Then, three weeks to the day I discovered the man I thought I loved was already married, I realized my period was late.
I’ve sat here so long, the chicken’s gone stone-cold. I stuff the last bite into my mouth, clean up and wander out into the living room, unable to fathom that only yesterday my grandfather sat in that chair, alive. That his scent will eventually fade, as will his image from my memory. I no longer remember exactly what my mother and grandmother look like, unless I look at their photographs.
I lift Leo’s sweater from the back of the sofa and slip into it, even though I’m already wearing two layers of clothes and it’s not all that cold in the house. Cocooning myself inside it, I lower myself into his chair, my legs crossed, my eyes closed. For a moment, I remember how it felt when he’d hold me in his lap when I was little, reading to me or watching a Jimmy Stewart movie with me. Harvey was his favorite. There were lots of hugs, when I was growing up. From my parents, from Leo. My grandmother was the reserved one in the family. Her embraces were fleeting, brittle things—
The phone rings again. Since I’m not peeing and my mouth isn’t full, I pick up.
“There is no way you and Starr get everything and I end up with half of a fucking life insurance policy!”
Ladies and gentlemen…meet my sister.
She was never real generous with her hugs, either.
chapter 12
You may remember my mentioning Jennifer, my older sister, a while back. Or maybe not. I didn’t make a big deal of it. But then, she hasn’t made a big deal of the rest of us, either, especially since she married some hot-shot investment banker and moved to Lawn Gisland, where she’s apparently settled quite nicely into her role as an Oyster Bay matron. Not that I know of this personally, but from Shirley Webster, Jennifer’s one-time best friend who I see maybe once a year when we happen to be in Grand Union at the same time. Shirley herself only hears from Jen sporadically, usually by means of an invitation to some event to benefit this or that Jewish charity on which board my sister serves.
Which might be commendable, except when you consider—from what I remember, at least, since it’s been ten years since Jen and I lived under the same roof—that my sister’s regard for religion in general and Judaism in particular ranked several notches below last year’s shoes. According to her, God was something for the weak and deluded to pin the rap on. Granted, maybe nobody in my family (except for my grandmother) was exactly big on the synagogue thing, but if the rest of us schlepped our Jewishness around like a squeaky, slightly bent grocery cart—a little rusty, but still useful when the need arose—Jen had given hers away to Goodwill.
Until, apparently, she realized sometimes you need a grocery cart, after all, so she went right out and bought a shiny new one. That doesn’t squeak.
As, apparently, she realizes there are times when you need your family.
I.e., me.
I always got the feeling that Jen was convinced she’d been plopped into our little circle by mistake (no argument there) and realized early on that she would shrivel and die, like an orchid planted in the desert, if she didn’t transplant herself somewhere more conducive to her delicate, hothouse temperament. Or maybe she was just pissed about the burial plan graduation gift. Something tells me she was thinking more in terms of all-leather interior and a sunroof. In any case, I have literally talked to the woman once since her wedding, and that was at our father’s funeral. At which she arrived ten minutes late because of a conflict in her schedule.
Anyway, here she is again, fuming nicely on the other end of the line. Funny how a relative’s death can reestablish those family bonds.
“You’re not exactly getting nothing,” I say, figuring since she dispensed with the usual amenities, I might as well follow suit. “Twenty-five grand, tax-free, is nothing to sneeze at.”
I hear the snap of a cigarette lighter closing, the whoosh of an angry inhalation. Like Tina, Jen has smoked since she was fourteen, prompting an impulse—which I somehow resist—to point out that if she’s really that afraid of dying young, let alone ending up with skin like a Slim Jim casing, perhaps she should rethink a few of her lifestyle choices. “Big fucking whoop. Like that’s gonna do me any good.”
Uh-huh. I think back to Jen’s wedding, which Stuart—Jen’s much older husband—bankrolled. At the Pierre. Ice sculptures, open bar, a cake that deserved its own wing at the Met. And let’s not even get into the ring, which practically needed its own zip code. Somehow, I’m not feeling many sympathy pangs, here.
But then, Jen isn’t after sympathy. She’s after blood. Mine, apparently, since Leo’s dead.
“We were his only grandchildren,” she says, huffily. “By rights, his estate should have been divided equally between us.”
“Yeah, well, and I’m your only sister,” I retort, figuring, what the hell, if you can’t resurrect a grudge at times like these, when can you? “Although it seems to me that didn’t exactly count for much ten years ago.”
There is actually silence on the other end. Then I hear the whoosh of smoke being exhaled and realize the pause wasn’t due, as I had sanguinely hoped, to a pang of conscience. “Oh, for God’s sake, Ellie! I cannot believe you’re still hanging on to this after all this time. I was trying to protect you, you know that! It would have broken my heart, seeing you embarrassed…”
“What was embarrassing was having your own sister tell you that you were too fat to be in the bridal party!”
“I never said that!”
“No, you just said you didn’t think I’d be ‘comfortable’ in the dress you’d chosen for your attendants.”
“Well, would you have?”
“I could have altered it, Jen! Or gotten the fabric and made up something else!”
“And wouldn’t that have been even worse,” my sister said in her version of “soothing,” “standing up there in a different dress because it was obvious you couldn’t wear the same one everyone else was?”
I wouldn’t’ve cared, I want to say, but why bother?
“Never mind,” I say wearily. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”
Her relief positively shimmies through the phone to give me a hug. “I’m so glad to hear you say that, honey—”
Honey?
“—I mean, it’s not healthy to keep dwelling on the past. Unresolved resentments do terrible things to our immune systems.” I hear her take another drag on her cigarette. “But as I was saying…there must be some mistake. With Grandpa’s will, I mean.”
Who the hell is this “Grandpa” dude? Leo, I want to scream. We called him Leo. “There’s no mistake. The will is completely legal, signed and witnessed and everything. Although I had no idea what was in it before I saw my copy, either—”
“Oh, don’t give me that, of course you knew! It says you’re the executor, how could you not know?”
“That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with what’s in the will! I just have to make sure everyone gets what’s coming to them!”
“Yeah, well, who was sucking up to the old man for years? You can’t tell me that didn’t count for something!”
“Living with the man’s not the same as sucking up to him! And yes, it counted for something! Starr and I were his family, Jen! You know, when people share lives and living space and actually give a damn about each other?”
“How do you know how I felt about Grandpa? I’m absolutely devastated, Ellie. Devastated.”
“Right. And when was the last time you actually talked to him?”
“I’ve been…busy. You have no idea what my life is like.”
“And you have no idea what mine is like,” I say softly, suddenly too drained to fight. Like she knows from devastated. “Or Starr’s. Or Leo’s, before he died.”
After a beat or two passes, she says, “So when’s the funeral?”
“You’re in luck,” I say. “There isn’t going to be one. So you don’t have to worry about fitting it in.”
“What do you mean, there i
sn’t going to be one?”
“Just what I said. Leo doesn’t want a service, it’s right in the will.” Which you’d know if you’d read the whole thing instead of just the part that had your name in it.
Because if she had, you better believe Sonja Koepke would be a serious part of this conversation.
“That’s just not right,” Jennifer says, “not even honoring the man after his death—”
“Jen? Go one step farther down that track and I swear I will kill you.”
“It’s so sad,” she says, “the way you’ve changed.”
“No, what’s sad is that you haven’t.”
After a couple of brittle moments, during which I can feel her thinking evil thoughts, she says, “I have to clear up some things on my schedule, but then I’m coming in, so we can talk.”
“If you’re coming to see me and your niece, fine. If you’re coming to give me a hard time about the will, save yourself a trip. The houses are mine and Starr’s, the bonds are mine, the bank account is mine. You don’t need it. We do.”
She hangs up on me.
Nice to know some things haven’t changed.
Like a St. Bernard sitting on my chest, lethargy pins me to the overstuffed armchair in my bedroom.
It’s taken a couple of days, but grief has finally found its way home. I still haven’t really cried yet, but I think that’s because it would take more energy than I have to really let go.
I hear Starr getting herself breakfast: a chair scraping over the linoleum, the sound of the fridge slamming shut, her favorite plastic Peter Rabbit bowl clattering onto the kitchen table. I should be down there with her, being strong and comforting and motherly. That my five-year-old daughter is clearly functioning better than I am is unnerving, to say the least.
I know I need to shower, to make my bed. Talk to my daughter. Except all of that implies a commitment to getting on with things. I don’t want to get on with anything, except maybe crawling back into bed and sleeping for about five days straight.
Depression does that to me. Especially this time, combined with the soul-sucking revelation that there’s absolutely nobody else to share the decision-making process with anymore, nobody for me to lean on and shoulder the sorrow with me, that I’m completely alone.
It may be a while before I get out of this chair.
“You gotta eat.”
Starr’s voice, whisper-soft and irritatingly commanding at the same time, startles me out of my stupor. Before I can say anything, she plops a bedtray on my lap with a bowl of Cookie Crisp in way too much milk and a half-filled glass of orange juice. She thrusts a spoon in my face, the Baby Gestapo in a faded powder blue hoodie and sparkly gunmetal leggings. And those red boots, the only shoes she will now wear. Her glasses sit crookedly on her nose. “That’s all the juice,” she says as I take the spoon in self-defense. “We gotta buy more.”
I nod and force my hand to scoop up a spoonful of the dreadful cereal and carry it to my mouth. “Thanks, sweetie pie,” I say, trying not to gag.
My child perches primly on the edge of my unmade bed for several seconds, her gaze unwavering, until—apparently satisfied that I have at least eaten enough to stave off imminent starvation—she gets up and pads silently over, wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me, then leaves, shutting the door behind her.
My throat closes, refusing to let the soggy bite of cereal pass. Alone? Why on earth would I think that? I’m not alone at all.
I set the breakfast tray on the floor and go take my shower.
Leo’s been gone a week now. Recently enough that I’m still thinking, “A week ago, we…” or “Just the other day he said…” But the thoughts aren’t making my stomach twist inside out quite so much anymore. I am, however, sick to death of everybody trying to boost my spirits. My spirits don’t want to be boosted, they want to grieve. They want to milk my sorrow for all it’s worth. I want to be left alone to let the memories wash over me, like lying on the beach in the warm sun and feeling the water gently lap at my legs until I feel healed.
Wearing my grandfather’s gray, shawl-collared cardigan— I have rubber bands around the cuffs to hold them up, otherwise they hang more than six inches below my fingertips—I check on Starr for the third time since I put her to bed an hour ago. It’s all I can do not to get her up to play or watch a video or make brownies. We can do that tomorrow, when she’s supposed to be awake. When she’s not as likely to guess her mother’s hanging by the thinnest of threads to what’s left of her sanity. Except I’m not really that bad off, I don’t think. I mean, wouldn’t I know I was losing it if I really were?
Maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that question.
I find myself wandering from room to room, like a restless cat. The worst thing is the silence. No, that’s not quite it, because I’ve been in the house plenty of times when no one else was here, or when Leo and Starr have both been asleep. But there’s the silence of peace, and the silence of a void. That where something—or in this case, someone—used to be, now there’s nothing.
And it’s making me batty.
I end up in my grandfather’s room, thinking maybe I’ll start going through his things. Except the instant I set foot on the worn carpeting, the ache of loss is so sharp I nearly cry out with it. This isn’t the first time I’ve been through this, looking at or touching personal items I know will never be touched or looked at by their owner again. Why the pain should be so searing this time, I don’t know. Maybe because it’s taken me three times to really, truly understand just how ephemeral this all is. Our individual lives, I mean. After eighty years, what’s left? Memories. And a bunch of stuff that will either rot away or end up being owned by someone else who’ll have no idea of its significance.
Creeped out by my own moroseness, I leave the room and its shadows. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or next week, when I can lift the shades to let the clear, cleansing early spring sunshine chase away the heebie-jeebies, I’ll come back and do what I have to do. After all, there’s no hurry.
I finally realize I’m afraid to cry. Afraid if I let out the sorrow, I won’t be able to stanch it.
I go back downstairs and put a mug of water in the microwave for tea. Soothed by the appliance’s benign hum, I become so thoroughly engrossed in reading the Celestial Seasonings box I flinch at the ding. I make my tea and put away the few dishes in the drainer, dismayed to discover, when I glance up at the clock, that all of five minutes have passed.
Okay, I need to do something. Anything. Hugging my tea to my chest, I wander out into the living room and poke through my video collection, bypassing the Jimmy Stewarts for Sex and the City. I shove in a tape at random, then plop onto the sofa. Only, before I can press Play, there’s a soft rap on the front door. It’s Luke, weighed down with grocery bags. And commiseration.
I’m grateful and apprehensive, both, for the comfort of his familiarity, the gentleness in his dark eyes. As with no one else, I can be with him and still be alone, which is exactly what I need at the moment.
I want to throw myself into his arms. Desperately.
“You’re back,” I say.
“I’m back.” He somehow frowns and smiles at the same time. “How you doing?”
I hitch my shoulders.
“Yeah. Same here.” He jiggles the bags. “I come bearing carbs. We got your ice cream and Sara Lee crap in this bag—” he holds one aloft “—and Entenmann’s and chips—” he lifts the other one “—in here.”
“Oh, God. You got any idea how much food I still have in my refrigerator?”
“I can guess.” He heads back to the kitchen; I follow, telling myself I don’t really want to bury my nose in that beat-up leather jacket of his. “I figure we can trade,” he’s saying, “since right now you’re probably wondering how on earth you’re going to eat it all before it goes bad.”
Unfortunately, this is not turning out to be as much of a problem as I’d previously thought. My mouth waters as he unloads a copious su
pply of goodies onto my counter.
“You’ve been well trained.”
His movements hitch. “I remember you and Tina used to be able to really pack this stuff away.”
Only Luke could think of somebody else’s pain while his own is still so raw and new. Especially as—I suddenly realize—this breakup is the first really bad thing to happen to him. For good or ill, loss is nothing new to me. I at least know what to expect, how to weather the stages. But all-in-all, Luke’s led a pretty charmed life—no major setbacks, no deaths, except for one grandparent a few years ago. So this is totally new territory for him.
“Your mother put you up to this, didn’t she?”
“You kidding? My mother would have a cow if she knew I was here.”
Frowning, I look up.
“Because she read me the riot act,” he says, “about how both of us are vulnerable right now.”
A moment of profound silence follows. I know what he’s thinking, because so am I: She has no idea.
“Are we ready to talk about this?” I say.
A glance, fleeting as a dream. “Are you?”
I think about it, then shake my head. “No. Not until…things are a little more settled.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”
“I don’t suppose we can avoid it for much longer, though.”
“Soon,” he says. “I promise.”
I shift, folding my arms over my stomach. “So why are you here?”
“Because if you feel half as crappy as I do, you probably don’t need to be alone right now. We’re both lousy company, so we might as well be lousy company together. So—” He indicates the loot. “Any preference?”
I feel a smile tug at my lips at his perception, as our unfinished business once again disintegrates like a soap bubble between us.
“Anything with chocolate.”
Luke rips open a box of Entenmann’s chocolate donuts, plunking one on each of two plates, then scoops chocolate chocolate chip ice cream into the middle. This is good—I recently read that it takes the body longer to convert carbs to sugar if you consume protein at the same time. Which confirms my long-held suspicion that ice cream is the perfect food.
Hanging by a Thread Page 16
