After You (2 page)

3

L
ucy’s funeral was held in an old stone church perched at the tip of a private garden in Notting Hill. We looked out of arched windows, a slivered view onto a beautiful bit of earth, green and blooming. While Lucy was eulogized, a little boy in overalls and miniature Wellington boots played outside with a red plastic shovel. He was too small to do any real damage; he just kept turning the same spoonful of dirt over and over, taking obvious delight each time, as if the smell of the ground and the deep brown of it was a continuous surprise.

Though the locale for the funeral couldn’t have been more picturesque—thank God for that little boy, who even managed to make me smile once or twice, and for my brother, Mikey, too, who sat next to me and held my hand—the sermon itself was soulless. We were all taken too off guard, Lucy’s loss too sudden, too indigestible, for us to rally to give her the glowing tribute she deserved and, knowing Lucy, would have relished. Only the vast quantities of food, hand-delivered to the house afterward by an overpriced local caterer, would have pleased her.

That was really the best you could do? Seriously? You know I wanted to go out with a bang
, I imagine her saying about the ceremony, equal parts annoyed and amused, shaking her head at me, like she couldn’t help being charmed by my inadequacy to the task.
I guess if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. But, yeah, A-plus on the lasagna
.

I think she would have enjoyed the elaborate hats the women wore—actual feathers and netting and brims a foot wide—and laughed at how they all brought us tarts and pies to pay their respects, the British food Lucy had always hated most; she despised anything buried under a thick layer of dough.

“You want to know the worst part?” she would say, during one of her typical culinary rants. “You know those mincemeat pies? The stuff inside? Not. Even. Meat. Only in this country could you get away with calling raisins and some other crap mixed together meat.”

So when Greg comes downstairs this morning and finds me nursing a cup of coffee in his kitchen, the first thing I ask him is whether he wants to keep all the pies. I want to honor Lucy’s memory in every way I can; throwing out baked goods is a start.

“Chuck them, I guess,” Greg says, looking at the dining table, which is full of dishes covered in Saran Wrap. “But save anything with rhubarb. Sophie loves the stuff. It’s because she thinks it’s cool that it can be toxic.”

Greg smiles a weak smile—
that Sophie—
and then clears his throat. Today he is suited up, jacketed-and-tied and even pocket-squared; posh and dignified, as always. I guess he’s going to work at his law firm, the one guaranteed death-free zone.

Greg was married to my best friend for almost a decade, and so, in some ways, I know more about him than I should: that his father was an alcoholic and he has deeply ambivalent feelings about his mother, that he thinks he’s a better tennis player than he is, that he makes a nasally whine during sex, that he can be bossy in and out of bed, that the Beatles’ “Two of Us” makes him teary, that he’s well endowed, that he owns this house outright and has enough money to retire tomorrow if he feels like it but that he will never feel like it, that he loved Lucy so much that when she went on business trips he would sleep with her bunched-up nightgown.

Standing in his kitchen now, inserting myself into his Monday morning, I realize that I’ve mostly known Greg as one of Lucy’s supporting characters. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a room with him alone until this week. Without Lucy, this man I’ve known for ten years suddenly feels like a stranger.

“Ellie, I can’t thank you enough for all of your help these last few days….” Greg says, his tone taking on that of a fellow general at war. Not cold but formal. He understands the social rules and he follows them. In other words, he’s British.

“Seriously, don’t thank me. I couldn’t—I mean, of course—” I stop myself, because if I keep talking, I will start crying, and I don’t want to cry in front of Greg again. I did enough of that at the funeral. If he can get out of bed, and take a shower, and put on a suit, if his eyes can remain puff-free, then I can stop my sniffling for the fifteen more minutes it takes for him to get out of the house.

“Right. So, I really appreciate you dropping off Sophie today. I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up some directions to the school. It’s a different route than she normally takes, but all things considered, I assumed it was best not to, you know, bring up unpleasant memories.” I don’t know what I believe about Lucy—if she is still here with us somehow—but if she’s watching right now, she’s cracking up.
All things considered? Unpleasant memories?
She may have hated the food, but she loved the understatedness of the Brits. She would joke that if the house were burning down, Greg would say,
Love, I think it’s getting a little toasty in here. Do you reckon we should call round to the fire brigade?

“You think she’s ready to go back? Have you noticed that she’s stopped talking altogether?”

“I know, but the headmistress said she should get right back into the swing of things. Routine, structure, and all that. Good for kids. She said that breaking from that will shake Sophie up even more.”

“Okay.” I’m second-in-command here, and that’s fine by me.

“Also, you needn’t worry about being safe on the walk. What happened. To Luce. That doesn’t actually happen here.” If the media coverage is anything to go by—I can still hear that constant stirring outside, the news vans still lined up, the reporters waiting for a quote—it’s clear that Notting Hill is not known for its murder rate. The sidewalks are filled with children going off to day schools, the girls in tartan kilts and straw hats, the boys in suits and ties. Seems impossible that what happened to Lucy happened to her here.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“So, the family liaison officer has cut us a deal with the reporters. They’ll film and take pictures of you both just till the end of the block, and then they promise to leave you alone. They’re supposed to block out Sophie’s face, but you’ll probably be in the paper. I’m sorry, Ellie. I know this is all a lot to ask.”

“Not a problem.”

The police have assigned us a “family liaison officer,” a burly, slow-moving cop named Nigel, who seems nice if ineffectual. He’s stopped by the house twice, mostly to make sure the reporters are behaving.

Call me FLO
, he’d said in his East End accent the first time we met.
You get it? F-L-O
. And then he actually laughed, as if that were a funny joke. Nigel is our point person for all things
accident-related
, including dealing with the media and the police. When he gives us updates, he uses words like
perp
and, my least favorite,
murder
. He hasn’t caught on to our euphemisms.

“And there’s a big merger going on at work, so I’ll probably be back a bit late tonight,” Greg says now.

He points to a schedule on a small wipe-it board in the corner that I hadn’t noticed before. Along the top, below the words
THE STAFFORD FAMILY
, the days of the week are printed in Lucy’s neat handwriting, and down the left side is a list of nanny shifts and planned activities for Sophie. Lucy and I talked at least once a day, e-mailed maybe four times that—strange that she never once mentioned three different nannies.

Seeing Lucy’s handwriting, though—the same scrawl that Mrs. Roberts used to yell at her for in elementary school, the same haphazard
Ls
that used to decorate the letters she would write me when I went to Girl Scout camp in the summers—makes me feel dizzy, and I close my eyes against the rush. She always called me L—not Elle, like Phillip calls me, elongating the sounds, but L. Short and abrupt.

“Ellie? Umm, I just wanted to let you know, I’d love for you to stay as long as you can. I mean, as long as you like. I—
we
, Sophie and I—could use the help. As it happens, Lucy had recently hired some new people, nannies, but I have to sack them all. It looks like they’ve been selling information to the tabloids.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. My address book has suddenly gone missing, some of our wedding photos, too, and all my old Eton friends are getting phone calls from reporters. It’s all just … bloody ridiculous.”

“I’m so sorry—”

He waves away my sympathy, and even his hand gestures are mannered. He looks like he is conducting a symphony. “Anyhow, I’m not sure how we would have survived any of this without you. It feels good to have at least one person I can trust.”

“I’m happy to stick around for as long as you need me,” I say.

“Thanks. Yes, okay, well, I guess I’m off.” Greg crosses through the dining room on his way to the front door. He stops, though, takes another long look at the table, wooden and sturdy, examining its vast array of covered treats, as if deciding what he wants to take for the road. But then his fist clenches, and my body prepares for the noise before my brain understands.

Greg smashes the pies, one by one, clean and careful. Punch, punch, punch. Like he’s playing an artful game of Whac-a-Mole.

“Right, then,” he says, just before walking out the door. He slaps his hands together to shake off the few crumbs that made it through the Saran Wrap. “Yeah. That’s better.”

After he’s gone, I notice there is a single pie left sitting on the table, whole and untouched. I don’t have to taste it to know it’s the one with the rhubarb.

4

I
wake Sophie by kissing her temple. She is warm with sleep and slow to move. I wish we could skip school and I could crawl into this mini-bed with her and let that warmness wash over me. I’ve been cold since I arrived in London. No, I’ve been cold since I heard about Lucy. After I got the call, Phillip wrapped me in a blanket to fight full body shakes. Somehow, I was on the floor, though I don’t remember my legs giving way.

“Okay, let’s get you ready for school,” I say now, with this new chipper tone I’ve adopted when I talk to Sophie. I wonder at what age cheerfulness can be misinterpreted as condescension.

I open the closet and see a neat world of little girls’ clothing. Each crisp item on a small hanger, grouped by category. T-shirts with other T-shirts, long-sleeved kept separate from short-sleeved. The colors are bright and childlike, a rainbow of soft pastels. When did Lucy get so organized? When we were roommates for those two requisite postcollegiate years in New York—two years of beery nights on Avenue C in Alphabet City—she never got off the couch without leaving something behind: a single sock, a crusty wineglass, sometimes even a pair of underwear. Maybe having kids really does change a person.

I remember Lucy saying after Sophie was born that all the clichés existed for a reason, that once you have a child
everything
is different.

“You’ll understand one day, L. I think until you have one of your own, you won’t really get it,” she had said, doing that thing she did every once in a while that made me feel like she got a secret joy from being one step ahead.

I pick out a yellow hooded sweatshirt for Sophie, since I figure it is probably raining, and a pair of Levi’s that are no longer than the distance from my wrists to my shoulders. Sophie, now bespectacled, reaches out for the clothes in my hands and hangs them back up in the closet, in the spots from which they came. I brace myself for a fit, remembering that picking out what to wear is notorious for setting children off. Today, of all days, Sophie can wear whatever she wants. I couldn’t care less if she matches.

She opens a drawer in the dresser next to the closet and takes out a navy-blue wool V-neck sweater and tights. From the closet she takes a stiff-collared light-blue shirt, a plaid skirt, and Mary Janes.

“Shit! Your uniform—I forgot.” Sophie looks at me, and for the first time since I have been here I see a small smile. A slight pursing of her lips, a brightening of her eyes. It’s amazing how this kid can talk without saying a single word out loud:
Hee-hee, you just said shit
.

“You didn’t hear that.” And then I realize I have the power to make her smile. “Fuck, I really have to learn to stop cursing.”

I get a full-out laugh this time. It sounds exactly like a normal kid’s laugh, and it feels so good to hear that I don’t care that I’ve resorted to bad jokes and cheap tactics. Sophie steps into her uniform and stays still while I brush her hair into reasonable submission and a tight ponytail.

“Dude, you look so cute in your uniform. I love this skirt. Do you think they make it in my size?” I realize I am pandering here—I don’t think I’ve ever said
dude
before in my life, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in plaid—but there it is. Sophie is engaging with me, and according to my mother that’s the most important thing. She may not be using actual words; nonetheless, she is alert and cooperating.

“I’m not sure about the tights, though. They look itchy. Are they itchy?” Sophie doesn’t shake her head yes or no, she just pulls them up under her skirt, redistributing the material systematically from her ankles to her nonexistent waist. I could learn a thing or two from this kid. When I wear tights, they always sag in the knees.

After I offer her breakfast four times—sugar cereal and oatmeal, even some rhubarb pie—and she still refuses to eat, we set off for school. I’ve already studied and memorized our route; still, Greg’s map hides in my purse, just in case. Without stopping, we step around the garish memorial that has popped up outside the front door: carnations wrapped in plastic, candles, children’s drawings, notes of condolence, all from people who have read about what happened. People who have never even met Lucy.

I handle the umbrella and angle it so it envelops both of us, while Sophie drags a pink backpack with wheels down the wet sidewalk. The bag is comically big for her and stuffed to capacity with books for recess. She keeps it from tipping with an inhuman amount of concentration. I’ve made her a bag lunch: peanut butter and jelly, an apple, and a granola bar. I also slip her a couple of pounds in case she wants to buy lunch instead, though I don’t know if kids can do that at The Pembridge Place School. I couldn’t even tell you what grade she is in, because they do things differently here. I don’t even think it’s called a grade, as a matter of fact.
A form
, maybe?

Lucy got such a kick out of the fact that she, she of Cambridge, Mass., who in high school wore
a Just Say No
T-shirt ironically and still listened to our old Grateful Dead bootlegs, made this little British child, who wears a fussy uniform and calls her Mummy.

I keep Sophie close as we pass the news vans lining the street, the metallic monsters a sharp contrast to the connected houses painted in elementary pastels, soft and bright. The Staffords’ house is baby blue, its neighbors pale pink on the left, yellow on the right. All the color seems out of place here, naive in the face of the constant gloom, or the surrounding city, much of it constructed out of postwar ruins with brick and cement. Muted, practical materials, devoid of color. But this is Notting Hill, after all, money and charm and faux-bohemia all wrapped up together into a foggy package; a community defined, at least in part, by a Hollywood interpretation of it, rising to the occasion with skyrocketing real estate prices and pushing its soul, the real bohemia, out of its private gardens and into its shady edges.

The media is obsessed with our tragedy; Lucy was white, attractive, and wealthy. A journalist too. One of their own kind. The randomness of the crime, the subtext that
it could happen to anyone at any time
, the ability to play on the British obsession with class and money, make for cheap and easy copy. The reporters are respectful, for the most part, if you ignore the fact that they’ve turned the block into a street fair and ring the doorbell at regular intervals. I have not once turned on the television, as I have no interest in seeing Lucy’s life reduced to a thirty-second segment or this new disheveled version of myself whispering a hoarse, “Please, no comment,” as I pass the filming hit men.

Yesterday, when I ran around the block to pick up some orange juice—really just to get out of the house—one reporter kept asking, “But who are you?” as if he took personal offense at my part in this family drama in which I have no reportable role. He is outside again, trying to get my attention, despite the fact that I have Sophie as a shield. He’s handsome in an artsy way, with a shiny flop of brown hair, a fitted sports coat, and a foreign accent. French, I think. His speech is overly polite, perhaps to make up for the fact that his presence is not. Unlike the others, he doesn’t have a notebook or a pen or a cameraman backing him up.

“May I ask you a question? Please? Off the record, of course,” he says to me, though he is looking at Sophie. Examining this portrait of grief. “Who are you? What is your relation?”

I don’t answer him; suppress my desire to scream back, to rip into him, tear someone down. I pretend like I can’t hear or see or speak. Borrow Sophie’s tactics.

“Almost there,” I whisper.

When we turn the corner, only about twenty yards from the front door, after less than a minute of flashing lights and a moving mob, we are freed from cameras and inquiring minds. In addition to our FLO, Greg’s law firm has been doing some threatening for us; the newspapers know they will risk an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit if they follow us to Sophie’s school.

To release the tension, I do what I do best: I vomit a constant stream of nervous babble onto Sophie.

“You see that mailbox? You see how it’s red? At home, ours are all blue. And our money is called dollars, not pounds. I’ll give you some dollars to keep if you want. So you can see what they look like. And where I live, the houses aren’t attached to one another like they are here. But you already know all this. Remember when you came last year for the Fourth of July? That was fun. I swear you seem so much more grown-up now. And you came to visit the year before that, too, and the year before that, almost every year since you were born, come to think of it.”

Just a few weeks ago, Lucy had canceled our annual tradition with vague excuses, something about work being too busy. I told her I understood, that it wasn’t a big deal, that we’d do it some other time soon. Meaningless platitudes to cover up my tangible disappointment. I had been looking forward to the long weekend for months, an imagined reward at the end of a particularly tedious spring semester, painful enough that I was wondering if it was time to move on from teaching. None of my future MBAs would miss me and my glossy PowerPoint presentations about the hypothetical Acme company, its ridiculous widgets. The Fourth had almost already happened in my head, in the expectant part of my consciousness, where the script gets prewritten in anticipation: Lucy and I sitting on the back porch with a couple of glasses of wine, discussing how different adult life had turned out to be from how we had fantasized as kids, and watching Sophie and Phillip and maybe Greg, if he was able to get some time off from work, try to catch fireflies with tennis-ball cans on the lawn. We were supposed to laugh like we used to when we were in our twenties, free and loud and uninhibited. We were going to time-travel back to when our world was as large and as small as a stolen conversation over a couple of Bud Lights, when the big questions—love, work, who we were going to be one day—were still unanswered and theoretical. Back to before I started living this new life, this one where I know how to order a decent bottle of wine and lecture on topics that don’t interest me, the one where I come home to a too-quiet house and the mocking plastic playground in the backyard that Phillip and I are too paralyzed to take down. Disassembling it is a statement neither of us has the courage to make.

Sophie isn’t listening to my chatter. She is steadying her backpack and watching her feet, careful not to dip her Mary Janes into the growing number of puddles.

“Let’s turn here,” I say, as casual as my voice will allow. My map says turn, but Sophie keeps going straight. She stops and shakes her head. Points down the fated shortcut, down the mews, the quaint alleyway that she used to walk with her mother, every single day, until the meth-head stopped all that.

“I know, honey,” I say, as if she actually said something out loud. “I know that’s the way you usually go, but we’re going to go a different way today. Okay? I think it’s … it’s probably better we go this way.”

Sophie looks at me with Lucy’s brown eyes. They are heavily lashed and borderline dopey behind her plastic glasses. Pleading and stubborn. I am not sure what to do. I can’t take her this way, past the accident spot. Sophie is no longer walking, and when I try to tug her hand, I am surprised by her sudden weight. She has made her body heavy in that way that dogs do, so they can’t be dragged in the wrong direction.

“Come on, Soph. Your dad wants you to go this way.” I know I’ve said the wrong thing now, though, the exact wrong thing, because Sophie folds over, drops her pink backpack, and lets its plastic handle splash to the ground. Her head is eye level with her knees, and her arms wrap around her stomach.

And then she does something I have never seen a child do before, something a child should not know how to do, something I hope never to see or hear again.

Sophie keens.

* * *

She hits a clean note of grief, a wail, a soul-piercing eruption of sound. Whatever she may have witnessed, Sophie is only eight years old. There are limits to human endurance.

I want to scoop her up and run off until we are in a place where it might hurt a little less. But this is impossible, since she’s crumbled into an angular form in her standing fetal position—elbows, shoulders, top of her head jut out, prickly and unyielding. I can only stand here and wrap my arms around her.

After a few moments, Sophie straightens up, reaches for the plastic handle of her backpack, wipes her eyes with her sleeves. She has squeezed herself dry. I swallow the tears I still have to spare.

A half nod tells me she is ready. Back to the task at hand. Let’s make that left.

A couple of blocks later, we are in front of The Pembridge Place School and kids are spilling out of cars, and parents and nannies and volunteer traffic wardens in fluorescent vests are corralling them through the front doors. Lots of running, and yelling about not running, and a few
don’t forget your backpack!
s are cried with urgency, as if any of this is important.

Sophie gives me a quick hug, which I return, my desperation apparent in the way I grasp her bony shoulders for too long and the way she wiggles out of my hands. Then she runs into the school, brave and stiff, pretending she’s just like all the other kids. An act she will have to keep up until four o’clock.