All the Time in the World (12 page)

Simon and Mae Edgerly have a Midwestern charm combined with a suburban reserve that I've always found endearing. They live outside of Chicago near Northwestern University, where Gretchen grew up and went to college before she moved to New York and met Scotty. Now that they're in their sixties, they spend the coldest three months of the year in Palm Beach and would have been on the last two weeks of that trip had it not been so direly interrupted.

Simon weeps openly. I can't watch it for very long, but when I decide to look at something else, I find the image burned onto my retina. Mae asks if she can join Lila and Mary, and when the three return to the waiting room, where everything is hushed so as not to wake the boys, she looks sad but composed, a direct juxtaposition to the pile of destruction that is Gretchen's father.

I wish that I could hear what she says next, but I am sitting down at Georgie's feet, and no one will let their voice travel far enough to be heard in my corner. What I see is Mae, squatting down so she is level with Scotty's face and physically lifting his head out of his hands. She looks at Patrick, nodding and smiling a little, and he gets up then and leaves the room. She is speaking intensely, with an occasional tear running down her face, which she does nothing to impede. She is holding on to Scotty's hands and grips them more tightly every so often. It goes on for a long time, so long that most of the other activity in the room stops, and all that can be heard are the background hospital functions and the low murmur of her voice.

She clasps her own hands together around Scotty's then and touches her forehead to them, closing her eyes. She whispers, and the sound has a specific cadence, though I can't make out the words. Prayer? I have no idea what the family's background is, but if I had to paint a picture of prayer, it would probably look something like that. But what kind of a god can be prayed to tonight? This night is by far the most successful argument against God that I have ever witnessed.

After a moment she opens her eyes, lifts Scotty's chin with one hand, and says something brief. He stands up, and Mae puts her arm around him. They both walk to the double doors and disappear into the hallway beyond. I have no idea what kind of man will return when he comes back to us.

Patrick reappears then, maybe from the men's room. It looks like he has splashed some water on his face. He sits down next to me.

“Charlotte, are you okay?”

I shake my head, but I don't do it because I want him to comfort me. I do it because thinking about George and Matt and the countdown until they are forced out of Eden is like a wrecking ball to my brain. He puts his arm around me, loosely, and I'm too tired to shrug him off.

“I don't know what to do about these guys,” I say, and he nods his agreement. He doesn't know what to do either.

When Scotty comes back out with Gramma Mae, his eyes are still dry. But he is composed and appears to be thinking more clearly. I hear her voice then.

“The one thing you can do is get your house in order. We'll have to work together to make plans, but there are things that must be done at home first.” Her gaze rolls over Patrick, over me, and lands on the boys. Scotty's glance follows hers, and I wish that Patrick would get his arm off me.

I stand up, and I offer no words of comfort to Scotty, because I have none. I don't want to tell him how sorry I am. It will mean nothing.

“Would you like me to help you get them home?” I ask, and he nods.

“Charlotte, I wish you could have known how much Gretchen valued you,” says Mae, and my stomach turns over because she has moved so quickly into a memory tense. “She told me once that she had no idea what she should pay you because how could she put a price on someone helping to raise her children? She was thankful to have found such a wonderful person to be part of their lives.” It sounds like I'm in the memory tense now too, and my heart is beating very fast with mixed emotions. I appreciate how coherent and in control she is. I know she's trying to help me feel better. But I can't accept a secondhand affirmation. There were two people who knew, truly, what my role was, and now there is only one. And he can barely stand.

“Thank you,” I say. Then I catch Patrick's attention as I turn around to pick up Georgie and wrap him in his coat. “Can you carry Matt and help me get a cab?” I ask him, and without waiting for a response, I pick up our bags and walk past Scotty. “I'll see you back at the apartment,” I say and walk outside to wait.

Patrick helps me buckle Matt and George into the backseat. I get in next to them, and he gets up front with the driver. I give the driver the address, and as we start off up Park, I hear a muffled laugh from the front seat.

“What?”

He turns around to look at me with irony. “I'm thinking that we probably ought to call Eliza and get her back. She's really good at making plans.”

April, six weeks after

After I extract myself from North-Mad and the empathetic eyes of Miss Leslie, I head over to Fifth Avenue and decide that instead of rattling around in the house, going stir-crazy until it's time to catch a cab, I will walk downtown, all the way into lower Manhattan, to meet Scotty for lunch near his office. Miss Leslie's commentary has hastened my courage; today will be the day that we decide what we're going to do. I called Scotty and asked him if we could go to lunch and make some decisions. He agreed because there was nothing else he could do, really. The future is descending.

Halfway down the requisite stretch of Fifth Avenue, my phone rings. The area code is 646, and I pick up quickly, terrified that Matt has been expelled from kindergarten sometime in the last hour.

“Hello?”

“May I speak with Charlotte?” A man's voice. I try to remember if the head of North-Mad is a man or a woman.

“Speaking,” I say.

“I'm calling to confirm your reservation for the postshow reception following the performance on Friday evening at eight p.m.…” He drones on for at least twenty seconds while I sift through the sand in my brain. Everett. The Philharmonic. Carnegie Hall. Jess.

I want to interrupt the voice on the other end of the line to point out the absolute absurdity of the suggestion that I will be attending Everett's concert. I want this stranger to know that the hampers in my place of employment are completely stuffed, due to the ridiculous amounts of laundry that little boys create. I want to tell him that if I'm doing anything on Friday, it will involve relieving those hampers of their burden; there will not even be enough time for spot treating the bits of spinach and applesauce out of my clothing after all the meals of the day have concluded, let alone showers, or figuring out what to wear to an event that doesn't involve plastic tablecloths.

Before I can clue the unknown man in on the reality of my situation, he varies his speech pattern slightly, like he's asking a question. I have to ask him to repeat it.

“Will the reservation be only for one?”

“Um. I guess so?”

“How many tickets to the show do you have reserved for your party?”

“I don't know. I think the composer reserved them—it—for me. I hope. Do you have that information there? Can you check?”

“You'll have to call the box office for that, ma'am.” He monotones the number at me, but I don't have anything to write it down with.

“Thank you,” I say. “And I think it's just one for the reception. Just me, I mean.”

“Very good,” he says. We hang up, and I call my older sister in Portland; I need to speak to someone who's not flailing around in emotional sludge.

She picks up right away. “Hello?”

“Hi, Jane.”

“Hello, my little spring chicken,” she says. “I'm at Home Depot. Can I call you back after I talk to the tile guy?”

“Everett's playing a concert at Carnegie Hall.”

“Wow. Everett. There's a name I haven't heard in a while.”

“He showed up at my door a few weeks ago. That night I texted you, remember? It was. Lord. It was the day before she died. I was obsessing about Everett and his concert, feeling jealous, thinking all these petty thoughts while she was—I don't know—in an ambulance. Lying on the pavement. Maybe while the surgeon was trying to—”

“Stop that. Stop it right now,” says Jane.

“I almost e-mailed Jess that day too. She's going to be at this concert, did I mention that?”

“Wow.”

“I can't go. How could I go? I'm super busy with George and Matt. They need—”

“You mean, how could you possibly do anything fun, that doesn't involve guilt or tribute, so soon after Gretchen died?” The element of truth in Jane's mild sarcasm feels like a crochet hook to the ribs.

“I'm not sure I would call it fun, exactly, but yes. They're miserable, Janie. Their life is so terrible. Going out, celebrating—it feels like jumping ship. And holy shit, it's been so long since I was in that world. It would be a lot for me.”

“I know,” she says. “I think they're lucky that you worry about those things.”

“Well. I loved her too.” My eyes and nose are running, but I had used my last tissue wiping syrup off George's forehead.

“I know you did.” Jane stays on the line. I am near the entrance to the zoo, and I stop walking, considering taking one of the wandering paths inside Central Park down to Fifty-Ninth Street instead of continuing along Fifth. “I have to get off the phone,” she says gently. “I hope you'll think about this for a while before you make any concrete decisions. Shutting everyone out of your life apart from those kids won't end well for anyone, especially you.”

“How are you at Home Depot? Isn't it like six in the morning?”

“We have a twenty-four-hour Home Depot,” she says. “Don't tell Dad. He'll get jealous and try to move out here, and then Mom will have my hide.”

“You're so down-home,” I say. “Using expressions like ‘have my hide' and installing your own tile. Gramma would be so proud of you.”

“She sure would,” she says. “I'm next in line! Don't want to miss my shot with Walter the tile man.”

“Sounds like a sexy dude,” I say.

“Want to say hi to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on,” she says.

A few seconds later, I hear a voice that could be my grandfather's say, “Hullo, Walter here.”

“Hi, Walter,” I say. “This is Jane's sister. Please don't let her leave there with purple tile. Her husband will throw her out. She'll try to make a case for it, and it's your job to talk her out of it.”

“Will do ya, ma'am,” says Walter, and I can hear Jane laughing as she gets back on the phone.

“I'm calling Claudia next,” I say. “So never mind about calling me back. She can have the title of benevolent sister, and you'll just be the girl who whored it up with Walter for a backsplash.”

“It's going to be a beautiful backsplash,” Jane says. We hang up, and I decide against walking through the park. I'm not in the mood for that kind of beauty. I continue along Fifth, stepping carefully on the uneven stones that make up the Park side of the street, and call our little sister, Claudia. She lives in Boston for no good reason, and it's my endless quest to try and get her to move to New York. She refuses and keeps moving to different apartments in Boston every time a lease runs out.

“Claud-hopper,” I say, after she says hello like maybe she's still sleeping. “Are you sleeping?”

“I'm a bartender,” she says irritably. “I went to bed, like, three hours ago.”

“I wasn't judging, just asking,” I say.

“Well, I'm awake now,” she grumbles. “What's going on?”

“I'm walking downtown,” I say.

“Did you call me because you got bored walking a long distance?”

“Would you be mad?”

“Yes.”

“I would never do that,” I say, even though I totally would. “I'm on my way to lunch with Scotty. I have to ask him about a lot of uncomfortable logistical things.”

“Why do you have to go to lunch with him? Can't you talk to him—” Her voice is drowned out by a sudden whirring noise.

“What is that? The blender?”

“Coffee grinder.”

“I missed what you said.”

“I said, why can't you talk to him when he gets home from work?”

“He comes home from work at, like, ten or eleven every night,” I say. “No one wants to talk then, least of all me. I have to be back at their apartment at six thirty in the morning.”

“Oh Lord,” Claudia says, and I know that if my flower child, turn-with-the-tide sister thinks something is a little bit crazy, it's not a sign that the river is flowing in the right direction.

“Why are you out of bed?” I ask.

“What?”

“Why are you making coffee? Aren't you going back to sleep when we hang up?”

“Mind your own business.”

“It's the absolute worst time to discuss employment stuff with Scotty, you know?” I say.

“You need to take care of yourself,” says Claudia. “I know they've been really good to you, and you care about them. But you're not a member of their family.”

“I feel kind of guilty for making him deal with yet another thing,” I say.

“He has to,” she says. “He has to function.”

“I guess,” I say. “What's reasonable, do you think?”

“I think it would be reasonable of you to drop into the conversation that you have a huge amount of student loan debt and that he should probably take it off your hands for you.”

“Be serious.”

“I am serious. That's what Mom would say.”

“I called
you
for exactly that reason.” I step to the curb for a second, letting a Hispanic man with a huge pack of random, mismatched dogs go by me. The smallest of the group, a spotted dachshund, leads the way, and he is followed by a golden retriever, a boxer, two midsize labs, and three fluffy white hypoallergenic dogs of varying breeds. It must be time for the midday walk at one of the neighborhood doggy day cares.