After Melanie

by Gloria Goldreich

  He took Judith’s hand. Her arm encircled Denise’s waist. Walking slowly, three abreast, they entered the small white-walled room where tall Brian, an oversized bandage across his high brow, his breath effortless, his smile broad, waited for them.

  EPILOGUE

  The air was lightly brushed with the first chill of autumn. Determined mothers had plundered the thrift shop’s supply of donated backpacks. Yellow school buses lumbered down the street, and Judith, watching from the window as Melanie’s laughing and chattering schoolmates clambered aboard, remained dry-eyed. As the bus disappeared, she thrust her lecture notes into her briefcase and drove to the university where she taught three days a week. She spent the other two days at the thrift shop, an arrangement David had encouraged.

  ‘It’s time for us to get on with it,’ he had said, and she had understood that he wanted their life to be restored to an orderly pattern, their days predictable, the dissonance of their wild grief quieted. They came together each evening, calmed by the familiar rhythm of their hours apart, earned fatigue acknowledged, their marriage newly threaded with resilience.

  One evening, she complained of not having enough shelf space for a series of new books on Victorian women writers that had just been shipped to her.

  ‘There’s an empty shelf in my office. Use that,’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes. Of course. Your office.’

  Neither of them, by design and intent, spoke of it as Melanie’s room. They had settled into a new reality.

  Their arms laden with the new books, they went upstairs. It was weeks since she had entered the room. David had begun to work more frequently from home and she refrained from invading his privacy. He had made some changes, she knew, and she glanced around with a critical eye, relieved that the contractor had reconfigured it so that a storage closet had been constructed where the bed had been. David’s computer and printer fit neatly in the space where the bureau had stood. He had hung the Daumier prints, her gift to him on a distant anniversary, over his desk. The copper pipe stand they had bought in a dusty Vermont antique store rested on its leather surface. He had made the room his own, but Melanie had a presence. Dried flowers were arranged in an endearingly clumsy blue ceramic vase she had crafted in an arts and crafts class. In a silver-framed photograph, placed on a shelf above his computer, she smiled down, her eyes shining, her hair floating about her shoulders.

  Judith took it down and tried to remember when it had been taken. Not long ago, she realized, because Melanie was wearing her prized pink cashmere cardigan. She traced the contours of her daughter’s heart-shaped face and pressed her lips against the cold glass before replacing it. Then, carefully, methodically, she arranged her own books next to it and joined David who was standing at the window.

  In silence, they looked out at the apple tree, its leaves laced with russet. Oddly, a single apple, silvered by early moonlight, dangled from a slender branch.

  She took David’s hand and pointed to the fruit, now swaying gracefully in the gentle evening wind.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Melanie would have loved it.’

  They stood very still, remembering their daughter’s high sweet voice as she called to them to report the tree’s progress, season by season, announcing that new green leaves had unfurled, that white blossoms had appeared.

  ‘The flowers are like stars,’ Judith remembered her saying. ‘They look like sweet-smelling stars.’

  ‘Melanie might have told us that the apple was dancing in the wind,’ she suggested.

  ‘Yes. Melanie might have said that.’

  He pulled her close and she marveled that they could imagine their daughter’s words, that they could say her name with ease, although pain and tenderness mingled in its utterance.

  They looked at each other, exchanged sad smiles and then, hand in hand, they left the room.

  Judith went to the thrift shop the next morning, arriving early because she and Suzanne had agreed to go through the cartons in which warmer clothing was stored. They dealt swiftly with the cartons of snowsuits and those crammed with winter jackets for men and sweaters for boys, placing them in bins which they carried to the trestle tables. They spoke softly as they worked, exchanging scraps of information about their lives. Judith asked about Eric.

  ‘He’s managing,’ Suzanne told her. ‘Some days are better than others. The occasional midnight phone call. The occasional early-morning apology. Things are not wonderful, but I’m coping.’

  ‘Coping is good,’ Judith said. ‘Day by day is good. Remember the words of poor Adrienne Rich. “Piece by piece I seem to re-enter the world.”’

  As she herself was doing. Each piece found its place in the jagged puzzle of acceptance, some with pain, some with ease. But she was moving forward. No. They were moving forward. She and David together.

  ‘I remember,’ Suzanne said and smiled in silent acknowledgment that, piece by piece, throughout the seasons of warmth, both she and Judith, however tentatively, had re-entered their worlds.

  Suzanne asked how the plans for Denise and Brian’s wedding were progressing and thanked Judith for her invitation.

  ‘I’m glad you’ll be there,’ Judith said. ‘And I’m glad we finally got the guest list sorted out.’

  The small wedding that Denise and Brian wanted had inevitably expanded to include Denise’s large extended family, the young couple’s friends, and friends of both sets of parents. Laboring over their own guest list, Judith had asked David if he wanted to invite Nancy Cummings.

  He had thanked her for the generosity of her suggestion and told her that Nancy had relocated to the Boston office. A promotion that she had welcomed. He did not tell Judith that he had taken her out for a very expensive and very awkward lunch and gifted her with a membership to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There was no need to speak of it. It was over and done with.

  ‘Weddings,’ Suzanne said as she carried out another carton. ‘I try not to think of mine. More trouble than it was worth. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Jeffrey Kahn came in the other day with a load of his wife’s scarves to contribute.’

  ‘Too bad I missed him,’ Judith said, carefully turning away so that Suzanne would not see her color rise. She remembered those scarves, swathes of rainbow-colored silk, squares of soft wool in the rustic shades of autumn, all lightly scented and carefully folded.

  She and Jeffrey had spoken about going through them and had even scheduled two appointments. He had canceled the first because of a patient’s emergency. She had canceled the second because David had surprised her with tickets for a concert. They spoke of rescheduling, but no effort had been made. He was busy, she knew, and, of course, so was she. And probably, she acknowledged, neither of them wanted to find the time.

  ‘He asked about you,’ Suzanne continued. ‘He wanted me to tell you that he was going to California for a while. One daughter getting married, the other about to give birth. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner. It slipped my mind.’

  ‘No problem,’ Judith said. ‘I’m glad for him. Glad that his daughters are doing so well.’

  She was glad. Glad and relieved. She wanted him to have his share of happiness. She hoped he would remember to give his daughter the cape Sylvia had worn during her own pregnancy. Of course he would. He was a careful man. She was pleased that he too was re-entering his life ‘piece by piece’.

  Suzanne slit open the carton across which she had scrawled Girls’ Sweaters and placed a large pile on the counter, loosing the scents of mothballs and Wool Lite.

  ‘Let’s separate out the cardigans,’ Judith suggested. ‘That’s mostly what the mothers look for.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  They worked swiftly, cuffing the sleeves and buttoning each one.

  Judith held up an ivory cable knit. ‘This one’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Practically new.’

  It was new. A price tag fluttered from the sleeve when she cuffed it.

  ‘Now that’s what I call gently used,’ Suzanne said, her
voice tinged with sarcasm. ‘And here’s another beauty. Double-ply cashmere. And look at the pearl buttons. Why would anyone give this away?’

  She held it up and Judith stared at Melanie’s pink cardigan, purchased with much hesitation and given away with much regret and sorrow.

  She took it from Suzanne and stroked the soft wool, traced the smoothness of each nacreous button and pressed it against her cheek. She folded it carefully and placed it on top of the pile which she carried out to a trestle table.

  There was a spurt of buyers when the hospital morning shift ended. Judith, counting out bills at the register, looked up to see Consuela.

  ‘Señora Judith, it is good to see you,’ the Guatemalan woman said shyly, and Judith reached across the counter and took her calloused hand in her own.

  ‘I am so glad to see you, Consuela,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you. Have you been well?’

  It was a neutral question. She could not ask if Consuela had adjusted to her grief, if her sorrow had been diminished, if she still mourned her youngest granddaughter, her Rosalita who had loved party dresses the color of flowers.

  ‘I am well. It is good that I am working so that I can help my family. I go to mass and I burn candles and make novenas for my Rosalita. She is in heaven, the priest tells me, and she is happy in heaven. But I am in this world and I must take care of those who are in this world with me. My children. My grandchildren,’ Consuela replied, her voice very low.

  ‘Yes. Your grandchildren. I remember that you told me that your Juanita won a prize,’ Judith said, happy that she remembered the child’s name, recalling how proud Consuela had been of the girl’s achievement.

  ‘Ah, my Juanita.’ Consuela’s face brightened. ‘I come today to look for a present for my Juanita. She is so smart. She goes now to a special school for children who study well, and she says that all the girls in her class wear such nice things. I want to buy something pretty for her, a dress, a sweater. What do you think, Señora Judith?’

  ‘I think a cardigan,’ Judith said, and she led Consuela to the table on which the sweaters were piled. Without hesitating, she pulled out Melanie’s pink cashmere cardigan and handed it to her.

  Consuela held it tenderly, fingering the wool, touching the buttons. ‘So soft it is,’ she said. ‘So wonderful the color. We have flowers of just such a color in my country. And the little buttons. See how they shine. Like stars.’

  ‘Like stars,’ Judith repeated. And like apple blossoms. Sweet-smelling stars, she thought. Melanie’s words were a tender memory.

  ‘She will feel so pretty in this sweater, my Juanita.’

  ‘I know.’

  They smiled at each other in silent acknowledgment of shared, hard-earned insight.

  Happily, Consuela followed Judith to the register. Happily, she placed a crumpled five-dollar bill on the counter as Judith found a box for the sweater, folded it carefully and shrouded it in tissue paper.

  ‘Be well, Consuela,’ she said as she handed the purchase to her.

  ‘Vaya con dios, Señora Judith,’ Consuela replied and took Judith’s hand in her own.

  Judith and Suzanne left the shop as folds of smoky dusk shadowed the fading pastel hues of a melancholy sunset. Judith looked up just as the amber-colored crescent moon broke free of an obscuring cloud, hovered briefly in the still starless sky and drifted from view.

  ‘Dinner?’ Suzanne asked hesitantly.

  ‘Actually, David is picking me up,’ Judith said. ‘Another night?’

  ‘Yes. Another night,’ Suzanne agreed.

  They touched each other’s hands lightly and parted.

  ‘Judith, over here.’ David, his arms outstretched, stood in a circlet of light cast by a street lamp. She walked toward him, making her way slowly through the chill of the encroaching darkness into the warmth of his embrace.