After I'm Gone (23 page)

“Mainly you. Yes, Linda and you knew Daddy, have real memories of him, and enjoyed the princess phase, whereas I only knew the garret part. Lord, how I hated that movie.”

Rachel smiled at the reference to Sara Crewe in
The Little Princess,
the Shirley Temple film that Great-Aunt Harriet had thoughtlessly insisted they watch on the old
Picture for a Sunday Afternoon,
saying all children loved Shirley Temple. Aunt Harriet really was a bitch.

“But you’re good, Rachel,” Michelle continued. “And you’re Mother’s favorite.”

“Oh, no. Mama doesn’t have favorites.”

“Of course she does. I’m not saying that she doesn’t love each of us, and each in a special way. And she’s always been good about loving us as we are, not making comparisons. But you’re the family star. The good grades, the
niceness
. Wanting to fix everything and everyone. Rachel—would you wait here for me? I’ll be right back.”

It was such a strange request that Rachel couldn’t deny it. But “right back” was a longish span of time, given the size of the house and Michelle’s slowed gait. By the time she returned, Rachel had gone through all the cabinets, if only to prove she wasn’t the nice one. The contents were uninteresting, although she longed to know what Michelle paid for her face creams, a brand completely unfamiliar to Rachel.

Michelle had a glass of champagne in her hand and a cloth napkin full of cookies.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Rachel said with a wave.

“It’s for me,” Michelle said. “The baby’s cooked, after all, one glass won’t hurt, but Hamish would freak. You can have a cookie, though.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said wryly.

“Everyone tells you everything, don’t they?”

“Not really.”

“Mama does. And Linda. Everyone confides in you.”

“I’m a good listener, I guess.”

“You scared me. About the evil eye, Rachel. That was a terrible thing to say.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Said formally, in a new tone. The old Michelle had neither given nor accepted apologies. “It’s not your fault. I’m scared because—I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve any of this.” She gestured, careful not to spill a drop of the outlaw champagne.

“Of course you deserve to be happy, Michelle. You’ve never really been.”

“I thought I was. Rachel—I had an affair. With a married man. For a while. I broke it off, about three months before I met Hamish, if you can believe it, but it was a horrible thing to do.”

“I know.”

“You know? How could you know? Do others know? Who it was, I mean? You don’t know that, do you? Because he was—well, he was well known. By Baltimore standards.”

“No, no—I didn’t know who. And I wasn’t sure he was married. But I knew you were having an affair with someone. You were secretive, you claimed not to be dating at all. You haven’t been without a boyfriend since you were twelve. I figured it was someone you couldn’t talk about.”

“Did
you
talk about it? With Mother or Linda?”

“Linda. Not Mother.”

“And what did Linda say?”

“She said you had to be free to make your own mistakes.”

“Boy, was I. The thing is, Rachel, that’s not the only thing. Remember Adam Gelman’s wedding?”

“Sure.” Rachel was remembering something else, how Michelle had disappeared that night. Was her lover there then? Who could it have been? Oh, Lord, what if she had carried on an affair with Adam? Younger than her by a bit, but he had had a crush on Michelle most of his life. Or maybe Alec, but why be secretive about Alec?

“My lover”—Michelle made a face—“what an icky word. It makes it sound so, I don’t know, grand and sordid at the same time. And it was really just sordid. Awful. But he gave me gifts.”

“The coat,” Rachel said. “The watch.”

“And the car, the one I said was part of my package at that tech company. It was a gift, not a lease.”

“Wow.” Rachel wasn’t sure what such a car cost, but she thought it was probably as much as she made some years.

“So, at the wedding, this friend of Adam’s tried to ask me out and I turned him down. I wasn’t very nice about it, but I was in a bad mood. I was upset, about the relationship I was in; I didn’t care about anyone else’s feelings.”

Rachel couldn’t help thinking:
You never cared about anyone else’s feelings, not then.

“So I was kind of rude to him. Anyway, it turned out that he was an IRS agent. And he opened a file on me.”

“That
can’t
be legal.”

“Doesn’t matter. He did some research—he found out my salary, found out what things cost. The coat, the car, the watch. He called me and said he believed that there was money, hidden money, from Daddy and he was going to investigate Mama.”

“He wouldn’t have found anything.” Rachel was sure of that, at least.

“No, but he said he would make sure it leaked to the newspapers, that he knew how to do that without leaving a trace. He made me come see him.”

“Did you go?”

“Yes, but with Bert Gelman. And—well, he had to know. Bert, I mean. About the lover. Because it turns out that the man I was seeing—some of the things he did were illegal. He should have paid a gift tax on some of the presents he gave me. But there was no way I was going to tell the IRS who he was, no matter how much they threatened me.”

“So what happened?”

“They dropped it, quite abruptly. Bert turned it around on the guy, filed a complaint that he was using his office for a private vendetta, and the guy got reassigned. Bert told me it wasn’t hard to show there was no money, not from Papa. Barry Speers.”

“What?”

“That was the guy’s name. I hope he got fired. But it’s out there, Rachel. Still. It’s like this big cloud, or this thing that’s going to fall on me. I can’t bear for Hamish to know, even though it was before I met him. I’m so ashamed. I’m ashamed in a way I wasn’t when it was going on, and I was plenty ashamed then.”

“Bert didn’t tell Mama any of this, did he?”

“No. He was my lawyer. He can’t tell. I made sure of that.”

“Mama’s pretty sophisticated in her way, Michelle. She would be okay with it, now that we know the story has a happy ending.”

“Does it?”

“It does,” she said, putting her hand on her sister’s stomach. “Everything will be fine, Michelle.”

To her amazement, Michelle burst into tears. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it. If you knew, Rachel—”

“But I do know, Michelle. You just told me. It will be okay.”

And it would be, Rachel thought, putting her arms around her sobbing sister. Everything always worked out for Michelle. No, not
everything
. She had never known their father, not really, and it must have been hard, growing up in that household, to be indentured into the family practice of Keeping Up Appearances. It was funny how things worked out. Linda had become a professional spinner of stories. Rachel had become almost pathologically honest, with one vivid exception. And now Michelle was Bambi Junior, finding a man who promised her the world. Maybe this one could deliver it.

Please,
Rachel prayed to the god she didn’t believe in.
Please let Michelle have her happy ending
. And she felt better about herself. Bad fairies want to do the right thing. It’s just so hard sometimes.

Hamish Macalister III
was born four weeks later. When the nurse came out, she handed Rachel a piece of paper with the exact time, 20:02, the numeric rendering of the date, 6-12-6, and his weight, 8-13. “For the lottery,” she explained. “A lot of people like to play the time, date, and weight.”

Rachel thought that was hilarious, someone instructing Felix Brewer’s daughter to play the lottery. Yet the next day she went to a Royal Farms and placed several straight bets: 2002, 6126, 813.
This is what my father did,
she thought, standing in line, waiting for her chance to play, as uncertain and tongue-tied as she might have been ordering a meal in a foreign country.
How do I word this? What is the custom? Am I holding everyone else up?
At the last minute, she added a Powerball ticket and found she enjoyed fantasizing about that big jackpot for a few days. Had her father sold people joy, after all? Was there something noble about the way he made his money? Because while it was disappointing not to win, it wasn’t unexpected, and the daydreams had been lovely, worth a few dollars. Where else could you buy a dream for two dollars?

And perhaps it was the haze of her lottery dream that carried her forward, because the next time she visited her new nephew, she asked Hamish Junior for a loan, so she and Joshua could adopt a child from China. It was not the first time that Rachel had asked someone for money. But she was keenly aware that it was the first time she had asked for herself.

The agency told
them it would be eighteen months. It was more than five years before they brought home Tatiana, a twenty-month-old girl who required two cleft palate surgeries. On an unseasonably cold March day in 2012, the Brewer family gathered in the hospital to keep Rachel and Joshua company during the second, simpler surgery—Bambi, Michelle, Linda, Hamish, although not Henry, who couldn’t get the day off. Linda’s girls were in school, but Noah, now twenty-five, skipped work, a testament to all those Friday night suppers, Linda’s insistence that family was primary. Michelle and Hamish’s two children were there, too; Helena had followed Hamish III by less than three years.

The Brewers took over the waiting room, but it was such a happy scene, compared to much of what happens in hospital waiting rooms, and they were such gracious, lovely people that the hospital staff indulged them, even Michelle’s constant use of her cell phone, which wasn’t officially permitted. (She said she needed it so Helena could play Monkey Preschool Lunchbox, although Helena was happy moving beads along the wire paths of a children’s toy.) It seemed natural when Bert arrived, old family friend that he was, still natural when he took Bambi aside for a hushed conversation. Bert had been taking Bambi aside for hushed conversations as long as her daughters could remember.

It was unnatural, though, when Bambi came back to them, picked up her purse, and said: “I must be going.”

Rachel couldn’t leave that be. “Is something wrong? Has Nana Ida—” The old woman was still alive at one hundred one, improbably. Or quite probably, given her tendency to hold on to anything she had, whether it was money or years. She likely had her own shoeboxes of condiments.

“No. I mean—it’s not for you to worry about.”

“
Mother
.” Where once only Linda and Rachel would have spoken in unison, now Michelle added her voice. Marriage, motherhood—she was part of the club.

“Well, it’s the strangest thing. But it seems that the police want to talk to me.”

“What?” But only Linda and Michelle asked this question.

“It’s nothing,” Bert said. “They’re just spinning their wheels. But if we go now, on our own, it will be over sooner and we can put it behind us.”

“
What?
” Linda and Michelle repeated. Rachel tried to make eye contact with her mother, but she wouldn’t look at her.

“Oh, don’t be so
obscure,
Bert,” Bambi said. “Girls, it looks as if I might be arrested.”

“For what?” Linda asked.

“The death of Julie Saxony.”

“It’s bullshit,” Bert said quickly. “She’s not going to be arrested. They want to ask her a few questions. It won’t take long at all.”

“Oh, no. It shouldn’t take long at all because I’m going to confess. Does Tubby still write bonds, Bert, or is he quite out of the business?”

“Mama.” Rachel wrapped her arms around Bambi. It was less a hug than an attempt to hold her in place. Bambi gently removed one arm, then the other, much as she might have peeled a clinging toddler from her. She used to do just that when Linda and Rachel were very young, and Bambi and Felix headed out to the club, over the girls’ protests. Their father was home so rarely in the evenings, it was a double blow to watch him come home and head out again, their mother at his side. They would wrap themselves around his legs and their mother would peel them off, one arm, one leg at a time, laughing all the while.

No one was laughing now.

“Tatiana will be fine, Rachel. I’ll be fine. I promise you that everything’s going to be okay.”

And with that, she was gone.

Tell
Me

July 3, 1986

S
aks. Why had she said Saks? She was flustered, too flustered to lie. “I’m going to Saks,” she told Chet.
Why?
he had asked. In a mild, curious way, but they were fully booked for the holiday weekend and they were doing dinners for the guests, testing out Chet’s recipes.

“To buy bras,” she blurted out.
Why? Why did she say bras?
Perhaps she thought the very word, “
bra
,” would keep him from following up. But Chet was not a man who was easily embarrassed.

“Is this
urgent
?” Teasing her. “You’re dressed to impress, I see.”

“It’s just that the ones I have are all too big.”

“Yes,” he said gravely. “
That
is a problem.” And then he let it go, although he asked her to make a stop at the restaurant-supply place and she agreed, because what else could she say? They had a teasing rhythm, not quite brother-sister, more like a boy who has a crush on an older girl but knows it won’t go anywhere. It had developed very quickly, a by-product of their mutual animosity toward Bambi Brewer, who, Chet reported, had nickel-and-dimed the catering company to death over costs for Michelle’s bat mitzvah. Julie, in return, regaled Chet with stories about Bambi’s extravagances during the marriage. Not that Felix had ever told her such stories, but he told Tubby, who told Susie.

Michelle
. Julie still remembered the shock of her birth thirteen years ago. Julie had been Felix’s girl for a little more than a year, and while she assumed he still had sex with his wife, it had never occurred to her that they would have more children. Then, one day, she had come into the office and there they were, the three amigos, puffing on cigars, drinks in hand, and when Julie had asked what was up, they had shared a look among themselves before Felix said: “And, lo, the Lord has delivered unto me another girl. What are the odds? Well, I’ll tell you. They were one in two, even after having two girls. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. The odds, each time, are one in two, while the odds of getting the same result three times in a row are one in eight. Longer, but not improbable.”

That had been a shock. Almost as shocking as the first time she had seen Bambi. She had expected her to be attractive, but not
that
attractive. She was older than Julie, of course. But not as old as Julie would have liked. And so very beautiful. Possibly more beautiful than Julie, an assessment that she was not in the custom of making. Julie had the better figure, though. No contest there.

Then. She had the better figure
then
. Would Felix mind that she was skinny now? Chet had been joking about the bras, but it was a problem. Felix remembered a different body. The weight loss had taken a toll on her face, too. Susie thought it was hilarious that Julie had this hot-shit chef and barely ate anything all day. But food tasted like dust in her mouth.

For ten years, Julie had sleepwalked through her days, yet not slept at all at night. He had promised they would be together, but he didn’t say when. She had filled the waking hours—what the rest of the world believed to be waking hours, all her hours were waking ones—with work. First the coffee shop. Walking up and down, back and forth, walking, walking. Clean the counter. Check the inventory. Write the schedule. And as her savings grew, she looked for something else, a business even more demanding. Innkeeper. If she had to take care of others, she wouldn’t have time to think about herself. So she bought the house on the water in Havre de Grace and spent her days, most of them, making breakfasts, changing linens, taking calls, overseeing her bookings. And when that became too automatic, she decided to open the restaurant, knowing there was a spectacular failure rate, but that was part of the lure. She wanted to succeed. With everything she did, she imagined Felix’s approval and admiration. She was as good at business as he had been.
She
wasn’t extravagant. She worked.

And still she mourned, stuck in time, forever trapped in her sister’s truck as Felix walked across the tarmac to the little plane that took him away. She couldn’t believe he didn’t want her to come with him. Bert had thought he would. Bert had made the fantasy possible, getting her a passport so quickly. She had assumed he knew something. But, in the end, Bert had been as in the dark about Felix as everyone else.

Everyone else. Including Bambi.

But now he had sent for her. Ten years later, but he had sent for her and she was still young. Younger than Bambi had been when he left her, and if Julie looked a little harder, a little worse for wear—that would change. She would sit in the sun with him, although perhaps in a hat, and eat whatever they ate there, fish and fruit.

I won. He loves me, he loves me, he sent for me. Not you. Me.

She was honest enough to concede that Bambi could not go, given that Michelle was only thirteen. Plus, she was a grandmother. The oldest girl had to have given birth by now, given her size at the bat mitzvah. Still—Julie had won. He had chosen her.

She wanted Bambi to know. That was mean of her, and Julie was not, by nature, a mean person. But she was meaner than she used to be, hardened by ten years of living with a heart that was not so much broken as shredded.

She was almost to the exit for Saks, near Reisterstown Road, an exit she knew well, for it led to Felix’s house, not that she had ever been inside it. How many times had she driven past the house in Sudbrook Park? It had started early in the relationship with Felix, when she still lived with Andrea. She would sneak out in the middle of the night, get in the VW bus despite not having a license. Just seeing the house had stoked her fury—and her longing. It seemed like a castle to her, its circular driveway a moat. A castle for the queen and the two princesses, then three. Bambi had to share Felix with Julie, but no one could get between Felix and his daughters. It was the daughters that had kept her from him.

Daughters
. At least Julie’s surveillance had been respectful, undetectable. When Felix’s daughter showed up at the inn last week, she had broken the rules in this game. Calling her a thief, a whore. As if Julie had two hundred thousand dollars, just sitting around. Why had Bambi told her daughters such outrageous lies? Worse, what if Felix heard these stories? She couldn’t bear the idea that he would think her so low, so craven. Her only thought was to make sure that Felix didn’t believe these stories.

And he didn’t. The call had come at last. It’s time. Time to disappear as he had, traveling light. Had Chet noticed her absurdly large purse? She would pick up a shift and a bathing suit at the mall, if there was time, but right now all she had was a cosmetic bag, the usual things. It had been stressed to her that she must disappear as if nothing had been planned. No trail, she had been warned. Some cash is okay, but it can’t appear that you’ve made any arrangements. People have to believe you’re dead.

She had thought:
No, I was dead. Now I’m going to be alive again.

She had driven swiftly, foot pressed so hard against the accelerator that she had averaged seventy, seventy-five miles an hour. She was more than forty-five minutes early and she knew she mustn’t linger at the meeting spot, draw any attention to herself. She could run her errands, but that wouldn’t take fifteen minutes. Maybe buy a bathing suit, although she didn’t want to see her thin, pale self in a three-way mirror, didn’t want to think how sad Felix would be to see this wisp that used to be Juliet Romeo. Felix would probably make a joke about it, plying her with piña coladas and—she tried to make the dream specific. Conch? Shrimp?

She would drive by the house one more time, say good-bye to it for Felix, say good-bye to the space it had taken up in her head, all these years. The brick inn by the water was a rambling version of this very house, not that anyone had ever noticed. Maybe she would even stop this time, park in the circular driveway, march up the walk and knock on the door, bold as you please, and announce:
He chose me, Bambi. Me!