Wreathed (9 page)

“Who is that?” he asked. He was pointing behind me, across the street. I turned to check it out, and there was Vanessa, struggling to force her way through an ornamental hedge. She was carrying a large camera with a telephoto lens and had an unmistakable look of triumph on her face.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I made my way across the street as best I could, slowed slightly by my impending sense of failure and my uncomfortable shoes.

Vanessa was brushing leaves off her clothes. “That was a great shot,” she said. “Fabulous. I thought you were going to help her up the stairs and block my angle, but you just stood there on the sidewalk. And here I thought we were going to have to go to the mattresses.”

“Leave,” I said. “Now.” I was having trouble with anything longer than one-syllable words just then.

“You’re looking kind of red, sweetie. Have you had your blood pressure checked?”

“Go!”

“I mean, you have health insurance, right? What’s that like?”

I am sure that I was red in the face. If Vanessa had taken my picture just then, there might have been steam coming out of my ears. I was living every stupid, tired cliché there was about being angry. I tried to keep my voice level and sane. “I have a funeral to go to,” I said. “Leave me and my mother alone.”

“Of course, sweetheart. Go. Enjoy your funeral. And thanks so much for all the help. Your mom looked fabulous.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Love the black on her, especially with the hat. It doesn’t look quite so good on you, though. Maybe you need brighter makeup or something. I can send you an e-mail with some tips, if you like.”

“Vanessa, for God’s sake. Don’t make me hurt you.”

“So who is that nice boy you were talking to? He’s
cute.
Is he single? Employed? Can you get me his phone number?”

I walked back across the street. Adam was waiting for me on the sidewalk.

“You didn’t just hit that woman, did you?”

“Oh, no.” Stepping on someone’s instep as hard as you can doesn’t quite count as hitting them, even if you are wearing high heels.

“Because it looked like she just collapsed, or something.”

“I think she’s disoriented,” I said. “She’ll be fine. Look, she’s dusting herself off.”

“If you say so,” he said. “You should go inside and find your mom, and make sure you get a good seat. The buses will be here in a minute or two.”

“Buses?” I asked.

Chapter 11

The senior housing community where Sheldon Berkman had spent his last days had sent two buses full of old people to the funeral, and they were late. Adam the cute nephew stayed outside to make sure that the other mourners got there safely, and I went inside to check on Mother. She was making a study of the stained-glass windows, which I’m sure were well done and artistic in their way but not something that I would spend two seconds looking at under normal circumstances.

“What exactly were you two doing out there?” she asked.

“Nothing special,” I lied. “Some more people are coming, but they were delayed.”

“It’s not as though he’s in a hurry, I don’t suppose. He’s not even here—well, the body isn’t here. Cremated, you know.”

“Oh. Where is he?” I asked, trying to disguise my relief at not having to be in the same room with a dead embalmed body. Not that I have a problem with that.

“I don’t know. The nephew said they were shipping the urn to Alaska; they were going to have a bush pilot scatter his ashes over Mount McKinley.”

“That sounds reasonable,” I said. It was one less thing to worry about, anyway.

We took our seats in the second row of the church. I would rather have sat in the back, but Adam the cute nephew had reserved seats for us, and it would have been rude to sit elsewhere, or so I was told. The bused-in mourners were just starting to file in as we sat down, so I took advantage of the opportunity and pulled up the LinkedIn app on my phone. Sure enough, I had three messages waiting from Adam, all of them asking if I was coming and if I had a minute or two after the funeral to discuss the will.

I was oddly relieved by Adam’s apparent interest in my legal acumen. As cute as he was, I didn’t quite think I was comfortable with him explicitly hitting on me at his uncle’s funeral. Afterward, though, maybe over a nice tasty bottle of chardonnay, that would be acceptable.

I flipped over to his LinkedIn profile, and scrolled all the way down to check out the important information.
Marital Status: Single
. I did a discreet little fist-pump, and ignored the withering look I got from Mother.
Birthday
was eight months before mine, which was nice.
Job Experience
looked stable enough.
Education
wasn’t too shabby, either. He had a B.A. from Syracuse in economics, and an M.B.A. in finance from Maryland. Not Ivy League, but I wasn’t in a position to be picky about such things, and anyway, every Ivy League guy I ever dated was either too full of himself to be decent boyfriend material or had an awful hidden perversion like wanting me to do their laundry or stay home to raise their children.
Interests
including restoring old houses, which meant that maybe I could invite him over to unstick my sticky pantry door...

“Ow!” I said.

“Put that thing away,” Mother said. “They’re about to start.”

“You could have just said, without poking me with your elbow.”

“Remember.
Kennedy widows.
”

I silenced my phone and put it in my handbag. Maybe Jackie Kennedy didn’t spend the funeral procession glancing at her iPhone, but that was mostly because they didn’t have them then. Anyway. I stiffened my posture and tried to look as serene and dignified as I could.

And then Adam the cute nephew sat down next to me.

The service was blessedly short. There were a couple of hymns, and a couple of prayers, and a long, painful delay when an old guy with a walker came clomping down the aisle so he could read the Twenty-Third Psalm. During the last prayer, the minister asked us to hold hands, and Adam the cute nephew took mine again. I would be lying if I said I felt electricity in his touch, but then I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel anything at all. It wasn’t so much an electrical connection as the feeling that you get when a key fits in a lock and turns and all the tumblers move at once. It felt right to hold his hand, and it felt wrong to let go.

Mother kept up her Kennedyesque sangfroid all through the funeral, sitting there placidly, not reacting to anything. When the last prayer was over, she picked up her handbag and made her way to the side door of the church. I shot an apologetic glance back at Adam, one that I hoped said
Sorry, gotta go, duty calls
, and started to take off after her
.

“Wait,” he whispered.

“Can’t.”

“Here,” he said, and handed me a folded piece of paper. “If you have time.”

I stuck the paper in the side pocket of my purse and hurried after Mother, who was already halfway out the door. I managed a coquettish wave as I left.

“I can’t do this,” Mother said. She had her hand on the passenger door of my car, which was locked, because I was fumbling in my purse to find the clicker.

“Give me a second,” I said. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t just get in the car and ride away, not right this second. I need a moment.”

“Are you OK?” I asked. “Do you think you’re going to be sick?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just need a little time. Maybe we could walk for a while.”

“Down towards the beach?” I asked. “Maybe some salt air would help.”

Mother didn’t say anything, so I knew something was wrong. You couldn’t normally say something as facile as salt air being a cure for sickness without her mocking you for it. We walked the two blocks towards the ocean together, slowly, her because of the burden of sadness and regret that she carried, and me because my black heels were starting to rub blisters on my big toes.

We found an empty bench along the ocean promenade and sat down. The March wind was blowing stiff and cold from behind us. We sat there quietly for what seemed like a long time. Mother had her hands folded in her lap, looking little different than she had during the service. Two or three dedicated joggers passed by, but otherwise the promenade and the beach and the whole of Delaware Bay were ours alone.

I wanted to comfort her, or at least help her somehow, but I didn’t know what to do except to give her time and space. If there was an explosion coming—and I’d seen her explode often enough to have a wary idea of when one was coming—I didn’t want to be the one to set it off. Then again, it was almost as likely that her fragile composure would just collapse into a soggy heap.

At length, she got a tissue out of her bag and started to dry her eyes. “Do you think the bars are open yet?” she asked.

“It’ll be a little while yet. But the liquor store should be open.”

“I need a drink. I need twelve, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You don’t have a flask, do you?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Just as well. I don’t want to worry any more about your drinking than I already do.”

I rolled my eyes at that, but I guessed that her criticizing me was a sign that she was feeling better. I rubbed my hands together, trying to keep warm.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she said. “I don’t want to give you a hard time. And I am grateful that you came with me. It would have been very difficult, otherwise.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, as a pair of joggers swept by.

“I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do, Mom. I love you, too.”

“I love you, but you are young and I am old. And I got a reminder today just how old I am. No thanks to Sheldon, the little wretch. It was a mean thing for him to do, to die here. Cruel. And to schedule his funeral for the church where we were married, to drag me down here, to dig up so many memories. It’s sadistic, almost.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t realized it was the same church. “But some of them were good memories, though, weren’t they? Maybe he wanted you to remember the good memories and forget the bad ones.”

“You don’t understand,” she said.

“Maybe I don’t.”

“You don’t understand because you’re young. Your good memories are all ahead of you. You don’t have anything bad to look back on, and everything good to look forward to.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Mother. Are you feeling any better?”

“I am feeling a little better, but not well enough. What I feel is
old.
Old and miserable and useless.”

“You’re not useless,” I said. “And there’s no need to beat yourself up this way. I can understand you being sad, or depressed, or angry, but you don’t have any reason to do that.”
And you don’t need to take whatever it is that you’re feeling out on me
, I didn’t say.

“I have the best reason of all,” she said. “
It is the blight man was born for / It is Margaret you mourn for.
”

“I’m sorry, who?” It sounded like poetry, whatever it was, but I couldn’t place it.

She sighed deeply, which I interpreted as
all that expensive education, gone to waste
. “It’s not important. Whoever she was, she was young, like you, and she’d never come face to face with her own mortality. It’s a burden, and today it’s a little heavier than most days.”

“It’s the nature of funerals. I see it all the time when people come in to the office to sign their wills. They think, psychologically, that signing their wills means that they’re going to die. Which they are, anyway.”

“Mortality isn’t about death. It’s more important than that. Physical death comes to us all, yes. But it’s different when you lose somebody you were passionate about, even if it was fifty years ago, even if it turned out badly. You get to experience that deep, heartfelt passion just a few times in your life. When you’re in its grasp, when it’s taking you out to sea, wild and uncontrolled, it’s like doing something incredibly fast and incredibly thrilling and incredibly dangerous, all at the same time. That’s what being alive truly is. You can’t know your own mortality until you have that feeling, and lose it, and understand that you’ll never get it back. Mortality is a terrible thing, Wendy. A terrible, terrible thing.”

I put my arm around her and we sat like that on the bench for a long moment. I didn’t look at her face, because I knew she didn’t want me to see her cry, and I didn’t want her to look at me and see me tearing up, either. We watched the wind ruffle the ocean, the breakers rolling in on the beach, and the occasional dog walker or fitness enthusiast passing by. The March wind was no crueler than the rest of the world.

At length, Mother took a long, ragged breath. “I’ve been sitting too long,” she said. “I need to get up and walk. Alone, if you don’t mind. You could wait here if you like, or go find a cup of coffee if you’d rather.”

“I’ll wait here,” I said. “Let me know when you’re ready to go back to the car.”

I waited until she was a decent distance away before I dug Adam’s note out of my purse. It read:

The Victorian Cottages

An Active Adult Community

Memorial Luncheon in honor of our Neighbor

SHELDON BERKMAN

1:30 pm, Friday

All Are Welcome

Chapter 12

I was late getting to Sheldon’s senior apartment complex, but I figured that since everyone from there was so late getting to the funeral nobody would mind if I was late for lunch. It took me longer than I thought to convince Mother to get back in the car, but once I did, it was easy enough to drop her at the hotel. I suppose I could have worked harder to convince Mother to go with me to the reception, but she said that she would be happy with a room-service sandwich and a quart of gin, and I took her at her word.

Under normal circumstances, I would have developed a game plan—worked out ahead of time what I would wear and what to say. But there wasn’t time for that, and this was the day of his uncle’s funeral and he probably was depressed about that. “Playing it cool” and “letting him come to you” are not my usual style, but this wasn’t a usual type of situation and, anyway, he would gravitate towards me because I would be the only person his age there.