Happy Family (24 page)

I
t's always nighttime when the voices come prodding. As Cheri's lying in the dark, trying and failing to stop her lazy Susan of a mind from circling back to “Things I Hate About Her,” the phone rings. Michael sounds panicked. “Bertrand's daughter was in a car accident. It's bad and she's in the hospital—” Michael's voice is breaking up due to a poor connection. After hanging up and calling back, all Cheri gleans is that Bertrand flew home yesterday as soon as he got the news. Karen is in the ICU at Northwestern Memorial. The last time Cheri saw Karen, she was in their kitchen with Bertrand, proudly showing off her baby bump. Cheri feels ashamed that she'd felt an ugly twinge of envy at the time. When the connection is better, Michael tells her that eight-and-a-half-months-pregnant Karen was driving home from Whole Foods when she swerved to avoid a raccoon in the street and drove smack into a lamppost.

Cheri is haunted by if-onlys. If only Karen had left the house a few minutes later; if the counter man had kept her waiting for just a few seconds longer; if she'd bought an SUV, because who gives a shit about carbon footprints when this can happen? The lamppost survived. So did Karen, albeit with extensive injuries—four broken ribs, internal bleeding, and a serious concussion—but the baby did not.

Michael tells Cheri that a memorial service will be held for the baby tomorrow afternoon, at the hospital chapel, since Karen is in no condition to travel yet. He's coming home for the service, arriving at O'Hare in the morning around eleven thirty. Of course he'll be there for Bertrand at a time like this, though Cheri can hear in his voice the anxiety over completing the shoot on schedule. “It's only one night,” he says, more for his benefit than Cheri's. “Let's meet at the chapel.”

The death of a baby destroyed the natural order of things; the parent should always die before the child. Parents should fly on separate planes so if one goes down in a fiery crash, the children aren't orphaned.

The next day, as Cheri contemplates what to wear for the memorial of an infant, she's struck by the irony: when she was trying to get pregnant, all she saw were pregnant women. Now that Michael has cancer, she's immersed in grief. After nine weeks apart, she will spend her first minutes with Michael in the company of mourners. How many days did he have until his last? This was the question Michael was trying to face by making this documentary, but Cheri didn't want to know. Nor did she want to count how few she was going to be sharing with him. She's suddenly leveled by the reality of time. How little Michael may have left; how much of it was wasted these past few years in moments of lost connection.

Cheri picks her most conservative black dress and places one demure gold hoop through each earlobe despite her profusion of piercings. At the last minute, thinking of Jessica, she puts on lipstick. The hospital chapel is filled with Bertrand's family and friends, some of whom Cheri recognizes from Karen's wedding. The room is like a yoga studio: candlelit, scented with lilies and patchouli, a guitarist to one side playing James Taylor songs. People mill about, sipping herbal tea. “Karen, I'm so sorry for your loss,” Cheri says, bending to hug Karen, who is in a wheelchair with a rose-colored scarf wrapped around her hospital gown. Her face has a purplish bruise on one side, and she's clutching a small bouquet of wildflowers.

“Thank you,” she says, her eyes blurred with tears. “We're choosing to look at it as a celebration of life.” Cheri isn't quite sure how to respond. Bertrand comes up behind her and gives her a hug. It's devoid of his usual papa-bear warmth.

“Michael's plane was delayed; he's in a cab now,” he says. “Thank you for being here.” Cheri nods and starts to offer her condolences to him, but Bertrand, ever the producer, notices an elderly man with a walker and goes to help him find a seat. It's then that she notices the small white casket on the dais. Cheri is taken aback to see that it's open. People are going up to pay their respects; some put in a flower or a note. Other than for one of her former professors, the only funeral Cheri had ever attended was Sol's. He had wanted a closed casket. As well versed as she was in ancient rituals, she hadn't participated in many modern ones, but she slowly makes her way up to the pulpit. Inside the casket, the baby is perfect; uncreased, pink-hued, seemingly sleeping peacefully. Moon kissed, still blessed. It reminds Cheri of the Victorian photographs of dead infants posed to look as peaceful as cherubim. Those were creepy, but this is just sad.
Where is Michael?
she wonders with a tinge of impatience. Cheri feels slightly self-conscious without him, as well as overdressed. For this “celebration of life,” she's one of the few people who chose to wear all black. Cheri takes a seat by the door and drapes her coat on the next chair to save him a spot.

A female minister with a gray bob steps up to the podium, and the musician puts down his guitar.

“Josephine's parents and family wish to express gratitude for her brief presence in this world. Let's take a moment to let in the joy she brought to everyone who anticipated her arrival. Who is to say that this child didn't lead a more impactful life in the few short hours God granted her than most of us do in our entire lives? It is not time that determines the quality of our existence.”

Cheri cranes her neck to look for Michael as people stand up and read poems in wavering voices and speak about how moved they were by this little girl's fight. Cheri's underarms dampen and she feels her throat closing like she's swallowed pepper. How many more platitudes does she have to hear? When Michael slips in next to her, her heart drops. His clothes hang on him and he's got the prominent Adam's apple of a very old man. Everything about him seems to have diminished. “Hey, kiddo,” he says.

“Hey, you.”

“It is hard to comprehend why God would do this,” the minister says. Cheri is looking at Michael, trying not to stare. His color is off, way off. “There are no answers, save that each life, no matter how long or briefly lived, is a precious gift. It's not about the amount of time we are here, but how we use it, how we love.” She ends her sermon and people nod and close their eyes in silent prayer. Michael's face looks pained, and she doesn't think it's solely because of the occasion. Behind the wear of the road, the exhaustion, there's a searching vulnerability in his expression. Suddenly, what Cheri read in his diary feels utterly irrelevant. Jessica is utterly irrelevant. Cheri wants to leap to her feet and yell,
Life is fucking unfair, people!
She can't believe she doesn't have an Ativan on her. The room is close and cloying.

The guitarist plays Joni Mitchell's “Woodstock.” Cheri watches Michael make the rounds; he looks like a crane as he stoops to put his hands on Bertrand's shoulders. She'll give him a few more minutes and then she'll insist he come home and get some rest. Is she the only one not feeling the hippie vibe, the magical thinking? Cheri half expects someone to flick a Bic and start swaying. She's had enough. She locates Michael in the crowd and taps him on the shoulder, hoping to steal a moment of privacy. When he turns to her, focusing on her for the first time today, she sees the whites of his eyes are pale yellow. “Michael,” she says, her voice betraying her fear. “Michael, something's wrong with your eyes.”

She fishes around in her purse for a mirror.

“What's wrong with my eyes?” Michael pulls out his phone and looks into the camera.

“I think you have jaundice.”

“Fuck me,” he says.

D
isaster! We are robbed; someone stole the car from Montclair. I should call the police, the insurance? Tell me what to do,” Cici shouts into the phone. Cheri thinks,
I knew it, I just knew this would happen.

“Mother,” Cheri says, interrupting her free fall of fretting. “Cici! It's not stolen. I know where it is.”

“You know? Why you not say something?”

“Michael borrowed it. It's been sitting there for years unused; it's not like you need it, so just calm down.” It takes a moment for this to register with Cici.

“Your husband stole my automobile? Why you no tell me?”

“It's not stealing, it's borrowing,” Cheri says. “It's safe and you'll get it back, so whatever you do, don't call the police. I'll take care of it.”

“He is a wolf in cheap clothing, always so nice to my face. What he uses it for? It is my property and I do not want any-body using it. Where is it, you tell me right
now.
”

“You're overreacting, as always. It's just a car, Mother, he'll return it in perfect condition, please don't worry.”

“Who are you to say what is and is not important? You think this is funny? You no tell me where it is, I will tell the police and they will stop him.”

“Cici, I can't take this crap right now. You're concerned about a goddamned car and meanwhile Michael's got cancer.” Cheri stops herself from saying more. She knew she couldn't put off telling Cici forever but she hadn't planned on breaking the news this way. “It's in his pancreas. Which is bad, and he's not doing well.”

“Cancer,” Cici says quietly. “Where is this pancreas?”

“It's behind the stomach. I didn't want to tell you and have you worry,” Cheri says. She also didn't want to have to answer her mother's endless questions or deal with her fear.

“Why he not get the surgery to remove the cancer like they did for Cookie?”

“It's not in a place where it can be removed. Look, just tell me you won't call the police about the car. Don't screw this up for Michael.”

“What? I am in the city doing nothing and you take my property, you no tell me why or that your husband he is sick with the cancer, and I screw up? Why you no tell me? Your father, he would not like that.”

“I didn't care what he thought when he was alive, so I certainly don't care what he might have thought now that he's dead. This isn't about you or Sol.”

Cheri is angry that she allowed herself to be caught in the crosshairs of her mother's myopia. Cici's helplessness infuriates her and makes her cruel. It doesn't help that Cici's call came on the heels of her learning through a colleague that Samuelson was in Washington presenting a list of locations in Iraq that needed to be protected, number one being the Iraq museum. If she weren't benched, waiting on word from the academic gestapo, she could be adding her voice to the protest, taking part in something meaningful. Her heart feels like it's one of John Paul Whatever Number's squeaky toys, and she doesn't have any more Ativan refills left. She'd called Dr. Vega, who, true to her word, wouldn't give her more Band-Aids without seeing her for another session. Too bad that among Michael's cornucopia of new meds there wasn't anything Cheri could use.

Michael has been in the hospital since the funeral two weeks ago. They'd put a stent in to drain the bile and that had stopped the jaundice, but the cancer has metastasized to his liver. The doctors brought up chemo, but Michael's response was “Appreciate that it's never too late to nuke, but I'm still going to pass.” The Gonzalez regimen had gotten him this far—the clinic would continue to adjust his enzymes and supplements—and he was sticking with it. With steadfast resolve, Michael insisted he would do things his way, and finally the doctors had no choice but to discharge him. But as he and Cheri approached their street, he let out a deep groan. “Are you okay? Should I pull over?” Cheri asked. Michael's face was painted with fear and he buried his head in his hands and began to weep. They sat in front of their house for what felt like a long time; she made little circles on his back until he pulled himself together. “Okay, I'm done,” he announced. But they both knew a corner had been turned; Michael's homecoming was the beginning of the end.

“If you can't go on the road, the road will come to you,” Bertrand said, invoking his virile magic. Like Michael, he seemed to deal with his grief by throwing himself back into his work. It was as if he'd clapped his hands and the Oompa-Loompas converted HMS Base Camp into a set. Giaccomo, Michael's cameraman, was suddenly everywhere at once, subjecting every detail of their lives to his lens. His very unobtrusiveness made his work more insidious. Cheri didn't like to be photographed under normal circumstances; it made her self-conscious and provoked the half smile everyone thought was a smirk. Jessica had launched a website for the film and chatted with Michael by phone daily about their social media outreach. But the good news was she'd gone back to wherever she came from, most likely a college out of state.

“You wanted him to be working and not beading.” Taya's voice blasted through the phone. “It took cancer to kick his ass into gear and turn him back into the man you fell in love with, that's why you're upset. Listen, go back to that shrink. You need to talk to someone who specializes in this kind of thing. You're
so
not a Jew.”

In response to Cheri's silence, Taya continues on: “Cheri. Talk to the shrink. Because, unlike me, who does nothing but obsess and talk about myself all day, you actually have real issues you're dealing with. Hold on a sec, this fucking guy's about to take my parking space. Hey, no—”

Silence confirms they've been cut off. Cheri could have argued that her distrust of shrinks sprang from her being a cop and having to pass psych evaluations, some while amped on amphetamines, rather than from her not being Jewish, but Taya's point was made.

It wasn't as if Cheri shunned all forms of help. She'd had numerous online sorties with pancreatic-cancer support groups where people told one another “I'm praying for you” and swapped stories about how their husbands' testicles swelled up like grapefruits at the end due to a salt imbalance. So that's what they had to look forward to. She'd even gone with Michael to a visualization group for people with cancer at the hospital. She detested consciousness-raising, especially in a herd nobody would volunteer to join, but when Michael wanted to go, she went along.

She sat with Michael in a circle of strangers, eyes closed, imagining their diseased organs to the beat of a therapist's word drum. But instead of visualizing Michael's pancreas, she had an image of him from the first vacation they took together, Michael singing “My Cherie Amour” like Stevie Wonder, his gray chest hair matted with salt, holding a trail of silvery fish in one hand, a Cuban cigar in the other.
“Cherie amour,”
he croons as he sloshes out of the boat and wades to shore with long strides, a pair of local Portuguese fishermen in tow. “We got your breakfast!” He was her Diego Rivera, her Hemingway, her Marc Bolan. The memory made her bone-crushingly sad, but the exercise seemed to cheer Michael, which was the point. “You should try the caregivers' support group,” the therapist had said afterward, handing her a flyer. “They have much better snacks.”

She thought about calling Dr. Vega again as Taya had suggested. There was something comforting about her silk blouses with the bows at the top and her fernlike plants. Despite her frugality with the scripts, Cheri liked her. They'd have the same conversation about Cheri going on some daily antidepressant with a name like Relieva. The commercials featured people balled up in bed, then suddenly out in a park playing Frisbee with a cute puppy. Why not show a homeless guy sitting in his own feces saying, “Homelessness is no problem since I've been on Relieva”? The last time she'd seen Dr. Vega, she didn't even know about Michael's diagnosis. Even with the Ativan she hadn't been protected from emotional surges and she has to steel herself for what she knows is coming.

Dr. Marlene Vega leans forward in her chair. “Why did you come here today, Cheri?”

“Honestly, I need more Ativan.”

“I can give you a script but that's not going to resolve anything, and I think you know that. Underneath the anxiety is loss. You've got to grieve; if you don't, it will keep showing up in other ways. There are no shortcuts. The only way to really address what's going on with you is to acknowledge it and talk about it.”

Cheri hesitates, contemplating what lurks behind and beneath her usually impenetrable facade. Giving it form makes it more powerful. “I have all of this knowledge,” she finally begins. “You want to know about ancient funeral rites—in any culture—I'm all over that. I can talk about death mythically, religiously, contextually. But when it comes down to dealing with it in a real person—my husband—I don't know where to begin.”

“Your father died unexpectedly. How did you deal with his death?”

“On a literal level? Great. I identified the body, made the funeral arrangements, coordinated with the executor of his will. My mother was a wreck so I handled everything. Crisis brings out the best in me. What I couldn't figure out was what to do about his other family. I spent years keeping my mouth shut to protect Cici; I didn't want it all to blow up now. How would they even know he died?”

“You didn't tell me the details, only that your parents were happy together at the end. Do you think Sol ended it with the other woman?”

“I didn't know. How would I? After I outed Sol I wanted nothing to do with him or my parents' dysfunction. All I knew was that the last three years of their marriage was a glorious revival. Sol stayed home with Cici and served the Great Unwashed by volunteering at a walk-in clinic. I assumed he'd broken things off with Catherine. That's her name: Catherine Webster. I looked up the title of the house in Rye after Sol died—it was under her name. I thought about writing to her and her son over the years but I never did. Now, I had a real reason to contact them. I even paid to get their e-mail address; I thought it would be less invasive than a phone call. But what could I say? ‘Hi, there, I'm your half sibling. I'm sorry to tell you but Sol Matzner just dropped dead carrying a turkey across Eighty-first Street.' Maybe they didn't even know him as Sol Matzner. These are the things you have to think about with someone who led a double life.”

“So you didn't contact them.”

Cheri flashes on the image of the little boy in his snowsuit reaching his arms up to Sol. “I cut out the
New York Times
obituary, put it in an envelope, but at the last minute, I didn't send it. Maybe if I had been a better person I would have, but I didn't think it was my burden to bear. I looked for them at the funeral. The boy would have been in college. Ironically, he'd have been twenty—the same age I was when I saw Sol shoveling snow that day. I knew I'd recognize him. They didn't come. That's when I felt this deep pit of…I don't know, longing. I'd never wanted to know them,” Cheri says, “but suddenly I wished I did.”

Dr. Vega gives a consoling nod. “You may have been an adult when you discovered Sol's secret but you were also his child. All children long for a sense of family. However fractured yours was, these people were connected to you. They were the other piece of the puzzle.”

“I was really worried that Sol might have mentioned the other family in his will. I wouldn't have cared about the money, but my mother still didn't know anything about them—she's always lived in Ciciworld. She had her fantasy about our family; it was
all
she had. I wanted to protect her.”

“And were they in the will?”

“No,” Cheri says, remembering her meeting with Sol's attorney, how he chose his words with the discretion of a man used to carrying other men's secrets. “But he took care of them financially, in a separate arrangement, neat and clean so Cici would never find out. But Sol's lawyer clearly knew that
I
knew about the other family because he went out of his way to tell me that Sol had ended his ‘other relationship' but had insisted on honoring his obligations. It's not like I wanted to know the details, but I was glad that he'd provided for his child. It wasn't that poor kid's fault that he was born to Sol any more than it was mine that Sol adopted me.”

“So Sol provided for his biological son and he didn't provide for you? Only for Cici?”

“No, actually. His will was extremely complicated, but bottom line: Cici got all of his assets—the house, the apartments, the jewelry—but he left me his patents in a separate trust.”

“That's interesting,” Dr. Vega says noncommittally, “let's get back to that in a minute. You said you'd had a moment of wanting to know Sol's other family. Have you thought about contacting his son? Do you know his name?”

“Thinking about him is like thinking about my biological parents. If I contacted him, then what? I'm not going to get to know him as a sibling. What's the point? I can assure you that his version of Sol—the one I saw shoveling snow that day—would be very different from the version I grew up with. He'd say how loving and supportive a father he was, and I'd be like, Well, not really, kid. And what would that say about me? Plus, he won't know why Sol led a double life any more than I do. Truth is, we see our parents only as our parents—that one particular role—and whatever damage they do in that capacity is permanent.”

“That may be true, but you're also suggesting that Sol's biological son would see his father in a purely positive light, as opposed to what you experienced. And that this would say something about you. What would it say?”