After Melanie

by Gloria Goldreich

  Their salads arrived. Judith forked a rose-shaped radish, a plump asparagus spear and dipped them into a golden dressing.

  ‘Your loss?’ she asked tersely, rigid with resentment.

  Was Suzanne equating her divorce, the loss of her marriage, with the death of a child, with Melanie’s death? The very idea was ludicrous. But then she remembered hearing that Suzanne’s son had serious problems. She struggled to remember his name. It surfaced. Eric. Yes, Eric. He had been Brian’s high school classmate but not his friend. Tall and good-looking, the subject of dark rumors to which Judith had paid little attention and could not now recall. Was Suzanne thinking of Eric when she spoke of a loss?

  Puzzled, she spoke again, softening her tone. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean by your loss,’ she said.

  Suzanne, her color high, her eyes too bright, responded, her voice even more subdued. ‘Yes. My loss. The loss of my son, Eric. He and your son were in the same class all through elementary school and high school.’

  ‘I think I remember him,’ Judith said carefully. ‘But I’m not sure.’

  ‘Probably because he and Brian were not friends. They moved in a different crowd. I assume that Brian didn’t do drugs and didn’t stumble into your house drunk or stoned when he was only a high school sophomore, that he wasn’t off and on probation.’

  She averted her gaze as she continued speaking, her every word etched in pain. ‘And that’s only the short list. What psychologists call the markers. It’s a term that I know now. But I didn’t know it then or probably I just didn’t want to know it. His father and I tried not to think about them. Markers. A clinical word that we were sure did not apply to our son. We were both furious with the psychiatrist who first used it. We preferred to rationalize, Stan and I. We were in denial even as we sought help, even as we knew we needed it, he needed it. We didn’t like the psychiatrists who offered darker and probably more realistic scenarios. We fed ourselves excuses and we liked the experts who agreed with our mantra. “All adolescents have problems.” “Eric will mature.” “Most kids go through a rough patch.” “Things will get better.” But of course things didn’t get better. They got worse. Bit by bit, Eric was lost to us. And I watched it happen. Whatever I did, whatever I said, was the wrong thing to do, the wrong thing to say. I was the mother of a child playing in traffic and I didn’t dart out into the road to save him. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. We both were. Stan and me, bewildered parents of a bewildering son. I blame myself for that paralysis. For not knowing what to do, what to say. For watching my beautiful boy become a stranger, who lied and stole and didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything.’

  Judith stared at her and struggled for annealing words. ‘I’m sure you and Stan tried to be good parents, that you loved your son,’ she said at last. ‘You can’t blame yourself. We’ve had workshops at the university to discuss kids like Eric. All sorts of dynamics and dimensions are at work. Peer pressure, brain chemistry, a culture of uncertainty.’

  She spoke too quickly. She recognized the foolishness of her formulaic assurances. She knew nothing of Suzanne’s family, but she did know how too many parents obsessed about the impact of their actions and attitudes on their children. The pages of glossy magazines exploded with useless advice, conflicting opinions. Tough love competed with demonstrative affection. Permissiveness and stern discipline vied with each other. Guilt had become the parental mantle, one which she herself had assumed.

  Absurdly, briefly, in the days immediately after shiva, when the house was eerily empty, she had become obsessed with the thought that she might have prevented Melanie’s death. She accused herself of missing vital signs, perhaps a headache too lightly dismissed, a sudden mood change that might have been a warning signal. She had confided her fears to her own internist, shared them with physician friends, all of whom had been adamant that she could have done nothing different. The aneurysm had been an undetected ticking bomb that could not have been defused. There had been no recourse, neither medical nor maternal. Its detonation had been inevitable.

  In therapy sessions, Evelyn had patiently, and then impatiently, struggled to disabuse her of such absurd and unwarranted guilt. Angrily, unprofessionally, she had at last shouted a direct command. ‘Stop that nonsense, Judith. No more stupidity!’

  To Evelyn’s admitted surprise, her outburst succeeded. Reason was restored. Judith accepted the doctors’ assertions. Melanie’s death was, as Suzanne had put it, a ‘medical tragedy’. It could not have been prevented. Just as it was very possible that nothing Suzanne and her husband could have done would have prevented Eric’s self-destructive behavior. His sad history could be called a psychological tragedy, an emotional tragedy.

  ‘You’re not being fair to yourself,’ Judith told Suzanne, who shrugged.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. We had always known that Eric had difficulties. He was what the nursery school teachers called an “acting out” toddler. Temper tantrums. Wild behavior. Grade school was no better. Pediatricians, psychologists assured us he would outgrow it. They talked about emotional delays. There was some therapy. They fed us theories about neurological development. ADHD. Chemical imbalance. Medication. Nothing made a difference. But Eric would mature, the experts said, and we decided to believe them because that was the easiest thing to do. And so we waited. We escaped into our own lives, Stan and I – he into his practice, conventions, seminars, investment clubs, while I sat on boards, organized galas for charities, haunted trunk sales, joined a bridge club, a book club – although I hate bridge and couldn’t concentrate on reading. By high school it was clear that Eric was not maturing, that his problems were only getting worse. Everything accelerated. There was truancy, suspensions, meetings with guidance counselors, therapists, more medication. We tried everything. Psychologists. Psychopharmacologists. New medications. Ritalin, Adderall, specially designed compounds. Nothing worked. We tried a boarding school where Eric lasted three weeks before running away. He began experimenting with drugs and we countered it with packing him off to rehab. An exercise in futility.’

  She paused and Judith saw that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. She reached across the table and took Suzanne’s hand in her own. They sat quietly for a moment, their fingers intertwined, two women draped in separate sadnesses, offering each other the comfort of touch.

  ‘But you tried,’ Judith said at last. ‘Give yourself credit for that.’

  But even as she spoke, she knew that her words offered no comfort.

  Suzanne sighed, nodded. ‘Yes. We tried. Of course we tried. He was – he is – our son, our only child, and we loved him even as we began to despair of helping him. And we didn’t give up. We rode the merry-go-round of advisors who had no real advice to dispense, no gold ring to catch. Some said tough love. Others talked intensive therapy, or maybe mindfulness, or maybe meditation. We went to therapists with Eric, without Eric, together, alone. Nothing worked. Nothing helped. And then we began to blame each other. I accused Stan of being an absent father, too busy with his practice, too intent on making money. And he accused me of spending too much time away from home, too many committees, too many bridge games, too many dinner parties. We were both right and we were both wrong.’

  Judith nodded. She and David too, throughout these months of unshared grief, had been both right and wrong. She would not, could not, of course, say as much to Suzanne who continued to unleash a torrent of confidences as though the flow of words might lighten the heaviness of her heart.

  ‘And then the police began coming.’ Suzanne’s voice was muffled. ‘Eric was stopped for driving under the influence. Maybe alcohol, maybe drugs. We took away the keys to the car, threatened to stop his allowance. Two weeks later another arrest. A baggie of cocaine was found in the glove compartment of the stolen car he was driving. We called in a favor from a lawyer friend and posted bail. Then there was a call from a Manhattan hospital. Eric in a knife fight, his cheek slashed. We rushed down and Stan stitched him up himself. He’s
a good plastic surgeon. There’s a scar, but it could have been a lot worse. Eric was actually proud of it. We bought and bribed our way out over one thing after another, shouting at him, shouting at each other, but we knew we had to do something drastic. There was a rehab center in Utah; they call it a residential therapeutic community – clever of them to find such a promising name. We were told it had a fabulous success rate, especially with kids like Eric. We had no choice – or at least we thought we had no choice – and we managed to get him there. He hated us for that. We flew there again and again for sessions that did nothing. Sometimes he refused to see us and the psychiatrists were vague about his progress. We argued with them, with Eric and with each other. We were exhausted, our marriage was drained. In the end, Stan left. It was inevitable, I suppose. He packed a suitcase, and I was alone in our home, which was really no home at all. Just a big, very expensively decorated house where three people who hardly talked to each other had lived for too many years.’

  ‘You didn’t try to talk to each other, to go for marriage counseling?’ Judith asked, seized with a terror that had little to do with Suzanne’s story.

  ‘I told you. We had been to therapists. Not helpful. As for talking to each other – we had forgotten how. Silence becomes a habit.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it does,’ Judith murmured. She knew that.

  ‘And so we were divorced. I keep the writ of divorce in the top drawer of my bureau. It’s the death certificate of my marriage, the certification of my bereavement, my loss. Strange, isn’t it, that when a marriage dies there is no ritual to mark it. No burial, no shiva. No comforting visitors. But there is sorrow. And regret. And shame. And guilt.’

  She fell silent and leaned back as though exhausted, her fingers circling the tall glass that had contained her iced tea and was now empty.

  ‘And Eric?’ Judith asked. ‘Is he all right now?’

  ‘We don’t know. We may never know. He’s gone. Ran away from that high-priced rehab. Disappeared from our lives. Both our lives. It’s been three years since we heard from him. He may be alive, he may be dead. My heart stops every time the phone rings, whenever I receive a letter written in an unfamiliar hand. Sometimes I wish him dead so at least I would know. Isn’t that a terrible thing for a mother to say, for a mother to think? And then there are days when I’m sure that he’ll call, that he’ll come home. I live in limbo, balanced between fear and hope. Without my son. That’s my loss, Judith, my terrible loss.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Judith murmured and felt the inadequacy of the words.

  ‘I apologize for throwing all this at you. I didn’t mean to. It’s really not my style,’ Suzanne murmured. ‘But please, don’t feel sorry for me,’ she added too quickly. ‘Things are getting better. I’m taking hold of my life. I sold my house and bought myself a condo. And the thrift shop has been a lifesaver. It gave me focus, a meaningful project, and it showed me what I was capable of accomplishing. I’m thinking about registering for a graduate program in marketing which may be a good fit. I’m sleeping better and crying a lot less.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Judith said. ‘I’m sleeping better and crying a lot less.’

  She was suddenly suffused with admiration for Suzanne who managed to live day after day with such horrific uncertainty, never knowing whether her son was alive or dead, ill or healthy, homeless or sheltered. She, herself, was fortunate, she thought bitterly. Melanie was safe in death, mourned and remembered.

  A single line of a poem, read and reread the previous evening, danced through her mind. She would share it with Suzanne who had on this sunlit day shared so much with her.

  ‘Adrienne Rich has a line of poetry that speaks to me,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s a small necklace of words that sort of sums up what I’ve been trying to do since my daughter’s death and it’s what you’re actually doing, Suzanne. It reads, “Piece by piece I seem to re-enter the world.” Piece by piece, Suzanne, you and I are both re-entering the world. The thrift shop and, I suppose, my involvement with Jeffrey Kahn, those are pieces that help with my re-entry.’

  She was briefly surprised that she had included Jeffrey in the mosaic she was building, but she understood why she had done so. It was Jeffrey’s compassionate caress, his body against her own, that had guided her back into a world where touch and tenderness soothed and comforted. It was Jeffrey, she realized with a clarity that resisted explanation, who had enabled her to respond to David’s touch, David’s tenderness.

  The insight startled. Certainty gave way to doubt. David might never accept her relationship with Jeffrey, but perhaps he might come to understand it as she was slowly reaching an understanding of the compassion he accepted from Nancy. They were, Jeffrey and Nancy, herself and David, an unlikely quartet, temporarily entangled in a ballet of uncertain choreography.

  ‘Jeffrey Kahn,’ Suzanne said, picking up the thread of the conversation and smiling in wistful apology. ‘I didn’t mean to imply anything when I called him your Doctor Kahn. He’s a nice man, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a very nice man and Sylvia, his wife, was a very nice woman,’ Judith agreed, relieved to be jerked away from thoughts she could not share. ‘The Kahns were our neighbors years ago, before they became exurbanites. David and I liked them both.’

  She knew that she mentioned David to dispel any lingering suspicions about her relationship with Jeffrey Kahn that Suzanne might harbor. Their nascent friendship, despite the confidences they had shared, had clear parameters.

  Piece by piece, Adrienne Rich had said, and Judith understood that each such piece was fragile and had to be handled with care.

  Suzanne nodded. ‘Yes. The Kahns were a lovely couple,’ she agreed. ‘Sylvia was an interesting woman. He must miss her terribly.’

  ‘He does. Of course he does,’ Judith agreed.

  Newly relaxed, newly in sync, they agreed to share a dessert. The honesty of their exchange, however limited, however painful, had been cathartic, and they spoke with ease, trading trivia, exchanging bits of gossip as they dipped their spoons into a chocolate mousse. They paid the bill, and Judith suggested that they go together one evening to see the new French film playing at the local arts theater.

  ‘David won’t mind?’ Suzanne asked.

  ‘No. He often works very late,’ she replied. ‘Let me know when you have a free evening.’

  Such an arrangement, an evening out with a friend, was new to her, but she recognized its thrust. Piece by piece she was re-entering her world, however new and unpredictable that world might be.

  Driving home that evening, she thought of what Suzanne’s life must be like. She supposed that her condo would be tastefully furnished. Probably she had a cohort of friends and accepted casual invitations. Judith imagined her going home each night to that tastefully furnished condo, entering a darkened and silent room, and staring at a silent telephone, haunted by fear, teased by hope. Eric’s disappearance was surely an agony, riddled as it was with dark possibilities and even darker probabilities.

  They had been spared such suffering, she and David. Melanie had not vanished. She had died. Death, however bitter and grievous, was vested with certainty. It granted no latitude to dangerous speculations, grim imaginings. She understood why Suzanne had confessed to now and again wishing her son dead. Then, at least, all doubt could be put to rest. She too could plant a rose bush beside her child’s grave.

  Judith drove ever more slowly, suffused with pity for Suzanne for her solitude and her uncertainty, the life that she lived alone.

  How would she herself cope with life alone if she and David were to divorce, Judith wondered. Divorce. A death of a kind, Suzanne had called it. ‘Divorce. Death.’ She said the words aloud. The repetition dizzied. A refluxion rose in her throat and she tasted vomit on her tongue.

  Gasping for breath, she willed herself to calm and drove on through the gathering dusk. She turned the corner on to her own street and saw the glow of lamplight in the living room window. Reassured, breathing more easily, she pa
rked and called his name as she turned her key in the door.

  ‘David.’

  He called to her in turn. ‘Judith.’

  Their voices melded. They met in the doorway and smiled tentatively at each other.

  They ate dinner, their conversation, as always, careful, their voices calm. He told her that he had had lunch with Brian. She did not ask what they had talked about. She said that she had had lunch with Suzanne. He, in turn, did not press her for details of their conversation. She described the restaurant, the clever salads they served, the floral theme of the décor.

  ‘Do they serve dinner?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Why?’ She wondered if he might suggest that they try it one evening and then she remembered that they were no longer a couple who went out for casual dinners. They were together but alone. But that might yet change. They were playing for time, both of them. She refilled his coffee cup and smiled at him hopefully.

  ‘No reason,’ he replied, and she recoiled in disappointment.

  As always, he retreated into the living room, and as always she methodically cleared the table and washed up, leaving the counter in organized readiness for the next day’s breakfast, his mug, her mug, plates and cutlery neatly arranged. She folded the napkins and stared at the arrangement, overwhelmed by a wild desire to sweep everything away, to leave shards of ceramic on the floor and to slam the door on the disarray. Instead, she opened the drawer in which she had placed Melanie’s mirror, unwrapped it and stared at her own reflection. She wondered if her features had always been so finely sculpted or whether they had been honed to a new sharpness by her uncontained sorrow. She noted that a new arrow of silver shot through her dark hair. She sighed, rewrapped the mirror, watered the African violets on the windowsill and centered the pot more carefully. She arranged David’s vitamin pills neatly in the tiny ceramic saucer crafted by Brian at a summer camp whose name she could no longer remember. Such small efforts soothed her. She recognized that she was striving for normalcy, for a return to the days when she and David had anticipated each other’s needs, performing small acts of kindness and consideration.