A Window Opens: A Novel (33 page)

I hadn’t been on the altar at Our Lady of Agony since my days as a very reluctant acolyte—a stint that ground to a halt one Sunday when I accidentally poured red wine instead of water over a monsignor’s hands. Now I was in the oak pulpit, eight feet above the rest of the congregation, eulogizing my dad with Will.

We took turns leaning into the microphone. As he described our dad’s other religion—justice—I scanned the packed pews. There was our mom, regal in ivory lace; and Judy, Elliott, and Dr. Davis, Linda, Jessie, and dozens of Filament friends, including Susanna and Paul and their kids. Despite my poor attendance at their meetings, the entire executive board of the Louisa May Alcott PTA was there. Our relatives were easy to pick out since they all had snow-white hair and wore matching expressions of concern on their gentle faces. Even in grief, the elderly Irish look like they’re smiling; my aunts and uncles were no exception.

In the middle of the church, three rows were packed solid with men and a handful of women in gray and navy suits. They were partners from my dad’s law firm—litigators and tax lawyers and bankruptcy specialists whose names (last names only) had been legendary at the dinner table when I was growing up. I recognized some faces, mainly my dad’s contemporaries, who had also been hired fresh out of law school in the late sixties: Curley, Progresso, Rankin, Marcus.

I remembered these men from visits to my dad’s office. But despite
their chumminess with him for nearly forty years, they’d been largely absent from his retired life and invisible during the past few months. Maybe it turned out that they had nothing in common beyond the law, or maybe they lacked the wherewithal to participate in conversation with someone who sounded like an automated recording, but their disappearance had been notable, and disappointing. These lawyers were the people who had spent the most time with my dad during his best years.

I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would never see them again after his funeral.

Will motioned for me to step up to the microphone. My turn. I started: “Our dad was the first person in his family to graduate from college. From an early age, he instilled in us a sense of . . .”

As I talked, my eye fell on a familiar but incongruous woman at the back of the church. I blinked, hard, and my mouth went dry. She was backlit from the light pouring through the front door into the dim sanctuary. It was hard to make out her face, but yes, that
was
Genevieve leaning against the wall even though there was plenty of room to sit. She was dressed in full-body black—wide-legged trousers, double-breasted blazer—with the exception of a black-and-white striped boat-necked shirt that lent a sort of Marcel Marceau air to her getup.

Why was she here? And what was that thing on top of her head? For one brief, cringing moment, I thought Genevieve had a bird in her hair—not entirely beyond the realm of possibility since I remembered how birds occasionally got trapped inside this church—but then I realized: she was wearing a fascinator. Yes. A small, black, feathered number, perched atop her head at a rakish angle. Odd choice, I thought, before turning my attention back to my notes.

When I glanced over my shoulder after Communion, she was gone.

•  •  •

One by one, the guests left my mom’s house. They promised to check in soon and made us promise to let them know if there was anything they could do.

News flash: nobody is going to give you an assignment. Just
do something.

Amy, the daughter of one of my mom’s tennis friends, worked quietly in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, brewing pot after pot of strong coffee and stowing Mass cards and sympathy cards in a straw basket so my mom could read them later. Even though our mothers had been friends for decades, we weren’t friends; she’d been a few years ahead of me in school. Up until this point, most of our contact had been through families she’d babysat for, whom she passed along to me when she lost interest in watching
227
alone on Saturday nights. I knew Amy was a teacher now, and the mother of toddlers, which meant that she’d lined up both a sub and a babysitter of her own so she could take coats and arrange crudité platters for our family. Her kindness was mind-boggling.

“I hope my kids grow up to be like Amy,” I said to Will.

“Looks like they might take after me.” He gestured with his chin at Georgie, who was running around the living room with a coffee stirrer dangling from each nostril. We both laughed, then exchanged a guilty look, then dissolved into hysterical giggles the likes of which we hadn’t shared in thirty years.

We polished off the last of the cheesecake and pressed our index fingers onto the dessert trays to pick up stray crumbs from lemon squares.

Later, my brother and I drank Bailey’s, paged through albums filled with Polaroids, and traded favorite family stories. I told Will about the drive our dad had taken me on the night before I left for college. “Where are we
going
?” I’d asked, annoyed to be missing a barbecue at the home of a friend whose parents could be depended upon to serve wine coolers. My dad pointed to the parkway sign nearest our house: “Exit 142A. Remember that. People will want to know.”

“Typical.” Will laughed softly and shook his head. “Remember the time we went to the top of the Empire State?”

I nodded; of course I did. It was a blisteringly hot Sunday, a day the two of us would have preferred to play Marco Polo in the deep end of the pool, but our parents insisted on a pilgrimage to the city. When we
arrived at the observation deck, Will and I begged for quarters for the coin-operated binoculars, then took turns trying to spy on people in other tall buildings. The unspoken—and unrealized—goal was to spot someone naked.

Just as the binoculars were about to go dark, we reluctantly ceded them to our dad, who swiveled the eyeholes in the direction of the Weehawken waterfront. Will and I burst out laughing. What a waste of money! There was nothing to see on the other side of the river except a rusty Colgate Palmolive clock and the site of a duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. (We never learned about the Vietnam War in grade school, but we studied this duel every year, often with a reenactment in period garb.)

When we had collected ourselves, Will zipped up his Members Only jacket and said, “Dad, why would you want to look at
New Jersey
?”

Our dad shrugged, straightening his glasses. His answer was matter-of-fact, as always. “New Jersey is home.”

Then I stepped up to the viewfinder, but there was nothing left to see. Our time was up.

•  •  •

The next morning, Margot helped me carry extra folding chairs out to the garage. As we were stacking them against a wall printed with raccoon paws, I noticed boxes of tulip and daffodil bulbs my dad had been too weak to plant in the fall.

He must have known then, I realized. Had he been scared?

Judy and Elliott wrapped my mom in a three-way hug, then started the long drive home to Cleveland. We said good-bye to Mary, then to Will, who squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head rapidly when my mom thanked him for all he’d done. Then the two of us stood in the driveway, waving until the Subaru was out of sight.

The yard was quiet. We dropped our arms to our sides. It was all over, but of course it wasn’t. Not even close. The hardest part was just beginning.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you after the service. I’m glad I could be there for you. Your family seems very sweet.

The same people who were so insistent that I should do something nice for myself when my dad was sick were now adamant that I should take all the time I needed before returning to reality. Unfortunately, none of them worked at Scroll, where there were no bonus days for bereavement, and the digital clock on GatheringPlace indicated that I’d exceeded my time-off allowance.

Among my 822 unread e-mails, I found one from Human Resources instructing me to file a trouble ticket for my unexplained absences or risk being docked pay. The trouble ticket drop-down menu didn’t include an option for “death in the family,” so I filed my explanation under “other/medical” and sent an e-mail to my team, saying I’d be
back in on Monday.

“Really?” said Nicholas. “Alice, so what if they dock your pay? You need to take care of yourself.”

“No, it’s fine. It’ll be good to get my head back in the game.”

•  •  •

My eyes had been excruciatingly sensitive to light, and my vision was blurry even with contact lenses, so I made an appointment with my eye doctor on the morning of my first day back. Dr. Mandelbaum lowered his equipment to my face and asked me to put my chin on a perch lined with tissue paper.

“Your ophthalmologist sister-in-law is correct: you do indeed have two scratched corneas, my friend. No contact lenses for a week, be sure to wear sunglasses when you’re in bright light, and I’ll give you a prescription for drops to apply three times daily.” He snapped off his rubber gloves and started scribbling on a little blue pad.

“Okay,” I said, already dreading appearing in public in my cat-eye glasses, which had been cool on Lisa Loeb circa
Reality Bites
. “Can you tell me how this might have happened?”

“Any recent trauma to the eyes?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Any significant stress you can think of?”

I sighed. “Well, my dad just died.”

Dr. Mandelbaum looked up sharply from his ablutions at the sink. “That’d do it.” He glanced quizzically at my chart. “He must have been quite young.”

“He had cancer years ago and it came back.”

“My word, that is terrible news. You take good care, okay?”

I promised I would, and then sat there alone in the dark, tears leaking from behind my burning eyes, as Dr. Mandelbaum’s voice boomed in the next exam room: “What seems to be the problem?”

•  •  •

When I arrived at my office, the team was gathered in the conference room for a meeting that wasn’t on my calendar. Matthew gestured to the seat next to him and touched my shoulder briefly when I sat down. “Glad to have you back. Lunch?”

“I’d love that.”

The TV monitor flickered to life and there were the Clevelanders, lined up at a table like judges at a spelling bee. Greg gave a mock salute and said, “Alice. Glad you’re up and running.”

“I’m glad, too.”

Except I wasn’t really up and running: my eyes were watering and stinging so badly, I could hardly keep them open. Reluctantly, miserably, I leaned down to my backpack, withdrew a pair of giant black sunglasses, and put them on over my regular glasses. Dr. Mandlebaum’s assistant had pressed them on me along with the receipt for my co-pay. (“Hon, I insist.”) I’d resolved on the spot to tough it out until the drops did the trick, but my eyes didn’t stand a chance in the fluorescence of the conference room.

When I looked up again, everyone was staring at me—including Genevieve, whose eyes suddenly looked bright, alert, and youthful. “Sorry. Minor eye injury.”

Greg’s voice filled the room even though he was halfway across the country. “So, Stevie Wonder, you want to get started?”

“Get started?” I glanced desperately at Matthew. What was this meeting about, anyway?

Genevieve snapped to attention, glancing nervously at the big screen. “Yes, Alice, we’re eager to hear your three most innovative ideas for how our lounges can exceed customer expectations.”

“My three most . . .”

“Innovative ideas, yes. Did you not get the ask? I sent it last week.”

Talk about baptism by fire. It was bad enough to be wearing two pairs of glasses. Now I was completely unprepared?

I considered winging it, but I was in no condition to improvise. Matthew’s hand found my knee under the table, a vote of confidence.

This was all too much. My eyes smarted.

“Alice? Would you prefer for us to begin with another team member?”

“I . . . I don’t have any ideas.”

“
None?
” Greg’s booming laugh vibrated the glass in our windows.

“I’m so sorry, Greg, Genevieve.” I pushed the glasses and sunglasses up on my nose. “I’m not prepared for this meeting. You should come back to me another day.”

Matthew leaned in to the diamond-shaped speaker at the center of the table and started talking. While everyone else’s attention shifted to him, Genevieve’s eyes remained on my face. Her face reddened as she stared at me with a look of confusion, then annoyance, then rage. The Mask. From behind my dark lenses, I stared right back.

•  •  •

Genevieve never mentioned the funeral in person; neither did I. After the disastrous meeting, she gave me a wide berth, but she did send me a terse e-mail that alluded to having a conversation about “deliverables” at our next 1:1.

When I walked by David’s desk, he said, “Welcome back, Alice. Feeling better?”

“Yes, thanks.” I paused. “Wait. You know my dad died, right?”

“Yes! Sorry, I just didn’t want to remind you. Did you get the Edible Arrangement?”

“We did—thanks.” Translation: it sat in the middle of the dining room table for three days and nobody touched it.

“Nom, nom, nom, right?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Translation: “Actually, not so much. Pineapple impaled on a toothpick doesn’t make anybody feel better, ever.”

Matthew requested a thorough debrief on the events of the previous week, down to the specifics of my dad’s final hours: “I mean, did you
know
it was the end?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Were you scared?”

“No.”

“Did he have any final wishes?”

“It never came up, Matthew.”

“Any regrets?”

“My dad? Actually, he said he wished he’d eaten more.”

Matthew took a big bite out of a jelly doughnut, sprinkling the front of his shirt with confectioner’s sugar. “A man after my own heart. So, what’s your mom going to do now?”

“I don’t know. She’s pretty exhausted from the past few months. She’ll probably take it easy, she has a lot of friends . . .”

“Will she sell the house?”