Mourning Becomes Cassandra

by Christina Dudley

  • • •

  Raquel, my mother-in-law (ex-mother-in-law? former mother-in-law?), had sent me three messages. We found it easier to email than to talk on the phone, since one or the other of us would start crying and set the other one off. Sighing, I clicked open the first.

  Hello, Cass.

  I thought about calling but knew you would be busy with moving into your new place. We are so happy for you making a new start. Please let us know if you need anything. You will always be family to us. In fact, if you don’t feel like going as far as your family’s this Thanksgiving, we would love you to join us. Max has been repainting the cabin.

  Raquel

  Ugh! Sitting around the Thanksgiving table with Max and Raquel and Troy’s brothers’ families sounded truly horrible. I loved them, but they were big drinkers, and it was sure to end in everyone throwing back even more than usual and ending up weepy and interrupting each other to propose maudlin toasts to Troy. Kind of like how we spent the week of the memorial. And the last few Ewan family gatherings. And once Raquel was really lit, she’d be sure to drag out the hand-embroidered dresses from Troy’s little sister, who also died young, and tell me how she had been saving these for Min to grow into. No way. I would rather spend Thanksgiving at the local Denny’s than torture myself like that.

  Feeling dread, I clicked on the next one.

  Hello, Cass.

  Max was up in the attic today and found a box of Troy’s swim trophies and ribbons. We would like to keep several, of course, but would you like some?

  Raquel.

  I groaned and laid my head on the desk. When I had cleared out the old house, Raquel came by two consecutive days to cart away U-Hauls full of Troy’s and Min’s things, all the time giving me reproachful looks that I would even consider parting with the stuff. I think she expected me to set up some kind of shrine with the relics and was deeply wounded by what she took for my callous, let-the-dead-bury-the-dead attitude.

  Numero tres:

  Hello, Cass.

  Little Minnie would have been 30 months next week. They are going to redo the playground at the park I used to take her to, so I thought it would be lovely if we bought a few of the bricks to put her name on it. And Max thought we should sponsor a drinking fountain with Troy’s name as well. We don’t expect you to contribute, of course. We just wanted you to know it would be there.

  Raquel

  Okay, she won. I was crying, but at the same time angry with her for dragging me down with her. A year had gone by. Why couldn’t she just let me enjoy a few months of denial? We’d been doing grief her way this whole time. Other than Mom ordering up the dumpster, my own parents were giving me space, not talking about it and trying to offer distractions: did I want to join them and their friends on their Caribbean cruise? Did I want to move closer to home? Why didn’t I get a subscription to the theater?

  I supposed I wasn’t being fair. Raquel and I were in a tug-of-war over how to grieve. For her it meant endless do-you-remembers and treasuring every tangible thing you could associate with them. When I did too much of this with her or with anyone, I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe. I was being swallowed alive. Any death you could think of where air was an issue. I guess I was my parents’ child—I just wanted to shelve it for a while. Not that I wanted to join my parents and their retired friends on a Caribbean cruise, but I did want a break from memory. The theater ticket idea was tempting, to tell the truth. Why else would I be avoiding my married-with-children friends and crashing with a bunch of singles, except to pretend that maybe none of that awfulness ever happened? Wearing my wedding ring was my one concession. I didn’t really want to be single, either, and have to deal with issues of singleness. With my ring I could also pretend singleness didn’t exist.

  Taking a deep breath, I wrote her a quick response:

  Hi, Raquel.

  The move went fine, and I am settling in. Thank you for the invitation, but I think my new housemates and I are planning a Thanksgiving shebang [total falsehood which I would have to rectify]. Please keep Troy’s swim trophies. I can see them there.

  The playground memorials are a beautiful idea. I like to think of children playing around Min’s bricks and drinking from Troy’s fountain.

  Hope you both are well. The cabin will look great when Max is done repainting.

  Love, Cass.

  If I was going to stay in denial, I needed to get busy.

  Just then I heard my phone chirp in my purse. Troy must be rolling in his figurative grave to think I decided to go without a landline at the Palace because my cell phone historically spent more time dead than charged. Digging it out of my purse, the crumpled morning’s bulletin came with it. “Calling All Mentors!” shouted the little headline for Camden School when I smoothed it out on my desk.

  Nice try, I told God. You’ll have to do better than that.

  • • •

  Sometime around 10:00, when I was tucked up in bed re-reading David Copperfield, Joanie poked her head in. Seeing me awake she slipped in, shutting the door behind her, and did a running leap onto my bed.

  “Grief, Joanie! Watch out for my legs!” I complained.

  Unrepentantly she flopped over on her stomach right next to me and propped her head up on her hands. “Ask me how it was, Cass. I love living with you and having you right here. I don’t even have to pick up the phone.”

  “How was it, Joanie?” I asked obediently. “I assume you mean coffee and not church.”

  “Yes, I mean coffee!” she said exultantly. “Roy is so great! He may be unemployed but he’s gorgeous, plus he’s fun to talk to and has lots of interests and asked me about me. And he totally wants to come to our first open house on Thursday.”

  “No big surprise there. Do you think the cute short friend will come too?”

  She sat up suddenly and looked hard at me. “We didn’t even talk about him, and I didn’t think to ask, since Phyl wasn’t interested. Are you interested? I’ll ask for you. You’re so short I’m sure he’s taller than you.”

  I shook my head, horrified. “No no no! I didn’t mean that. I don’t want him either. Let Brooke Capshaw have him.” She was getting that speculative look in her eye, so to change the subject I demanded, “Did Roy ask you to marry him yet? And did you say Yes and Yes and then No, never mind?”

  She mock-scowled at me. “What a grump. Aren’t you even going to ask me how he made it to his age without being gay or divorced?”

  “I assumed he was both.”

  “Oh, ha ha,” Joanie said sarcastically. “No, really, Cass, he’s been overseas for the past four years teaching English in Cambodia for World Vision. Isn’t that the coolest?”

  I pretended to consider, just to tease her. “Fairly cool…but just because he’s an idealist doesn’t make him a monk. He probably had a Madame Butterfly/Miss Saigon thing going on.”

  “What are you talking about, Cass? You mean he was an opera fan?”

  “No, goof,” I laughed. “What’s wrong with being an opera fan? I meant he might have had a love affair with someone in Cambodia and left a souvenir or two behind. Did he ask you how you feel about kids? Or being a stepmom?”

  She whipped one of my pillows out from behind me and walloped me with it. “So cynical today. I was going to give you the play-by-play of our conversation, but I guess I’ll save my raptures for Phyl, then.”

  I gave her an apologetic squeeze. “I’m just giving you a hard time. I want the play-by-play. It’ll take my mind off my mother-in-law’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

  “Oh, no. Have you heard from her again?”

  “What do you mean ‘again’? I still hear from her practically every day. We’re quite the e-mourners,” I explained. “So I did that, and when Daniel came home I tried to have a basic getting-to-know-you conversation. He was very evasive and non-curious. I can’t say it was a success.”

  “Poor you,” she crooned. “And here you are taking refuge in some thick, boring book.
Let me share my much more exciting evening with you…”

  In her own way Joanie could give Dickens a run for his money in the details department. By the time she got around to Roy dropping her off and squeezing her hand significantly it was past 11:00. I kicked her out and, despite all, fell asleep almost right after putting out the light.

  Chapter Four: Open House

  Late Thursday found Joanie, Phyl, and me in the Palace kitchen, preparing for our first open house. Joanie had chosen a Mexican theme and planned more food than five or six people could eat, but if Daniel showed up we wanted him to find it worthwhile.

  Perched on a barstool, I diced tomatoes for the Spanish rice, while Phyl arranged the last of the summer flowers in bud vases. “Do you think Daniel invited Missy?” she asked, frowning over some limp helenium culled from the yard.

  “Doubtful,” said Joanie, smoothing sour cream over the seven-layer dip. “With just the few of us, it would be like inviting her to a family wedding. Sends the wrong message.”

  Laughing, I dumped the tomatoes and chicken broth in the rice cooker. “Yes, God forbid he send the message that Missy actually means something to him. Phyl, you better get going with the margaritas—it’s almost 6:30.” You wouldn’t guess it, to look at Phyl, but bartending was one of her chief gifts. Another was recycling; even in a place where large segments of the population could sort plastics by touch, Phyl qualified as a total green freak and had even turned it into a career, working for the City’s Environmental Services. She was the reason there was not a paper plate or piece of plastic ware to be found in the Palace.

  The words were scarcely out of my mouth when the doorbell rang. Dancing to answer it, Joanie returned pulling Roy by the hand and waving his bouquet of chrysanthemums. Roy lived up to expectations, being over six feet tall and lean, with hair as red-gold as Joanie’s and the worshipful expression shared by her previous three fiancés. As soon as the friendly introductions were over, he pulled a barstool closer to where she was cooking and parked himself there.

  “I bet six months till he proposes,” Phyl whispered, as if Roy could possibly hear her over the blender crushing ice.

  I snorted. “After four years in Cambodia? I’m betting eight weeks.” To give them some privacy, Phyl let me help her rim the glasses with lime and salt, though I could see her bite her lip when she saw my inexpert results.

  The doorbell rang again, and we looked at each other, puzzled. We weren’t expecting anyone else, and Daniel wouldn’t ring the doorbell. To my surprise, it was Missy, stunning in a black halter top and jeans. Did this mean that, Joanie’s opinion notwithstanding, Daniel didn’t mind sending her the wrong message? Or that he did, in fact, want to make her feel significant?

  Missy grimaced when I opened the door and tried to peer around me. “Hey, there, Cathy. Daniel said to come by for dinner tonight. I brought some libations.” Before I could do more than take the Chardonnay bottle and usher her into the kitchen, the bell rang again. Who on earth…?

  The porch was crowded with people this time—had Daniel invited his entire office? Panicked, I thought of the fajitas-for-eight cooking in the kitchen and mentally rifled through the pantry for more we could throw together, until I noticed that some of the crowd were toting grocery bags, and there were coolers and offerings being unloaded from various trunks. Phyl was going to have a cow when she saw all the clamshell containers. And what would everyone eat off of? Cars lined both sides of our street for several houses in each direction. Names and faces and contexts soon blurred together; the hall closet wouldn’t close on all the jackets and purses; and potluck offerings soon hid all those acres of granite counter.

  One last ring of the doorbell.

  “Wyatt Collins,” said a stocky, balding man, when, zombie-like, I opened the door once more. “Law school buddy of Danny’s. And this is my wife Delia. Saw Danny right behind us, but I don’t think he can get up the driveway to the garage.” Well, if he couldn’t it was his own fault.

  Over Wyatt Collins’s shoulder I could see the master of the house unfolding from the low seat of his vintage Corvette, relaxed and empty-handed. Scrunching aside to let the Collins’ in, I stared insistently at Daniel to catch his eye.

  “What happened to ‘two guests, max’?” I hissed, when he was close enough to hear me. “Did you wake up thinking you were The Great Gatsby?”

  He raised one eyebrow and pushed me gently inside so he could shut the door. “I couldn’t let you religious wackos outnumber me.”

  • • •

  Our carefully-planned Mexican dinner became a global mishmash: baked beans next to hummus next to siu mai, smoked salmon jockeying for counter space with California rolls and fruit salad, but at least everyone got enough to eat. To this day I don’t know how many people we had total or who everyone was or how they knew Daniel. He never afterward invited so many, and indeed most of them never showed up again, as far as I recall. I suspect he was just making his point: this was his house, both Palace and Lean-To, to use as he saw fit, and we were on a loose leash but a leash all the same.

  Thankfully, the evening was so mild that, rather than confining themselves to the kitchen, people spilled out on to the deck. Such a crowd relieved me of the need for mingling, especially since they knew each other better than I did, and I was free to eat and people-watch. I amused myself by trying to guess which of them were lawyers—the ones drinking the most? The ones talking the most? One of the biggest drinkers and loudest talkers had attached himself to Phyl; he was apparently a longtime buddy of Daniel’s, good-looking enough, but we both saw the tan line on his ring finger, and she had to keep glomming on to different groups to escape him. Joanie also had her fans, but none of them managed to shake Roy. There seemed to be an understanding among the men present that Missy was off-limits because of Daniel, even though Daniel himself didn’t seem to pay her much attention. She would gravitate toward him, listen in on his conversations, volunteer comments herself, but the second she laid a hand on him, faint tension would appear around his mouth, and he would find some pretense to move out of reach. Missy and I weren’t the only ones to notice his growing disenchantment; a striking brunette hovered nearby, flirting more boldly with each beer she downed. The heir-apparent, perhaps?

  At one point I found myself sharing the chaise longue with Delia, Wyatt’s shy, self-effacing wife, and Julie the Droopy Paralegal. I wasn’t clear on the causes of Julie’s droopiness; she muttered something about having just broken up with her boyfriend, who may or may not have been present. Wyatt and Roy had discovered a mutual interest in wildlife photography and gotten pretty absorbed in comparing notes. Joanie was hanging on Daniel, much to Missy’s ill-concealed chagrin and the brunette’s confusion.

  “How did you and Wyatt meet?” I asked Delia politely. Droopy Julie gave a dramatic sigh, which Delia and I ignored.

  Delia smiled and ducked her chin a little. “In the library at the law school. I was a senior on work-study there fall quarter, and he kept coming by to ask me questions and trying to check out reference books that couldn’t leave the library.”

  “He seems like a nice guy. Was he into the wildlife photography back then?”

  Delia laughed. “No, back then, he was just into the wild life, period. Especially because he hung out a lot with Daniel. I don’t know how they graduated.”

  “The more I hear about Daniel, the more I wonder that, too. He’s sure into the wine, women and song.”

  “No kidding,” Droopy Julie interjected. Had she preceded Missy at some point? She was rather plain, by Daniel’s standards, but maybe I wasn’t making allowances for her current droopy state.

  We all gazed thoughtfully at poor Missy, who was pouting gloriously into her glass of Chardonnay.

  “Wyatt wasn’t so into the women,” Delia said presently, “but he was all for the wine and song. Daniel’s promised him we’re going to play some Rock Band tonight.”

  “All of us? What do you play? Joanie has a great voice, so she
does vocals.”

  She smiled timidly. “I’m actually pretty good on drums. Wyatt sticks to the bass because it’s the least to keep track of, and Daniel does guitar. Do you play?”

  “Only a few times with my husband’s brothers. Of course they stuck me on vocals, but I couldn’t say I was any good at it. I could muddle through the few songs I’d heard before.”

  “Your husband’s brothers?” Delia looked puzzled. “Are you divorced?” Droopy Julie perked up a little, to think I might also have a broken heart.

  I sighed inwardly, kicking myself for my slip. I absolutely hated always dragging around my tragedy like a ball and chain. A real conversation killer. “I’m widowed, actually, but it’s okay…” I babbled, holding up a hand to wave away her sudden gasp and crestfallen look. “Here, can I take your plate?”

  As I fled, I overheard Droopy Julie murmur, “God, how awkward! She doesn’t look old enough to be a widow—I wonder what he died of.”

  I ducked back inside, feeling that familiar lump rising in my throat and hating it. The kitchen looked like a take-out container graveyard. Painstakingly, I scraped food scraps into the yard waste bin and started rinsing the dishes, so I would have time to get my emotions back under control. Maybe I should have a signboard printed up: Cass Ewan. I have been recently widowed and lost a child, and I do not want to talk about it. Thank you for your donations! Hearing the door open, I quickly dashed my sleeve across my eyes.

  It was Missy, still looking unhappy—or like Miss America unhappy. Miss America after she’s posed for inappropriate pictures and has to relinquish her crown to the runner-up.

  “Would you like anything else?” I asked huskily and then cleared my throat.