“I’ve never left her alone before.”
“Okay then, wait. But you said the next available seat wasn’t for twenty-four hours.”
“Yes,” Sylvia said, her throat thick.
“In other words, tomorrow.”
“But I can’t—”
“One day. That’s nothing! Ruth can drive you to the airport, then take Gracie to school—she’ll have her usual routine. I’ll be back shortly, and tomorrow, or the next day, she and I can both fly to Saginaw. I’ll sort the tickets out. What’s the big deal?”
“Okay. But what if you can’t get a flight back home?”
“As long as some earthquake doesn’t come ripping and roaring through LA, we should be fine.”
“Okay. What about your new job?”
“We’ll talk about that later. Your dad takes priority.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I should just wait until there’s another seat for Grace.”
Ruth, who was standing there, raised her eyebrows. She whispered, “It’s not my business, of course, but by that time, Sylvia, honey, your dad could have passed away. He needs you. Sylvia, this is an emergency.”
Sylvia had her father in her mind’s eye; his stomach bloated from all the pills, his pallid face desperate. She said to Ruth, “I guess you’re right.”
“Are you listening to me, Sylvia, baby?” Tommy was still on the line. “I’ll catch the next plane home.”
“Wait one minute, Tommy.” She turned to Ruth. “Are you okay looking after Gracie until Tommy gets back? It’ll only be for the day—he’s catching the first plane he can. I could ask one of Grace’s school friend’s moms, although it’s a little short—”
“Don’t be silly,”—Ruth jokingly rolled her eyes—“of course, I’ll look after her; I’d be delighted.”
SYLVIA HATED FLYING. She panicked every time. The liquid allowance, and all the fuss airplane traveling entailed these days, drove her nuts. In her rush, and with the added panic of dropping Grace off at school on time, she realized that she’d forgotten her passport, but luckily not her driver’s license.
As Sylvia drove to Riverton Airport, Ruth beside her in the passenger seat, she reeled off a list of instructions, as Ruth scribbled it all down in a notebook. Sylvia’s eyes were fixed on the road, almost without focusing, while Ruth then rambled on jollily about a boyfriend who had abandoned her on a backpacking trip on an Indonesian island (as things, he said, were “not going to work out”).
“You know, Sylvia, I have something to say, that you may not think is important but . . . well . . . it’s something that has marked my life.”
Sylvia glanced at her friend. She had been so preoccupied by her father, she hadn’t thought of much else. “Oh yes?”
“Just . . . I understand. I lost my mom to cancer and . . . well . . . you’re doing the right thing going to see your dad.”
Ruth is a good person, however quirky, Sylvia mused. They both knew what it was like to lose a mother to that insidious disease. She thought about the tragedy of her dad, and prayed he would make it through. She reflected on the vulnerability of her relationship with Tommy, and how she was about to leave the most important person in her life: Grace.
Trusting her to someone outside the family.
AS SOON AS SHE landed, Sylvia could feel disaster thick like syrup. She knew something was wrong. It was confirmed in Melinda’s heavy, red-lidded eyes. Sylvia’s dad, she told her in a whisper, had just died.
Melinda shielded her with her plump arms as Sylvia’s lungs began to heave with disappointment. Why, oh why hadn’t her father had more strength? She ached for him—why hadn’t she been there sooner? Why hadn’t she read the signs? She cried for her mother, too, for the deep love her parents shared during their forty-year marriage. If Heaven came through and wasn’t just a myth, her dad would at least be reunited with the love of his life.
The drive from the airport felt surreal, as if everything was unraveling in slow motion—as if this were all happening to someone else. Melinda was babbling, words tumbling out of her mouth incoherently. She spoke several times about Aunt Marcy’s upcoming mole removal operation—which was precautionary, she explained, because the mole was benign—and the guilt she felt about not being able to be there for her. The older parents got, the more like children they seemed. Just vulnerable beings without all the answers who needed looking after.
They drove along for several miles, each in their own world, each suffering from the wound of loss. The fact that Sylvia’s father took his own life was a bludgeon to them both, not just Sylvia. It was Melinda who sat on her father’s knee when they were girls, Melinda whom he taught to play golf, Melinda who used to chat to him about the stock exchange.
“I just can’t believe dad didn’t wait,” Sylvia lamented, staring out of the car window, focusing on nothing, the blur of buildings flashing past her in a haze.
Melinda blinked away a deluge of tears. “I know, honey. Life can be so unfair sometimes.”
There was a long silence and then Melinda said, “Sylvie, I made a promise to your dad recently—something you and I need to discuss.”
“A promise?”
“We do need to talk about financial stuff—he worried about that—although now really isn’t the time, so remind me later.”
“Go on, then, spill it.”
Melinda swerved, the car nicking the curb. “Later. We can discuss this later. Just don’t let me forget, is all.”
“Whatever it is I need to deal with, I might as well know right now.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow when you’re feeling better,” Melinda croaked.
They drove on in more silence, until Sylvia blurted out—in order to break the pain of death—“Just tell me what I have to sort out already, and I’ll get it done.”
Tears trickled down Melinda’s round cheeks, her eyes on the road ahead, but she almost careened into the bumper of the car in front of her. “There’s a shit load of paperwork to deal with. Bonds et cetera, a lot to sort through.”
Sylvia blew her nose. Her head felt swollen as if she had the flu. She glugged down some water which she’d bought at the airport.
Melinda said, “The good news is that you’ve got that money in your joint account offshore.”
Sylvia looked blank.
“The account you have together in Guatemala. You remember? You must be getting bank statements every month and be able to go online and manage your money.”
“That’s right, I forgot, we have a joint account.” Sylvia remembered now. Her dad had been smart. He’d stashed his savings in an account with her name on it, too. Melinda was right; she still received bank statements once a month, but just shoved them in the filing cabinet, never even bothering to look—she had never considered the funds hers. And the last thing on her mind right now was this. She wished she hadn’t asked Melinda to “spill it.” Her father’s money was tied with a dark ribbon of guilt about it.
Melinda continued, “Mom doesn’t think he had any debts. But I don’t envy you—it’s going to take you a good few meetings with lawyers et cetera to deal with it all. Sadly, I have to get back to Chicago. Damn my job! I wish I could stay with you. I mean, of course I’ll be there for the funeral . . . but . . . I’ll drop you at home and then I have to get back to Chicago. You don’t hate me, do you?”
“No, I don’t hate you, silly,” Sylvia said despondently, “you’re like a sister to me. Better than a sister.”
“By the way, Mom is going to identify,”—Melinda stopped mid-sentence and took a breath—“the body at the morgue so you don’t have to. She’s still at the hospital now.”
“What would I do without you guys?” Sylvia’s eyes pooled with tears again.
“You’ll have to call Uncle Wilbur’s lawyer for a meeting,” Melinda rasped. “And his accountant. I’ve left a list of numbers for you. I mean, look on the bright side—that money’s waiting for you. Available now. You and Tommy can finally pry yourselves out of your h
orseshoe world in Wyoming and start afresh. You have a choice again. I mean, hasn’t that been the whole problem all along? No choice, because of money issues?”
The Money subject again. Even though Sylvia had unwittingly got the ball rolling, she wished Melinda would drop it. Had her dad really just gone and killed himself? Hoarding those pills, as he had done, and taking them all in one go, meant only one thing. But why?
“You are so vague, my love,” Melinda went on. “Sometimes I don’t think you’re flesh and blood but some sort of ghost floating through life—a spirit that might start walking through doorways. How you manage, my beautiful Sylvie, to even pay a bill is an enigma to me. You are so disconnected with practical matters. Especially these days. You see, how clever your dad was? Thinking ahead. That way the money doesn’t have to wait to pass through probate. It is legally yours. He was such a smart man.”
Sylvia was silent. All this talk was making her insides flip and fold. She turned her eyes away from the cityscape—the empty crumbling buildings, the recession letting down a whole generation, and said listlessly, “But the account is in Guatemala.”
Melinda tittered as if to say, Money talk is easy. Feelings and relationships are the complicated truths to deal with. “So? Don’t you see, Sylvie, hun? That way you can avoid paying death duties. Uncle Wilbur was pretty crafty. He must have chosen Guatemala because it wouldn’t draw attention.”
“Wouldn’t draw attention? Who has a bank account in Guatemala?”
“Exactly. Who would even think to look there? Don’t you see, Sylvie? It isn’t considered an offshore tax haven like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, yet it has all the advantages. They do not tax offshore-derived income and no capital gains tax on bank interest. No Tax Information Exchange Agreement with any country. You can get your hands on that money today if you want. It’s yours. Your dad was always canny about money.”
Sylvia sighed. “The duplicity of it all makes me a little nervous.”
“Do you want to pay your debts off or not?”
“I guess. But it wasn’t the first thing on my mind.” My father has just died, Melinda.
But this was obviously her cousin’s way of easing her own pain. Thinking practically so she didn’t have to dwell on her own emotions. She’d always done that. Always been the listener, the one to focus on other people’s problems, never her own.
She went on, “You can finally get the house in Wyoming finished, sell, and move back to Brooklyn, maybe. Perhaps you could even afford to buy a spacious apartment with a small backyard. Or somewhere near a park. You could even look into private schools.”
A private school for Grace—that would be nice. As her mind wandered, Sylvia noticed a muscle-bound man in a wife-beater tank top, strutting along the street, with a pit bull wearing a studded collar. Poor dog was probably being used for dogfights in some disused warehouse, or car factory. She turned her attention back to Melinda, who seemed to be suffering from verbal diarrhea.
“I mean, Grace may not end up being a horse rider but she could do ballet, or even martial arts. Not bad for a girl to learn that sort of stuff, especially in the city. Or Sylvie, the other option is that you guys could come back to live in Saginaw, although come to think of it, I’m not sure that’s something Tommy would welcome. I mean, I know the romance of the beautiful countryside wooed him in the first place, and a town like Saginaw in the middle of a recession probably wouldn’t be much of a temptation. I guess you don’t want to test your marriage.”
“No.”
“Speaking of which, are you and Tommy, you know . . .?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you make up the other day, after you baked him that apple pie? You’re not being all cool with him, are you?”
Sylvia shifted in her car seat. “Cool?”
“Detached. Unavailable. You need each other right now. With your dad gone, you need him now more than ever.”
Sylvia stared out of the car window again, and focused her eyes on a woman pushing her baby’s stroller ahead of her, across the road. She always marveled at how women could do that—use their children as a sort of buffer with oncoming traffic. The car fumes were nose level for a child. She had always carried Grace in a special sling until she was old enough to walk.
“Sylvia?”
“Sorry?”
Melinda shook her head and smiled. “Never mind, honey, I’m just being my bossy old self—ignore me.”
CHAPTER 7
Sylvia
Walking into the hallway of her childhood home without her parents, or at least one of them to greet her, was eerie.
Sylvia felt the pit of her stomach dip as she stood there in the hallway, her eyes moving about the still, quiet house; memories living in the walls, soaked in the furniture, the drapes, her mother’s tennis trophies, the paintings that her grandmother had done. Like colorful friends supporting her through heartbreak and happiness, they’d seen her have her diapers changed and get ready for her first date. She looked up at the sweeping, wrought iron staircase and remembered coming down, one step at a time, as a princess, a witch, a fairy, dressing up with Melinda and their friends, her mom taking snapshots. The little Regency sofa, where she’d chatted for thousands of hours on the telephone, sat below, it too remembering, perhaps, the time she fell and landed on its arm, saving her life (or at least a hospital visit) from the hard, Spanish tiles below.
And Tibby, her Siamese cat, was his spirit here, too? Tibby, her best friend, who was one when she was one, eighteen when she was eighteen. It didn’t seem right that he had died when he had, just as she was going to college, as if his heart could no longer bear the parting. He obviously knew; he could smell her treacherous suitcases, the betrayal of a girl grown up. Her eyes now wet with tears, Sylvia sobbed, her body heaving from all the memories. She sat on the cold terracotta floor and felt the weight of responsibility shroud her like a musty-smelling winter coat from the attic, demanding, What are you going to do with us? Armchairs, sofas, crystal, miniature wooden boxes, paintings—they all commanded her attention. Right here, right now. Help us! they cried. We are all alone. We need your care. Remember . . . your parents are dead.
Sylvia walked into the kitchen, opened the icebox door, and took out a Coke. Rows of pretty glasses, green with golden rims, twinkled in the glass-fronted cupboards. They too, wanted a promise. Don’t abandon us, we are part of you! She looked inside a drawer for an Advil, or something to lift away the burden; her head pounding with regret, guilt, love, sadness. The drawer, packed with a hundred pill prescriptions, including perhaps, the ones that killed her father, laughed at her.
Where will you even start? You could put us all in a bag, dump us at the pharmacy (isn’t that what you’re meant to do with old fogies like us?) but we are a drop in the ocean, a speck of sand on a beach. What about the rest of the house—your mother’s country club clothes, your father’s suits, the silver, the candlesticks, your father’s ’68 Mustang in the garage, his diaries, golf clubs, photo albums, the letters, your essays from school, the boxes in the attic, the—
“Stop!” Sylvia cried out. “Please, leave me alone! It’s all too much, all I want is to be home with Grace—”
“But this is your home,” the paintings, the sofa-that-saved-her-life, the trophies and the ’68 Presidential Blue Mustang all said at once. “You can’t abandon us!”
“Hello? Hell-oh-oh? Sylvia?”
Sylvia’s heart missed a beat. Someone had let themselves through the front door, never locked, always open to friends—that was the way the neighborhood was.
“Hello Syl-via? Are you ho-home?”
It was the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wicks, holding a large casserole dish. She looked just the same as she always had, squeezed into polyester pants, lemon-colored, paired with a tight blouse, her bra strap digging into the flesh in her back. She was one of those people who was always perky and kind, no matter the circumstance, no matter the weather. “I thought you might be hungry,”
she purred, “and Lord knows with everything you have to do around here, I know the last thing you have is time for cooking.”
“Oh Mrs. Wicks, you’re a saint! I was actually feeling ravenous and wondering where I could go to get a bite around here.”
“Well isn’t that lucky I arrived in the nick of time? Where are Tommy and Grace?”
“They’ll be here in a couple of days. I’m just about to call Gracie, actually.”
“When’s the funeral, honey?”
Sylvia gasped. “The funeral? I don’t know. I need to make a thousand phone calls. Speak to the funeral parlor. I guess I need to call everyone, too. Tell them Dad has died.”
“Let them know he’s passed away?” Mrs. Wicks corrected. “Good idea, though most of his friends already know. I can make some more calls if you like.”
Passed away. It was a word everybody insisted upon using these days. Nobody dared say the word “died” or “dead.” Some people didn’t even add on the “away” part, just, “he passed,” or “she passed.” But her dad was dead and making him “pass” didn’t make it any less painful.
“Mrs. Wicks you’re an angel, thank you so much for your help,” Sylvia said, taking the dish. “Umm, this smells delicious.”
“Pop it in the microwave for a few minutes. You know you can call me Marg. I’ll come back later, and remember, if you need me to do anything, anything at all, just say the word. Is Jacqueline coming today?”
“I think today’s her day off.”
“So she’ll still continue to work here?”
Sylvia hadn’t thought that far ahead. Jacqueline had been with them forever. Sylvia’s forever, anyway. She loved that woman. She knew that she would probably be sitting at home, with swollen red eyes, devastated about the death of her boss, her working life now over. She should have retired long ago—she was too elderly to be pushing a vacuum cleaner about. But she didn’t want to retire, she’d said so a hundred times. To Sylvia, Jacqueline had never been a maid—she had been her lifeblood. Sylvia could keep her on a while longer, of course, but not indefinitely—she wouldn’t be able to afford it. But the idea of not having her in her life didn’t bear thinking about.
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