The knocking grew louder, more persistent. Why, it wasn’t downstairs at all, it was right outside her bedroom door. And she heard a voice as well.
“Mama? Are you in there? Mama!”
Rachel? What a lovely surprise. Perhaps she’ll stay for supper.
“Come in, dear,” Sylvie called brightly. “It’s not locked. Just stuck. These old doors. Give it a hard push.”
My Lord, how awful she looks, Sylvie thought as her daughter came into the room. Hair stringy, flat, as if she hadn’t washed it in days. Face puffy, eyes swollen. Poor child.
“Oh, Mama.”
Rachel crossed the room and kneeled at Sylvie’s feet. As she tilted her face up, a dusky sunbeam caught it and lifted it from the gloom, illuminating it like a tortured soul in a Goya painting. Something in her expression stirred Sylvie from her lethargy, and made [183] her feel cold. A bone-deep cold that no amount of blankets could warm.
Go away, she thought. Leave me be.
Rachel pressed her face into the folds of Gerald’s shirt spread across Sylvie’s lap. Her voice rose, muffled and thick with tears. “I miss him so much. It just doesn’t seem possible that I won’t see him again. When I walk through this house, he’s in every room. Oh God, Mama, it’s like he’s here, so close I can even smell him. Only I can’t see him or touch him.”
Rachel began to weep, shoulders jerking, hot tears soaking through the dressing gown Sylvie had not changed out of since this morning.
“Hush now.” Sylvie smoothed her hand over Rachel’s head, feeling the hard curve of skull under the springy silken hair, and the tender little hollow at the nape of her neck. When Rachel was a tiny baby, Sylvie had stroked her to sleep just like this. “Don’t cry, my darling.”
Sylvie felt a wonderful sense of peace. As if she had indeed left the present behind, and were suspended in another time, a time of happiness, a baby warm in her lap, its sweet powdery fragrance filling the whole room.
Then the coldness began to seep through her again.
“Mama, I miss Daddy, but it’s you I’m worried about.” Rachel’s words tugged at her, forced her deeper into the cold black place she didn’t want to be. “You haven’t cried once. And you won’t eat. You haven’t been out of this room for a whole week. Bridget called me this morning. She was in tears she was so upset.”
“There’s nothing for either of you to be upset about,” Sylvie replied. “I’m perfectly fine. I just don’t seem to have much of an appetite, that’s all. And much as I love Bridget’s cooking, she does get a bit heavy-handed with the butter and eggs. She’s been trying to fatten me up for years. Even sneaks cream into my coffee when I’ve specifically asked for skim milk. It’s like a war with her, you know. And she just can’t accept losing.”
“Oh, Mama.” Rachel lifted her face, damp and swollen from crying. “Can’t you at least cry? It’d be so much better if you could.”
Sylvie flinched from those bruised-looking eyes. No, no, she couldn’t let herself cry. If she did, she’d never be able to stop. Like an ocean wave snatching her under, drowning her.
[184] Oh, if only Gerald were here.
But that was what Rachel was reminding her of, wasn’t it? That Gerald was not coming back to her. Ever.
Then something cracked open inside Sylvie, pressing against her chest, hurting, forcing the air from her lungs. Tears rose up her throat in a great choking wave.
And it all came rushing back.
Gerald complaining of chest pains at Mason Gold’s wedding, collapsing before she and Rachel could get him out to the car. Then the emergency room, all those doctors, nurses, paramedics swarming over him, pounding on his chest, poking him with needles, wires, tubes, trying to shock his heart into beating. But it was too late by then. Too late ...
The funeral, two days later, was hazy in her mind. How unreal it had seemed, like a dream, or a movie she was watching. Temple Emmanuel, so crowded, Gerald’s friends, his clients, employees, people from the Opera. Hundreds, all of them wanting to squeeze her hand, kiss her cheek. And Rachel, close at her side, so good, so strong, remembering names, murmuring the right words of appreciation.
Sylvie saw in her mind the cemetery glittering under a shroud of snow, that awful blanket of artificial grass, so wrong, worse than the gaping hole underneath. Someone had left a bouquet of baby-pink roses at the grave, though everyone should have known there were to be no flowers. Yes, she had almost cried then. She had wanted to bundle them in her arms, carry them away before they wilted. Those lovely, wasted roses.
Sylvie had felt herself begin to wilt, but a man’s strong hand was suddenly gripping her elbow, supporting her. Nikos. And he didn’t seem threatening anymore. Just an old friend, someone being kind.
He wouldn’t hurt her. Or Rachel.
Sylvie had somehow known that, even before Rachel turned toward him, frowning slightly as if she was trying to place him among her father’s many friends and acquaintances. Then she accepted his proffered hand.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said.
And that was all. Though he had held her hand a bit too long, [185] his dark eyes never leaving Rachel’s face, he was letting Sylvie know he was there only to offer his condolences.
Later, when almost everyone had gone to their cars, Nikos had lingered.
“Your husband was much admired,” Nikos said kindly, his words a white plume in the chill air, his shoes punching deep holes in the frozen snow as he walked back with her to the car.
“Yes, he had many friends,” Sylvie said. “He was ... a generous man.”
“I know that better than most.”
“You?” She stopped to look at him. His seamed brown face—yes, now in the daylight she could see all the tiny lines and fissures, like old rubbed leather—showed only admiration.
“There is something you should know,” he began as they made their way slowly down the narrow roadway, an aisle between a forest of gravestones. “I see no harm in telling you now. And perhaps it will be of some comfort to you.”
Sylvie began to feel dizzy again, and she clutched Nikos’s arm. “Comfort?” she choked. “How can anything comfort me now that he’s gone?”
“We can talk another time if you wish.”
“No. Tell me.”
“He knew,” Nikos said. “About us. You and me. All those years ago, he knew. When he fired me, he told me he didn’t blame you. He was afraid you would leave him, an old man with nothing to offer you but money.”
Part of her wanted to laugh, madly, hysterically. But suddenly she was so tired, so very tired, all she wanted to do was lie down in the snow and close her eyes. She leave Gerald? Oh, dear God, if only he’d known the awful thing she’d done, just so he wouldn’t leave her.
Sylvie felt something cold on her face, and realized she was crying. She dug gloved fingers into her cheeks. “He knew? All along, you mean, he knew?”
“He gave me money,” Nikos said, hanging his head. “I had to promise that I would never see you again. Five hundred dollars. I used it to buy an old pickup that started my business, what became Anteros Construction.”
[186] “Anteros.” It dawned on her. “The god of cheated love.”
“Yes,” he confessed, “I loved you. But I knew what he did not—that you would never leave him for me or any other man. So, yes, I took the money, I am ashamed to say.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “There are worse things than taking money.” Worse than you can imagine.
They were passing under the shadow of a huge barren elm, and Sylvie shivered, thinking of that expression, A goose walked over my grave.
“I didn’t see him again until two years ago,” Nikos continued. “Someone told me he might be interested in property I planned to build on. And I needed financing, so I went. But mostly, I think it was vanity. I wanted to show off, show him how well his five hundred dollars had paid off. But what I remember best about that meeting was the picture in a silver frame on his desk—of you and your daughter. That’
s when I realized who had gotten the best of our long-ago bargain.”
The stillness that followed Nikos’s confession seemed huge and never-ending. Sylvie listened to the branches of the old elm creaking under its burden of snow, the flutter of sparrows taking flight. Somewhere nearby, she could hear the firing of car engines, and the labored droning of a grave-digging machine. The sun came out from behind a bank of clouds just then, turning the snow mirror bright, winking off flecks of mica in the granite tombstones.
Sylvie just stood there, looking out over the graves, feeling that if she moved too much or too quickly she would shatter this gift Nikos had handed her, this precious glimpse into the secret heart of the man she had loved, and by whom she had so undeservedly and richly been loved.
Even her pain felt exquisite somehow, a finely wrought thing she turned over and over, examining it from all angles, marveling at its intricacy.
I could have told him about Rose. And he would have understood. He would have forgiven. All these years ...
She’d felt so humbled then by her shame and Gerald’s generosity.
Now as she sat in her rocking chair with Rachel kneeling before her, a shirt Gerald would never wear spread across her lap, she [187] thought how grateful we are when our world is falling apart for even the smallest reprieves. A gentle touch. A kind word. Forgiveness.
He really was gone. Her dear Gerald. She would no longer hear his footsteps on the staircase. Or the Puccini drifting from his study. Never look up from pruning her roses and find him smiling down at her from the terrace. Or stop in the quiet of an evening to read her aloud a passage from a book.
But she still had her daughter, she had Rachel. And Rachel was grieving, too.
“Mama,” Rachel was saying, “I’ve been thinking ... don’t get upset, just thinking is all ... of joining Kay in Vietnam. They so desperately need doctors and ... well, I think it would be good for me. To get away from ... from everything. But I won’t go, Mama, if you want me to stay with you, if you need me. I know that Daddy would have wanted me to look after you.”
Sylvie felt a lightning bolt of pain strike her heart. Not Rachel, leaving her too? Dear Lord, how much more could she take?
Oh, where was Gerald? Why wasn’t he here when she needed him so?
Gerald, such a good protector, like the father she had never had. He wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone, surely.
But Rachel wasn’t meant to be her protector. Rachel had to have her own life.
“No.” Sylvie set aside her sewing, and rose from her chair. Such a simple effort, yet how she ached, as if she’d been shut up inside a box for days. Still, good to feel her body, even if it hurt. “I won’t have you putting your life on hold for me. I won’t have that responsibility.”
“Mama.” Rachel just shook her head, the light falling away, her face slipping into shadow. “I want to be with you.”
“Now you do. For a few days, a few weeks maybe. And then you’ll be sorry. No. I hate the idea of you leaving, being so far away. And so dangerous. But I’d hate it more if you stayed here simply on my account.”
“You mean that, Mama? Are you sure?”
Sylvie did not feel sure of anything. Except perhaps of knowing that she would make it through this night. She felt so weak, so lost without Gerald. But if she could stand up, make a decision, even the [188] wrong one, then that meant something, didn’t it? It had to mean she was not going to die, wither away like those poor roses on Gerald’s grave.
Life is full of surprises, she thought, and maybe I’ll just surprise myself.
Sylvie brushed away a hair that clung to Rachel’s wet cheek. “Can you stay for supper? Then we can talk about your plans. And let Bridget fatten us both up.”
Chapter 10
Max Griffin awoke. Bernice was snoring, a soft gurgling sound that made him think, while still half-asleep, that the toilet needed its handle jiggled. He felt a fierce need to pee.
Logy with sleep, he edged out from under the covers. Then the shock of the cold floor against his bare soles. Christ. Slippers. He groped blindly, finally found them, not where earlier he’d kicked them off, but in front of the nightstand, lined up perfectly, toes facing out. Bernice. Sure. She always put them there so he’d find them in case he might need the John at night.
No, not from her, that word. John, head, pot, or even toilet. Powder room, he could hear her voice in his mind, that precise, ladylike voice as she ushered company into the living room, took people’s coats. The powder room is at the end of the hall if you’d like to wash up. Wash up, another of her euphemisms.
Max found the door, felt for the light switch. A glare hit him in the face like a flashbulb, hard bright light backfiring off chrome, mirror, shiny pink tiles. If he hadn’t been awake before, he surely was now. He could now launch into a summation to a jury, his mind felt that clear.
As he peed, he stared into the toilet. Blue. The water was a bright unnatural blue, the color of a YMCA swimming pool. And now it was turning green, a sickly yellow-green. Did Bernice know what happened when you peed in blue water? No, how could she? She’d never look, never even take a peek before flushing; just the idea of doing that would disgust her.
An old memory came to him. Coming home and finding Bernice on her hands and knees on the kitchen floor before the avocado-green Frigidaire, wearing big yellow rubber gloves that made him think of Minnie Mouse, and scrubbing underneath it with a bottle brush and a plastic tub of soapy water.
[190] “Baby asleep?” he had asked.
She looked up at him, her red hair clipped back with a plastic barrette, a fine sheen of dampness glimmering on her pale forehead. “She’s having her bottle,” Bernice said. “I found this new contraption, a pillow with loops you can slip the bottle into so it doesn’t fall over. Just stick it in the crib when she’s hungry. Really frees me up.”
Mandy had been three months old.
Aside from a few hardly visible stretch marks, being a mother had not changed Bernice, Max thought. Their daughter was just one more household item to be properly organized. One more jotted reminder over the kitchen phone on the chalkboard, its frame painted with a smiling bumblebee and the sunny yellow logo THINGS TO DO.
He shook himself off, and flushed.
Now a headache was starting, a painful pulsing in his temples that was creeping outward. Jesus, he didn’t need this. Not with back-to-back court dates tomorrow.
Max stepped over to the mirrored medicine cabinet, where he had to confront the unwelcome specter of middle age: a husky man closing in on forty, eyes puffy with sleep, jaw still firm, but his rumpled brown hair shot full of gray.
He popped open the cabinet, relieved to watch his reflection slide away. Rows of bottles faced him. Few of the things usually found in medicine chests, no old prescriptions dating back to the hernia operation he’d had in ’62. No crusty bottles of last winter’s cough syrup, no rings on the glass shelves. Everything new, and precisely arranged by category, neater than a drugstore’s shelves. Massengil douche. Daisy feminine spray. Four different brands of underarm deodorant. The lilac plastic dial containing Bernice’s birth-control pills. He found the Tylenol next to the orange baby aspirin Bernice gave Monkey when she had a fever. He shook two into his palm. Where was the water glass? Shit, she’d confiscated it again. That hotbed of germs. Jesus. He’d have to get one from the kitchen.
Downstairs the cool emptiness soothed him. The headache ebbed. This great old house overlooking Little Neck Bay. He remembered how he’d pushed for it soon after they were married, even though the mortgage payments had seemed murderous. Bernice had had her eye on one of those pseudo-Tudor attached homes in Bayside. So much easier to keep clean, she’d argued. Not like this [191] one, with its eighty-year-old pumpkin pine flooring, where dirt could fill the cracks, with its ocean-pitted windows and crumbled caulking. Six months spent reshingling the roof, replacing gutters and drainpipes, stripping off layer after layer of old paint before they could move in. But when
the painting, wallpapering, sealing the floors with polyurethane was finished, Bernice relented. Even she became smitten by its charms, the exposed beams, the tucked-away window seats, the stained-glass fanlight over the front door.
Max crossed to the kitchen sink without turning on the light. He could see well enough. Dusky moonlight gleamed off the flagged stone flooring. His gaze moved to the brick patio jutting out below the window. He saw that the daffodils had come up around its sides, rows of flowers like neat pickets poking up through the freshly turned earth. Max felt a little surge of happiness at this sign of new life. Then he thought, feeling blue again, They’ve been up for days, maybe a week, and I didn’t even notice. When I was younger, I would never have missed the first daffodils.
Max then found himself thinking about his father, recalling one summer evening out on the back lawn with his two older brothers, playing croquet. Max had been fourteen, and Dad ... how old had he been? He’d always seemed the same age somehow, always bald on top (except for that little thatch above his forehead he called his “donkey lock”), always that generous roll of fat creeping over his belt. Of that summer evening, more than twenty years ago, each detail now came back to him, passing through some sort of mental wicket, sharp and clear as the thunk of a mallet against a wooden ball. The smell of freshly cut grass mingled with smoke from the hamburgers Dad was barbecuing, the tray of dripping ice-tea glasses Mom had set out on the porch railing, and how his wrist stung where Robbie had given him an Indian sunburn. Max, lining up his shot, remembered looking down at his grass-stained pantlegs and thinking how Mom would give him holy hell. Then Eddie had begun razzing him about all the time he’d been spending locked in the bathroom lately, and Max had looked up and seen his father, wearing a pair of saggy old Bermuda shorts and baseball cap, standing there by the barbecue pit with a long-handled spatula clutched in one hand, staring off into space with tears running down his cheeks.
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