Wreathed

by Curtis Edmonds

  I got back to the hotel room and took my shoes off, which was the single best thing I had done all day. I wriggled my way out of the somber dress and slipped into blue jeans and a nice comfy black hooded sweatshirt that said TEMPLE on it. I figured the responsible thing to do was to check on Mother and make sure that she hadn’t jumped out the window or that she wasn’t drunk-dialing old boyfriends or something. I put my ear up to the connecting door and listened for a short moment, just so I could tell what she was up to. I heard something that sounded like snoring, which I interpreted as a positive sign. Taking a nap couldn’t do anything but good for her at this point.

  I ducked out of the room and filled my ice bucket, and then settled on the balcony with a liquid refreshment. All I had to drink from was one of the little plastic glasses they put in your room, but that wasn’t an insurmountable barrier for the truly determined drinker. It was still chilly outside, but the sun was shining and I was warm in my sweatshirt.

  I had business to take care of before the serious drinking started. I sent a quick e-mail to my boss in Morristown, telling him that I had resolved the situation with Gawker. I said that all they’d wanted was information on my mother’s ex-husband, which was accurate enough, and that I’d be back to work on Monday. I tried to respond to the Facebook messages I had been neglecting. I played WHISTLE on a double-word score in Words With Friends to take a commanding lead over the sexist pig I had been playing. After that, I looked at the ocean for a long while.

  A wise man once said that human beings were programmed to like boundary conditions—places like tree houses, mountain cabins, or transgressive gay bars. Boundary conditions exist in places where you can stay in one element and look at another different and fascinating element for as long as you wanted. That’s why people like beach towns like Cape May; you can sit and look at the ocean, or go in the ocean and look back at the land, whatever’s more fun.

  If that’s true, then maybe that’s why people go to funerals. Funerals are the boundary condition between life and afterlife. Sheldon Berkman had crossed the boundary between living in a tacky, seaside retirement community and trying to flip an old Victorian house to being a pile of ashes in a fancy urn in a U-Haul truck on its way to the FedEx office in Sea Isle City. I didn’t think much of that particular trip, and wasn’t thrilled about having to make it myself one day.

  Another wise man said that you should get busy living, or get busy dying. Of course, that was just something Morgan Freeman said in a movie once, but he had a point. I was stuck where I was, and I knew it. I was living a static, lonely life in a nondescript town in North Jersey, handling the paperwork for other people’s deaths. It was slow and safe, and it was paying off my student loan drip by drip, but it wasn’t making me happy and I didn’t know what to do about it, other than to take another nice long frosty smooth sip of creamsicle.

  I need a man, I thought, not for the first time.

  But it couldn’t be just any man. I wanted someone stable and devoted. I wanted someone smart and honest. I wanted someone devastatingly handsome but not narcissistic.

  But more than that, I wanted someone with a deep romantic streak. Someone who would fall madly in love with me and do great things to earn my love in return. Someone charming, affectionate, and sweet. Someone who would be the great love of my life for today and for all time.

  Was that person Adam Lewis?

  He was cute. I would give him that. He was drop-dead gorgeous, honestly. Just the right age. Single. Employed. Interested in me, as far as I could tell. All of these things were positive marks in his favor. The one thing wrong with him was the most important thing that could be wrong with him, that he didn’t seem like the type to sweep a woman off her feet. I mean, who asks a girl to help him clean out his dead uncle’s apartment for a first date?

  The good news was that he was single and he seemed to be unattached. But there was every reason to think that he was single for a reason. Maybe he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. Maybe he was an insensitive lout who liked to poke fun at people’s personal weaknesses. Maybe he was bad at sex, although I would have to find that out on my own.

  On paper, he seemed like the perfect guy. But there was no way he could be the perfect guy, because the perfect guy doesn’t exist.

  Maybe you should stop looking for him, then, I thought.

  I poured myself another creamsicle and watched the ocean slam into the beach for the next hour.

  Mother came out onto her balcony before five. She was wearing a shapeless gray wool poncho as protection against the chill wind, and she had a martini glass in her hand. “How long have you been sitting out here drinking?” she asked.

  “Not long enough.”

  “What revolting concoction is that? It looks orange.”

  “Vanilla soda and diet orange vodka,” I said. “No, wait, the other way around.”

  “Oh, dear. Will you be up for having dinner?”

  “I had enough food at the wake to sink the Queen Mary,” I said. “I could eat a little something, though, as long as you don’t ask me to drive you anywhere.”

  “That is why God gave us room service,” she said.

  “Is that where you got the martini glass?”

  “I packed it in my suitcase,” she said. “In case of emergency.”

  I saluted her with my sad little plastic cup. “You are my hero,” I said.

  “Of course, dear. How was the reception?”

  “Interesting. It was at the retirement home complex. Many, many, many pierogies.”

  “What on earth possessed you to go there? It sounds dreadful.”

  “They were very nice pierogies. Tasty. Filling. And there was fruit salad. I liked the fruit salad. I should have asked for the recipe, if I ever decide to learn how to cook. And there were pierogies. Did I say that?”

  “You made that very clear, dear.”

  “It’s important, when you are as drunk as I am, to try to be as clear as you can.” I got that out very slowly, over-enunciating each word, which I do when I’ve gone well over my limit.

  “I understand. But what made you decide to go?” she asked.

  “Motivation. Adam asked me to go, so I went.”

  “Oh, the nephew. Is that his name? Charming young man. He asked you to go to the wake with him?”

  “Exactly positively.”

  “So did you screw him?” she asked.

  I stared at her, which was hard because there suddenly seemed to be more than one of her. “How many of those martinis have you had?” I asked.

  “Don’t answer a question with a question, darling. It’s common.”

  “You can’t ask me that. Not when I’m this drunk. It’s a violation of the Geneva Constitution. You could go to jail.”

  “I am not judging you, sweetie. It’s a common reaction. Funerals make us want sex. It’s part of our genetic programming. It’s how we express our love for life.”

  “Oh.”

  “So? Did you go out and love life?”

  “None of your business, Mother.” I said it very slowly to be sure I was enunciating.

  “I thought he was exceptionally good-looking,” she said. “And he seemed every inch the eligible bachelor. It’s a shame you didn’t at least try.”

  “He had an errand to run,” I explained. I was not about to tell her what kind of errand. “He did ask me out, and I said yes, even though he was not being the least bit romantic.”

  “Why on earth were you waiting on him to feel romantic?” she asked. “Let me tell you something about romance. When you’re dealing with a very attractive man with whom you want to have sex, it pays to be direct. Some men wouldn’t know a signal if it hit them over the head with a gin bottle. Just come out and say you want to have sex with him. He will appreciate it. If he’s any good at it at all, so will you.”

  “I cannot believe I am having this conversation,” I said.

  “Then you clearly haven’t had enough to drink.”

 
I poured myself another creamsicle and raised my plastic glass over the railing separating my balcony from hers. “Cheers,” I said, as she clinked it with her martini glass, minus the satisfying clink sound. We sat there for a long time, watching the shadows grow longer. Room service showed up with club sandwiches just as it was getting too cold to sit outside. Mother took her sandwich off to her room, and I don’t recall anything about the rest of the night other than that I was so drunk and tired when I went to bed that I woke up the next morning with a mayonnaise smear on my forehead.

  Chapter 16

  That next morning found me sitting in my car again in front of the pink house on Idaho Street, with a hangover that would incapacitate Charlie Sheen.

  “Are you sure that’s the right house?” Mother asked. “It looks decidedly odd.”

  “That’s what it said in the codicil. It’s 228 Idaho Street. Unless it’s a misprint.”

  “More like a practical joke. I would say it was a white elephant if it were not that wretched shade of pink. What do you suppose Sheldon expected me to do with this thing?”

  “You could always rent it out. If you were ambitious you could start your own bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Don’t you dare disturb my hard-earned retirement, Gwendolyn Rose.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. Of course, you could move down here full-time.”

  “And deprive your sister of free babysitting? I wouldn’t dream of it.” She peered through my window, as though she was trying to see something exceptional in the house that just wasn’t there. “Do you think it’s all right to go inside?” she asked.

  “We have the key. You can go in if you want. But Adam thinks Sheldon was in the middle of a reconstruction project when he died. It might not be safe. There could be holes in the flooring, or a gas leak, or disco wallpaper. You should have a home inspector check it out first.”

  The house, like the rest of the world, looked worse in the glare of the harsh morning sunlight. I had dark glasses on, but everything in the world that was sunlit was bringing me intense pain. I would be lucky to get out of the car, much less navigate the steps up to the front porch without throwing up.

  “Is it legal?” she asked. “Do I really own this thing?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mother, I am far too hung over to give you legal advice right at the moment,” I said.

  “How middle-class of you.”

  “Hangovers are middle-class? Since when?”

  “Since forever,” she explained. “Poor people can’t afford to have hangovers because they have to go to work the next day. Rich people have enough money that they can just say they’re indisposed. You have to be middle-class to have a hangover.”

  “What are we?”

  “We are old money, dear. We have hangovers, but don’t complain about them. That would be déclassé.”

  “We wouldn’t want to be déclassé, then, would we? Anyway, before I could even tell you anything helpful, I would need to look at all the legal paperwork—the will and the mortgage and the title certificate—to make sure everything was in order. But you clearly met the condition in the codicil by attending the funeral. You should inherit the house, unless Adam contests the will or the codicil.”

  “I can’t help feeling as though Sheldon is trying to influence my life from beyond the veil. He’s manipulated me into something, but I don’t know why.”

  “It’s just a house, Mother. It’s real estate, like on a Monopoly board. If you don’t like the house, you can sell it. Or you can let the bank take it back; it must be mortgaged from here to next Wednesday.”

  “Something is wrong about that house,” she said. “I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t know what the problem is, but I don’t like it, and I’m not sure I want any part of it. What do you think we should do?”

  “I remember, very distinctly, somebody, not that long ago, promising me a spa day if I drove them down to Cape May.”

  “Then what are we doing sitting around looking at an ugly house?” Mother asked. “Onward and forward.”

  Mother thought all the local spas had tacky names, so we left Cape May and headed towards Atlantic City, where we checked in to the Elizabeth Arden spa at Harrah’s. I got a hot stone massage from a stout Polish exchange student named Magda that would have brought a plaster saint back to life. That was followed up with just enough time in the sauna to leach all the alcohol residue from my body but not enough time to make me sick, and a facial that unclogged pores I didn’t even know that I had. Mother got the deep-tissue massage, which must have worked because she was so relaxed that she slept in the car all the way back north.

  I got a text from my sister Pacey as we were pulling into Princeton; she wanted to see if we would have dinner at her house. I love Pacey. She is an exceptionally smart person, and she has had a tough time with her twins, and I admire her deeply, but she cannot cook. I don’t blame her, because I cannot cook, either. The difference is that I am generally able to feed myself without giving myself food poisoning or starting small fires, and you can’t always say that about Pacey. But I needed to talk to someone else about the events of the last few days badly enough to brave whatever badly cooked meal she had planned. Then I thought about it more, and sent her a text suggesting Chinese delivery.

  Pacey and her husband lived in a large development that wasn’t quite finished yet; there were several houses in varying stages of construction on her street. They had moved there from New York, where her husband Henri still worked, just before their twins were born. Henri took the train into the city most days, but he had to be in Europe for meetings every so often, and I think he was in Zurich just then.

  Pacey had been working at the Swiss consulate in New York when they met. Pacey had a master’s degree in foreign policy from GWU and spoke four languages fluently. She’d put her career on indefinite hold to ride herd on three-year-olds in a nondescript suburb. I honestly didn’t know what to think of that, and I am not sure that she did, either.

  Mother woke up as I pulled into the driveway of Pacey’s house. She was blinking like an owl. “Please tell me your sister is not planning to give us all salmonella infections,” she said.

  “Averted,” I assured her. “General Tso’s and lo mein are on their way.”

  “Egg rolls?” she asked.

  “I can’t promise you egg rolls. Fortune cookies, I can promise.”

  “Let us go inside, then, and meet our fates.”

  My nephews spent dinner dunking dinosaur chicken nuggets in sweet-and-sour sauce, throwing rice at each other, and asking Mother if she would do Legos with them after dinner. They were annoying little pests about it, if you ask me, but when someone that cute says, “Gwandmama, can you pwease play Legos with me?” then you play Legos with them. Pacey insisted that Benjy and Simon wash their hands first, which seemed like an excellent idea to me, but they whined about it for what seemed like forever but was probably only twenty minutes. Finally, they complied with the parental order and started playing with the Legos, punctuated by healthy cries of “BAM” and “POW.” I had no idea what Mother was making of it all. I decided to help Pacey wash the dishes.

  “What I don’t understand,” Pacey said, “is why Mother was acting so cagey about the whole funeral thing. Who was it that died, anyway? She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Sheldon Berkman,” I said. “I got to hear the whole story on the way down. It’s amazing. They were dating in high school, and then when he graduated, they eloped to Cape May. She hadn’t even finished high school yet.”

  “Oh, him,” she said. “I thought he was in Alaska or something.”

  “You knew about Sheldon?” I asked. “Holy shit, Pacey. You knew Mother was married before, and you didn’t tell me?” I could hear my voice go shrill with outrage and jealousy. Why would she tell Pacey about Sheldon and not me?

  “You didn’t know about that already? I thought Daddy would have told you about Sheldon. You
know how he loves undermining her when he thinks he can get away with it.”

  “I never heard Word One about this guy until Thursday night. Why did Dad tell you and not me?” That’s not fair, I thought, but our parents had drilled “life isn’t fair” into all of us, like an evil mantra.

  “Special circumstances,” she said.

  “Spill.”

  “No.”

  In the background, we could hear Mother imploring Benjy to take the Darth Vader Lego piece out of his mouth.

  “Spill or I give your kids double cotton candy when I take them to the zoo next time.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Spill.”

  “Never,” she said.

  “One day, not so far from now, you and your husband will be in the same country at the same time, and you are going to want me to babysit, and I am going to feed your clever, adorable children as much sugar as I can cram down their little throats, and you won’t be able to stop me, and they will keep you up all night long.”

  “Quid pro quo?”

  “If you insist,” I said.

  “Fine. Sophomore year at UVa, I was dating this guy named Wade Prescott IV. Very bright, very sexy, and unfortunately, very Southern. He drove up to Philadelphia, totally without me knowing about it, and walked up to Daddy at his office and asked for my hand in marriage. He had it all planned out. He was going to ask me to get married in Virginia Beach over spring break, just the two of us and a preacher.”