My irony must have penetrated for once. He regarded me with something of an apology on his face. “Look, I mean it. It was all done through Primeline, and you weren’t involved in that.”
“That’s right. Primeline was your own idea. Another midlife crisis, huh?”
Don flushed a dark red and headed out the front door. Primeline was his one really sleazy action before the divorce, I mean, besides taking up with The Trophy (she was just The Bimbo back then). He set up a separate corporation that siphoned business away from our company. The treasurer slot was ably filled by Wanda, the step-aerobics instructor whose previous real estate experience had been renting an apartment. If his method of cheating me got him into trouble now, well, I didn’t have the least sympathy for him.
“Good luck with Wanda and all those legal complications,” I said sweetly, and closed the door behind him. And those were the last words I ever said to him, and they were dripping with sarcasm. I guess even after all that time apart, we hadn’t moved on. Then he died, and I realized we never would.
Chapter Two
I DECIDED I wasn’t going to let my son go alone to his father’s funeral. Defiance propelled me into a discreet black dress and into the car. Tommy came with me, somber in his new suit, his floppy brown hair wet-combed and tamed. He hadn’t said much since I picked him up in Chicago and told him that his father had fallen from a building. He’d asked, “Did he hurt any?” Death came instantly, I said—I heard those words in some newscast describing that long fall into an unlit construction lot.
But I lost the fuel of righteousness when I got to the big-steepled church. Don’s sister was out front, shading her eyes from the sun, watching for us. “Go with your Aunt Tracy, honey,” I told him as we climbed out of the car. “I’ll be behind you. You should go to the cemetery in the family car.”
“So should you,” he said fiercely.
He was taller already than me, and his hug had that masculine imperative meant to protect and not to seek comfort. But I gave him comfort, as much as I could through my arms and words. “I’ll ride with—” It took me a while to think of a friend of Don’s who was still a friend of mine. “I’ll ride with Cecilie Wolsey.”
Cecilie had been Don’s secretary for years, who took early retirement when he sold the company. Cecilie never blamed Don; in fact, she testified for him at the divorce trial, agreeing that far from being a part-owner, I was just another paid employee. I tried not to hold it against her. Her loyalty had to be with Don and the recommendation he could give her.
As I took a seat in the third-to-last pew, she turned to me with a face red with tears. “It’s so sad,” she whispered, and I could smell the liquor on her. “To see young people like Don die. Like I missed my own time, and they’re going in my place.”
“I don’t think it works that way, Cecilie,” I said. “Hey, why don’t you ride in my car to the cemetery?”
“Thanks, but I’m with the Jamisons. There might be room with them.”
“No need.” The Jamisons had known Don as a boy, and I couldn’t listen to their recollections. “I’ll see you there.”
“Good of you to come,” she muttered as the minister stepped up to the pulpit and the music died away.
What could I have said? Agree I was a class act to pay my respects to my former late husband? Or admit I felt illegal, staring at my replacement sitting proud right up there in the first pew?
At least Tommy got to sit with his Aunt Tracy, a few seats down from the widow. Tracy would take care of Tommy. We used to exchange babysitting when our children were little, and I trusted her.
It was cool in the sanctuary, and the light filtered in pink and gold through the stained glass windows. I felt the ghost of pride. The mayor was there, probably only at the request of Brad Munssen, our old business partner and the city’s natural resources advisor. Still, it said something about Don’s stature that the mayor had come, and half his cabinet. Not that Don would know, but if he could know, it would make him happy.
The service was short—thank heaven for Presbyterian economy. There were a few hymns, ending with “Nearer My God to Thee.” The minister stood at a carved pulpit and read a one-size-fits-all sermon about the inevitability of death. Everyone nodded thoughtfully, trying to convey a readiness for whatever might come without indicating any dread about the matter.
Brad was there, of course, and gave the eulogy. It had to be the snob factor that led Wanda to ask him to speak instead of one of Don’s current friends. After all, Brad and Don had dissolved their partnership around the time of our divorce, the dissolution supposedly just a shift in emphasis, or so the local business journal had reported. I thought it sounded suspiciously like the redefining life goals and starting down a new spiritual path Don used on me. But maybe Brad impressed Wanda with his loyalty. Or maybe he impressed her with his connections. The Munssens were one of Concord’s founding families, and they still dominated the local society pages. And Brad was prominent in his early retirement. He served on half a dozen boards, starting with the mayor’s advisory council and working his way down to the Bike Trail Project.
He sure looked the part, with his newly-trimmed hair and Brooks Brother suit. Even in our ragtag college years, he’d had that élan that said his grandfather didn’t just run the bank, he owned it. And with that natural grace that came along with the silver spoon, Brad handled the awkward situation easily. He talked about their days in the fraternity (getting a laugh from the other Sigma Chis) and Don’s hard work establishing their first business, and the pleasure of seeing five Ross-Munssen buildings guarding the edge of town. He didn’t bring up any verboten topics, didn’t mention his own exile from Don’s life, and never got more specific than “those of us who loved Don” except to say that Tommy should be proud of his father’s life.
Don’s nephew read the 23rd Psalm; then the widow, holding her little son’s hand, started down the aisle. Her high heels clicked imperatively on the marble floor. She was staring ahead, the veil concealing her face, but when she came to my row, her head jerked and I felt the heat of her glare. Maybe I was imagining it. But I didn’t imagine Tommy’s alarmed look, or Tracy’s, as they trailed behind her. They were afraid there’d be a scene.
But she halted just for a moment, and hissed, “I should have known you’d be here.”
I was so taken aback I couldn’t really reply. But finally, I whispered back, “My son just lost his father. I’m here to support him.”
Wanda hissed back, “Maybe he doesn’t need you. His father sure didn’t.”
It only took a moment, and she was gone, and I don’t know if anyone really noticed. But Tommy touched my shoulder as he passed to go out the door. I wanted to say to Don, we did good. We made that gentle, tough boy. And I’m sorry, and I forgive you, and let’s don’t be sad.
DON WAS TO SPEND his eternal rest in the classy section of the cemetery. The stones here were elbow-tall, and the flowers were fresh. None of that plastic stuff allowed. Even the breeze was more genteel here, never mussing the mourners’ hairdos. But the grass under my pumps was spongy, and I had that eerie, adolescent thought-shiver: Was it because of the human fertilizer?
I figured Brad had helped the widow pick out this spot, just down the hill from the Greek Revival mausoleum where the deceased Munssens gathered. It was her right, I reminded myself. It wasn’t as if Don and I had prepared for this. We were Gen-Xers, so our eternity plan consisted of living forever. But then, I was irredeemably middle-class. I knew my place, and it wasn’t here among the lieutenant governors and insurance company presidents.
The group at the gravesite was small, and I felt conspicuous. I stayed in the shade of the maples, as if I were the backstreet lover secretly saying my goodbyes. I wished the sky would cloud up so I could stop squinting. I couldn’t put on my sunglasses and add “tawdry” to my already suspicious presence.
&nb
sp; Hiding under another maple was a knot of Tommy’s friends. Lily was in a black skirt and white blouse and looked like she’d run away from parochial school. The three boys wore polo shirts and chinos and their best clean Nikes, the ones they wore only to play indoor basketball and to go to church. I felt a rush of that sweet pain parents get when kids are being very good. I went up to them and thanked them for coming. “I know Tommy really appreciates it.”
Jamie Torrance appointed himself spokesperson. “We won’t bother him or nothing—we’ll just be here. And we’re going to take him out day after tomorrow. We bought the tickets before—before all this. And the WWF comes to town about once a year. And it’ll take his mind off things.”
I agreed nothing would divert Tommy like a good faked wrestling match. For a weak moment, I wanted to beg to go along. Instead I patted Jamie on the arm and went back to my own tree.
As I moved around that awful square hole in the ground, the mayor’s aide was there, talking intensely to a man I thought was the city engineer. I heard the aide make some joke with the word “tumble,” and the engineer chortled. I halted, fury filling me. They were laughing about my husband’s death. No, not my husband. But still, he was my son’s father. I glared at them, and this time they took notice of me and sidled away, back towards the line of cars.
From this vantage, I saw the procession of mourners waiting to speak to the official widow. I could almost hear what they were saying: Such a terrible loss, what a shock it must be. Or maybe they were laughing, as the mayor’s aide did, at Don’s death.
Just as well that though I knew most of them, most of them no longer knew me.
Then there were the few that I didn’t know at all, the ones who must have been the Trophy Widow’s friends. They were young, lithe, buff. I wondered what Don thought of them: the two young women with the slightly-too-tight skirts (okay, I knew what he thought of them—the same that any man would) and one hunk of a fellow who stuck close by Wanda, as if she might be his ticket to a Chippendales’ audition. They’d go out afterwards and drink a few rounds to good ol’ Wanda, who knew what she was doing when she married that old guy. Then they’d discuss how best to touch her for a loan.
After a moment, Brad broke away from his graveside post to approach me. I saw the beads of sweat on his upper lip and knew he wasn’t feeling well. He always looked slim and elegant, but there was a price for all that aristocratic inbreeding. “Meggie. It’s sad to have to meet on such an occasion. Good crowd though, don’t you think?”
I remembered Willy Loman’s observation that a man’s worth could be judged by the number at his funeral. Don ought to be proud then. I said, “Well, Don grew up here, and everyone liked him.”
“Yes, everyone liked Don.” A thousand memories in that line. Brad was Don’s best friend, and so we would always be joined. We weren’t just Don’s audience. We were the people who knew him.
But maybe we stopped knowing him years ago. Or maybe Don stopped being the Don we knew. Maybe that’s why Brad made his graceful exit before I was gracelessly shoved out the door. With that gentleness that was so much a part of him, Brad said, “We didn’t stay in touch, Meggie.”
This wasn’t an accusation, just a rueful acknowledgment of the limitations of friendship. “I know. But—” What was the point, I almost said, but cut it off as barely short of insulting. “I lost touch with a lot of people the last couple of years.”
“Let’s not do that again. We’ll get together for a drink next week, all right? Talk about old times. The good times.”
I felt the tug. No one remembered those good times now. Just Brad and me. Quickly, before my Brave New Self intervened to remind me to look ahead not behind, I agreed. He gripped my hand, then left to go stand by the grave.
It was only after a moment that I wondered what exactly a drink meant to Brad. A date? Surely not. We were friends. And I’d never been his type. Even in college, he went for women who wore pastel silk suits to class. His discreet but long-standing man-about-town reputation posed no danger for me.
Danger. My Brave New Self scoffed at that. I had to remember that a single man’s interest was not dangerous. Sneaking a glance at Brad’s elegant back, I decided that, dangerous or not, his interest wasn’t a problem/opportunity I was likely to face.
I scooted back to my protective tree. Tommy was in front of the casket, Tracy holding his hand. He looked around and lifted his hand in a wave when he saw me. I saw Wanda’s head jerk then—she’d probably never forgive him for that. I didn’t care. Tommy wouldn’t ever have to see her again.
“Mrs. Ross.”
I turned to see who had the temerity to call me by that name.
“Dr. Warren.” Now this was above and beyond the call of duty. A psychiatrist coming to a client’s funeral? (That’s what the younger shrinks call us—clients, not patients. It’s supposed to make us feel less like sick people and more like rational consumers of mental health services.) It wasn’t like we’d all become good pals. But who knows? Maybe Dr. W and Don got to be close. Maybe Dr. W even owed Don a favor. Maybe Don paid Dr. W extra to encourage me to dump my hopeless quest to win him back.
Dr. Warren was as impeccably, and as expensively, dressed as Brad, but there was a difference. Brad was born to wear Brooks Brothers. Dr. Warren wore his suit like armor—something stripped off when the battle was done. He didn’t seem uncomfortable, but this place wasn’t his native ground. I sensed that. It wasn’t mine either.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” That was all he said, and yet that was all it took. He was the only one who mentioned my loss. I covered my mouth with a fist, and he said, his voice rougher now, “Don’t cry. She’s looking at you. And you can bet her mascara is waterproof.”
“Ha,” I said bitterly. “She doesn’t need it. I bet she hasn’t cried a tear.”
Dr. Warren said something doctorly, like how different people show grief in different ways. I ignored that but rubbed away any stupid tears that might leak out. I didn’t want him thinking all I did was cry. It wasn’t my fault that our entire acquaintance took place during the worst time of my life.
“I am not crying,” I declared, and that hard face relaxed, and I realized I was supposed to use my annoyance to buck myself up and get through this disaster. Reverse psychology. “Wanda still looking?” I said.
“Nope. The minister has opened his bible.”
I sobered up quick and checked Tommy again. He was still holding Tracy’s hand. I couldn’t help him now, and I felt the harsh crack of that. This was the worst in a long series of hurts I had to let him suffer on the road to adulthood. I wasn’t any good at that. I wanted to fight the battles for him, take the math tests, beat up the bullies. Don hadn’t let me. That’s what fathers were for: To hold mothers back, to let sons live their own lives, make their own mistakes, become men.
I held myself back now.
A few more prayers, a warbly hymn, then the minister led everyone away from the grave and down the slope towards the cars. They don’t go through that ceremony of lowering the casket and tossing clods of dirt anymore. Too tacky. Too gritty. Too final.
Tommy broke away from the procession and came back to me. “Mom, they want me to go back for the luncheon. I don’t want to.”
“You have to. You know that. It’s for your father.”
He hesitated, shifting his weight forward, as if he thought he might be able to run away. His new leather shoes creaked, and he made a face. “I got a blister.”
“I’ve got a bandaid.” I searched through my handbag and triumphantly handed one over. Tommy looked dubiously at the battered little wax packet, so I added, “The seal isn’t broken. It’s sterile. Now be sure and say please and thank you. And wait until you get to a restroom to take off your shoe. If you’ve got a blister, I bet it’s because there’s a hole in your sock.”
He gave that ann
oyed adolescent “huh” and trailed off to catch his aunt. After that crack about his sock, he would just as soon spend the afternoon with civilized people who didn’t go out of their way to humiliate him.
“Good tactic.”
I’d forgotten Dr. Warren. He was leaning against a tree, his arms folded across his suit front. I said, “Well, I’ve learned a few tricks. Do you have any children?”
“Two girls,” he replied. “They’re both at Ovid.”
Ovid was an old red-brick liberal arts college in the leafiest part of town, still alive because a couple of Concord’s older families kept endowing buildings. The shrink business must be doing well if he could put two kids through private college. Most local kids went to IU or Purdue, or sent their kids to the new state university out on the highway, with the low tuition and the hot computer science department. “That must be nice, having them here in town.”
“Yeah, I see them when their laundry reaches crisis proportions. What are you going to do now?”
For a second, I thought he meant with my life. Then I saw he was watching the cars streaming after the Official Widowmobile. He meant right now. It was embarrassing to confess I wasn’t invited back for the luncheon, so I said, “I’m going home.”
He pushed away from the tree. “Tell you what. You stay here for a couple minutes. I’ll get some junk food and bring it back.”
“Here?” I’d been trying not to notice, but now that the funeral party had exited the cemetery, a pickup truck was wending up the road towards us. I could see shovels in the back. Anyway, I’m not one for domineering men. They get my back up. And if I had anywhere to go but an empty house, I’d tell old Mike Warren to take his commands to boot camp where they belonged.
But the sun was warm, and after standing so long, I couldn’t get the energy back to my legs. So I watched him get into his car as the three overall’d fellows clambered from the pickup truck, grabbed their shovels from the back, and walk to the casket.
Until Death Page 2