Authors: Dorothea Benton Frank
Needs a Plan
T
he windshield wipers scraped and strummed across the glass in an irregular rhythm, back and forth, back and forth. It was driving me crazy. I barely remember the trip back to the funeral parlor to pick up our car, or the ride back to my house, but I would be haunted by the sound of windshield wipers shaving away ice for the rest of my life. My brother-in-law, sweet Mark, just herded us like a small flock of weary sheep from the limo to our SUV. He and Patti did the driving from that point on. What I do remember is that we were nearly silent for the duration. What were my children thinking? First, we were numb with shock and grief and now we were numb with another load of shock. Affairs left and right? A mistress with a condo? A baby? What other secrets did Addison have? What had Shirley Hackett meant? What else on God’s green earth could possibly happen? All I wanted to do was go home and have this day push itself into the past.
I was never so happy to have an enclosed garage as I was that horrible day. Little blessings. Little blessings. What a dreadful, horrible day it had been. Surreal. The garage doors tumbled down behind us and clunked with a kind of finality not unlike a guillotine. The underside of the cars were encrusted with salt and sand from the roads. I don’t know why I thought about that except it had to be from habit. If Addison ever saw anything like that, he would have a panic attack and rush his cars to the drive-through brushless car wash to rinse the offending mess all off to the last spec of grit. His precious vehicles could not be exposed to corrosion. I looked at the wet tire marks on the floor of the garage and the thick mud, sprayed and spattered all along the fenders, and thought, screw it. Let them all rot and see if I care.
I went up the few steps to the door and stepped into the mudroom and then into the kitchen. Suddenly, I felt sweaty and achy. My coat was too hot, my feet ached from the damp cold, and I was feeling thoroughly miserable. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a thousand years.
My old friend, Richard Millman, who owned a catering company called Contemporary Foods, was waiting. He had promised to deliver sustenance and, true to his word, he was there himself with a couple of his longtime waiters. Immediately, he helped me with my muddy coat, folded it over his arm, and then he hugged me. It was out of character for Richard to be that familiar, even though we knew each other well. We had planned dozens of parties and special events together over the years for one organization or another and had suffered plenty of disasters together. One May years ago, the night before a benefit for the New Jersey Symphony, a storm came up carrying unpredicted, uninvited, and very unwelcome sixty-miles-per-hour winds that blew down the tent we had set up for 480 people. Chairs were broken, sound equipment destroyed, racks and racks of glasses smashed to smithereens . . . He just called me and said with all the serenity of the Buddha, “We have a little issue with the tent, Cate. You got a minute?”
Richard was always the consummate pro, completely calm and collected. But today was not like any other day, and I could sense from the shaky and hesitant sound of his voice that he was feeling unusually emotional. Natural disasters were one thing, death was bad enough, but suicide? Suicide destabilized everyone in ways that are difficult to understand, because for all the survivors, it is often impossible to comprehend why someone would do something so rash, so final, for
any
reason whatsoever. And was any part of their decision to end their life your fault?
“God, Cate, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“Thanks, Richard. I’m so glad you’re here. Especially in this terrible weather, I had thought that maybe you wouldn’t be able . . .”
“A blizzard couldn’t stop me from coming.” He shook my son’s hand,
sorry, Russ,
and then took my daughter’s hand in his and when he looked at her wretched face, he added, “Oh, Sara, I’m so sorry.” This was a man who clearly knew heartbreak, something about him that I had never before considered. I wondered what had happened in his life and then I thought that he might just have been born with empathy. Empathy was often an underrated quality—especially by the kinds of sharks with whom Addison did business. They thought empathy made you soft and soft made you less commercial and less commercial made you a big fat stupid loser with a capital L. Nice.
“Thanks, Mr. Millman,” she said, slipping off her coat with Mark’s help.
“There are a few visitors in the living room,” Richard said and quickly gathered all our wet coats. He then excused himself to hang them up somewhere to dry.
“He’s such a sweetheart,” Patti said. “Come on, Mark.”
Patti and Mark went in to see who was there.
“Oh, Mrs. Cooper! I’m feeling so terrible. I can’t imagine how you’re coping with all this. Are you all right? Can I make you a cup of tea?”
It was Albertina, my housekeeper/friend/confidante/savior of the last five years. To my surprise, she was wearing a dark, wine-colored, wool knitted dress, heels, and makeup, instead of her usual gray cotton shirtwaist dress and white apron. I had never seen her wear lipstick, and I was taken by how very pretty she was. And young. Or maybe it was that on that day I felt particularly ancient.
“Oh, Albertina, thanks but I’m all right, I guess. I’m so glad you’re here,” I said and gave her a hug, the kind of hug that girls give each other to demonstrate camaraderie and compassion.
“And just where else would I be at a time like this? I put my things in the bedroom on the third floor and I plan to stay the night. My sister is with my kids. She sends her condolences and she made you a flan.”
“She did? Gosh, thanks. That’s so nice. Well, I’m glad you brought your things. I sure don’t want you on the road in this weather.”
“No. The roads are too slippery. Too slippery for my old car anyway.”
“Yes,” I said and for some reason I felt like weeping all over again. Did my Albertina, the woman who changed my sheets and did my laundry, the woman who sat with me in the kitchen so often and listened while I worried about my children and their futures, the woman who knew almost every intimate detail of my household, did she know the truth about Addison and his many indiscretions? But I didn’t ask her to tell me what she knew and I knew then that for all the rugged terrain we had traveled in the past, this was one topic I would never discuss. Dignity had to be restored between us. It was enough that when she heard my hysterical screaming, she burst through the door of the family room and saw Addison’s lifeless body hanging there as well. She started yelling in Portuguese and literally almost dragged me away and into the kitchen where she called 911. She also called a piano repair company to come right away and collect my old piano to be completely cleaned and sanitized as Addison had left behind some, well, bodily fluids in the lower register of ivory and ebony keys along with a note that said, “I’m sorry.”
Instead of offering her my big SUV for the night, I just said, “Absolutely. Please stay.” I was thinking,
We’ve had enough tragedy. Please don’t take a risk.
She nodded and said something about going to make herself useful by checking the fireplaces, to see if they were still burning, to add a log if it was needed, to throw some more salt on the walkway, and to check the powder room for hand towels, to be sure any arriving guests didn’t track that salt into my rugs. It was unusual for Albertina to babble to me about her intentions, but it made me think she must have been very rattled by the whole catastrophe. I couldn’t even remember if she had been at the cemetery, but assumed then that she had to have been, because of the way she was dressed. I wasn’t thinking straight. Obviously.
My fingertips were numb and I rubbed my hands together to get the blood circulating and searched Russ and Sara’s faces. And Alice’s.
“Okay, are we ready to see who’s here?”
“I just want to get this nightmare over with,” Sara said.
“Understandable,” I said and took a deep breath. “Me too.”
“It’s much
healthier
to let yourself grieve,” said Alice, my shrink daughter-in-law, who is the world’s authority on what there is to know about any kind of emotional malady and what to do to fix it. “Just let it all
go
!”
I heard Sara groan. “And just what makes you think we’re
not
grieving?” Sara said, ready to take her on. Sara kept her jalapeño-tempered inner pit bull on a short leash, but when it came to Alice, she showed some tooth.
“All right, girls,” I said. “That’s enough. Let’s go see our guests.”
“Look,
excuse
me but this is my area of expertise and as a
professional
. . .”
“Alice?
Stop,
okay?” Russ said and Alice’s furious mouth slammed shut but her face was in flames. She squinted with her unfortunately beady eyes in my son’s direction and I thought it would not bother me a bit to reach over and give the sanctimonious inside of her upper arm a good and solid twisting pinch. I took a deep breath instead. After all, who was I to have an opinion about whom my son should love and marry? I only carried him for nine long months, brought him into this world after twenty hours of horrific labor, and took care of his every single solitary need for more than twenty years. What did I know?
Finally, we walked out together, swinging the door that led to the long butler’s pantry, across the dining room and across our large foyer, our heels clicking like the tiny hammers of a silversmith plinking against the cream-colored marble. The long distance from the kitchen to the living room was not lost on me. All those shelves stacked with dishes, goblets, serving pieces, vases, and every kind of serving accessory down to six different sets of knife rests and forty-eight old Sheffield fish forks and knives, all made of silver with mother-of-pearl handles. Forty-eight. When was the last time I’d had forty-eight people over for fish? I could not remember that we ever had. Suddenly I wondered how long I would stay in that house, because all at once the excess seemed completely ludicrous. I was a widow now. A widow who had just buried her husband today and had no idea what to do tomorrow. Becoming a widow had never occurred to me. But that simpler life had. I had a lot of thinking to do but not then. For the next few hours, I would play hostess to whomever braved the elements to stop over and offer their sympathy. And then I would plan.
The eight or ten people in the living room were old high school friends of Russ and Sara. Naturally, they offered their polite condolences to me and to all of us. I made all the small talk I could and then drifted into the dining room alone. I noticed that the rye bread on the turkey sandwiches was beginning to curl on the edges. Going stale, hard crust, inedible . . . like so many things. Everything had an end, unpredictable maybe, but certain.
Where were Addison’s colleagues? The only other people who rang the bell and stayed for a while were Addison and Mark’s tennis partners, Mel his lawyer, and Dallas his accountant. I should have asked them what was going on with Addison’s finances and if there was a will, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. No, that was business for another day. It was remarkable enough that I was still standing.
No one else came, no one from the neighborhood, not Joanne who did my hair or the women who sold me my clothes at Neiman Marcus. Where was my landscaper, my plumber, my electrician, or the guy who ordered all our wine for us? Maybe they didn’t get the news. Maybe their bills never got paid? Maybe it was the weather?
It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon, the skies were growing darker by the minute and the weather was deteriorating still further. The wind howled around the house, the trees bending in fury. I was still standing in the dining room and heard the door close again. The house seemed quiet and I thought, well, the last visitor has left.
Patti came and stood by the table, inspecting the food.
“Look at all this stuff,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “What a waste.” But then
waste
was the name of the game in Addison Land.
“I couldn’t eat a thing. Not a thing! Well, maybe a bite. You want me to fix you a plate?”
“No thanks. I don’t think I can swallow food right now.”
“Gotcha. Well, how about a glass of wine?”
“No. I don’t think . . . wait a minute. You know what? I will definitely have a glass of wine if you’ll have one with me.”
“You got it, sister!” Patti lifted the bottle from the cooler and wrinkled her nose. “Party wine. This might be the time to crack open some of Addison’s Chateau Wawawa, instead of this swill. What do you think?”
“You’re right but I don’t feel like going down to that musty cellar and digging around.”
“Then swill it is. Ice will improve it.” She filled about a third of a goblet and handed it to me. Then she poured some for herself and held up the glass to toast. “What shall we drink to? Old Addison?”
“Sure, why not? The gates of hell are open today. Hope you had a nice trip!”
Patti giggled and told me I was horrible. We clinked the bowls of our glasses and I said, “Oh, fine. Here’s to you, Addison Cooper, wherever you are, long may you wave!”