Good Mourning (3 page)

I gave Jen a squeeze and told her to look around. There were wet eyes here and there, but for the most part, people were talking, hugging, even dancing. “Dad would have been proud of you,” Max said as the last of the visitors filed out of the room. I waited for his typical sarcasm to follow, but it never did.

By the time I got back to the apartment, most of the people who had come to grieve my father were standing in the grand foyer, sipping Lillet and Macallan 18 and pillaging a table topped with so much food, you would have thought we were holding a charity gala. Everyone wanted to hug me. Some of the hugs were warm and comforting, others were tense and awkward. Even though the party was going strong, I was starting to feel the fatigue of the previous few days weighing down on me. I retreated to the formal living room—one of the places in the house I never typically hung out—and hoped nobody would notice.

“Lizzie, why are you crying?” asked Elaine. She had graced us all with her presence, able to leave her hectic schedule of bridge tournaments and dinners on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. I couldn't believe it; she legitimately looked puzzled.

“I'm just tired,” I said, barely able to look at her. We'd never been close, and I was always fine with that. But I'd
never actually hated her until now. She was wearing an all-white pantsuit that matched her hair. You'd have thought she was going to a summer party in the Hamptons instead of, oh, I don't know . . .
her son's funeral
.

Elaine shrugged, and after telling me about all the fabulous people she got to catch up with at Dad's service, she finally left me alone. The only people I wanted near me were Gaby and my friend Ben, who had grown up in the same building as me. Ben loved my dad and was especially a fan of his blueberry pancakes. Even when we were teenagers, Ben would stop by in the morning before school just to have breakfast with Dad and me. “Mr. Meyer,” he would say, plopping his backpack on one of the dining room chairs and taking a seat without having to be asked, “pass the syrup!”

When eleven o'clock came around, Gaby pulled me off the couch. “It's safe, mostly everybody has left,” she said. I hadn't eaten real food in several days, and I could see Ben was already making a plate for me. A few stragglers—mostly my mom's friends who were too nervous to leave her side—came over just as I was about to attempt a bite. “Elizabeth! Oh! You did such a wonderful job,” said Mrs. Mullen, a woman my mom had met at Christie's auction house. “I want you to plan my funeral! But, you know, not for a long time. Ha!” I slapped on a fake smile and nodded. It was the only reaction I had left.

Finally, the apartment was empty. Max had gone out with a group of friends—his method of grieving was to sur
round himself with people and talk about anything except
the
thing. The distraction technique. Mom busied herself with paperwork. She had stacks of hospital bills to deal with, but even more, she had all of Dad's investments. On her side of the family, stock portfolios looked after by private wealth managers did not exist. “How am I going to figure this out?” I heard her mutter from the other end of the dining table, her head resting on her left hand, and Dad's heavy, monogrammed silver Montblanc pen in her right. She looked so small sitting there alone at a table that sat sixteen. I should have comforted her, but I didn't. I'd always had an easy relationship with Dad, but with Mom, things were more complicated. Now she was all I had left, and even though it sounds unfair, part of me resented her for it. She had willingly dedicated her whole life to caring for my father when he needed it the most, but he was dead. It wasn't rational, but I felt that
she
had failed.
She
had let him die. She had promised things would be okay, and they weren't.

Finally alone in my bedroom, I kicked off my Jimmy Choos, unzipped my dress and let it fall to the floor, and threw on a massive sweatshirt. It felt good to wipe off the waterproof mascara and unclip my pearl necklace. I didn't have to put on a face anymore. I crawled into bed and pulled the comforter up to my chest. The room was totally dark, except for the city streetlights glowing through the curtains. There was one thing I had kept on: Dad's Rolex. I looked
down at the red face and felt a wave of panic rush from my stomach to my chest and back again.

“Dad,” I whispered, practically choking on the hurt. “What am I supposed to do now?” I lay there, numb, for what could have been minutes or hours. My only comfort was knowing I had thrown my father the best send-off I ­possibly could. Mulling that over, I somehow finally,
finally
drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, I had the craziest idea.

TWO

Getting My Feet Wet

I
s Tony here?” I asked, looking at my watch. It was ten a.m. on a Tuesday—almost a month after Dad's funeral—­and while I normally would have been just waking up from a night of dancing at Marquee (at the time, the hottest club in the city), I instead found myself standing in the foyer of Crawford, with Maggie tied up outside, finally ready to go through with my crazy plan.

The receptionist at the front desk barely raised her head to look at me. “Name?” she asked.

“Oh, he's not expecting me,” I said. “I was just hoping I could talk to him. About a job.”

She finally looked up and raised her eyebrows. “You wanna work here?”

I nodded. “I'm just hoping I can speak with him. I was
here last month, for my father's funeral. Brett Meyer? I'm not sure we met, though. My name's Liz.”

The woman muttered something and picked up the phone. She looked like she was in her midthirties, with long dark hair and fake pink nails. She whispered something into the phone and then turned to the receptionist next to her. I had no idea what they were saying because they were speaking Spanish, but apparently it was hilarious.

“Was that Tony?” I asked. I was starting to feel self-­conscious. I'd only studied French and Latin.

“What? Oh. Yeah. He's coming. You can wait over there,” she said.

I awkwardly strolled around the lobby looking at a painting of Grandpa Crawford, who founded the funeral home decades earlier and ushered his son into the family business. I would later learn this was the norm. Working in death isn't something most people choose—it kind of chooses them.

“Liz, what can I do for you?” said Tony, walking up ­behind me.

I felt the stares of both receptionists and pulled my Hermès bag behind me. “Maybe we can talk in your office?”

I plopped myself down in the same leather chair where I had laid out the plans for Dad's funeral. “I'm wondering if you have any job openings,” I said. No sense in beating around the bush.

Tony scratched his head, like he didn't quite understand.

“I have lots of experience planning events—mostly charity fund-raisers and that sort of thing for friends, although I know a lot of people in the restaurant and nightclub businesses, too. I used those skills to help plan my father's funeral, so I'm thinking . . . I could keep doing that?”

“You don't want to work here,” he said, looking at his watch and letting out a sigh. “Why would a girl like you want to work at a funeral home?”

“I know your clientele,” I said. “I know them better than anyone here, I bet.”

Tony shuffled a stack of papers in front of him. Dead ­silence.

“The only opening I have is for a secretary,” he said. “But you'd have to join our union, and it only pays like thirty grand a year.” He shrugged. “That's it. I'm telling you, you don't want—”

“I'll take it!” I said, smiling. I wasn't sure why, but something about being back at Crawford felt right. Plus, I figured if I got bored, I could always quit and go intern or go back to event planning. (Although the latter kind of made me want to vomit; it seemed like no matter what party I was asked to plan, the next question was always, “And can you get your famous friends to come?”) This was like event planning, but I didn't have to make the guest list, and the guest of honor would never be a pain in the ass.

A few minutes later, I was at the front desk filling out ­paperwork as quickly as possible—mostly union stuff, and
copies of my photo ID. “Well, that was easy!” I said to the receptionist, who looked barely awake. “Looks like we'll be working together,” I continued, convinced that she'd warm up to me, as people usually did.
She must have had a rough morning. Shame
, I thought. “Uh-huh,” she said, taking the paperwork from me and tossing it in a pile next to the phone. Maggie was less than thrilled when I got back to the sidewalk, but she was easily appeased once I stopped at a nearby bakery to get her an organic dog cookie—her favorite. I bought myself a celebratory Linzer cookie as well. I hadn't expected to be offered a job on the spot, although things like that had a way of working out for me. “Maggie, isn't this exciting?” I said as we both bit into our cookies. “I'm going to plan fabulous funerals!”

I invited Max and Gaby over for dinner that night to tell them the news. Max said I would last two weeks, tops, but to my surprise, he didn't try to talk me out of it. Gaby was more worried about whether or not my job would interfere with our plans to go to London for a friend's birthday bash the following weekend. I shrugged.

“I don't have my schedule yet, but it's possible.”

“Well, you could always quit, I guess.”

“I haven't even started,” I said, mixing a Ketel One and club soda. “Plus I'm not going to quit a job to go to a party, that's insane.”

“You can't miss it! It's going to be the party
of the year
. I will seriously freak out if you don't come with.”

Max pointed to my drink. “You better make that a double before you call Mom to tell her about your glamorous gig as a death secretary,” he said. “Or actually, maybe spare us from the scene and just tell her in person tomorrow.”

I hadn't spoken to Mom in two days, and not by accident. Max was always her favorite—she loved talking to her friends about her son, “the lawyer.” He fit into her mold of what someone raised on the Upper East Side
should
be; he went to an elite grade school and the right college, got into a top law school, and chose a respectable career. Straight and narrow. I, on the other hand, had defied her from the day I could dress myself. First it was jeans instead of a smock dress, and then the stakes grew. By the time I was eighteen, I was rebelling on a higher level. I went to NYU (she pushed me to leave New York for college) and spent most of my monthly allowance on flights to Europe instead of groceries. While Dad had encouraged me to forge my own path, Mom hadn't always been impressed by my boldness. I felt deep down that she didn't trust me, that she feared my heart would lead me someplace I shouldn't go. I knew that a union job at a funeral home was
not
what she had in mind for her only daughter.

I was right.

The next night, I told Mom that I wanted to talk to her about something and that I'd be stopping by after dinner. She was tired, but in some ways, that made her seem easier to talk to. I sat down on the couch and waited for her to sit next to me, but instead she just stood behind the sofa.

“So, I have some news,” I said, slightly terrified.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “Go on.”

“I . . . I got a job . . . at Crawford,” I said, immediately wishing I had just told her I'd gotten a job, period.

“The funeral home?”

“Yeah. They are looking for a receptionist, and I think I could be really good at it.”

Mom was silent.
Well, this is going awesome
, I thought.

“You think you could be really good at
being a receptionist
,” she said, drawing out the last three words like they caused physical pain coming out of her mouth. “A lifetime of private school tuition and a two-hundred-thousand-dollar college education, and you
think
you could be a
secretary
. Is that what I'm hearing?”

The lady had a point; I probably should have considered leaving the job title out. My mom's mom, Rose, who grew up in a small apartment and never went to college, had worked as a secretary when my mom was growing up. When my parents got married, Mom worried that the money would change things—or more accurately, she worried that Max and I would become bratty little rich kids. But at the same time, over the years, I think she started to take pride in the fact that we had more opportunities than she'd grown up with. We were born into a certain lifestyle, and in Mom's opinion, the very least we could do was be grateful and take advantage of that fact.

Mom rubbed her temples and then braced herself up
against her designer sofa. I could see the frustration in her face and regretted coming over at all. “But, Elizabeth,” she blurted out, “you . . . you're . . . you're pretty! And looks don't last forever, you know. They just don't. Work in PR. Work in fashion. But for goodness' sake, don't work at a ­
funeral home
.”

“Because what would your friends think, right?” I said, getting defensive.

“No,” said Mom, shaking her head. “Because you can do better. Why would you want to be around dead people all the time? It's so, so . . .
morbid
. Is this about your father? Do you want me to call a therapist?”

I grabbed my coat, wanting to leave before losing my shit on a grieving widow.
Why can't you just be happy that I've found something I want to do?
I thought. Before Mom could say anything else, I'd walked out the front door and was charging toward the elevator. I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
She just doesn't get it.

THE GREETING
from the Spanish-speaking Crawford ­receptionist, Monica, was about as warm as a corpse when I showed up at seven a.m. for our first day working together. I had envisioned the staff being excited to have a new member on the team, especially someone who was so enthusiastic. But Monica
definitely
wasn't charmed by the latte I brought her from Dean & DeLuca. When I set it down on the desk and
said, “Just a little something to kick off our first day working together!” she rolled her eyes and pointed to the back room. “Over there,” she said, smacking gum between words.
Who chews gum at seven a.m.?

I wasn't quite sure what she meant, so I proceeded as usual. “You want sugar in yours?”

Another eye roll. “No, you can't drink that up here. Company rules. Coffee and food in the back room only.”

“Oh, it's fine,” I said, shrugging. “Nobody is here yet anyway. Here, take yours.”

“Don't act like you know the rules here. What's your name again?”

“I'm Liz.”

“Well,
Liz
, there's a strict rule about no food at the desk. So if I were you, I'd take your coffees or lattes or whatever you brought, and put it in the back room like everyone else. Got it?”

I decided to take the not-so-subtle hint and walked the lattes to the back, leaving them on a counter next to a box of doughnuts and a can of Folgers.
I guess that's breakfast here?
I thought, a little queasy looking at the sad, greasy pastries, jelly oozing out of their middles. It's not that I didn't like sweets; I'd gone out the night before with Ben and some of our friends to celebrate . . . well, I'm not really sure what we were celebrating, but it was something. I'd meant to have a couple of drinks and be home by midnight, but a couple of glasses of champagne turned into a couple of shots, which
turned into several cocktails, and before I knew it the sun was coming up and I was heading home for a shower and some sober-up coffee.
Ugh, I was counting on that latte
,
I thought, wishing I had brought some Advil.

On my way back to the receptionist desk, I stopped in the restroom to do one last hair-makeup-wardrobe check before my meeting with Tony. My head might have been in a fog, but I didn't want him to know that. I smoothed out my hair, which was pulled back in a low ponytail, and checked my new black suit—I'd bought it off the rack in a panic the day before, because, Jesus, who owns a black suit?—for wrinkles. The suit was horrendous, so I paired it with beige suede Gucci heels and mabe pearl earrings. I thought back to the quote I picked for my high school yearbook; it was from
Sex and the City
and read, “Sometimes, the best you can do is play the hand you're dealt and accessorize the outfit that you're given.” (I was super deep at eighteen.) Other than the bags under my eyes, and the heinous black hose I'd borrowed from my mom, I looked like a total pro. At the very least, I looked better than Monica, who had pulled her wet hair into a messy bun and was wearing some sort of sneaker-meets-dress-shoe that looked like it was dug out of the bargain bin at Payless. Although I did feel a little like Shelley Long in
Troop Beverly Hills
when she put on her scout-leader uniform for the first time.
Now if only I could get a designer to tailor this getup
, I thought.

Tony was supposed to give me a tour of the funeral
home—I'd been there for Dad's service, but I'd only seen the “front” of the place. The “back,” a.k.a. the rooms that clients would never, ever be allowed to see, was all brand-new. But Tony was gearing up for a big wake that day, so instead, to my slight disappointment, he asked Monica to take me down to see Bill. “Tell her to wear her sweater, if she has one,” he called out from the top of the stairs. Monica rolled her eyes. “Follow me,” she said, as if she were being hugely inconvenienced.