Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls

by Jennifer Weiner

  "Up here," Elle murmured into my ear. "In front." Her dress was black and tight but not indecently short or low-cut. Her shoes were closed-toe, with a sensible heel, and she'd cried off her eye makeup. My brother Josh was there, pale and somber in a gray suit. My mother wore a loose cotton dress and clutched Mona's hand. Joy sat next to her, and I sat next to Joy, and Samantha slipped in the row behind me, reached over to squeeze my hand, and wiped her eyes.

  I patted her shoulders, looking around. "Is your guy here?" I whispered.

  "In the back," she replied, sniffling.

  "Some first date," I said, and craned my neck until I saw him, a man in a navy suit with reddish-blond hair, affixing a yarmulke to his head.

  There must have been prayers, though I can't remember them. I'm sure there was a eulogy, but I can't remember that, either. I remember thinking, midway through the kaddish, the mourners' prayer, that maybe someone had found the notes I'd taken about Peter's demise, and there'd be a flaming funeral pyre and someone to sing "Many Rivers to Cross" once we got to the cemetery. I held Joy's hand. I dispensed Kleenex along the length of the aisle. I didn't cry at all.

  Then Joy and my mother and Elle and I got into the back of a rented Town Car (rented when? by whom? I had no idea), and it drove away. "You know, he didn't want this," I remarked to no one in particular as I climbed out of the car. "He wanted to lie in state at the Apollo." I hummed a few bars of "Many Rivers to Cross."

  Joy stared at me. "What?"

  "Never mind," I said. "It was just a joke we had. Just something silly." Out the window, the leaves on the trees burned brightly against the perfect blue sky. Cars zipped down the highway on their way to normal places: the school and the supermarket, the drugstore and the post office, and inside of them were people going about their business, singing along to the radio and enjoying the sun. "It was before your time."

  Rabbi Grussgott stood at the head of a rectangle dug in the dirt and chanted the kaddish, and I was fine. The coffin went creaking into the ground on canvas straps. Still fine. Then, in a ritual I remembered from Bruce's father's funeral and hadn't seen since, the rabbi handed me a shovel.

  Uh-uh. No way. "I can't," I said, handing it back.

  "It's okay," she said quietly. She held it in her hands. It was just a regular gardening tool with a worn wood shaft and a rust-flecked spade. She looked at us. My mother made a small moaning noise in her throat and stepped backward. Elle took the shovel and looked a question at me. I shrugged. Joy stepped forward and took the shovel in her hands.

  "I'll love you forever, Daddy," she said, scooping dirt from where it had been piled by the side of Peter's grave and sprinkling it on top of the wood of his coffin.

  The kitchen and the dining room were filled with flowers, and every countertop held an assortment of trays from the Famous Fourth Street Deli, where the three of us had eaten so many meals. "Deli equals death," I told Sam. I wadded up the plastic wrap I'd pulled off a platter of cookies and tossed it into the trash can.

  "Would you please sit down?" Samantha asked me for roughly the hundredth time since we'd gotten home. "It's sitting shiva, not running-around-the-kitchen shiva. You're supposed to let us help."

  "I want to keep busy," I said. "It helps." That wasn't actually true. It wasn't helping. I felt as numb as if I'd been wrapped in six inches of gauze, yet somehow I was functioning, finding plastic cups and extra toilet paper for the powder room and the monogrammed ice bucket one of my Cleveland cousins had given us for our wedding. Every time I turned around, I thought I'd see him walking through the door, sitting on the couch with a crossword puzzle in his hands and his long legs stretched out in front of him, and every time it felt like being hit with something heavy. Oh, I would think as the vision dissolved. Oh, Peter.

  I made myself go to the sink and start loading the dishwasher, even though Sam and my mother tried to shoo me away. "How did that happen? Do you think the Chinese take-out industry's pissed? Or the fried-chicken people? How come fried chicken didn't get to be the universal food of Jewish grief?"

  "We can get you fried chicken," Sam promised. "We can get you anything you need."

  "Do you remember my bachelorette party?" Because I was preparing to wed a diet doctor (Bariatric physician, I heard my husband say in my head, please!), we decided that instead of a party that celebrated a farewell to flesh and included a trip to the local version of Chippendale's, we would instead have a Farewell to Trans Fats, which, I'd sadly told my friends, would probably never be permitted to darken my cupboards again. Six of us had gotten all dressed up and gone restaurant-hopping for deep-fried mozzarella sticks, biscuits with honey, macaroni and cheese, McDonald's french fries, fried chicken, and fried ice cream. Then, I remembered, we'd gone to see the strippers anyhow. I'd gotten home at two in the morning, reeking of grease and tequila and whipped cream (the last acquired at the strip club), with my high heels in my hand and a lei made of condoms around my neck, swearing to myself that it would be nothing but salads and All-Bran until the vows were said.

  I hope it was worth it, Peter had called from the bed, and I'd giggled and crawled in next to him, fully dressed except for my shoes. He'd told me I'd smelled like a zeppole. You know it turns you on, I'd said.

  "You know what the moral of this is?" I asked. I was in the kitchen. There was the table where we'd had thousands of meals, played hours of Candy Land and dominoes when Joy was little and Scrabble when she was big (even though I should have been the family champ, Peter would usually eke out a victory by dint of some obscure medical term that always sounded made up). There was the stove where he'd make his chicken cacciatore, and it was so delicious that I'd never complain about the way he'd use every pot and pan we owned to make it, and I'd wind up washing all of them. The refrigerator still held half of a six-pack of Yuengling and the skim milk he'd poured on his oatmeal. On the door was a Rocky magnet with a picture of the two of us on the museum steps underneath it. "The moral is, eat whatever you want, because it doesn't fucking matter. You're gonna die anyhow."

  "Come on." Sam gripped my shoulders briefly, then steered me toward the pantry. "Language. And we need more napkins. Just tell me where they are."

  "Napkins. Right." Around my waist was the gingham apron I'd bought to impress Remy Heymsfeld from Open Hearts. I guessed I'd need to call him soon, him and Betsy both, to tell them what had happened, to see what could be done. There was a magnetic pad on the refrigerator, and I scribbled down CANCEL BABY before rifling through the shelves. The only napkins I could find were left over from our Fourth of July barbecue. Their red, white, and blue stripes would probably give the proceedings an incongruously patriotic feel. Ah well, I thought, and piled them next to the platters on the table and looked at my watch, wondering when I could go back to bed.

  "How can people be eating?" Joy demanded with her hands on her hips, staring at the spread: corned beef and pastrami, turkey and tuna and egg salad, smoked fish and Swiss cheese and cream cheese, rye bread and bagels, kugels studded with raisins, platters of sugar-dusted linzer tortes and chocolate-chip cookies. "How can anyone be hungry?"

  "Life goes on," I said. It was the worst cliche, and possibly the most true.

  Joy curled her lip in the scornful manner she'd perfected over the last nine months. Her hair hung in ringlets around her face. "Well, I think it's disgusting." She brushed at her swollen eyes and walked out the back door.

  The doorbell rang. "I'll get it," Sam said, wiping her hands on a dish towel tucked into her waistband. A minute later, she came back, leading a little girl and her mother. The girl introduced herself as Cara.

  "From the Ronald McDonald House," said her mom. "She was wondering if she could say hello to Joy."

  "Sure, honey," I said, and I led her into the garden, where Joy and her friends were sitting. Sam's guy was doing card tricks for them, and they were doing a good job of making a dent in the cookie trays.

  I stood on the steps as Joy looked up. "Hi, Cara."

  "My mom s
aw about your dad in the paper," Cara said. "Is it okay that I came?"

  "Sure it's okay," said Joy. My heart swelled as I watched Joy pull up a chair for the little girl, introduce her to Tamsin and Todd, and ask about someone named Harry. "He has hair now," the girl said, and smiled, and Joy smiled back at her. "That's good," my daughter said. Today she is a woman, I thought, and turned away so Joy wouldn't see me cry.

  Maxi handed me a handkerchief, a crisply ironed monogrammed linen square. I wiped my face, then smoothed my apron and went back to the kitchen. Through the windows beside the door, I could see a station wagon parked at the curb with its blinkers on and six feet of Bruce Guberman standing next to the driver's door.

  "Oh my God," I whispered. "Guberman."

  "That's him?" Maxi whispered back, peering at the car. She beckoned for Samantha, who took in the scene with narrowed eyes.

  "Do you want me to tell him to leave?" Sam asked hopefully.

  "No," I said. Then a horrible thought struck me. "Oh my God, you guys. What if he thinks that every time someone dies, I'll have sex with him?" I started laughing as the passenger-side door swung open, and Emily, dainty as a doll, exited, then opened the door behind her and extracted one of her sons. My fingernails dug into the meat of my palms.

  "Let me handle this," Samantha said, stepping past me.

  "No," I said. "No, it's okay. They're here for Joy. It's okay."

  I stood there and watched as Bruce took his wife's elbow and steered her (or maybe "dragged her" would be more apt, although I could have been projecting) up the steps toward my front door. Then I made myself walk down to meet them. "Cannie," he said.

  "Bruce," I answered.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "Sorry," I said, like a parrot.

  Emily detached herself from Bruce's side.

  "I'm so sorry for your loss," she said quietly. "Boys," she said, bending down (short as she was, she didn't have far to go). The older boy put his video game in his pocket, and the younger one, the spitting image of Bruce, looked up at me and said, "Sorry."

  Two little boys. Two perfect boys. Oh, Peter. My throat closed again, but I managed to say, "Joy's in the garden." I wiped my eyes and stood aside to let them pass.

  Three days later, I made myself play the forty-seven messages on our voice mail. I sat in the living room, a glass of wine in my hands, with Peter's blue bathrobe belted around my waist, and let the words wash over me. We were so sorry to hear...such a terrible shock...if there's anything we can do. I wiped my eyes. I could push through the days, but the nights were terrible. I kept seeing him. That was the thing. Coming out of the shower with a towel around his hips. Walking up the stairs with the newspaper, folded in thirds, in his hand. Pulling a sun-warmed tomato off the vine in the backyard, slicing it and salting it and giving me half. Standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, like he was hoping the contents would change if he just stared at them long enough. Don't you be putting my butter back in there, I'd say as I walked past, and saw him eyeing the butter I kept on the counter, and he'd say, If you want this entire family to die from botulism, I suppose I shouldn't stand in your way.

  Come back, I would try to tell him. Don't leave me. Don't leave Joy. Come back to us. Come home. Sometimes I'd get a word or two out. Then he'd be gone.

  If you need anything...if we can help... I wrote down names and numbers with one of Peter's University of Philadelphia pens. The writing on the page didn't even look familiar. It was like a stranger had stolen my hands.

  The forty-second call was from a woman with a high, sweet voice that sounded almost giddy. "Hi, guys!" she said. Didn't get the message, I thought...her, and messages 22 (a guy trying to sell "Peter Krushel...Krushla...um, the gentleman of the house" a subscription to the Examiner) and 30 (a computer asking if we wanted to switch our car insurance). "It's Betsy!" Betsy, I mouthed. It took me a minute to remember who Betsy was, and when I did, I groaned out loud. "Listen," she said, "I know I'm not supposed to home-test, and it's not official until your doctor confirms it, but..." She paused. I held my breath, staring at the wall, clutching the pen and the pad, thinking, Oh yes, thinking, Oh no. When I looked sideways Peter sat at my desk, smiling at me. "Wait," I whispered as he turned toward the window. "Oh, please, wait..."

  "Congratulations, Mom and Dad!" said Betsy.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  "It doesn't always work on the first try," my mother said.

  I gave her a look to tell her that she was being ridiculous. "You had somebody implanted with a fertilized embryo, and now you're surprised that she's pregnant? Did they not have health class in your school?"

  "Well, when you put it like that," she murmured, and ran her hands through her hair. She was wearing her own clothes--she'd made a big deal out of getting dressed every morning--but on top of her outfit, she wore my father's terry bathrobe, the way she did whenever she was at home. Every time I saw her shuffling down the hall with her hands in the pockets and the hem dragging on the floor, I wanted to cry.

  "We'd been prepared to do three rounds, and then, if nothing happened..." Her voice trailed off. On the stove, the teakettle whistled. My mom ignored it, so after a minute, I got up and poured boiling water into her mug and brought it to her, along with the sugar bowl and the pitcher of milk. We were almost out of milk. Milk, I wrote on the notepad on the refrigerator. The words "crackers" and "shampoo" were still there in my father's handwriting. I wondered if we'd just leave that page up there forever, or if someday I'd come home from school and it would be gone.

  I poured myself juice and sat at the table across from my mother. My hair, still damp, was in a ponytail; my hearing aids were in my ears. I wear them all the time now. I don't ever want to miss anything again. "So what are we going to do? If we don't take the baby, does Betsy get to keep it?"

  "I'm not...I mean, we can't...Well, it's a baby," my mom said, as if this was a news flash. "It's not a dress. You can't just return it, or not pick it up at the store."

  I nodded and sipped my juice, watching her.

  "We have to be sure, though," she said. "It's such a big thing. A baby. We have to be certain. It's forever, you know?"

  "Forever," I repeated. The steam from her teacup curled toward her face, and she used the heel of one hand to wipe at her forehead. There were purplish crescents underneath her eyes, lines I'd never noticed at the corners.

  I sat there, looking at her for a minute, waiting for her to say something else. When she didn't, I flipped to a fresh page of the shopping list. Bottles, I wrote. Bibs. Blanket. Crib. "Do we still have my old crib?"

  "Huh? Oh, yeah," she said, and nodded vacantly. "In the basement. I saved..." She stared over my head. "I saved everything. I don't know why. I just did."

  Get her back on track, I thought. "Is that the safest kind?"

  "Safest?" She blinked. "I'll check."

  "I'll check," I said, and made a note. Check on crib safety ratings. Stroller. Car seat. Diapers. Rocking chair. "Hey, Mom? What do they call those slings ladies use to carry babies on their chests?"

  She thought about it. "Slings," she said. Then she said, "I should probably get a job."

  I wrote down Job. Then I looked up. "Do we need money?"

  "We'll be okay. But I should have something to do. Your father thought..." She lifted her cup, then set it down without drinking. "I don't know. Maybe I'll try to write something."

  "You have to take care of the baby," I pointed out.

  "In my spare time," she said. "In my spare time, I could write."

  I wondered whether she was lying about the money, whether we'd have to sell our house, whether I'd have to drop out of the Philadelphia Academy. "I can take care of the baby after school. You can work then."

  She nodded. "Maybe."

  Pajamas, I wrote. Books. Educational DVDs. I'd probably get some money for my bat mitzvah. I could use it to buy things the baby would need. "We'll be okay," I told her. She gave me a watery smile. Then she blew into her cup of
tea and sipped from it, staring out the window. The leaves outside our window were still dark green. Soon they'd be crimson and gold, falling in drifts to the sidewalk under the bright blue fall sky. People would put pumpkins on their stoops, then wreaths on their doors, and by May the trees would be budding again, the boughs bright and heavy with cherry and dogwood blossoms. I tried to imagine me and my mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk, one of those fancy ones with big rubber wheels and bright canvas hoods, but all I could think of was my father, walking with me to Rita's to get a water ice or to TLA to rent a video, his hand warm around mine. In the winter, we'd take my mother's old sled to Fairmount Park. He'd pull me up the steepest hill, then run down to wait for me, crouching in the snow, his arms outstretched. Don't be afraid, he'd say, and I'd dig my heels into the snow, balancing for an instant before tilting forward and sending the sled over the lip of the hill, knowing that he'd catch me. He would always catch me. A sob wanted to push its way out of my throat, but I wouldn't let it. Snow-suit, I wrote. Hat. Scarf. Mittens.

  THIRTY-NINE

  We sat shiva for a week. Then I threw out all of the picked-over deli trays, uncovered the mirrors, and took Joy shopping for summer camp. I cried after the bus drove her off to the Poconos, but I did it in my car, with the windows rolled up and the radio playing, telling myself that I'd be all right, that women survived worse things, war and famine and horrible illnesses, that I could deal with widowhood and two weeks in an empty house. On the first Monday after Labor Day I drove Joy to the Philadelphia Academy, the way I had so many times before. "If you want to come home, just call me," I said as I pulled the minivan up to the curb.