A woman of valor, who can find? For her price is far above rubies.…
She stretcheth out her hand to the poor, yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.…
The absolute stillness of her body seemed to anchor the room. All the months of twisting frustration and abject terror disappeared now, drawn into a peaceful center of gravity. But when Mom and I stepped closer, the breath caught in my chest. Heavy-handed makeup covered Suzy’s soft, expressive face. Everything about it was wrong. The eye shadow was blue as a bruise. Sweeps of rouge attempted to impart a blush of life in her cheeks, but the wrongness of the tone and the matte finish of foundation made her look plastic—almost puppetlike.
“No. No way.”
I strode to the back of the room where the funeral director stood, trying not to hear the obvious punch line Suzy would have whispered with one hand cupped to my ear if it had been someone else lying there. “I wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that.”
“Excuse me.” I was quiet but firm. “That makeup needs to be removed. That’s not at all how my sister looked. Just take it off, please. I’ll redo it myself.”
Sensing there was no room for discussion, he quickly had it done. I took my own little makeup bag from my purse and leaned down over the edge of the coffin. Her skin was smooth and white as a pearl, her lips faded lavender, her eyelids porcelain gray.
Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laugheth at the time to come.…
She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and the law of kindness is on her tongue.…
I clenched my teeth against the need to sob. Tried to breathe around it, but couldn’t.
Mom watched from a chair off to the side. She didn’t make a sound, but she didn’t fight or push away her tears.
She looketh well to the ways of her household.…
Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also praiseth her.…
Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that feareth the Lord,
she shall be praised.…
The light-handed way Suzy had always applied her makeup was as much about her personality as it was her sense of style. She had no desire to hide or alter anything about herself, only to make the most of what she had. There was a daytime look routine and a nighttime look routine. She’d taught me to do both and updated me periodically with new tricks and trendy products.
Give her the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates.
Suzy left us with the daytime look.
II
Evolution
∼ 9 ∼
A Seal Upon Thy Heart
In a garden square near the Szechényi Chain Bridge, which spans the Danube to connect the cities of Buda and Pest, the stylized Zero Kilometer Stone carved by Miklós Borsos symbolizes the starting point from which all major roads in Hungary count their distance. While serving as U.S. ambassador to Hungary, I spent some time staring at that stone, contemplating the starting points in my life. The moments from which I mark the distances I’ve traveled are not, in and of themselves, all that remarkable. They tend to be smooth and stylized, elegant and immovable, like the Zero Kilometer Stone.
Eight weeks after Suzy’s death, I was so deeply entrenched in grief, I wouldn’t have believed that a new beginning was possible, let alone so close that I could almost reach out and touch it.
In September, Eric started kindergarten, and I went back to work. I wasn’t ready to face the reality of a daily life without Suzy, but I had rent to pay, a child to raise. People searched for the right thing to say and came up with, “I’m sorry for your loss.” I’d grown immune to the words. My automatic response was a wooden “Thank you. You’re very kind.” But it didn’t always feel like kindness. Sometimes it felt like politeness. This was the correct thing to say, and if I were a correct-thinking person, I would rise above this now. It was time to let go. But how do you let go of someone so thoroughly woven through your soul? How do you live without someone you would have died for? I read books on the psychology and methodology of grieving, feeling like a failure because I still couldn’t sleep or eat or think straight.
“How long has it been?” someone would ask, and I didn’t know how to answer. How long has it been? implied that this foundation-shifting event was over, and for me, it was still going on. My mother’s unstoppable spirit was shattered on the floor. My father’s bounding energy had aged to a weighted sigh. My own ability to help them or even make it through the day felt frozen. Literally. My heart and mind felt encased in ice. The only warmth I could feel was Eric. Sometimes I had to take hold of him and hug him until he squirmed away, complaining that my hands were cold.
“When can we visit Aunt Suzy?” he’d ask the same way he asked, “When can I go to Grammy’s house?”
It tore my heart out that I’d let another person disappear from his life, but he was just asking out of curiosity. “Why are you crying?” was a candid, legitimate question coming from a four-year-old who was just as likely to ask in the next breath, “Why are fire trucks red?” or “Why do some dogs not have tails?” He didn’t know there was any such thing as grief; he was just figuring things out, fitting life into his lunchbox. It was comforting, this tiny happy-talking refuge in the midst of all that emotional wreckage.
I lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, scenes from Suzy’s life and death replaying in my head. We were there, on a street corner in Paris.
What a great life! We’re so lucky, Nan. The luckiest.
The next moment, we were on the street corner in Houston, staring down the oncoming bus. Now it felt like I was the one who’d been slammed to the ground, stunned, run over.
Fancy meeting you here.
My father’s dignity and the grace with which my mother faced all this were heartbreaking. Mommy had witnessed Suzy’s first breath and her last and remained grateful for every day between. I should have felt lucky to be the tagalong little sister who got as much of Suzy’s time as I did, but all I could feel were the missing hours, the wasted words, and all the thousands of days that Suzy should be here and wouldn’t be. I couldn’t fathom the character of a God who would turn his back on her.
“I’m not sure I can even believe in the existence of such a God,” I told Mom. “I don’t know where to put all this. Mommy, if you think I should move back home for a while, …”
“No,” she said flatly. “That would be a disaster. Your life is in Dallas. You have your job. Eric has school. Live your life and take care of your responsibilities. That’s the best way to get through it.”
This was the hardest moment of my mother’s life, but she was no stranger to loss. Her style of grieving was eminently pragmatic. Daddy was strong for her; she was strong for him. Scott and Steffie desperately needed a mother’s love, and Mom was there with the closest possible approximation. It didn’t surprise or hurt me that Suzy never asked me to step in and be a mother to her children. She knew I loved them, but we had very different mothering styles, and she knew our mother didn’t have to be asked.
I know you’ll take care of everyone, Mommy, she’d said.
She’d trusted Daddy to look after her. Don’t let them bury me in the ground.
He was the one who’d always sheltered her. I was the one who’d challenged and perplexed her, so maybe she was getting a bit of her own back, leaving me with this impossible task.
Promise me, Nan.
I’d promised, and I meant it, but what was it she expected me to do? Paint the walls in the waiting room? Stand on the corner with a sandwich board? Was I supposed to find every woman who didn’t know better and shake her till she listened? Did Suzy expect me to cure breast cancer?
“Knowing Suzy,” Mom said wryly, “she expected all of the above with a pink ribbon on it. Plus a box of chocolates.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Go back to what you know. Volunteer. Raise money. Make noise.”
I went back to what I knew, picked up where I’d le
ft off. At the time Suzy died, my autumn and holiday season had already been booked full of various projects. The doing of those familiar things kept me busy and tenuously connected to the life I had when Suzy was alive. Charity functions. Fashion shows. Luncheons to support hospital wings. I did everything I could to sync my PR job with the charity work I wanted to do so that I’d learn from these events, connecting with people who knew people and spending time with the guest speakers, whether they were oncologists, researchers, or celebrities. At the annual Cattle Baron’s Ball, a star-and-rhinestone-studded event benefiting the American Cancer Society, I ran into Dr. Blumenschein, and he greeted me with a warm embrace.
“How are you, Nancy? How’s Miss Ellie and your dad?”
“We’re fine, thank you.” I went with the polite response; he already knew the real answer. “I’m glad to see you, Dr. B. I need your advice on something.”
“Fire away.”
“I have to cure breast cancer.”
He smiled a pained, knowing smile. “Me too.”
“No, I mean it. This has to be done. How do we do this?”
“Well, you start with … with this,” he said, indicating the packed ballroom. “Keep doing what you’re already doing. We need funding for research.”
“Funding can be had,” I said. “There’s tons of oil money in Texas right now. We need to push breast cancer to the top of the list and get some of that money flowing our way.”
“People tend to fund a general focus on cancer. Breast cancer specifically … that’s a little difficult.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. People keep telling me it’s not a major deal, which you and I both know is untrue. Or they tell me it’s unseemly and makes people uncomfortable. But why should that be? How can people in the civilized world circa 1980 glorify Raquel Welch, eat up Charlie’s Angels with a spoon, then turn around and tell me there’s something unseemly about breast cancer? What is this antediluvian …”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Nancy.” Blumenschein held up his hand like a crossing guard. “I’m not disagreeing. Just saying … let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That’s how it is. We’ve learned to be realistic about it.”
I studied the well-dressed assembly. There was a lot of décolletage in the room. If we couldn’t champion the cause here, where on earth could we? When Dallas society came out to play, they did it in a great big, star-spangled, bouffant-and-bow-ties way. Bras and beehives were piled high, egos and checkbooks fully loaded. Generosity was a competitive obsession, second only to Friday night football. Texas was teeming with fabulously philanthropic movers and shakers like Joanne Herring, powerful políticos like the Bush and Connally families, brilliant business moguls like … like Norman Brinker.
He smiled at me from across the ballroom. I smiled back with an absent nod and returned to Blumenschein.
“It’s a marketing issue, that’s what it is,” I said. “We need to work on education. That’s imperative. To get the money ball rolling in a big way, we need awareness. We need outrage. We need people to care enough to get into the conversation. Rose Kushner, Betty Ford, Happy Rockefeller—they got things started, and the Betty Rollin book was a huge step forward. But it came out four years ago, and in terms of awareness, have we made any real progress since then? As far as the fundraising piece—okay, we’re here. This is a wonderful event, and I appreciate everyone’s generosity, but it’s too little, too late.”
“Too late for Suzy, yes,” said Blumenschein. “And for a lot of others. Believe me, I never forget a face. But what keeps me up at night are the ones walking in the door tomorrow. The ones we might be able to save.”
“You’re a great man, George Blumenschein.” I gave him another quick hug, then clinked my champagne flute on his. “L’chaim.”
He nodded firmly and raised his glass. “To life.”
I saw Norman Brinker again the following Sunday.
My friends, Joyce and Selwin Belofsky—regulars at Dallas charity functions and in the Dallas Morning News society pages—had been very sweetly concerned about me over the previous year and had invited me to brunch at their country club. Norman did the standard table flyby.
“Joyce, so good to see you. Selly, how’s it going?” He gave my tailored red suit an unabashed once-over. “And the lady in red. How are you, Nancy?”
We exchanged stock pleasantries, and Norman went on his way, working the room like a summer wind gust, stirring up a little flurry of conversation here and a little dust devil of laughter there. Joyce and Selly and I sat chatting in the sunshine until Norman made his way back to us again.
“Selly, what are these ladies buzzing about so intently?”
“Nancy’s doing the most interesting work with M. D. Anderson,” said Joyce. “She’s studying all the medical journals and really making quite a project of it.”
Norman raised one eyebrow. “Really.”
“I met some Baylor research scientists at the Cattle Baron’s Ball,” I said. “They were very appreciative of everything you’ve done.”
“I’m glad to help,” said Norman. “Can’t say I know much about the science, but I do know a good team when I see it, and they’ve got one.”
A few more pleasantries and off he went. And back he came.
“Selly, I just want to know how you rate,” he said. “Not one beautiful woman on your arm, but two? Don’t you think that’s a little greedy?”
Polite chuckles. Parting pleasantries. Off he went again, and we got up to leave.
“Well,” Joyce said, “Norman Brinker is a good friend of ours. But not that good. He was hovering around our table like a honeybee.”
“Had to be the red dress,” said Selly.
The milestone moment. A crisp October morning at ten o’clock, my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Is it true you walk on water?”
“Who is this?”
“Norman Brinker.”
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I didn’t know why he was calling. Through the grapevine, I knew he and his second wife had divorced after five years. They’d had two children, but for whatever reason, they didn’t appear to occupy the same sort of place in his life as Brenda and Cindy, his daughters with Little Mo. He was currently seeing a nice woman and wasn’t one of those men who swaggers around playing the field or flying personal laundry out in the breeze. He was a father, the head of a huge corporation, an extremely wealthy and influential community leader; a man in his position has good reason to be guarded about the relationships he gets into. If I was interested in getting to know Norman—and I was—I could expect to be properly vetted. Which was fine with me. I had my son to consider; I wasn’t about to get involved without knowing a man’s true colors.
He asked me to meet him at Chateaubriand, a Dallas steak house that was upscale but not too self-important.
“Can you be there in ninety minutes?”
“Sure,” I said. I was there in eighty.
Norman was still there ahead of me, glad-handing the waiter like the guy was his long-lost cousin. Something I quickly learned about Norman: No matter how many friends he had there when he walked in the door, you could multiply that times ten by the time he walked out. It was the secret of his success. He was the quintessential people person. He didn’t lord it over a waiter or a line cook; he was in league with him, a comrade-in-arms. He made everyone on the totem pole feel like a partner in this great endeavor of dining, this noble enterprise of living a good life, eating good food, and making great, caring conversation with everyone in earshot.
I quickly learned a few other things as well. He didn’t drink. (His mother was a staunch member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.) He didn’t smoke. (His father had once made him eat a fistful of chewing tobacco.) He rarely ate lunch sitting down, but he accepted the table we were offered, held my chair, and sat down across from me. There was a bright light directly over my head. I felt a foursome of suits at a nearby table giving me the eye. A tri
o of ladies came in and exchanged pleasantries with Norman, then sat in the corner staring holes in the back of my neck.
“Tell me about yourself,” he said.
“What do you want to know?”
“The usual. Where are you from?”
“Peoria, Illinois. Land of milk and honey.”
“Are you a person of faith?”
“More like a person of doubt right now. It’s been a trying year. But I was raised Jewish, and those teachings mean a lot to me. I hope God and I will eventually be on speaking terms again.”
“What do you like to do when you’re not at work?”
“My little boy keeps me busy. I’m involved in a lot of cancer-related charities. Working on fundraisers, trying to learn everything I can.”
We riffed the way acquaintances do, starting with banter-weight small talk, then embarking on what felt like one of those long, casual job interviews, where you’re not really sure you want the job, so you’re not nervous, and the person conducting the interview isn’t really sure he wants to hire you, but he’s definitely reluctant to let you leave. Talking back and forth across the table, we both recognized a kindred spirit under the skin, but to the naked eye, we didn’t have much in common.
Norman was sixteen years older than me, a Christian, with two grown daughters. Five years earlier, he’d founded the Willow Bend Polo and Hunt Club just outside Dallas, and while Norman himself was an egalitarian sort of guy, there were plenty of godly people in the country club set who chose not to mingle with God’s Chosen People. I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome there, even if I was associating with someone swanky enough to invite me.
We talked about our families—children and parents—and here again, our backgrounds were light-years apart. My childhood was far more privileged, idyllic compared with Norman’s, but I could see that he cherished his upbringing the same way I cherished mine. His mother had died just a few months earlier, and he was still feeling raw about that loss, a feeling with which I could certainly identify. We traded our best stories about growing up and going out into the world. I shared a few amusing anecdotes from my travels with Suzy, and he regaled me with the tale of his great Hungarian horse-jumping mishap at the Modern Pentathlon in Budapest in 1954.
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