The House On Hope Street

by Steel, Danielle

  “Oh, my God, Liz … you look awful …”

  “I know, Mother, I’m sorry … I …” She didn’t know what to say to her, and the relationship they shared had never been overly warm, or comfortable for Liz. It was always easier dealing with her from a distance. Jack had always been the buffer for her when her mother disapproved of what they were doing. Liz had never forgiven her for her lack of support or compassion for her youngest grandson. Her mother thought it had been foolish of them to have a fifth child anyway. Four already seemed too many to her, and five was “ridiculous and excessive,” according to Helen.

  Carole offered her dinner, but Helen said she’d eaten on the plane, and she sat down at the kitchen table with the others, and let Jean pour her a cup of coffee. “My God, Liz, what are you going to do now?” She dove right to the heart of the matter, without waiting to take her first sip of coffee. The others had all been crawling through the day, inch by inch, and minute by minute, trying to look no further ahead than the next hour, or voice any disturbing questions. But Liz’s mother was never one to mince words or hesitate to tread where she shouldn’t. “You’ll have to give up the house, you know. It’ll be too hard for you to handle it on your own … and close your practice. You can’t do it without him.” It was just exactly what Liz felt and was afraid of. As usual, her mother had gone straight to the heart of the terror and stuck it right in her face, shoved it down her throat and up her nose, until she could hardly breathe thinking about it. It seemed like an echo of what she’d heard nine years before … you’re not going to try and keep that baby at home, are you? My God, Liz, having a child like that in the house will destroy the other children. Her mother could always be counted on to voice everyone’s greatest terrors. “The Voice of Doom” Jack had always called her, but he laughed when he said it. She can’t make you do anything you don’t want, Jack had reminded her. But where was he now? And what if she was right? … What if she did have to give up the house, and close their practice? How was she going to exist without him?

  “All we have to do right now is get through Monday,” Victoria interrupted firmly. They had arranged to have the viewing at the funeral home over the weekend, and the funeral on Monday at Saint Hilary’s. “The rest will take care of itself.” The funeral on Monday was their goal, the place where Liz had to focus. After that, they would all help her pick up the pieces, just as they were there for her now, and everyone at the table knew she didn’t need to worry yet about the big picture. This was bad enough, and as they sat there, Liz’s mind kept drifting back to Christmas. It really was a nightmare that would live on for them forever. The children would never again put up a Christmas tree, or hear a Christmas carol, or open a gift without remembering what had happened to their father on Christmas morning, and what it had been like for each of them right after it happened. Liz looked ravaged as she looked around the table at the people who had come together to help her.

  “Come on, why don’t you come upstairs and lie down,” Victoria said quietly. She was a small woman with dark hair and brown eyes, and a firm voice that told you not to argue with her, but her strength was exactly what Liz needed. When she was still practicing, Liz used to tease her about being a terror in the courtroom. Her specialty was personal injury law, and she had won some extraordinary sums for her clients. But thinking that reminded Liz of Jack again, and Amanda, and everything that had happened. Liz was crying again as she walked slowly up the stairs to her bedroom, with Victoria right behind her.

  Liz told her to have Peter sleep in Jamie’s room, and put her mother in Peter’s room. Jack’s brother, James, was going to sleep on the couch in Jack’s office next to their bedroom, and her own brother in the living room. The house was chock full. Jean was going to sleep in the other twin bed in Carole’s room, and Liz had already asked Victoria if she would sleep in her king-size bed with her. They were there like a benevolent army, ready to fight the war on agony with her. And everywhere Liz looked, there seemed to be people. Peter and Jessica were in one of the girls’ rooms talking, when she walked past, and Jamie was sitting on Megan’s lap. They seemed to be calm, and not crying for once, and Liz let Victoria lead her to her own room. She lay down on the bed, feeling as though she had been beaten with two-by-fours, and stared up at the ceiling.

  “What if my mother’s right, Vic? What if I have to sell the house and give up our practice?”

  “What if China declares war on us, and bombs the house the day of the funeral? Do you want to pack now, or wait until afterwards? If you pack now, your stuff could get pretty wrinkled, but if you wait, your things could get pretty messed up if they drop a bomb on the house … What do you think, Liz, now or later?” She was smiling, and Liz laughed for the first time since that morning. “I think your mother is creating problems you don’t need to worry about, now certainly, and probably never. What is she saying to you, that you’re a lousy attorney and you can’t function without him? Give me a break, Jack used to say you were actually a better lawyer than he was.” And Victoria believed it. Liz had an extraordinary knowledge of the law, and what she lacked in bravado and panache, she made up for with skill and precision.

  “He just said it to be nice,” Liz said with tears springing to her eyes again … God, it was so impossible to think he wasn’t there. Where was he? She wanted him back, now. Only yesterday morning they had lain in the same bed she was lying on, and they had made love the night before that. Tears poured down her cheeks as she thought of it. She was never going to make love again, never be with him again, never love anyone again. Her life felt like it was over, as much as his.

  “You know case law better than any other attorney I know.” Victoria tried to drag Liz’s mind back to the immediate present. She could almost see all the horrors that Liz was thinking, whether or not she voiced them. “Jack was just showy in the courtroom, like me, we’re both bluffers.” It was hard to remember not to speak of him as though he were still with them.

  “Yeah, and look where it got him. I told him yesterday that Phillip Parker would kill her if we messed with his business and his assets. I just didn’t know he’d kill Jack too.” She dissolved in tears again as she said it, and Victoria sat down on the bed and held her until the wave had abated, and by then Liz’s mother was standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “How is she?” Her mother looked directly at Victoria, as though Liz were unconscious and couldn’t hear them, and in some ways she was, she felt as though she were having an out-of-body experience, and was watching everything that happened from a place somewhere on the ceiling.

  “I’m okay, Mom. I’m fine.” It was a dumb thing to say, but what else could she say? It was as though she had to prove to her mother that she could do this. If not, she might prove her mother right and lose her house and her practice.

  “You don’t look it,” her mother said grimly. “Tomorrow, you should wash your hair and put on makeup.” Tomorrow, I should die so I don’t have to live through this, Liz wanted to say to her, but couldn’t. There was no point fighting with her on top of everything else. They had enough to worry about now, without adding family feuds into the bargain. Jack hadn’t been close to his brother either, but at least he was there, and it was nice for the children to see him, Jack’s parents, and her mother and brother.

  She and Victoria lay in bed late that night, talking about him, and what had happened. It was a nightmare none of them would ever forget, and probably never recover from. Liz had already spoken to several people on the phone that day who had told her she’d never get over it, particularly a traumatic death like this, and two others had told her that the best thing she could do was get out in the world again as soon as possible, she might even be married again in six months, who knew, she might get lucky. Lucky? How did they figure that, and where did they get the courage to tell her what to do? Sell the house, move away, move into town, take a new associate in with her, give it up, what to tell the kids, what not to tell the kids, buy a dog, have him cremated, throw
the ashes off the bridge, don’t let the kids attend his funeral, make sure they see him before the casket was closed, make sure they don’t so they don’t remember him that way. Everyone had free advice to give, and an endless stream of opinions. She was already exhausted from listening to them. But all it boiled down to in the end was that Jack was gone, and she was on her own now.

  She didn’t fall asleep until five o’clock that morning, and Victoria lay awake and let her talk all night. And at six o’clock Jamie came in, and climbed into bed with them.

  “Where’s Daddy?” he asked, as he lay next to her, and Liz could feel her whole body shudder as he asked her. Was it possible he’d forgotten? Maybe it was so traumatic for him he’d repressed it.

  “He died, sweetheart. A bad man shot him.”

  “I know,” he said sensibly, looking up at her as they lay side by side in the bed that his father had slept in only a day before. “I mean now, where is he?” Jamie looked at her as though she were silly for thinking he’d forget, and she smiled sadly at him.

  “He’s at the funeral home, we’re going there today. But he’s really up in Heaven with God.” At least she hoped that was true and that everything she’d always believed was the way it happened. She hoped that he was happy and at peace, as she’d been told. But in her heart of hearts, she wasn’t sure yet. She still wanted him back too much to entirely believe that.

  “How can he be in two places?”

  “His spirit, everything about him that we know and love, is in Heaven with God, and right here with us, in our hearts. His body is at the funeral home, kind of like he’s sleeping.” Tears squeezed out of her eyes as she said it, and Jamie nodded, satisfied with her response.

  “When will I see him again?”

  “When we go to Heaven to be with him. Not till you’re very, very old.”

  “Why did the bad man shoot him?”

  “Because he was very angry, and very crazy. He shot someone else too. And he killed himself, he won’t come back here to hurt us.” She wondered if that was what he was thinking, and she wanted to allay his fears, whether or not he voiced them.

  “Did Daddy do something bad to him?” It was a good question.

  “Daddy did something that made him very angry, because the man had done some bad things to his wife. Daddy asked the judge to take away some money from him.”

  “Did he shoot Daddy to get back his money?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Did he shoot the judge too?”

  “No. He didn’t.” Jamie nodded, mulling over what she’d said to him, and then he lay in bed next to her, just holding her close to him, and Victoria got up and went to take a shower. It was going to be a long day for all of them, and she wanted to get ready so she could help Liz in every way she could. It was going to be an unthinkably awful day for Liz and the children.

  In the end, it was even worse than Victoria, or Liz, had expected. The entire family went to the funeral home, and they broke into sobs the moment they saw the casket. There were flowers standing next to it, and a spray of flowers on top of it, Liz had asked for white roses for him, and the smell of them was heavy in the room when they entered. And for a long time, there was only the sound of sobs, and finally Victoria and James took the children away, and led Liz’s mother away with them, and Liz was left alone with the mahogany casket she had chosen for him, and the man she had loved for nearly twenty years resting inside it.

  “How could this happen?” she whispered as she knelt next to him. “What am I going to do without you?” The tears streamed down her cheeks as she knelt on the worn carpet and rested a hand on the smooth wood. It was all so inconceivable, so unbearable, so much more than she had ever thought she could bear, except that now she had to. She had no choice. This was the hand that life had dealt her, and she had to live through it, if only for her children.

  Victoria came to get her after a while, they went out to get something to eat, but Liz couldn’t eat anything. The children were talking by then, and Peter teased the girls to cheer them up, and kept an eye on his mother as he sat next to Jamie and told him to eat his hamburger. They had all suddenly grown up overnight. It was as though Peter could no longer allow himself the luxury of being a teenager, but had become a man. Even the girls seemed more grown up suddenly, and Jamie less of a baby. They were all doing their best to be strong and be there for their mother and each other.

  Carole drove the children home after they ate, and the others went back to the funeral home with Liz. And all afternoon people came to pay their respects, and cry, and comfort Liz, and chat with each other outside the funeral home. It was like an endless cocktail party, with tears, and no food, and Jack in the casket at the end of the room. Liz kept waiting for him to step out of it and tell them all it was a terrible joke and it had never happened. But it had, and it seemed to go on forever.

  They went through a second day at the funeral home, and by then Liz was alternately numb and feeling hysterical, but outwardly she was extraordinarily composed, so much so that some people wondered if she was sedated. But she wasn’t, she was just on autopilot, and doing what she had to.

  Monday dawned with dazzling sunshine, and she went back to the funeral home before the funeral, to be alone with him. She had decided not to see him, and was agonized over it. She felt as though it was something she ought to do, but she knew she just couldn’t. She didn’t want to remember him that way. She had last seen him in the ambulance, and on their office floor, moments before he died, and that was agony enough to remember without adding further torture to it. More than anything, she was afraid that if she saw him, she couldn’t stand it, and would lose her grip completely. She left quietly and drove home, and found the children waiting for her in the living room, with their uncles and their grandparents. Her mother was wearing a black suit, and the girls were wearing navy blue dresses their grandmother had bought them. Peter was wearing his first dark blue suit, that Jack had just gotten him a month before, and Jamie was wearing a blazer and gray flannels. Liz was wearing an old black dress Jack had liked and a black coat that Jean had borrowed for her on Sunday. They looked somber and respectable, and as they filed into the pew at St. Hilary’s Church, Liz could hear people cry and blow their noses.

  The service was beautiful and brief, the church was full, there were flowers everywhere, and afterwards it was all a blur to her. Jean and Carole had arranged for food at the house, and more than a hundred people came to eat and drink and tell her how sorry they were. And all Liz could think of was leaving him at the cemetery. She had left a single red rose on his casket for him, and then kissed the box, and walked away, holding Jamie’s hand with Peter’s arm around her. It was a moment of such blinding pain that she knew that never in her entire lifetime would she forget it.

  She moved like a robot throughout the day, and two hours after everyone left, her brother-in-law caught a flight to Washington, her brother to New York, Jack’s parents to Chicago. Victoria went home, but promised to drop by the next day, with the boys. Jean went home that night too, and her mother was leaving the next morning. And then she would be alone with her children, and have the rest of her life to live through without him.

  When the children went to bed that night, finally, Liz and her mother sat in the living room. The Christmas tree was still there, drooping as badly as she felt, and her mother had tears in her eyes as she patted Liz’s hand.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you.” She had lost her own husband, Liz’s father, ten years before, but he had been seventy-one and sick for a long time. She had had time to prepare for it, and her children had been grown and gone. It had been painful for her too, but nothing like this was for Liz, and she knew it. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, as tears slid down her cheeks and Liz’s once again. There was nothing else to say. They just sat in the living room and hugged each other for a long time, and for the first time since Jamie’s birth, Liz remembered that she loved her, and forgave her for the things she had said the
n. In a terrible way, this agonizing loss had brought them a kind of healing, and if nothing else, Liz was grateful for it.

  “Thanks, Mom. Can I make you a cup of tea?” she asked finally, and they went out to the kitchen together. And as they drank tea at the kitchen table, her mother asked her again if she was going to sell the house and Liz smiled. This time it didn’t bother her as much. It was just her mother’s way of saying she was worried about her and wanted to know if she’d be okay. She had finally figured out that she wanted Liz to reassure her.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but we’ll be fine.” They had put aside enough money over the years, and Jack had a healthy insurance policy. And of course she had the law practice to support them. Money wasn’t the issue now so much as learning to live without him. “I don’t want to make any big changes for the kids.”

  “Do you think you’ll remarry?” It was a silly question, but Liz smiled, thinking of what Victoria had said. “If China declares war on us …”

  “I don’t think so. I can’t imagine it, Mom.” And then tears filled her eyes again. “I don’t know how I’m going to live without him.”

  “You have to. For the children. They’re going to need you more than ever. Maybe you should take some time off from work, close the office for a while.” But she couldn’t afford to take time off, and she knew it. Their entire caseload was now resting exclusively on her shoulders. Except for Amanda Parker. Just thinking of her made Liz ache for her children and what they had been through that day. They had lost both a mother and a father. She had called the house and spoken to Amanda’s sister that afternoon and told her how sorry she was. They had both cried, and the Parker family had sent her and the children flowers.

  “I can’t close the office, Mom. I have a responsibility to our clients.”