by Kate Hewitt
“Mommy couldn’t pick you up today.” The words lodged in my throat. How on earth was I supposed to tell a preschooler that her mother was dead? That she’d been shot? And what about Ella, who was ten, and Alexa, currently a defiant fourteen? What was I going to tell any of them? How was I going to do this?
“Daddy…” Ruby’s voice turned coyly wheedling, as she sensed a weakness. “Can we get ice cream?”
I opened my mouth to say no, we could not—of course we couldn’t get ice cream when my wife was dead. No one did that; there had to be some implicitly acknowledged rule of the universe that you couldn’t get ice cream, you couldn’t do anything fun, when someone had just died. When you felt broken inside, as if you were nothing but shattered fragments. Of course we weren’t going to get ice cream.
“Daddy? Can we? Please?”
I gazed down at my daughter’s face—Ruby, our happy accident, her forehead crinkled up, her hands clutched together under her chin. She was even standing on her tiptoes. As I looked down at her, I felt as if my heart were twisting hard inside me and I thought: She doesn’t know yet. And I realized that she could still be happy now, she could still have ice cream, and for that small mercy I was glad.
“Yes, Rubes,” I said hoarsely. “Yes, we can get ice cream.”
We ended up buying double scoops from an upscale gelateria on Lexington Avenue. Ruby was full of chatter, telling me about her morning at preschool, the games she’d played, the crafts she’d done, the princess costume someone named Chloe had worn and how she hadn’t had a turn to wear it, which wasn’t fair.
I let it wash over me, a soothing tide of normality; I savoured the way she licked her ice cream so carefully, eyes screwed up in concentration, and how her pigtails bounced. I didn’t mind when she got a pink drip on her shirt; how could I?
“Daddy,” she said, pointing to my forgotten cone. “Your ice cream is melting.”
I stared down at it, the chocolate dripping over my hand, my stomach tightening so I knew I couldn’t even take a bite. “Sorry, Rubes,” I said absently, and she started up with her chatter again.
My mind was beginning to race and seethe once more. I had to call Laura’s parents. My mother. Tell the girls…
And what about the police? They’d said they needed to be in touch. They had questions to ask. I had questions I wanted answered. They’d mentioned picking up Laura’s things…
“Daddy, you’re not listening.” Ruby sounded cross.
I opened my eyes that had fluttered closed without me realizing and stared at her bubble-gum-pink-smeared face.
“Sorry, Rubes, I’m listening. I really am. Chloe…”
“I wasn’t talking about Chloe.” She sounded disgusted. “I was asking about Mommy. Is she at home?”
I looked around the little gelateria with its spindly chairs and tiny tables of wrought-iron and glass, the tubs of colorful gelato in a glass case, pink and pistachio-green and white with swirls of scarlet. The woman at the counter, a twenty-something with two eyebrow piercings, gave me a smile. The moment felt weirdly normal; all I had to do was smile back, and yet I couldn’t. I had the inexplicable and surely inappropriate urge to tell her my wife had just died, that she’d been shot. Perhaps in a few hours the news story that would come up on her Snapchat would be about Laura. I felt as if I could laugh hysterically at the impossibility of it, the utter ludicrousness, even as something inside me wanted to emit a primal roar of rage and fear. This was real.
“We should go.” I lurched up from the table like a drunk, making the woman’s eyes widen in alarm. “Ruby, come on. We need to get home.”
“So will Mommy be there?” Ruby asked this so eagerly, it almost felt as if she knew somehow, as if she were testing me, waiting for me to disappoint her.
“No, she won’t.” Then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I lied. “Not yet,” I said.
* * *
Back at our apartment, everything was quiet, eerily so. Usually when I came home, the house was quiet, but it was a comfortable, lived-in sort of quiet, with a background hum of humanity—the dishwasher on, the creak of a bed or sofa, a distant murmur. Not this unnatural stillness, like a held breath, a waiting emptiness.
We’d bought a fixer-upper on Eighty-Third Street and Third Avenue in a pre-war building four years ago, when I’d started my own firm with my partner Frank Stein; it had three bedrooms, a dining and living room, a kitchen and a maid’s room that I used as my study. Enormous by most Manhattan standards—and also in need of a huge amount of repair and redecoration.
The woman who had lived there had been ninety when she’d moved into a nursing home, and the place had last been decorated at least thirty years ago. We were doing it up slowly, because I wanted to supervise all the plans, and also cut costs where we could, and so far we’d only managed the kitchen, which Laura had insisted was the most important room to refurbish. So while that room was all gleaming marble and distressed oak, the rest of the house looked like something out of The Brady Bunch.
I walked in slowly, taking in all the once-upon-a-time insignificant details that now would be etched onto my memory forever: Laura’s scarf, funky green and blue swirls, hanging on a hook by the door, waiting to be worn; her handwriting scribbled on the calendar in the kitchen. She had a dentist appointment next week. I breathed in, and I thought I smelled her scent—Jo Malone, something orangey that I gave her every Christmas. I imagined she was in another room, that she’d come in the doorway with a little smile, her eyebrows lifted, arms outstretched towards Ruby: Home already?
Ruby ran ahead of me, through the dining room, with its sliding pocket doors into the living room, that had a magnificent marble fireplace surround that had sold us on the place, as well as the long sash windows overlooking Eighty-Third Street. The walls were covered in a hideous olive-green flocked wallpaper that I couldn’t stand but hadn’t yet had time to get rid of, like so many other details of the apartment—the cheap bathroom suite in an ugly orange-brown, the army-green walls, the paint probably full of lead in my study.
Ruby flopped on the sofa in front of the TV and then gave me a craftily beseeching look. She was always able to judge a moment, sense an opportunity.
“Can I watch Peppa Pig?”
“Yes, okay.” I knew Laura had strict screen-time rules, but I hardly had the wherewithal to enforce them now. I turned on the TV, scrolling through the various streaming services we had, until I found Peppa Pig. Moments later, the cheerful theme music, accompanied by a snorting pig, echoed through the room, sounding ridiculous, especially considering the circumstances.
Everything felt ridiculous, offensive—the doorman’s friendly greeting when we’d come in the building, the snick of my neighbor’s door closing, someone beeping their car horn in the street below. How dare people go on with their lives? How could the world keep moving? All of it felt wrong.
In my head, I kept thinking my wife is dead, words on constant, awful repeat, thundering through me yet still not making any sense.
I left Ruby happily watching while I went back into the kitchen, unsure what to do now. Should I call someone? Start telling people? There would be a funeral, I realized. I would have to plan a funeral. How did I do that? I didn’t even know where to begin. Death had always been something that had happened to other people. It had never touched me like this before… until now.
I sat at the kitchen table, feeling as if I should be doing something, but having no idea what. There was no manual for this situation, no navigation guide for these awful moments. There was just this emptiness, this awful silence… punctuated by Peppa Pig. I dropped my head into my hands.
In my jacket pocket, my phone buzzed. I didn’t want to answer it; I knew I couldn’t cope with more news, whatever it was. I was picturing Laura this morning, still in her pyjamas, the stripy top she always wore even though it was threadbare, and the loose bottoms in pale blue that had lost all their elastic at the waist.
She’d been loading the
dishwasher with the dirty breakfast dishes as I took Ella and Alexa to school. I could see her perfectly, her hair in a sloppy ponytail, her smile relaxed as she told Alexa —who had been fuming about something as usual—where her math homework was: “On the sideboard, where you left it last night, sweetie. Look in the dining room.”
Alexa had stomped off in a huff, muttering under her breath, but Laura had been unruffled. We’d exchanged a bemused glance and she’d rolled her eyes, still smiling; she wasn’t fazed by our oldest daughter’s teenaged angst, while I tended to let it irritate me, raise my hackles far too easily.
Except, I realized, I wasn’t remembering that exchange correctly. I’d embellished it, turned it into a moment of affectionate solidarity when, in fact, I’d been almost as annoyed as Alexa, looking away without acknowledging Laura, jangling my keys loudly because we were running late and I resented having to take the girls to school when Laura could so easily do it, and it usually made me late for work.
That was how it had really happened, and I wondered, now that she was gone, how many memories I would try to reframe, casting everything in a sentimental, sepia tint because it was over. Our life rewritten in tiny, inconsequential moments—but it had been a good life, if not a perfect one, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing it, even as I knew I already had. It was gone. Gone.
My phone buzzed again.
I took it out of my jacket reluctantly, tensing as I read the text, from my partner Frank. Just heard the news. So sorry.
He’d heard? How? From someone at the office? Had the policewoman told them, or had they just guessed? Then a news alert came up on my phone, from the New York Times. Woman shot on subway identified as Laura West, a Manhattan resident and mother of three.
I swore, loud enough for Ruby’s rapt attention to be broken. She looked at me all the way from the living room, wrinkling her nose the same way Laura did. Had.
“That’s not a nice word, Daddy.”
No, it wasn’t, and she shouldn’t have known it in the first place. I rose from the table, pacing the confines of the kitchen, fighting panic along with everything else.
I had to start calling people, before they found out from the damned internet. How had the story leaked? The policewoman had assured me it would be kept out of the media for now, right before I left, intent on getting Ruby. I had believed her.
My phone buzzed again, this time a message from Jane Sayers, half of a couple-friend of ours from Laura’s publishing days. Nathan, is it true?? I just heard the news about Laura and I can’t believe it.
Shit. Everyone was going to be messaging me. The news was out there, speeding through the internet, firing up social media sites, just hours after her death. I had to get to Alexa and Ella before they heard.
“Ruby, we have to go.”
“But, Daddy, I just started watching—”
“We have to go!” It came out in a shout, and Ruby’s face crumpled. She was so clever and precocious, I forgot how little she was sometimes. I took a deep breath. “Sweetie, I’m sorry, but… something’s happened. We need to get Alexa and Ella from school.”
“What’s happened?” She scrambled off the sofa, coming to stand before me, her little face so serious. One pigtail had come loose and was lying limply against her head, the other one springing out in a riot of red curls. I reached down and tried to retie the ribbon, but the material was slippery and I couldn’t manage the bow. I left it in a tangled knot, ruined.
“Mommy…” I began, then stopped to let out a long, low breath. Saying the words out loud felt cruel, and I was afraid they would crack open my chest, split my heart right in half. “Mummy’s had an accident.” I fought an urge to laugh or scream, I wasn’t sure which, because still I resisted the awful truth of it. This couldn’t be happening.
Ruby frowned. “She’s hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Is she in the hospital? Are we going to visit her? Did she cut her head like I did at the playground and I had to have stitches?” This said with innocent relish; Ruby had loved having stitches, being the center of attention, allowed extra TV and milkshakes from the diner across the street.
“No, she didn’t cut her head.” If only. Briefly I closed my eyes.
“Daddy, don’t do that.” Ruby tugged on my arm. “I don’t like it when you close your eyes.”
“Sorry, sorry.” I opened my eyes and reached for her hand. “Let’s go get Ella and Alexa.”
* * *
We took a cab even though it was only a few blocks away, because I knew every minute counted. How many kids in Alexa’s class would be checking their phones? Did fourteen-year-olds read the news? Would teachers know? The school had a no-phone policy but according to Alexa every single student broke it. It could only be a matter of time, and not much at that.
We pulled up in front of the twin brownstones that comprised The Walkerton School for Girls, one of the Upper East Side’s best. It had taken a lot of money, time, and effort to get both girls in here, but it had been worth it.
Walkerton had the second best Ivy League acceptance rate of all the city’s private schools. Alexa had started in seventh grade, Ella in fourth. It cost a mint, even with the financial aid we received from the school, and Laura had had her doubts about being part of such an exclusive social circle, but I was sure.
I wanted the best for my children, far better than I’d ever had, being dragged along on my mother’s zany adventures as she tried to find herself and forgot me, time and time again, in hippy communes and New Age centers, anonymous cities and claustrophobic small towns. My daughters’ lives would be different, I’d vowed when I’d first held Alexa as a squalling newborn in my arms, and they were. They’d had the kind of opportunities and stability I’d never had, and yet I couldn’t shield them from this, the worst thing of all.
Now I waited in the lobby while the receptionist went to find Alexa and Ella in their classes, having looked both disapproving and concerned when I explained, very briefly, why I was there. I talked about accidents rather than incidents. I left the rest unsaid.
Ruby skipped around the room, gazing at the framed photographs of famous alumnae, artwork by students, entertained by the novelty of the situation.
A few minutes later, Alexa and Ella came through the double doors, clutching their bags and coats. Alexa’s navy school skirt was rolled up a couple of inches at the waist, and she had more makeup on than she’d had that morning, but I hardly cared about that now.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Alexa’s hazel eyes—Laura’s eyes—were dark with fear.
Ella was winding a strand of blond hair around her finger, looking surprised but not particularly curious, as always a little lost in a world of her own, slightly removed from reality, as if viewing it from her own personal bubble.
“I’ll tell you when we get home.”
I thanked the receptionist and shepherded the girls out onto Eighty-Seventh Street.
“Dad.” Alexa sounded impatient. “I’m missing math. What’s going on?”
“Something’s happened,” I said tersely. I wished I had a way to explain this that didn’t feel wrong. “I said I’ll tell you when we get home.”
We were all silent in the taxi, four of us squashed in the back, Ruby scrambling over us because there was no space for her to sit.
“Ruby, get off,” Alexa said irritably, pushing her sister away as she stared out the window.
Ella put her arms around Ruby’s middle and pulled her onto her lap. We were breaking a million safety laws, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home and start circling the wagons. I wanted to barricade the doors and keep the TV off and abandon the phones. Forget the world for a little while, and all its intrusions, and keep us all safe. Yet already I knew that was impossible.
As we entered the apartment building, I checked my phone and saw I had six unread texts, four missed calls.
No one spoke until we were back in the apartment, and Ruby had raced off to resume Peppa Pig; wi
th expert ease, she turned on the TV by herself and pressed play. I let her.
“Come into the kitchen,” I said quietly, and, both looking terrified now, Alexa and Ella followed me in.
I sat down at the little table by the window, which was always piled with papers and junk mail, never used for its purpose. They followed, their gazes tracking me.
“Dad…” Alexa’s voice wobbled. “What’s happened?”
“Alexa… Ella…” I took a deep breath, and then I cracked. It hit me, the reality of it, in a way it hadn’t before, like a sledgehammer straight to the chest. Laura was gone. She was never coming back. I’d never see her again; she’d never hum in the kitchen, or tuck her icy feet between my calves when we were in bed. She’d never pull Ruby onto her lap and tickle her tummy. She’d never fold into me, her arms around my waist, her lips grazing my neck so I could feel her smile. Already I feared I couldn’t smell her scent anymore; the house just smelled stale to me now.
My face contorted and I drew a deep breath, trying to organise my features into something small and sane. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, willing it all back. Back, back, because where else could it go?
“Dad…” Alexa started to cry, dashing her eyes impatiently, not even knowing yet why she was sad, while Ella simply stared, wide-eyed and shocked at the sight of me looking so emotional. “What is it? Where’s Mom?”
“Mom…” I managed the single word before I took another deep breath. I had to hold it together, for their sakes. “Mom’s been in an accident.” I didn’t want to say incident. I hated that word now, so soulless and officious-sounding, like something on a report.
“What kind of accident?” Alexa’s voice was high and thin. “Is she hurt? Will she be okay?”
I didn’t answer and Alexa leaned forward, her fists clenched on top of the table, her eyes wild.
“Dad. Mom’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”
Still I couldn’t speak, even though I knew I needed to. I was letting them down. Already, I was letting them down.