by Nancy Geary
The policeman caught her and held her steady.
She tried to step forward but felt the officer’s hands gripping her upper arms. Stuck, she looked around. Through the open door, she could see Mrs. O’Connor slumped in an armchair. Two police officers seemed to be speaking to her. One of them—an older man—took notes in a spiral pad. The other paced back and forth on the Oriental rug.
She looked up at the officer who held her in a vise. His large mirrored sunglasses obscured his facial expression, and she found herself staring instead at her own distorted image: short legs, a thick middle, an oversize oval head. “What . . . happened?”
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Loss, my loss, what loss? Why was he sorry? Even as her barometer of realization rose, she was confused. His words didn’t make sense. The situation didn’t make sense. She’d just been gone an hour. It was a hair appointment and nothing more. She hadn’t been negligent. She hadn’t been a bad mother.
Sorry for your loss, sorry for your loss, sorry for your loss, sorryforyourloss. The words echoed. She felt her legs collapse, and then the cool flagstone beneath her. The officer wouldn’t let go, and bent over her, still gripping her arms.
“Give me my baby! I want Sarah now!”
Mrs. O’Connor’s head turned toward the noise, and Grace could see her face, puffy and bloated, streaked with tears. Her hair was in disarray, and the front of her dress appeared to be wet. In her hands, she scrunched a white handkerchief.
The screen door creaked open, and two paramedics in short-sleeved uniforms appeared. The small shape on the stretcher was covered with a dark blanket and held in place by one of the safety straps. The second one dangled down, unbuckled, since the covered body lacked sufficient length to require its use.
Grace stared at the perfect mound, the form in silhouette. She tried to picture the sweet face and blue eyes and blond curls, but all she could see was blackness. She couldn’t breathe. Her limbs didn’t move.
She looked back at Mrs. O’Connor, sitting in her home. Their eyes met, and the nanny’s mouth contorted in an expression of horror. It seemed to be a cavernous, gaping hole coming at her, opening and closing without uttering a sound. Her eyes bulged. It wasn’t Mrs. O’Connor at all. It was a bloated fish wearing a dress, no doubt dripping salt water all over her upholstery. But then she saw the handkerchief that the woman had been holding. It waved back and forth, some sort of a truce offering. Maybe that was it. The war was over. Her vision blurred. It wasn’t a piece of cloth at all. Grace was mistaken. The grouper in her armchair was holding a dove, and was about to release the bird in her library.
Grace sank back against the policeman’s legs. She prayed for this moment to end.
An assistant in the public relations department of the Bank of Boston recommended an event coordinator. Bain spoke to her briefly on the telephone, checked with a reference, and hired her. Pat Jeffries drove down the next morning to plan the memorial service. She wasn’t bothered by the fact that it was a Saturday.
“We’ll keep it simple, elegant,” the woman said as she produced a leather binder from her attaché case and began to take notes. “Appropriate for a child loss.”
Not a child loss, Grace wanted to scream. Not any child. Not even the child. Sarah. Sarah Eleanor Alcott. Her only baby. Her daughter.
She started for the stairs. She needed to lie down. Maybe if she could just bring herself to fall asleep, she would never again awaken. Or if she did, maybe this nightmare would be over. She closed her eyes, remembering the weight of her daughter as she held her in her arms.
“You have my deepest sympathy. My company’s, too. It is just devastating. Absolutely devastating,” Pat offered. Her voice was flat, corporate, as if she were announcing to the outside directors that profits were down this quarter. Maybe that made her a professional, but to Grace it seemed hard-hearted. What kind of woman could make a career out of child funerals anyway?
Turning to Bain, Pat added, “I’d recommend we do this as quickly as possible. Monday at the latest. It will be best for both you and your wife if the formalities are over, and you can have privacy to grieve.”
Monday. Two days away.
Pat filled St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church on Main Street with baskets of pale pink and white flowers. The handles were tied with pale pink satin ribbon. She coordinated with the minister, arranged the order of service, and had programs printed quickly. Although the script lettering was difficult to read, each scroll was tied with a pink ribbon. “Done by hand,” she explained, justifying the per-copy price.
She hired a caterer to prepare finger sandwiches and petits fours, nothing too heavy. “Especially in cases like this, nobody eats,” Grace heard her whisper to Bain. “An adequate liquor supply is the way to go.”
The white casket lined with white satin was twenty-four inches long. That meant it was small enough to rest on the altar.
Pat selected a dark suit for Bain with a white shirt and gray tie. Although the suit was back from the cleaners, Pat re-pressed it herself. The clothes were hung on a special rack, with tasseled loafers and gray socks lined up in front. Grace wondered whether the woman planned on buttoning his shirt and zippering his fly, too.
Sunday evening, Grace found Pat going through her own closet. That was the last straw. “Please leave,” Grace said matter-of-factly.
“Your husband wanted me to make a choice for you,” she explained, defensively. “So that you wouldn’t have to think about it tomorrow morning.”
“Well, that’s very kind. You’ve provided quite an excellent service. But I gave birth to Sarah. I am her mother. And I can damn well figure out what to wear to her funeral all on my own.”
It was the first time she’d ever cursed at anyone. But it felt good. She hated this woman, this stranger who had come into her life to take control of her daughter’s death. “I want you out of my bedroom. I want you out of my home. Now.” She half smiled, relieved that she’d spoken her mind.
Pat did walk out, but she also reported Grace’s conduct to Bain, who appeared in a few moments.
“I know you don’t want her here. I don’t, either. But that’s because neither of us can bear to face the reason that she’s here. We couldn’t have managed this without her, Grace,” he said. “She’s trying to help. You don’t have to be rude.”
Rude! That emotion hardly began to capture how she felt. Anger, rage, despair, they were all just words.
And because Mrs. O’Connor was gone, the real culprit couldn’t be blamed. Grace couldn’t vent her fury, couldn’t shake the nanny until her eyes rolled back in her head or pound her with a Belgium block from the driveway, couldn’t scream and curse at the person who had ruined her life. The experienced grandmother with fine references had virtually disappeared in the back of a police cruiser along with her suitcase and travel bag. All she’d left behind were her toothbrush and a pair of slippers under her bed, items that Grace would have thrown away, but she didn’t want to touch them.
“I know what pain you’re in,” Bain said, his voice softening. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her to him. He gently stroked the back of her head. “I love Sarah and I miss her. She was my daughter, too. But we mustn’t forget who we are. You won’t feel any better by lashing out at Pat.”
In other words, the event planner was just executing her orders, doing her job.
The consummate professional, she was kind enough to accept Grace’s feeble apology.
Monday arrived, despite Grace’s every effort to will it not to come to pass. It should have been dark with pelting rain, thunder and lightning. Or, if the weather were to more closely mirror her mood, a thick band of fog should have enveloped everything, making visibility impossible. She wanted the salty moisture to saturate the walls, the fabric, even her skin, anything to penetrate the overwhelming numbness. Instead, as if to taunt her, the morning was beautiful, sunny and cool without a cloud in the sky.
By nine thirty, station wagon
s filled the small parking lot of Children’s Beach. She couldn’t bear the sight of the mothers in shorts and bikini tops with their children and folding chairs, umbrellas, beach buckets, and bright-colored sand toys. Happy voices and giggling children wafted through the car window as they drove to the church. She would ask Bain to take a different route home, one that didn’t take her along Stage Harbor Road.
Bain parked in front of the church, just behind the hearse that waited to transport Sarah to the cemetery for what had been called in the obituary a “private burial.” The term seemed redundant. As much as Grace wanted to follow her daughter’s coffin into the earth, to dive behind it as it was lowered down into the hole, Sarah would be buried with only the stuffed pink rabbit that Grace had tucked into the casket beside her cold body.
At the curb, there were several orange cones to keep tourists from taking the coveted spot on Main Street. Bain cut the engine, alighted, and then came around to her side. He opened the passenger-side door and helped her out. She stood, blinking at the sun as her eyes adjusted. Mourners mingled on the flagstone path leading to the church entrance. One of them smoked.
A woman approached quickly, taking small steps in her high-heeled shoes. It took Grace a moment to place her. They’d met the previous summer at a Stage Harbor Yacht Club newcomers’ party. All she recalled was that the short, squat woman with bright pink lipstick was an avid sailor. She was the club champion in some class of boats or another.
“I just don’t know what to say.” The woman spoke in a voice that had a slightly Southern twang. “I am so sorry and you have my sincerest condolences. My husband, frankly, was so distraught for you and Bain that he couldn’t bring himself to attend. But his prayers are with you both.”
Grace remembered the husband, Barney, and his pants with anchors appliquéd on them. He didn’t strike her as the type to be distraught over much of anything. On a beautiful Monday morning in late August, that man with his salt-and-pepper hair and double chin was no doubt teeing off the seventh hole.
“Yes, indeed. We’re both praying for all you Alcotts.”
All. Try just two.
“This must be hard, so hard,” the woman, who professed to lack words, continued without even a pause for breath. “And you’re handling this so beautifully. My God, I don’t know how you do it. You even look good. Trust me. Jackie Kennedy just lost the award for most grace under pressure.”
Grace couldn’t listen. She tried to speak, to utter some pleasantry to dismiss this person, but when she opened her mouth she thought she might vomit.
Turning away rather abruptly, she saw Prissy in the corner of the courtyard, alone. Her hands rested on the back of a weathered bench that had been given in memory of some other family’s lost member. She looked clean and formal, almost unrecognizable in tailored slacks, a fitted cotton sweater, and leather sandals. Her hair was pulled off her face in a thick braid.
Her sympathy-filled walnut eyes rested on Grace. In a few long strides, she came over, threw her arms around Grace’s neck, and embraced her. “Despite all my stupid comments, I know what motherhood—and what Sarah—meant to you. And it’s got to hurt like whale shit. I am so sorry,” she whispered as she held her friend tight to her chest.
Grace felt the weight of her body fall onto Prissy. She’d been almost silent for two days, but suddenly she wanted to take Prissy aside to confess, to tell her everything, to explain all the details that the paper left out: that she had told Mrs. O’Connor to answer the telephone because she needed to coordinate with Bain; that the woman had left Sarah in the bathtub when she heard the ring because she wanted to follow her employer’s instructions; that her baby girl had drowned in the time it took for Bain to explain that he was delayed at work and that, if he wasn’t there by seven, Grace should go to the Marshalls’ without him; that her baby should still be alive.
As if reading her mind, Prissy murmured, “It wasn’t your fault.” She squeezed her tighter and their bodies swayed ever so gently from side to side. Grace could feel the heat emanating from her friend’s tanned skin. She wanted to be down at the beach, watching Prissy clam as she sat in her folding chair and sipped from a glass of iced tea. If only she were there now instead of here, standing with a black-clad crowd on a beautiful August day. Then she could lull herself into thinking her daughter was up at the house, sleeping perhaps, or nibbling on a cracker. If only.
Bain touched her arm. “We have to go in.”
The memorial service. She couldn’t dream it away.
“Thank you for being here,” she said to Prissy as she struggled to hold back her tears. “Thank you for being.”
Bain led her down the aisle. Gripping her arm, he steered her through a sea of unfamiliar faces. Every Bank of Boston secretary seemed to have shown up, no doubt wanting an excuse to take the day off and drive down to the Cape, an easy holiday. The service would be over by noon.
Grace took her place in the front pew next to her brother. She could hear his breathing. Ferris’s face was red, no doubt a result of the Bloody Marys he’d ingested on an empty stomach shortly before leaving for St. Christopher’s. “I’m on a liquid diet,” he’d remarked, adding more pepper and stirring the vodka and tomato juice with a celery stalk as he declined the buttered English muffin she’d offered.
Bain sat on her other side, his gaze fixed straight ahead. He’d said little all morning, and she worried about his seeming calm. He’d mastered the necessary motions—drinking black coffee, getting dressed, and driving to church—but his face remained expressionless.
Grace wished her father were here. But he had agreed to lead a delegation of economists, urban planners, and engineers to Vietnam, and was at that moment somewhere meeting heads of state and other policy makers. She doubted that he’d received her telegram informing him of Sarah’s death; even if he had, there was no way he could have returned in time for the funeral. Still, she couldn’t help but feel his absence. His first—perhaps his only—grandchild was gone.
As the minister proceeded down the aisle reading about resurrection and life, she glanced behind her and scanned the crowd. She wished Bain had agreed to let Prissy sit with them in the front row, but he’d been adamant. She wasn’t family. She wasn’t entitled to a reserved seat. And now Prissy was nowhere in sight.
“O God, whose beloved son did take little children into his arms and bless them,” the portly priest said, addressing the congregation face-on. “Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust this child, Sarah, to thy never-failing care and love . . . ”
In the arms of Jesus Christ, Sarah was lifted to eternal life in a better place. The image was soothing. Her baby was safe. Her little girl was at peace.
She reached for Bain’s hand and held it in hers. The fingers were limp, and his palm was slightly clammy. He didn’t respond at all, and she wondered if he even realized she was touching him. But she refused to let go.
Then somewhere through the service, after the minister had read a Gospel passage and had given a brief, uninspired homily, she felt her husband’s fingers tighten in her grasp. The pinkish skin of his knuckles lightened as he gripped her, not too hard, but enough to get her attention. There was desperation in his touch.
She looked over at him. He didn’t turn. Still staring at the altar, he whispered, “I have you.” A tear ran down his cheek.
“And you always will,” she replied as she wiped it away with her handkerchief.
Those words were what she needed to hear. He didn’t blame her. Even childless, he still loved her.
Grace closed her eyes and pictured Sarah, her diapers protruding from the sides of her swimsuit, her curls peeking out from beneath the pink gingham sun hat, and her smile as she flicked sand with her yellow plastic shovel. She would hold on to this memory, as she held on to him.
The caterers had washed the last of the glasses and boxed up a few remaining hors d’oeuvres.
Shortly before the final mourners departed, Pat, too, took her leave. “I’ve se
en a lot of sorrow in my line of work, and I offer a single piece of advice for what it’s worth,” she’d said, standing by the front door. Her voice was uncharacteristically somber. “Celebrate life.”
“We’ll try,” Bain had said, shaking her hand vigorously. “Thank you for everything.”
Then the woman had turned to Grace. For the first time in two days, Grace could see that Pat was tired. There were circles under her eyes and, once her lipstick had rubbed off, the lines and cracks on her lips showed. “If you don’t go on with your life and make the most of it, Sarah’s brief time here will have been for nothing. Don’t do that to her, or to yourself.”
For twenty dollars a head, the event planner threw in a platitude or two along with the watercress sandwiches, miniature crab cakes, and Sauvignon Blanc. Grace had felt the urge to strike her.
With that, Pat headed down the brick walkway to the waiting limousine, the one that Bain had paid for.
The sky darkened, and Grace watched as Bain poured himself yet another gin and tonic and cursed the lack of limes. On another day, at another moment, she would have gone running into the kitchen to see if there happened to be one left, an overlooked lime tucked into the produce drawer of the refrigerator or hiding under a cantaloupe in the fruit bowl. But she had no energy for the search at this point—and no sympathy for his drinking, either.
They sat in silence.
She had almost dozed, almost surrendered to the sweet respite that sleep would bring, when she heard his voice. “That woman was incompetent. I told you to use an agency.”
Grace sat upright, stunned.
“She didn’t have credentials. Taking care of her own brood doesn’t give her experience as a professional. In her family, the kids probably took care of one another anyway, so she could cope with her drunken, good-for-nothing husband. That’s not child rearing. Bloody Catholics. They’re all peasants.”
Mrs. O’Connor. He was talking about Mrs. O’Connor, faulting her, and faulting Grace for hiring her. She didn’t need to be reminded.