Goodnight Nobody

by Jennifer Weiner

  "And now," Reverend Ted said, gazing down at us benevolently, "if any of Kitty's friends would like to speak?"

  The big, high-ceilinged room was silent except for the occasional sniffle or the shifting of one stockinged leg against another. Flounder gazed at the audience expectantly. I found myself unexpectedly on the verge of tears as Kitty's in-laws stared stoically ahead, poster children for the stiff upper lip society, and Marybeth and Sukie murmured softly to each other but made no move toward the stage. Wasn't anyone going to say anything? Didn't she have any friends? If I bought the farm, I was sure that Janie would give a kick-ass speech in my honor, that she'd make me sound funny and loving and competent and that she wouldn't mention the day Sam had rolled off the bed and Jack had fallen out of his car seat and I'd had to go to the emergency room twice in eight hours. And unlike me, Kitty had actual praises that could be sung about her. There were women here who'd seen her devotion to her daughters firsthand. So why wasn't anyone singing?

  Finally Kevin Dolan made his way to the stage and whispered into Reverend Ted's ear. I exhaled, thinking that at last someone was going to say something on Kitty's behalf, as Kevin whispered and pointed. Into the crowd. Toward the back of the room. At me.

  "Kate Klein?" the reverend asked. Heads turned. A flurry of whispers made its way through the aisles, as the blood drained from my face. I shook my head. Reverend Ted appeared not to notice. "Kate Klein!" he said, and then tried for the first semi-joke of the morning. "Come on down!"

  I shook my head more vigorously and mouthed the word no, while keeping an appropriately sedate expression cemented to my face. My no didn't register. Hands gripped my arms and I found myself propelled down the aisle in my too-tight shoes. Then, somehow, I was up on the stage, with Kevin Dolan guiding me gently toward the podium. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I must have heard you wrong, but didn't you tell me you were working on a speech for her memorial?"

  Busted, I thought, as my head bobbed up and down, a movement completely independent of my will. Oh, Kate, you are so completely screwed. I held the edges of the podium in a death grip and stared out at the crowd--three hundred of my Connecticut contemporaries--with not a single thought as to what I was going to say.

  I swallowed hard, then began, "Kitty Cavanaugh was..."

  "Louder!" called someone in the back row.

  "Can't hear you!" added someone else.

  I cleared my throat and adjusted the microphone, wincing at the squeal of feedback, and tried again.

  "Kitty Cavanaugh was a good mother, a good wife. As we've all heard," I added limply. "And she was doing important work--the work of..." Spending secret afternoons in New York City and possibly cheating on her husband, who was undoubtedly cheating on her. Oh, God help me. I swallowed hard. "...investigating what it means to be a good mother, a good wife, a good person in our times. We might not all have agreed with what she had to say..." I wiped my forehead, as someone in the back row sucked in an outraged breath. "But maybe we can all agree that being a parent is hard. Really, really hard. Harder than those books make it sound, harder than the movies make it look. And at the end of the day, I think Kitty will be remembered for being brave enough to ask those hard questions, to try to find her own answers, to not give a damn if they flew in the face of what we'd been raised to believe." I swiped my sleeve against my forehead again and felt sweat trickling down my back and soaking the band of my bra. I probably looked like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News. Memories of the handful of times I'd seen Kitty--really seen her--flashed uselessly through my mind. Kitty in pink linen, smiling at her daughters; Kitty sprawled out dead on her kitchen floor with blood turning her silk blouse the color of old Bordeaux.

  Sing, I thought. Sing her praises. "So...so maybe we can all sing a song. In her memory." I whipped my index finger discreetly over my upper lip and realized that, in spite of years of voice lessons and listening to every jazz recording ever made, in spite of growing up with one of the world's preeminent sopranos as a mother and one of the country's top oboists as a dad, I couldn't remember the melody to one single song. Not a single lyric, not a single note. Nothing. My mind was absolutely blank. Except...I drew a deep breath. "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands." My voice cracked on the last word. The audience stared at me, dumbfounded. Reverend Ted's broad brow was furrowed. Kevin Dolan's jaw dropped. Finally Lexi Hagen-Holdt and Carol Gwinnell patted their hands together and began to sing.

  "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands."

  A few more halfhearted clappers joined in, their faces politely expressionless, their voices cultured and soft.

  "If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it," Reverend Ted joined in, in a serviceable baritone.

  "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," sang Kevin Dolan. The final pairs of claps rang through the audience like stones falling into an empty well. "Thank you," I murmured, and limped back down the crowded aisle, which parted as the other mourners leaned--no, cringed--away from me.

  I staggered past them, drenched with sweat, and went back to the wall I'd been leaning on. The woman beside me leaned over to touch my hand. "That was..." Her lips worked for a few seconds. "That was really something."

  I nodded weakly. Really something. I just bet it was.

  "To conclude," said Reverend Ted, "We will hear from Kitty's family."

  Oh, no, I thought, as my breath caught in my throat. Philip Cavanaugh was making his way unsteadily through the crowd with his daughters. One was on his left side and one was on his right and they were guiding him, like tiny navy blue tugboats guiding a freighter into port. Oh, no. Not this. I fumbled in my purse for a tissue and settled for a wadded, chocolate-streaked napkin from Dairy Queen. I'd never cared much one way or the other about Lady Di, but I still had vivid memories of her funeral--that casket with the folded letter on top reading "Mummy" that had had me sobbing like I'd lost my own mother (who was actually performing in Denver at the time, perfectly safe). What if it had been me, and Sophie and Sam and Jack were left with just their father? I thought of the letter on the van the night before and couldn't stop myself from shaking, as Philip Cavanaugh paused and wiped his eyes. His eyes were sunk deep into his head. His lips were grayish and trembling. His cheeks were hollow; new loose skin beneath his chin wobbled as he walked.

  He climbed one step, then two. His heel caught on the third step and he stumbled, almost falling, before he reached the podium. I heard Lexi Hagen-Holdt gasp, and saw Carol Gwinnell pat her shoulders. The dark-haired woman seated in the front row next to Kevin Dolan--Delphine, I presumed--sobbed quietly into a handkerchief. Philip reached out one finger and touched the microphone lightly, as if to make sure it was still there.

  "Kitty was..." His voice was a low, toneless rasp. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Kitty was..."

  Much too loud, this time, or he'd gotten too close to the microphone. There was a booming echo, then a muffled thump. Philip Cavanaugh leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

  "This is too much," muttered the woman on my left. Then Reverend Ted was there, gently guiding Philip back down to his seat. The two girls remained, standing in front of the microphone, miniature Kittys with perfect posture and shining brown hair combed back neatly from their pale faces. They looked at each other, and finally, one of them--Madeline or Emerson, I had no idea--stepped forward. "We loved our mother very much," she said.

  The clock ticked. Lexi Hagen-Holdt cried. Philip Cavanaugh's breath rasped as he struggled for composure and Reverend Ted patted him ineffectually on the back. The other little girl stepped up to join her sister.

  "She was the best mother in the world."

  The lobby was a logjam. Philip, propped upright by his parents on one side and Reverend Ted on the other, stood like a waxen effigy with a hand on each of his daughters' shoulders. I scooted behind them as quickly as I could, given the blister situation, trying not to hear my reviews ("Who was that...that large woman, and what
on earth was she thinking?" one chic, rail-thin woman inquired of another). As I watched, Kevin and Delphine Dolan approached Philip. Kevin wrapped his arms around Phil's shoulders. Phil closed his eyes, and Delphine Dolan, whose makeup was in ruins, stood by his side, wiping at her eyes. When Phil reached for her arm, I thought I saw her flinch.

  I pushed through the doors and beat almost everyone out to the parking lot. Once I was there, I ignored the faces and concentrated on license plates. Eastham, Massachusetts, the obituaries had said. Eastham was where the unsent postcard I'd found was supposed to go. Connecticut plates are blue and white; Massachusetts plates are red, white, and blue. I saw three cars with Massachusetts plates: a little green lozenge of a Saab hatchback, a Cadillac SUV with a booster seat in back, and--I held my breath--a four-door Honda, probably five years old, which made it easily the oldest car in the lot. It was gray, with a ding in the driver's door and a bumper sticker reading "Give Peace a Chance."

  I stood off at what I hoped was a polite distance between the Honda and the Saab and held my breath as--finally--one of the older couples I'd seen inside approached the gray car. The man was white-haired and frail, with pale skin and watery blue eyes behind oversized eyeglasses. The woman was short, small and slender, with curly gray hair cut close to her head, in a loose green sack of a dress, a necklace made of chunky glass beads, and Birkenstocks over black tights. She wore no makeup, not even the Upchurch woman's casual swipe of Sugar Maple lipstick. Definitely from out of town.

  I picked my way across the gravel parking lot to their car. "Excuse me, are you Kitty's parents?" I looked at the woman, struggling to remember Kitty's maiden name. "Bonnie Verree?"

  They looked at each other before the woman answered.

  "Yes. I'm Bonnie Verree. Kitty was my daughter."

  "I'm Kate Klein," I said, holding out my hand.

  "We heard you speak," she said. She took my hand in hers, which was small and warm. She had the same blue eyes as Kitty, but that was where the resemblance stopped. I couldn't see any of her daughter's fine features in Bonnie's friendly, button-shaped face...and Kitty had been easily eight inches taller than her mother.

  "You're the painter," I said.

  She stared at me curiously.

  "I was in Kitty's house...those beautiful seascapes."

  "Oh," she said. Her husband clamped one blue-veined hand on her shoulder.

  "We need to get going," he said. "There's terrible traffic on ninety-one."

  I nodded, then blurted, "I wanted to tell you how sorry I was for your loss."

  "Thank you, dear," she said.

  "I was the one who found her," I began, then shut my mouth, realizing, with mounting horror, that it sounded almost as if I were bragging. Hooray for me, I found your daughter's corpse!

  "That must have been horrible for you," Bonnie said.

  I gave a small nod, as if to suggest that I was the kind of sophisticated soul who stumbled across exsanguinated neighbors regularly. "I wish I'd known Kitty better," I said slowly, trying to think of a way to ask about that postcard. Happier than I can even believe. "I mean, we saw each other all the time, at the playground, and, of course, I read Content, so I've seen the articles she wrote..."

  The words "articles she wrote" had a galvanic effect on the couple. Hugh's pale, lined face turned red. Bonnie pulled her hands away and looked at me helplessly. Her husband stalked to the driver's side of the car and shoved the key into the lock so hard I was surprised that I didn't see it pop out on the other side of the door.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," I blurted again.

  Bonnie shook her head as her husband reached over the gearshift and pushed her door open. "You don't understand," she said, in a voice so quiet I had to lean forward to hear it. "Hugh and I lost Katie a long time ago."

  I was so stunned by what she'd said and by what she'd called Kitty, that I stood there as if I'd been frozen as Bonnie slammed the door and Hugh put the car in gear and came within six inches of driving his Honda over my toes. He stomped on the gas, squealed out of the parking lot, and pulled onto Main Street without pausing to look for oncoming traffic.

  I staggered backward. My heel caught, and I'd almost hit the ground before someone grabbed my elbows.

  "Are you all right?" a man's voice said.

  My heel buckled underneath me and I fell down onto the gravel. "Ow!" When I pushed myself upright, my ankle throbbed, and my palms oozed pinpricks of blood.

  "Sorry. Thank you," I said. The man who'd tried to catch me was in his fifties, short and wiry and entirely bald, with brown eyes, a narrow face, and a nut brown tan. He reminded me a little bit of an otter, something small and sleek and better suited for the water than the land.

  "Jesus," I said, hoping that a few deep breaths would get my knees to stop shaking. "Meet the parents."

  The man gave a perplexed shrug and extended his hand. "Joel Asch," he said.

  The name was familiar, but it took me a second to remember what Laura Lynn Baird had told me. Content's editor in chief, who might have been sleeping with the deceased.

  "You were Kitty's friend," I said.

  He nodded. "I tried to be," he said, watching as I brushed bits of gravel off my hands.

  "Did you two know each other a long time?" I asked.

  He turned his head toward the town hall doors, where mourners clad in taupe and gray were filing out, murmuring quietly to each other. "Would you like to get a cup of coffee?" he asked. "I've got some time before I have to go back to the city."

  Twenty-Three

  Ten minutes later Joel Asch and I were seated at a table at Brookfield Bagels, a gray-shingled cottage with yellow-and-white-striped awnings and half a dozen round wooden tables for two, where six bucks could get you a watery cup of coffee and a warm, squishy circle of dough the exact texture of impacted Wonder Bread. Joel Asch took one bite, winced, and set it aside.

  "I know," I said, lowering my voice, "they're awful, aren't they?"

  "They're...not good," he said. He looked as if he was debating whether to force down his mouthful of faux bagel or spit it into his napkin. He finally decided to keep chewing.

  "So tell me," I said. "How did a stay-at-home mom from Upchurch end up writing for one of the most important magazines in America?" With my fulsome compliment still hanging in the warm, yeast-scented air, I reached into my bag for my notebook.

  Joel Asch smiled at me indulgently. "You wouldn't be angling for her job, now, would you?"

  I shook my head. "I keep pretty busy here," I said.

  "Well," he said. "I was Kitty's professor in college, and we'd kept in touch over the years. Kitty was actually the one who brought Laura Lynn to my attention. I caught her a few times on CNN. Her ideas intrigued me. The battle between stay-at-home mothers and mothers who work. The contested ground of maternity in America."

  I nodded and wrote contested ground. "As a mother myself, I have to tell you, that's a fascinating subject." As a mother myself, it was doubtful I'd ever find time to read about it, given that I was too busy living it, but flattery couldn't hurt.

  "So I called Laura Lynn, and she was eager to be associated with Content."

  "Of course," I said, in a tone that implied that you'd have to be a pederast or a space alien not to want to be associated with Content.

  "But she was busy. The demands on her time were such that it became clear that she would need..." He twirled his plain gold wedding band around one thin brown finger. "A certain level of assistance. And I'd seen plenty of Kitty's work in college."

  Seen her work, I wrote. The plot was thickening. At least, I hoped it was. "What subject did you teach at Hanfield?" I asked.

  "I was a guest lecturer there for a semester. I taught a course in politics and the press." He carefully rolled up his empty cream cheese packet. "Kitty impressed me. Her mind impressed me. The clarity of her writing. The singularity of her focus."

  "Mmm-hmm," I said, wondering whether singularity of focus wasn't professorspeak for nic
e rack. Kitty must have been a tasty morsel as a coed--that bittersweet chocolate hair tied back in a headband, that fresh face and perfect body in jeans and a Hanfield sweatshirt.

  "She was very bright," he said. "And a hard worker, and she turned in her papers on time. I helped her find her first job, writing the in-house newsletter for St. Francis Hospital in New York. When it became clear that Laura Lynn needed help, I called Kitty and asked if she'd be interested. Then I set up a lunch for the two of them to meet, and that was that."

  That was that, I wrote. My heart was pounding. He'd met her in college, admired her mind, kept in touch with her over the years, found her not one but two jobs in the ultracompetitive New York City market. If that didn't spell affair I wasn't sure what did...which meant that horrid Laura Lynn had hit the nail on the head. "I have to say, I'm amazed she found the time to write. Kids can be pretty overwhelming."

  He gave an indulgent chuckle. "That's what my wife tells me."

  I laughed along with him, thinking that his wife and I probably had a lot in common--high-powered husbands who were hardly ever home, men who liked the concept of a wife and children more than they seemed to enjoy the reality of kids who'd cry at the slightest insult or stubbed toe, clamor for junk food or crappy plastic toys and on bad days whine ceaselessly at bedtime, bathtime, mealtime, and many times in between.

  "How did they work together?" I asked.

  "They did a lot by email, and on the phone. Laura Lynn would call her from airports or greenrooms or wherever she found herself. They'd talk about a theme, hammer out an outline, then Kitty would write a draft, Laura Lynn would approve it, and Kitty would email it to me."

  "She didn't come into the office?"

  He shook his head, looking pained, and a little suspicious. "Well, the other writers..." He reached into his pocket for a travel pack of aspirin, shook two loose, considered, and added a third. I filled in the blank myself: the other writers at Content probably had no idea that Laura Lynn Baird wasn't writing "The Good Mother" herself, so having Kitty show up in the office would have come as an unpleasant surprise.