The Obituary Writer (7 page)

“Vivien,” he said, “tonight I will see you perhaps?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said as she hurried past him.

“
Ciao
,” he said.

She murmured a goodbye.

Outside, Vivian paused on the sidewalk. The rain yesterday seemed to have washed everything clean—the sky was a bluer blue than it had been, the morning glories climbing the fence a more vivid pink. The air itself smelled of spring and new beginnings. Vivien breathed in a deep lungful. It was almost April. In just a few weeks it would be thirteen years since she had last seen David.

She remembered how only a few nights before the earthquake they had gone to Coppa’s for dinner and David noticed that someone had written on the wall:
Something terrible is going to happen.
Vivien had feared it was prophetic, but David had laughed. “Probably your friend Jack London,” he’d said. “Afraid that I’m going to marry you sometime very soon.” He’d asked his wife for a divorce, and even though Vivien was afraid to hope she would grant him one, David had been full of optimism.

Vivien closed her eyes against the memory and thought instead of that man in Denver. The room they had stayed in at the Hotel Majestic was number 208. She imagined that key held in David’s pocket all these years, waiting for her to find it.

“This is crazy,” Lotte said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“But that key,” Vivien said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “To the Majestic.”

Lotte sighed and went back to attending the large pot of beans on the stove.

What if it was Robert?
Vivien wanted to say.
Wouldn’t you try anything to find him?
But maybe Lotte wouldn’t try anything. Her friend had always been practical, the one to worry over consequences and risks. As children, she’d kept Vivien out of danger many times. Lotte had warned Vivien not to get involved with David in the first place.
He’s married, Viv,
she’d said, horrified and concerned.
You just don’t do that.

Lotte lifted the long wooden spoon to her mouth and tasted, frowning. She took a hefty pinch of salt from the canister and tossed it in, stirring. Lotte’s life had a rhythm, a predictability that Vivien sometimes envied. The tending to Robert and their three children, feeding her family and all of the workers at the vineyard. In September, when it came time to harvest the grapes, Lotte was out there with all the men, from first light until it grew too dark to work. Her once-smooth ivory complexion had grown ruddy from years in the sun, and lined enough to make her look her age, or more. Although her long legs were muscled and her arms strong from the physical labor of having babies and working the vineyard and doing the laundry and cooking for so many people, Lotte had gone thick around the middle.

“You probably won’t hear till Monday at the earliest,” Lotte said, hoisting a ceramic platter of chicken. The chicken had been sitting in oil and lemon and garlic all day, and pressed flat under heavy bricks.

“I know,” Vivien said. She’d gone straight from the library to the Western Union office:
MIGHT HAVE INFO ON AMNESIAC IN YOUR HOSPITAL. STOP. IS HOTEL KEY FOR ROOM 208? STOP.

Lotte paused on her way to the large outdoor grill where she would cook the chicken. “I just don’t want you to get hurt again,” she said softly.

“Grief is a strange thing,” Vivien said. “There isn’t an again. Not really. It’s always there, always present. Again implies it can end and then start up anew. But it never goes away in the first place.”

“Once a teacher always a teacher,” Lotte said, laughing softly.

Vivien watched her friend’s broad back as she walked outside. Were all old friends this way, somehow stuck in time? To Lotte, Vivien was still a teacher acting foolish over an older married man, instead of an obituary writer, a woman who had lived alone for over a dozen years. A widow, Vivien thought, though Lotte wouldn’t grant her that status.

“Vivvie!” Lotte’s daughter Pamela screamed. “I didn’t know you were coming today!”

“Well, here I am,” Vivien said, scooping the child into her arms. At six, Pamela had the same brown curls as her mother, and the same vivid blue eyes. Looking into her face, Vivien could see the child Lotte all over again, as if thirty years hadn’t passed and they were still sitting side by side at the Field School.

“I’m mad mad mad at Bo and Johnny,” Pamela said, her whole face seeming to frown. “They won’t let me ride the ponies with them. They say I’m too little but I’m not. I’m big, right, Vivvie?”

“Quite big, darling,” Vivien said. “And getting bigger every minute.” She hugged Pamela good and hard before setting her back down. Poets and mothers spoke of the lovely smell of children, but to Vivien they smelled acrid, like vinegar. And in Pamela’s case, earthy too, like the soil here in Napa.

Pamela dragged a small wooden chair with a straw seat over to the stove so that she could inspect the beans. “Do you wish I were a boy, Vivvie?” she asked, tasting one.

“Not at all,” Vivien said truthfully. Lotte’s boys were not at all like the boys she’d grown up with in San Francisco. They thought nothing of shooting and skinning deer or rabbits. There was always dirt under their fingernails and in the creases of their palms. She couldn’t remember seeing them dressed in anything but blue jeans and flannel shirts. No, Bo and Johnny were mysterious creatures to Vivien, and even to Lotte. When Pamela had been born, Lotte was the happiest Vivien had ever seen her.
At last,
Lotte had told her,
I won’t be alone.

“Well, sometimes I wish I were a boy,” Pamela was saying. She stirred the beans, just like her mother had, with confidence and assurance. “Like in
Treasure Island
, right, Vivvie?”

“You want to be an adventurer,” Vivien said. Whenever she visited here, she read to Pamela at night. Robert Louis Stevenson was their latest favorite.

“Yes!” Pamela said. “I want to fight pirates and crocodiles and sail around the Cape of Good Hope!”

Vivien laughed. “Girls can do that too,” she said. “See? You don’t have to be a boy at all. Just older than six.”

“That’s a relief,” she said. Pamela jumped off the chair and scurried toward the large open doors that led outside to where Lotte stood cooking.

The fullness of Lotte’s life always struck Vivien. While hers was solitary and isolated, Lotte’s was populated with noise and work and people. Like tonight. At the long picnic tables behind the house, neighbors from other wineries sat talking and sharing their own wines, nibbling cheese made from one of their goats. Mexican and Italian workers from Lotte’s vineyard sat beside them, speaking in Spanish and Italian and broken English so that the air seemed to buzz with syllables. Children ran past, holding empty jars as they searched for fireflies. Someone had brought a large wooden bowl of rocket and small red tomatoes from her garden. The salad was dressed with olive oil from one of the vineyards, and a splash of a vinegar Lotte made from pouring leftover wine into an earthenware jug she kept by the kitchen door.

Vivien stood beneath the string of white lights Robert had hung from the patio roof, weary from the abundance, the fresh food and wine, the life that seemed almost palpable here. A hand on her shoulder forced her to look up, into the face of the Italian man from the library.

“Mrs. Lowe,” he said, smiling beneath his mustache.

She didn’t correct him. “Sebastian, right?” she said.

“If you must pronounce it like that, it’s okay,” he said. “I just like the word, how should I say this? In your mouth. It sounds like the song of a canary.”

His hand felt heavy on her shoulder, like a burden. Would it be impolite to move it away? Vivien wondered.

“We will get food,” he was saying, “and then sit together?”

Vivien shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. I’m sitting with Lotte.” Even as she said this she caught sight of Lotte already at a table, surrounded by her neighbors, the ones who made the goat cheese and the other ones who pressed the olive oil.

“Do you know the story of Saint Sebastian?” Sebastian asked her.

“I’m afraid I don’t know very much about saints.”

He raised his bushy eyebrows. “No? A pity.”

“I wasn’t raised Catholic,” Vivien explained.

“Saint Sebastian,” he said. “He is patron saint of athletes because of his . . . endurance. So you see? I wait.”

Vivien blushed. “You are certainly a romantic,” she said.

Flustered, Vivien walked away from him and squeezed herself on the picnic bench beside Lotte.

Lotte’s eyes followed Sebastian as he made his way to the table where most of the workers sat talking noisily.

“He’s sweet on you,” she said.

“Please,” Vivien groaned. She took some chicken from the platter and some of the salad. “Don’t encourage him, Lotte.”

“Thirteen years,” Lotte said. “It’s too long to wait.” Her voice sounded tired of this conversation.

Luckily, Pamela came running up to them, holding out her jar. In the darkening night, the fireflies inside glowed bright.

“I caught five!” Pamela said. “More than Bo!”

Lotte kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “My girl,” she said softly.

Unexpectedly, tears sprang to Vivien’s eyes. For the first time, she realized what made her so weary here. The noise, the companionship, the children. She envied her friend. The idea made her whole body heavy, as if stones weighed her down. In their youth, it had been her, Vivien, who had attracted suitors and other friends. She’d always had invitations, to parties and dances and shows. She used to have to practically drag Lotte along. And now, what did Vivien have? The stories of dead people. A foolish belief that her lover was waiting for her to find him. While Lotte had . . . Vivien dared to look up. Pamela had climbed onto Lotte’s lap and the two of them were laughing over something Vivien was not privy to. Someone had put on a record, and Caruso’s scratchy voice rose above the laughter and conversations. While Lotte, Vivien thought, had everything.

THREE

No one should ever be forced upon those in grief, and all over-emotional people, no matter how near or dear, should be barred absolutely.

—
FROM
Etiquette
,
BY
E
MILY
P
OST, 1922

5

Just Like Jackie

CLAIRE, 1961

P
eter’s voice startled her awake. “Home at last,” he said.

For a moment, Claire thought he might have turned around and they were back at their own home. She squinted out the window, but the snow hid everything.

“We’ll just have time to change and get to the party,” Peter was saying.

“Okay,” Claire said.

She opened her purse and took out her compact and lipstick. She powdered her cheeks, and rubbed at the dark circles under her eyes. Then she carefully put on fresh lipstick.

“Why are you bothering with that now?” Peter said.

Claire snapped the compact shut. Because it’s what is expected of me, she thought. Because even though I am unhappy and I don’t know if I love you anymore and I’m pregnant, I still need to do the things I have always done.

But she said none of it. She just pulled a comb through her hair as he parked in front of his mother’s house.

“You’re not going to meet anyone here,” he said, motioning toward the green triple-decker. “No one cares if your hair is done or if you have lipstick on.”

“I care,” Claire said.

She stepped out of the car, slipping as she did. A small yelp escaped before she caught herself. By the time Peter arrived at her side, she was steady again.

“Careful,” he said, his hand firm on her arm.

Was he being kind? Or simply safe? Every word he said, Claire found herself weighing, trying to determine what emotion lay behind it. Would he forgive her? Or would he punish her forever?

It was dark and snowy and cold. This street of working-class triple-deckers, which appeared sad even on bright sunny days, looked gloomy and deserted. The house seemed to sag, its porches heavy with snow and ice, the faded green duller than she remembered. The houses in most of this neighborhood held generations of families. Grandparents on the first floor, their kids and grandchildren in the second- and third-floor apartments. But Peter’s mother lived alone on the top two floors and rented out the bottom floor to the neighbor’s youngest child and her family. Peter had gone away to college and never moved back. He’d tried to convince his mother to move to the smaller first-floor apartment, or to sell the house altogether. But she refused.
This is my home,
she always reminded him.

The front door opened and the Galluccis peered out. Connie Gallucci had had three babies right in a row, and she’d never lost all the baby weight. But she still dressed sexy, even now. She already had her party dress on, a garish too-tight green one, low-cut and revealing her ample cleavage. Connie’s hair was still in giant curlers. No, Vivien saw as she got closer. She’d rolled her hair in empty Campbell’s soup cans, like Vivien had seen in some fashion magazine at the hairdresser’s recently. Her husband Jimmy had gained weight, and his stomach pressed against his white sleeveless T-shirt, hanging over his belt. It was hard to believe he had been the star hockey player back in high school.

“Pete!” he said. “Ready for the shindig?”

Jimmy walked down the path to shake Peter’s hand, and then to take Kathy from Claire.

Everything about Connie and Jimmy made Claire slightly uneasy, as if she’d caught them in the middle of something private. They both exuded a sexuality she wasn’t used to. Connie always wearing low-cut blouses and too much makeup, and Jimmy with his T-shirts and hairy chest. Even now, following Jimmy up the stairs, she caught a smell of sweat and something male and unfamiliar. Peter smelled clean, of Ivory soap and Old Spice. Sometimes she caught a whiff of shoe polish on his hands. Claire used to like watching him polish his black wingtips, the way he spread newspaper carefully on the floor, buffed them with a chamois cloth, shook the bottle of black polish before spreading it in quick even strokes across his shoes. Such a simple thing, but it had seemed so masculine and sexy.

The door at the top of the stairs opened and Birdy stood there, beaming in her best Chanel suit and rope of pearls. The pearls, Claire knew, were real, a gift from a long-ago lover. The suit she suspected was a copy. But still, her mother-in-law looked lovely, her silver hair piled on top of her head, her green eyes sparkling.

She opened her arms and Peter rushed into her hug.

“Darling,” Birdy said to him. “You feel thin.”

“I don’t want to get a paunch like this guy,” Peter said, indicating Jimmy who had come in beside them.

Birdy smiled. “I’ve heard of fathers who gain weight in sympathy with their pregnant wives.”

She seemed to notice Claire for the first time.

“Darling,” she said, kissing Claire on each cheek. “Apparently my son is not one of those men.”

“No,” Claire said, avoiding Peter’s eyes. Her husband believed this baby was his, and she worried that with one look he would know he was wrong.

“I’ve got to go downstairs and get beautiful,” Jimmy was saying.

“Good luck with that,” Peter teased as Jimmy bounded noisily down the stairs.

“Well, let’s not stand here,” Birdy said. “I have a bit of champagne waiting for us in the parlor.”

“I’ll be right there,” Peter told her. “I’m going to get Kathy settled with Connie’s babysitter.”

Claire followed her mother-in-law into what she called the parlor, a formal room filled with old-fashioned furniture, all velvet and beaded and stiff.

“I’m so sorry we didn’t make it here for Christmas this year,” Claire said as soon as she sat down.

“I missed seeing you all, of course,” Birdy said, leveling her gaze right at Claire. “But I worried that something was wrong.”

“The baby,” Claire said vaguely, hoping the old woman would not question her further.

“A difficult pregnancy then?”

Claire nodded.

The truth was that she and Peter were barely able to be civil to each other at Christmas, he still wounded by her affair and Claire too upset over ending it. They had both been angry, and untethered. She’d never bothered to ask what excuse he had given his mother for their absence. The thought that perhaps he had told her the truth struck Claire, but she quickly dismissed it. Peter would never divulge that to his mother. Or to anyone, she suspected. It was too humiliating.

“Actually,” Birdy said, “Peter indicated that you two were . . . well, going through a bit of a rough patch.”

“He did?” Claire said, her throat suddenly dry.

“It happens, of course,” Birdy said, offering a silver bowl of cashews to Claire, who took a couple only to be polite, holding them in her palm rather than eating them. “Lord knows, Peter’s father and I had our moments.”

“I just don’t feel comfortable with him discussing it with anyone,” Claire managed.

“He didn’t give me the details,” Birdy said.

Claire could feel Birdy’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look up.

“Oh,” Claire said, remembering that she’d put her mother-in-law’s Christmas present in her purse. She unclasped it, and took out the slender gift, wrapped in the red and white paper with silver ribbon.

“Merry Christmas,” Claire said. “I’m sorry it’s so late.”

Birdy opened the gift, carefully sliding the ribbon off and being sure not to tear the paper.

“Frost,” she said. “How thoughtful.”

“I know how much you like poetry,” Claire said, “and since he’s reading one at the inauguration tomorrow . . .”

“Do you know ‘Master Speed’?” Birdy asked.

She didn’t wait for Claire to answer.

“A sonnet,” she continued. “ ‘Two such as you with a master speed, Cannot be parted nor be swept away, From one another once you are agreed, That life is only life forevermore, Together wing to wing and oar to oar.’ ” She smiled. “I think I’ve got that right. At my age, I’m not always so sure.”

“It’s beautiful,” Claire said.

“I believe that’s on his wife’s grave,” Birdy said.

“Well, I hope you enjoy these poems,” Claire said. “It’s the latest collection.”

“I’m sure I will.” She placed the book on the small table beside her chair.

Relieved, Claire heard Peter coming back inside.

“What?” he said when he entered the room. “You haven’t opened the champagne yet?”

“We couldn’t toast without you,” Birdy said.

Peter picked up the bottle and placed the white napkin over it.

“Eighty years old, Birdy,” he said as he turned the cork. “And still the prettiest mother on the block.”

“Well, still the oldest anyway,” she said, obviously pleased.

To Claire she added, “Poor Peter. All the other mothers would be outside organizing games of tag and jumping rope, and his mother was inside cooking or knitting or—”

“I won’t hear it,” Peter said. “You were fine. The best.”

The cork opened with a small sigh, and Peter filled the three glasses.

“To my lovely mother,” he said, holding up his glass. “Happy eightieth birthday, Birdy.”

They all clinked and sipped, and then Claire excused herself to get ready for the party.

Up in Peter’s old room, she sat on the edge of his bed and began to cry.
Wing to wing and oar to oar
. Was her mother-in-law telling her that Claire needed to understand that? Did Birdy know about Miles? Claire wished she had the courage to ask her mother-in-law these questions directly. But the old woman intimidated her.

Sighing, Claire found herself for the second time today wanting to call her old roommate. Rose had told Claire once that men had affairs to stay married, and women had affairs to get out of their marriages. Rose should know. She had always dated married men. In fact, her husband had been married when Rose started seeing him. Before him, a married doctor named Monty bought her Chanel No.5 and silk stockings. An actor took her dancing at the Copacabana and for steaks at Peter Luger. The Italian businessman gave her a tennis bracelet, a thin circle of gold studded with glittering diamonds. At the time, Claire had been slightly horrified at Rose’s behavior.
Don’t you think about their wives?
she’d asked.
Don’t you worry about . . . I don’t know, your soul?
Rose had laughed at her. She’d stood back and held out her slender wrist with the diamond bracelet shining on it and said,
No, Claire. I don’t.

Vivien stretched out on top of the twin bed. The bedspread was ivory chenille, with some faded pattern on it, now just a few curlicues of color. A mobile of the solar system hung from the ceiling, the planets moving ever so slightly in the drafty room. Each planet was a different color and different-sized sphere, and Claire tried to remember which was which. She used to know a mnemonic saying to help her remember their correct order. My very excited mother just . . . Just what? Ordered pizzas? But no, there wasn’t a planet that started with
O
.

Peter had told her how he and his mother spent all day one Saturday painting these Styrofoam balls, making sure they were sized right and then hanging them on wire in the proper order. They’d use a coat hanger to make Saturn’s ring, he’d told Claire. That was what his mother liked best when he was a boy—spending the day with him, just the two of them. Other boys would be outside playing street hockey or basketball, and Peter would want to join them. But the way his mother looked—
so happy,
he’d said—when they did projects like this used to keep him inside with her. They’d built the solar system, a replica of the
Titanic
out of matchsticks, a skateboard from an old piece of wood attached to one of his old roller skates.

Claire reached up and touched Mars, painted a faded red.

Peter could point to each sphere and name it and tell her their names. In fact, he had done that very thing the first time she’d come with him to visit his mother. This was before they got married, when she thought he was the most remarkable person she’d ever known. While his mother slept down the hall, Peter had snuck in here and they’d made love, each squeak of a bedspring stopping them for a moment, each sigh choked on. Afterwards, he had stood naked right there below the mobile and set those planets spinning.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars . . .

“Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,” Claire said into the empty room, remembering.

She paused.

“Pluto,” she said finally. She smiled to herself. That was the pizza part.

“Almost ready?” Peter called up to her.

“Almost,” she called back.

Claire had found a pewter maternity sheath dress like one she’d seen Jackie wear last year. It had pockets at the side, and flared gracefully from the waist. She’d started wearing her hair in a bouffant like Jackie’s too. Everyone had. And standing in front of the mirror now, Claire was satisfied with how she looked tonight.

“Claire!” Peter was calling. “We have the guest of honor waiting.”

She could hear the strain in his voice and wondered if his mother heard it too. Again, she wondered what Birdy knew. But there was no time to worry about that now. Claire touched up her hair, lifting the top slightly and spritzing Aqua Net on it, then spraying a bit more on the curled-up tips.

“Coming!” she said, and hurried down the stairs.

“Worth waiting for,” Birdy said, even though she was already in her coat and hat. “You look lovely.”

“I’m sorry,” Claire said, and she saw Peter flinch slightly.

“Women are slow,” he said. “Pregnant women even slower.”

He had Claire’s coat held up, ready for her, and she slipped into it.

As the three of them headed down the stairs and out to the car, Claire vowed to have a good night. Tonight she would be the wife her husband wanted her to be. The daughter-in-law she should be to Birdy. She would be gracious. She would smile. She would not apologize for who, she feared, she might be becoming.

The Hope Club sat on the corner of Benefit and Benevolent Streets on the East Side of Providence. A four-story brick Victorian house, it had been a private club since 1875, and it was, Claire knew, the kind of place that Birdy always wanted to belong to. As a young woman, she had lived a privileged life in San Francisco, with club memberships like this one, and private schooling. Peter had told Claire this when he’d explained his mother’s struggles to her. She’d married a laborer, and come East reluctantly. His mother dreamed of living in one of the Victorian houses that lined College Hill in this part of Providence, and used to take Peter for drives past them, pointing out their architectural details, their gingerbread trim, the towers and turrets and rounded porches.