‘I clean. I make everything nice for the sick people,’ she said proudly.
She plucked up rompers for toddlers, sweatshirts with the logos of sports teams for teenaged boys, girls’ blouses spangled with sequins.
‘For my grandchildren,’ she said in her lilting Spanish-accented English. ‘The children of my daughter. They say always, “What you bring me, Abuela Consuela?” Even my littlest, Rosalita. That bambina. She loves dresses the colors of flowers. Pink. Green. Yellow.’
Judith plucked sundresses ‘the colors of flowers’ and set them aside for tiny Rosalita.
Consuela smiled her gratitude. ‘Gracias, Señora Judith. You are so kind. You make me so happy. You make Rosalita happy.’
Judith treasured her words. It had been a long time since she had made anyone happy.
She knew most of the volunteers, both those who appeared infrequently and those who came regularly. Lois and Libby were the stalwarts, their hours coinciding with her own. She knew about Lois’s daughter’s allergy, about Libby’s twin sons’ learning problems and her intrusive mother-in-law. Some of the volunteers spoke incessantly, as they sorted through donations or when they shared tepid coffee during a lull. Others listened, smiled and nodded, all of them aware that their membership of this odd sorority was a combination of altruism and need. Their conviviality was comforting and relaxing, their revelations sometimes trivial – a child had not been invited to a birthday party, an anniversary had been ignored – sometimes heavy with an embarrassing intimacy.
Andrea Weinstein, who came in on Tuesday afternoons, an attractive, dark-haired young woman who spoke with a breathy intensity, confided that she had undergone three IVF treatments in her attempt to become pregnant. ‘We’re talking about adoption now,’ she said.
Opinions were offered as donated garments were folded and priced. An older woman advised against adoption. ‘Who knows what the genetic background is?’ she asked. ‘Do the agencies tell you about hereditary diseases? It’s so risky.’
‘Having a child at all is risky,’ Judith said drily. ‘A healthy child with an impeccable genetic history can fall ill. There are no guarantees.’
Her own words, the dispassion of her tone, surprised her. There was an uneasy silence. The volunteers all knew about Melanie. Their kindness did not allow them to reply.
At last a pale young woman spoke very softly. ‘Our son and daughter are both adopted. We never thought of it as a risk. We just wanted children, a family. And we’re happy to have them.’
Suzanne sat in stony silence and then, too abruptly, left the room.
Libby steered the conversation into a safer precinct.
Occasionally, late in the afternoon, when it was clear that there would be no more shoppers, a pot of fresh coffee was brewed and unmatched mugs from the sale table were stacked on an upturned carton. Cookies were produced from a battered tin and placed on the delicate rose-patterned china dessert plates, which never seemed to sell. Judith handled them carefully. Someone had treasured them. The rose patterns were faded but they were unchipped.
At such impromptu coffee hours, the volunteers sat in a circle on stools and wooden boxes and stirred their coffee with tarnished silver spoons. They knew that their makeshift table was set with the unwanted discards of dining rooms that had once resonated with chatter and laughter. They indulged in occasional bouts of curiosity. Who had owned the charming Delft sugar bowl? Why had that Bennington pottery casserole never been used? They tossed such questions out but did not expect answers.
They traded inconsequential bits of gossip, speculating about a synagogue scandal, a rumored affair between a divorced man and married woman, the startling bankruptcy of a village shop. They talked about congregants who seemed adrift, those who were single or widowed.
‘Do you think Jeffrey Kahn will marry again? He’s not that old and he’s so attractive,’ Andrea Weinstein said.
‘What do you think, Judith?’ Lois asked.
‘I have no idea,’ she replied, determinedly keeping her tone light.
They drifted into a discussion of how kind it would be to invite people who lived alone to dinner, although no such invitations seemed to be forthcoming.
Judith relaxed and allowed their chatter to float toward her. The luxury of unscheduled time and laconic talk was new to her. She had always been too busy for such an indulgence, lunch hours consumed by errands, her moleskin notebooks crammed with tightly written lists. She had glanced at such an outdated list recently, reading it as though it was written in a foreign language.
Brian’s winter coat into storage.
Manuscript to the MLA journal.
Butcher and greengrocer.
Grades to the registrar.
Melanie to ballet class.
Melanie to tennis lesson.
Such lists had lost their relevance. Her world had shrunk, her obligations were minimal. She was on sabbatical – no grades to be filed, no manuscripts to be mailed. Denise would now see that Brian’s winter coat was taken into storage. David was seldom home for dinner. There was no need to rush to the butcher or the supermarket. And, of course, never again would she drive to a tennis lesson or a ballet class. She had wept briefly then and placed the notebook very gently into a seldom-opened drawer.
Late one afternoon a boating accident on the Hudson was discussed. A young girl had been killed. A television reporter had chased after the bereaved mother, thrusting a microphone at her and asking again and again how she had reacted to her daughter’s death.
‘What a stupid man,’ Lois said indignantly. ‘How does any parent react to a child’s death?’
Another awkward silence. Again all eyes were averted from Judith who stared straight ahead. They dispersed swiftly, their relief evident, when a new group of chattering shoppers entered.
It was pay day at the hospital, and aides and orderlies, still in their uniforms, were happily searching for end-of-the-day bargains.
Judith hurried to offer assistance, to help Consuela find a bathing suit that might fit tiny Rosalita, and a sundress for Rosalita’s sister, Juanita. There was no time to speculate about loss and grief, no time to imagine the unimaginable. All thoughts of the drowned girl were banished as piles of blouses and sweaters were tossed about. Wire hangers clattered to the floor. Consuela found a tiny bathing suit in a floral pattern, a pink sundress that had a small tear which she could easily mend.
Judith returned to the cash register and accepted five dollars from a weary, sad-eyed young woman who purchased the carefully folded white tennis dress that Melanie had never worn. The public school was offering tennis lessons. The lessons were free, the rackets lent by the school, but her daughter had craved a tennis dress and she was happy to find one. Judith listened. Agreed that tennis was a wonderful sport and congratulated herself that her eyes remained dry as she wrapped the small garment in tissue paper and placed it in a Walmart bag.
She was tired when she arrived home. There were two messages on the answering machine. David would not be home for dinner. A late meeting. An even later conference call. He sounded neither regretful nor apologetic. The second message was from Jeffrey Kahn. He would be in California for an additional week. He would call her when he returned. He sounded both regretful and apologetic. He hesitated and then added that he hoped she was well. It was, she realized, as close as he dared come to saying anything daring and personal. He had chosen his words carefully. She sighed and counted the days until his return. Seven. Perhaps eight. Not such a long time.
She made herself an omelet and ate it while rereading the last chapter of Middlemarch. Sipping her coffee, she marveled at how well George Eliot perceived the intricacies of a long marriage, or perhaps a too-long marriage, and how fluidly she wrote of death.
She snapped the book closed. She wondered how she herself might write about death. It was an exercise that Evelyn had daringly proposed and which she had immediately dismissed. Of course she would not, of course she could not. Her hand trembled and
droplets of coffee spattered the table.
The phone rang. It was Brian, his voice buoyant, dishes clattering in the background, Denise singing softly. She imagined her son smiling, happy in his student apartment, happy with his Denise who sang as she washed the dishes. The thought of his happiness soothed and calmed her. How fortunate she and David had been to have untroubled and untroubling Brian as a son. How fortunate Melanie had been to have such a wonderful big brother. How odd that the thought did not sadden her. Was the lack of sadness what Evelyn called ‘acceptance’?
‘Hey, Mom, is Dad there? I want to ask him something about arbitration law,’ Brian said.
‘Dad’s working late,’ she replied.
‘You OK, Mom?’
She realized that her voice was muffled, choked off by a confusion of thoughts and that intrusive rejected word. Acceptance. How was it recognized?
‘Fine,’ she assured him. ‘Just a little tired.’
Too swiftly, she reminded him to give her love to Denise. Too swiftly, he told her that Denise sent her own love. Judith assured him that she would leave David a note asking him to call. He assured her that it would not be necessary. He would reach his father at the office the next day.
‘Goodnight, Mom.’
‘Goodnight, darling.’
She carried her coffee upstairs and paused outside the closed door of the room that had been Melanie’s. She did not go in but inhaled the scent of fresh paint and new wood. The furniture she had selected would soon be delivered. A computer table and an office chair. The sleep-sofa and armchair finally upholstered in nubby tweed. Soon it would be known only as David’s office. Which, she told herself firmly, was as it should be. That was perhaps ‘acceptance’. Was that the second or the third stage of grief? She could not remember, but it was of no importance. She rejected all those clever clinical definitions. She had not denied and she would not accept.
In their bedroom, she lay down on the bed without undressing and fell asleep instantly. David, arriving home very late, gently removed her shoes.
How beautiful she is, he thought.
If she wakened, he would tell her so. He pressed his lips to her cool cheek, but she did not stir. He covered her with a light blanket and placed his hand briefly and gently upon her head.
THIRTEEN
Brian was worried. He had, in fact, been vaguely worried about his parents since Melanie’s death. He himself had slowly, very slowly, recovered from his own shock and slowly, very slowly, he had learned to manage his own terrible sorrow, to grasp the stark finality of the loss of his beloved sister. His nights of weeping had ended, the heaviness of his heart had gradually lightened, the shadow of lingering depression had at last lifted, replaced by a transient, manageable sadness. It was only then, during the days of his own recuperation, that he had, reluctantly, recognized what Denise had realized much earlier. His parents were lost to an impenetrable and dangerous despair, each hugging grief unshared, each weighted by separate and solitary sorrow.
Concern for his very self-sufficient mother and father was new to him. Their family life had always been suffused with calm, his mother in control, his father quietly purposeful. Asked to describe his parents’ marriage as an exercise in his introductory psychology class, he had said simply, ‘Strong, very strong.’
He could remember no anger and very few quarrels during his childhood. Yes, his parents were quiet, sometimes disarmingly quiet. There was a period when he had felt a melancholy in their silence. It was Melanie’s birth, he knew, that had released them from that uneasy sadness into a new and happier time suffused with merriment and laughter. He had marveled at their patience and their pleasure as Melanie had tumbled through a charming infancy and an exuberant childhood. How mischievous, how playful she had been, his sister, his little sister.
He had adored her – he and his Denise both. He had been overwhelmed by her death, so painless, so terrible in its suddenness. He understood that her heart had stopped. Inexplicable and uncommon, a doctor friend had explained and went on to speak about the mysterious origins of aneurysms, but Brian had stopped listening. Terrified, he had touched his own heart. Terrified, he had touched Denise’s heart, pressed his ear to her chest and listened to its strong, steady beat as she wept and he wept, their tears melding.
Paralyzed by his own grief during those first bewildering weeks after the ritual of shiva, he was certain that his parents – his strong, self-sufficient mother, his calm father – would sustain each other. They would be all right, he told Denise. They were strong, very strong.
He now knew that he had been mistaken. The emotional seesaw on which Judith and David had been so evenly balanced for so many years no longer steadied them. Melanie’s death had catapulted them on to an unforgiving surface of loss and danger. He realized that their mourning was silent and unshared, each hoarding discrete shards of fragmented grief.
He was newly grateful for Denise’s exuberant and compassionate love. The daughter of a large and raucous family, she was accustomed to explosions of wild rage and swift reconciliations. She understood his tears and outbursts of grief, and she assuaged his melancholy. She herself had loved Melanie, had thought of her as yet another younger sister, perhaps irritating at times but always adorable. She spoke of her still with sweet tenderness.
Denise contrived to coax him into laughter, even as she allowed him to mourn, recognizing his needs as he, in turn, recognized hers.
Meeting as undergraduates, with the greatest of ease they had become friends; with even greater ease they became lovers. They had studied together, holding hands as they took notes and turned pages. They hiked the Palisades, tall Brian slowing his stride so that Denise, who was so much shorter, could keep up with him. They cooked together in their student apartment, Denise, with her oversized red-framed glasses always sliding down her nose, clusters of rose-gold curls framing her cheerful face, choosing eclectic recipes that required mysterious herbs and spices. Brian obediently and cheerfully dashed out to the supermarket in search of coriander or cumin. He loved her penchant for chaos, her talent for serendipitous adventure, so different from his parents’ orderly, organized lives. They became engaged during their senior year. Denise’s large, energetic family was delighted. Melanie had danced with excitement. Judith and David had been more restrained.
‘You’re both so young,’ David said.
‘You and Mom were just as young,’ he countered.
‘Different circumstances. Our situation was different.’
David did not elaborate and Brian did not argue. His parents never spoke of their childhoods. He knew only that all four of his grandparents, dead before his birth, were not spoken of with tenderness. He assumed that his mother and father, both, had been in flight from unhappy homes and miraculously had found happiness and love when they found each other.
He had seen the photo album in which Judith had pasted the faded snapshots that recorded their college courtship. There they were, holding hands as they lay beneath a tree. There was Judith, her dark hair caught up in a ponytail, laughing as she looked up at David whose hand rested on her head.
Melanie, of course, bubbled over with enthusiasm. She had loved Denise, had been enchanted by the idea of a wedding, delighted that Denise had asked her to be a junior bridesmaid. She had studied bridal magazines, asked fabric stores for swatches of magenta velvet, magenta silk, magenta satin, all of which she tucked into the crowded cubbies of her desk.
‘It will be a wonderful wedding,’ she’d told their parents. ‘I will wear a magenta gown. I will carry a bouquet of magenta-colored flowers. All my friends are jealous of me.’
Humming the wedding march, she had gripped Denise’s hands and danced about the living room with her.
Brian, watching his sister and his bride, saw his mother smile and glance at his father. He was relieved. His parents would not be able to resist Melanie’s excitement. It would all work out, he had told himself hopefully.
And then, on a day tinged with
the warmth of a hesitant early spring, he had checked his voicemail and heard his father tell him, in a voice so weighted with grief that it was beyond recognition, that his sister was dead.
‘Dead.’ The word was repeated, followed by an intake of breath and he had understood that his father was crying. ‘Dead.’ Then a terrible silence. No words would suffice.
That silence had prevailed. It was Denise who observed that, during their frequent visits, David and Judith spoke to each other with a calm civility but without affection. Their coolness angered and bewildered her. ‘They should be comforting each other,’ she said after one awkward visit.
‘I know,’ Brian agreed sadly.
He knew that his father now spent more and more evenings in the city, arriving home later and later, or, as it had happened, on very few occasions, not coming home at all. His mother had told him as much, and her seeming indifference to those absences troubled him. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.
And then, one afternoon, rushing across Bryant Park on his way to the library in search of an obscure text, he saw his father and a silver-haired woman having lunch in the outdoor café. He recognized her, having seen her in his father’s office and taken note of her distinctive hair. He remembered suddenly that her name was Nancy and recalled that the furniture in Melanie’s room had been given to her small daughter. He hurried away, reluctant to approach them. He told himself that it was possible that they had met for lunch to discuss a business problem. Possible but not likely. Glancing back, he saw that their heads were bent close and he wondered if their hands were touching.
The scene haunted him throughout the day and that evening he told Denise about it. ‘I don’t understand what is happening,’ he said worriedly. ‘Things are weird between my parents, but I can’t imagine my dad being unfaithful.’
After Melanie Page 13