After I'm Gone

by Laura Lippman

  She closed the sauna, turned, and found Bert at the door of the room. She felt guilty, thinking such mean thoughts about his sons while prowling through his house, cataloging Lorraine’s things, learning to want items she hadn’t known existed.

  “Your mother’s looking for you.”

  “I was hoping to lie down. I have the most ferocious headache.”

  “The guest room is made up. Or you could use our bed.”

  His kindness made her feel even guiltier. Too bad Bert’s sons weren’t more like him. They had his looks, but something was lacking. Bert made her feel safe.

  “I’ll be okay. I’ll just throw some cold water on my face, maybe take some aspirin.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You know, Michelle, for a moment—in this dim light, I thought you were your mother. You may end up being even more beautiful than she was in her prime.”

  Michelle realized that Bert thought this high praise, but really. “Aren’t I in my prime right now?” she asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “When, then?” Said with a pretend pout. She looked up at him through her lashes, parted her lips. She suddenly wanted Bert to kiss her. And when Michelle wanted men to kiss her, they did.

  But Bert said only: “I think your mother’s prime started in her midthirties or so. Maybe even forty. And she’s still in it. Find that aspirin, Michelle, then come downstairs, okay?”

  He probably didn’t realize what she had offered him, old man that he was. Michelle went to the powder room, took a Tylenol she didn’t actually need and stared in the mirror, wondering how anyone could be in one’s prime at forty.

  Rachel had noticed Michelle was missing, but not in the way Linda had, which was to say Rachel wasn’t furious.

  “Michelle won’t stay at any party that’s not about her,” Linda sputtered. “She did the same thing at Rosh Hashanah dinner last week, went into my bedroom and watched television.”

  “She had a migraine,” Rachel said.

  “People with migraines need to be in dark, quiet rooms. She was watching Gilmore Girls.”

  “It’s a drag for her, being the youngest. She’s the odd one out. The rest of us come in pairs.”

  “Not Mama.”

  “Doesn’t she? I always feel as if Papa is with her, somehow.”

  “You’re such a romantic, Rachel. He’s in—Bali, with his girlfriend, the one who lived at Horizon House. I always wanted to get a good look at her, see what the attraction was.”

  “They’re not in Bali.”

  “Israel, then. Wasn’t that always the other rumor? That he bought a new life for himself by investing heavily in Israeli bonds?”

  “I think you’ve confused Papa with Meyer Lansky.”

  “Oh, Rachel, the great romantic. Do you really think Papa yearns for our mother after all these years?”

  “I met her,” she said.

  “You saw her. You told me, back when it happened. And it’s not as if she announced her plans to you that night. It was probably already in the works, don’t you think? And all that other stuff she did was meant to obscure it.”

  Nana Ida came over to Linda and Rachel, pushed her way between them and linked arms. The sisters were not particularly tall, but they dwarfed Nana Ida.

  “Harriet loved you both so much,” she said of her older sister, with whom she had not even been on speaking terms until two years ago.

  Linda nodded carefully, while Rachel made a noncommittal noise. They were not fans of Harriet.

  “And although she didn’t specify, I know she’d want you to have mementos. We’ll go through her jewelry box, see what’s left.”

  Rachel hoped her expression stayed neutral. She knew that her mother had—with Harriet’s full consent—sold the better pieces. But everything was to be willed to her mother, Harriet’s godchild, so what did it matter? Her mother had sold off things precisely to keep the estate below certain levels in order to avoid the inheritance taxes. She wrote checks over the years, too, although never enough to pay a gift tax. Yet Harriet would never let Bambi see her financial accounts, and that was where the real money was.

  “She probably would have wanted you to have a little money, too,” their grandmother said. “But we’ll have to see what’s what when the dust has settled.”

  Even as Rachel was sorting out her grandmother’s syntax, Linda said sharply: “You sound as if you’re the executor.”

  “Oh, no,” Nana Ida said. “That’s the lawyer. But the estate will be split between your mother and me. Well, not fifty-fifty. Your mother will get a cash gift, and I’ll get the rest. Harriet changed it six months ago. We became so close, living at the Windsor Towers. She had resented me all our lives because I was the baby, but she finally saw how silly that was. Plus, she knows now how much I helped out—tuition and such. I put you girls through Park.”

  “We appreciate it,” Rachel said, as she always said when this came up, and it came up a lot.

  “Does Mama know?” Linda asked.

  “I told Harriet she should tell her.”

  “Does Mama know?” Linda repeated. Rachel realized how quick her sister was to recognize a nonresponsive answer, given that her professional life was based on giving them.

  “I couldn’t say,” Nana Ida said, looking down into her coffee cup. “It’s not so very much, I’m sure. Money shouldn’t matter in families.”

  But Linda had already broken away, plunging through knots of people to reach their mother. Rachel watched her go, remembering how it was Linda, all those years ago, who told her that Julie had been just the latest girlfriend, not the only one. Linda had always known how to break bad news.

  Linda tried to move quickly, but she couldn’t just plow through the well-wishers. How much money could it be, anyway? Two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand? Probably not enough to get Bambi’s head above water. Did Nana Ida have any idea how close to the bone Bambi lived, how she sweated the property taxes every year, worried over utility bills, and let repairs go as long as possible? The reason Bambi had asked the Gelmans to hold the shivah was because she couldn’t bear for people to see the house’s condition—the cracking window frames, the patchy roof. She had been able to maintain the “public” rooms, which required little more than regular paint and the occasional reupholstery job, done on the cheap with tacks. But the kitchen was stuck in the seventies, as were the bathrooms. The Sudbrook Park house was frozen in time, like something out of a fairy tale. Her father had paid it off before he left, perhaps the last decent thing he did. Bambi should have sold it immediately, downscaled. Instead, she held on to it, mortgaging it and remortgaging it. Why hadn’t she sold it?

  Because, Linda knew, she expected him to come back. She still expected him to come up the walk. So she wouldn’t petition for his life insurance, or even ask for the modest veterans’ pension to which he was entitled.

  And her mother had been so good to Aunt Harriet. Linda remembered an incident a few years back, before Harriet had to go to the nursing wing of Windsor Towers. One of the aides had called Bambi in alarm, and, for once, it wasn’t because of something hateful that Harriet had said. When Bambi got to the apartment, the aide showed her that the kitchen drawers were stuffed with packets of sugar and artificial sweetener, cellophane packages of soy sauce and plum sauce, mustard and mayonnaise. It boggled the mind, how Harriet had ever gathered all these things. She must have gone into restaurants and shoved them in her pockets willy-nilly. When the aide had tried to throw them away, Harriet had become enraged and thrown a tantrum like a child. Bambi had soothed her and packed up her “treasures” in marked shoeboxes. Where had Ida been then? Maybe they should contest the will. But, no, it would end up in the news. Just this past July, a reporter had called about doing a story tied to the twenty-fifth “anniversary” of Felix’s disappearance. No one in the family had cooperated, but that hadn’t stoppe
d the reporter from doing a clip job.

  Linda found her mother in the kitchen, sitting at the long, padded bench in the breakfast nook. She looked drained. Had someone else already told her about Great-Aunt Harriet’s last spiteful act?

  “Drink this,” Lorraine was saying to Bambi. “It’s decaffeinated.”

  “I thought you said it would be days, maybe even a week or so, Bert. But if a reporter called you here—”

  “The reporter was sniffing. He doesn’t have anything solid.”

  “Even if it is her,” Lorraine said, “it has nothing to do with you. Nothing.”

  “But they’ll write about it soon enough. Not tomorrow perhaps, but it’s going to be written about. They’ll dredge everything up again.”

  “No one’s going to pay attention, given what’s happening in the world at large,” Bert said. “It’s a blessing of sorts.”

  “The attacks?”

  “The discovery. Now you know. It has nothing to do with Felix. She never went to him.”

  “Do I? Is that what I know, Bert? And do you think the newspaper will care about that distinction?”

  Linda could hold still no longer. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?”

  “Tubby got a tip from a detective this morning,” Bert told her. “They think they’ve found Julie Saxony’s body. They still have to do an official ID, and there’s no immediate determination on cause of death, but apparently some items—her driver’s license, I guess, because that would be plastic—survived. I thought the news wouldn’t get out until they had matched dental records, done an autopsy—”

  “Where?” Linda asked because it was the only thing she could think to ask.

  “Leakin Park.”

  “And no one found her until now?”

  “It’s a big place,” Bert said. “They say a dog found her on the far side, where there’s no path to walk. And they still have to make an official ID. All they have for now is a body, maybe a license. She could have left that body there herself. We don’t know for certain it’s her.”

  And not even ten minutes ago, Linda thought, I imagined her in Bali, sitting next to Daddy on matching chaises, a table of drinks between them. But she didn’t want to feel sorry for Julie Saxony. She didn’t want to feel anything for her. She didn’t want her dead. She just wanted her never to have existed.

  I know she’s not in Bali, Rachel had said. I met her. Linda looked at her mother. She was shaky and pale, upset. But she didn’t seem surprised. Then again, she had known about Julie, possibly all day. It was the call from the reporter that had jarred her. Linda would handle the reporter. She always did.

  Michelle chose that time to enter the kitchen, oblivious as ever. She didn’t look like someone who had just weathered a migraine, or whatever excuse she had used this time.

  “Do we have a minyan? Because I really need to get on the road.” Then, when everyone glared at her, “What?”

  March 22, 2012

  Julie’s sister, Andrea Norr, did not seem particularly surprised to see Sandy’s car bouncing up her driveway. Resigned, perhaps, like someone who knew a mistake had been made in her favor but had always believed it would catch up to her eventually. Maybe even a little relieved. She walked alongside his car the final ten yards or so, invited him in, made him more bad tea.

  “So she told Susie, that little bubblehead? I thought Julie was tighter with a secret.”

  Sandy felt a knee-jerk instinct to defend both women. “I think your sister chose a good confidante. Susan Borden didn’t tell the police about the missing money, or even the argument with the daughter. She sat on a significant lead, believing she was honoring Julie’s wishes, that she would put your interests ahead of hers when it came down to it.”

  Andrea made a face, the kind of face Sandy wanted to make with every sip of her tea. “If that’s the case, it was out of guilt, not love.”

  “Guilt over what?”

  “She left me, Mr. Sanchez. We ran away from home together. It was an adventure. And she left me—in the Rexall, in our apartment on Biddle. You know what she called me, when I told her I didn’t approve of Felix? She called me the little old biddy of Biddle Street. She chose her meal ticket over her sister.”

  “What I keep hearing is that she really loved him.”

  “So what?” A flare of temper. “I was blood. He was some stupid married man who was never going to marry her, never. Okay—so secrets are coming out, right? Susie told my secret. Now I’ll tell Julie’s. She thought, sometimes, about going to the cops, saying that Felix didn’t run away. That he feared for his life. That Bambi had him taken out, because he was going to leave her and she didn’t think she could get by on the alimony.”

  “That doesn’t sound like your sister.”

  Andrea’s laughter wasn’t cruel, not exactly, but a laugh at one’s expense always feels cruel and she was definitely laughing at Sandy.

  “You think you know Julie better than I do? Another man blinded by a pair of big”—she paused in a practiced way—“blue eyes.”

  “I’ve learned a lot about her. Other people, her friends, thought well of her.”

  “Did they? Well, here’s my tip. When you want to measure the worth of a person, ask the family first. And don’t forget that Felix, the man she loved, didn’t care for her at all. He put us both at risk, asking that we get him out of town. Yes, Tubman knew and the lawyer, Bert, he knew, too, that Felix was going. They knew the how, and they probably could guess the when. Before he left, Felix moved money around, he signed a power of attorney. Julie was too stupid to ask for anything.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “I literally bought the farm! Oh, hell, not even I find that funny. Anyway, I had the discipline to wait three years before I spent what he gave me. Someone had to.”

  “Wait?”

  “Have discipline. That bail bondsman ran all over town, making wink-wink, nudge-nudge jokes about getting stuck with the bond. Always the jolly fat guy.”

  “Your sister had discipline. She didn’t tell anyone anything for ten years, as far as we know. And Bert Gelman had discipline.”

  “Well, Bert would have been disbarred, right? If he helped someone flee.” She sighed. “There’s one more piece of the story. I know you think Julie was protecting me. But it was mutual. Julie was too stupid to ask for anything. But she wasn’t too stupid not to take what was right in front of her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That night, Felix gave her a suitcase. A small one, like a cosmetic bag. He told her to take it to ‘the place.’ I don’t think she ever did. She hated Bambi that much, she wouldn’t share whatever Felix left behind.”

  Sandy was jolted. It was like finding out that a woman you admired had a bad habit, or an ugly laugh, or made fun of cripples. He was disappointed in Julie, and maybe Susie, too, for not telling him this part.

  “What was in the suitcase?” he asked. He was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “Money for Felix’s family.”

  “You can’t put enough money in a suitcase for a family to live very long.”

  “No. But I think there was information, too, about accounts, and how to access them. All I remember is that he said it would take care of everything and she should take it to the place, whatever that was. But she didn’t. I mean—it’s obvious, she didn’t, right?”

  “Not to me. It’s not like your sister lived like someone who had that kind of money.” Even as he defended her, he was remembering his own random curiosity about Julie’s ability to make the leap from grubby coffee shop to showplace inn.

  “No, but neither did Bambi Brewer—I knew the stable owner who got stiffed for the daughters’ lessons. And that was only six months or so after Felix disappeared. I mean, Bambi might have been reckless, but she couldn’t have run through it that fast. So you have to as
k yourself where the money went. My sister didn’t care about having the money, or using it. She cared only that Bambi never have it. See, that’s my real beef with Felix Brewer. He made my sister mean. He strung her along, used her to get away, left her thinking ‘if only.’ He was yammering about being with her right up until the moment he left. You want to take someone’s life away from them, then put them in the ‘if only’ camp. My sister pinned all her hopes on Felix Brewer. When he didn’t ask her to come with him, he broke her heart. I mean, why not take her with him? All the way to—well, I don’t have to tell you that part. Where we took him. But up until the very last moment, when he said good-bye to her, she thought he was going to ask her to come along. She had a passport with her. Got it just in case. She went to Bert, asked him to help her expedite it. I guess he thought, ‘What could it hurt?’ Well, it hurt a lot. When Felix left—literally left Julie holding the bag—huh, I did it again. Another stupid joke.” She broke off, slumped back in her chair as if all that talk had left her winded.

  “You were saying?”

  “Felix. He broke her heart. So she lashed out. You know, that’s another reason, I think, that we ended up on the outs. Because I was there, I knew. She had a little overnight bag. On the trip up, she said to me, ‘Where do you think we’re going? South America? Oh, I hope I can learn Spanish.’ My stupid baby sister, may she rest in peace. She had never been on a plane before, either, and she was excited about that. I knew and she couldn’t bear it. That was the beginning of the end for us. She tried to play it proud on the drive back, but I wasn’t fooled.”

  “Where was the place?”

  “I dropped her at a diner on Route 40, where someone else was to meet her and drive her the rest of the way. That’s all I know. Really. Today, I haven’t left anything out.”