?” I whisper.
Her eyes snap to mine, and I brace myself. But her tone is surprisingly mild. “Dad would not want him here.”
“Dad won’t know,” I offer in apology. “Please? Let him help.”
I’m not sure whether she feels he’ll be a buffer between us,
whether she concedes for the sake of Bill, who does like him, or whether she’s just too tired to fight. But after a minute, she says, “Fine,” and looks at Jack. “You, set the table.”
Joy laughs.
Anne shoots her a dark look before grabbing the grill brush and heading out back.
My daughter rounds innocent eyes on me. “What? He can scrape the grill. He can vacuum the living room or … or fix the doorbell, which, FYI, does not work. What does he know about setting a table?”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Jack murmurs with a smirk and, straightening from the jamb, pivots into the dining room.
After slicing the zucchini, I join him. He has managed to find the basics and is circling the table with napkins and plates. Leaning against the peach-painted wall with my arms folded, I consider the absurdity of what he is doing—and where—until he’s done, at which point he puts a shoulder to the wall close beside me. This is the first time all day that we’ve been alone.
His voice is low. “Doing okay?”
I lean just that little bit sideways so that we touch, my form of self-medication. His warmth always loosens me up, and I need that after the day that was. “Weird,” I say. “So many people. To hear them talk, he was beloved. Is that seriously what they remember?”
The corner of his mouth twitches in a smirk, just barely contained. “It’s selective memory. They wanted to help you. Did they?”
“Some. I had no idea he went to bat to help the Eigers’ son get into Harvard. Why didn’t he tell us that?”
“Maybe because he didn’t go to bat to help you get in there. Maybe because he was too busy making your life miserable.”
I want to scold him for speaking ill of the dead, but if his bitterness is loyalty to me, how can I fight that? “Maybe he did talk about it,” I whisper. “Maybe I just don’t remember.”
But Jack’s eyes have drifted off. I follow them through the front hall to the living room, where they focus on Dad’s chair. It still bears the imprint of his body. None of us fluffed its cushions, not even Lina. Incredibly, as though there was a sign with Dad’s name, it stayed empty all day.
A Week at the Shore Page 29
