After Melanie Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Gloria Goldreich

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Gloria Goldreich

  Novels

  WALKING HOME

  DINNER WITH ANNA KARENINA

  OPEN DOORS

  THE GUESTS OF AUGUST

  THE BRIDAL CHAIR

  AFTER MELANIE *

  * available from Severn House

  AFTER MELANIE

  Gloria Goldreich

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by Gloria Goldreich.

  The right of Gloria Goldreich to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8871-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-996-2 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0209-3 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For Clive Sheldon, Brian Amkraut, Allison Freedman

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My dear friend, Norma Hurwitz, a long-time dedicated volunteer at the Back Door Thrift Shop of The Hebrew Institute of White Plains, inspired me to focus on the thrift shop by relating tales of her own experiences with her usual verve, humor and compassion. My son, Harry Horowitz, rescued the work in progress numerous times with his unsurpassed technical skill. Jennifer Weltz, my persistent and creative agent of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, provided insightful suggestions. My thanks to all of them.

  ONE

  They sat opposite each other at the dinner table, tears of melting vanilla sorbet weeping their way down the clear crystal dessert goblets. Their eyes were averted from the empty chair between them. Still wearing his office uniform, his well-tailored gray suit and the white shirt that had not lost its starch, it occurred to Judith that David looked like a guest at his own table. She herself wore the same pale-blue tracksuit she had worn the previous day: a streak of tomato sauce hardened on the left sleeve, the pocket slightly ripped. She had meant to change but then, as with so many things she meant to do these days, she had simply not bothered. She regretted that now, knowing how proud David had always been of her appearance. It was unfair, especially now, to deprive him of the simple pleasure of looking at her approvingly. She moistened her napkin, dabbed at the stain and gave up. It made no difference and, besides, he was not looking at her. His attention was focused on the bills that she had left at his place.

  In a monotone he told her that there was a charge on the credit card bill for a meal at La Belle Place, an error that he would rectify. It was a restaurant they liked, but they had not eaten there … since. He did not complete the sentence. There was no need. Since. It was his code word for all that he could not, would not say.

  She glanced at her watch. It was only seven, the minutes inching by, the meal ending and the evening emptiness beginning. Conversation was exhausted. They had already commented on the vagaries of the weather, the laxness of their gardener. She told him that a shutter on the window in her den had to be replaced. He nodded and they fell silent because silence was less dangerous than the intrusive words they might speak. By tacit consent, they retained the privacy of separate and secret sorrow. They did not want to break each other’s hearts.

  ‘Coffee?’ Judith asked.

  ‘No,’ he replied, too sharply.

  She nodded, rose and drew the drapes, unwilling to witness the slow dying of the light. He watched her as she moved from the dining room to the living room, straightening a window shade, moving an earth-colored ceramic bowl in which she had arranged an assortment of pale shells and scarlet bittersweet. Judith’s grace, even at the simplest of tasks, still moved him. She had studied ballet when she was younger, and her posture, her every gesture, reflected the discipline of dance. He had always thought of himself as clumsy and it had always surprised him that she had never found his awkwardness a deficit. It had, in fact, amused her. He remembered how she had laughed – a lilting, rippling laughter – if he stepped on her toes when they danced or allowed a package to slip from his grasp. But he sensed that his ineptness now evoked her irritation. He had, during these last terrible months, grown clumsier than ever, dropping cutlery, fumbling with his keys, spilling coffee. At the office he knocked over files, misdirected emails. Amanda, his personal assistant, had spent a precious half hour that very afternoon reorganizing papers he had thrust off his desk as he reached for his phone.

  ‘It’s all right. Of course you’re distracted,’ Amanda had said in her faux maternal voice. ‘I understand.’

  He had nodded, resenting her kindness, indignant at her words. How could she understand his grief, his loss? She was childless. By choice, she had told him. Neither she nor her husband had ever wanted children. It was a confidence offered in the aftermath of an office Christmas party, probably to counter his uncharacteristic and perhaps boring boasts of his children’s achievements – Brad’s engagement and admission to law school, Melanie’s induction into the middle-school honor society.

  But, of course, that party, those foolish exchanges with Amanda, had been before. His life now was reduced to those two disparate eras – before and after with an occasional since.

  He sighed, unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt and removed his tie, twisting it through his fingers. It was of a s
oft gray weave, a long-ago gift from Judith, chosen, she had said, because it matched his eyes. A birthday present, an anniversary gift? The question nagged stupidly, irrelevantly. Judith would remember, of course. Her gifts to him were always selected with great care and given with shy pride. Now and again she would hand him a wrapped package containing a shirt of a particular softness or a sweater of a gray-blue color, purchased, she might explain, for no reason at all, but simply because she loved him. Perhaps the tie had been one of those impulse gifts, but he would not ask her. He had to be very careful. He would speak only the words he had rehearsed so carefully.

  She began to clear the table and he coughed softly.

  ‘I think it might be time to think about doing something about her bedroom,’ he said and folded and unfolded his napkin, staring straight ahead.

  ‘Her bedroom?’ Judith asked. ‘Her bedroom,’ she repeated, her voice flat.

  She looked down at the plate in her hands that held half the lamb chop she had struggled to eat. The fat was clumped into a pale bubble; shreds of meat adhered raggedly to the bone. She waited, willing him to say their daughter’s name aloud and knowing that he would not. He refrained from uttering it, she supposed, fearful that the syllables would congeal in his throat and choke him until he could no longer breathe. His emotional cowardice angered her.

  Melanie’s room. Say Melanie. That mental command, unuttered, unheard, was her silent unshared mantra. Melanie. Melanie. She had a name. Our daughter had a name. Say it.

  He moved his water glass, shook the napkin out and placed it on the table.

  ‘If we cleared the room out, we could use it as a den. Maybe a guest room,’ he continued. ‘I could use it as a home office.’

  ‘We have a den. We have a guest room.’

  She carried the plate into the kitchen and scraped it, taking a dull satisfaction in the soft thud the bone made when it fell into the newly installed garbage bag.

  ‘A home office, actually. I’ll need room for my files, my computer if I’m going to work more hours from home,’ he called after her as he played with the cutlery, arranging and rearranging his knife, fork and spoon in odd sequences: a stainless-steel triangle, a stainless-steel square, the utensils gleaming against the red table cloth. It was a boyish habit which she had once found endearing but now unnerved her. The clink of metal against metal grated, and she moved too swiftly from the kitchen to the dining room. She swept the offending silverware away, thrust it into the dishwasher and returned to sit beside him.

  ‘And are you going to work more hours from home?’ she asked.

  ‘That was what we talked about. That was what we agreed on,’ he reminded her. ‘You remember. Brian suggested it and we both thought it was a good idea.’

  ‘Yes. I remember. But that was before.’

  Her voice drifted off. She wondered if either she or he would ever again complete a sentence. They said since, before … Why could she not simply say, That was before Melanie died? They did not say, Since Melanie died. She allowed the two words, so fragile, so dangerous, to tumble through her mind. Melanie died. Melanie died. She scraped crumbs from the tablecloth and thought to risk speaking them aloud.

  ‘And this is now. Not before. We still have our own lives to live,’ he retorted.

  His harsh words, echoing her own usage, each monosyllable saturated with contained irritation, silenced her. She recognized his anger, but he was not a man who shouted. He pushed his chair back and left the dining room, carefully closing the heavy oak door. He was not a man who slammed doors.

  ‘Before what? Say it, damn it. Say it,’ she called after him, although she knew he could not hear her, knew that he had already retreated into the sanctuary of the living room and settled into the deep armchair that faced the fireplace. The radio, always tuned to WQXR, played too loudly, keeping him safe from her voice, safe from the fierceness of her grief.

  ‘Say it,’ she commanded. ‘Before. Before she died. Before Melanie died. Say it aloud. Melanie is dead.’

  She repeated the words to his absent presence, tears streaking her cheeks, clutching a crumpled napkin, as she willed herself to accept the unacceptable, terrible truth. Yes, Melanie – laughing, lovely Melanie – their surprise child, born after ten years of implacable infertility, was gone from their lives, her death sudden, unfathomable and inexplicable. They were alone, she and David, alone and bereft in a house with too many rooms, awkward and uncertain with each other.

  Such awkwardness and uncertainty had ambushed them. So young when they first met, so immediately at ease with each other, they had, in the halcyon days of their togetherness, talked with unrehearsed fluidity, walked hand in hand with matching step, whispered loving secrets, laughed in unison.

  They had marveled, during those early days, at the miracle of their finding each other in the bewildering labyrinth of their large and unwelcoming university. They had reveled in the discovery of shared delights. Their love and laughter sustained them throughout their undergraduate years and they had married a week after graduation, plunging into their lives with unguarded optimism, their fellowships in place, their future unmarred by shadows of doubt. Everything was planned. Everything was programmed. She would get a doctorate in literature, concentrating on women writers. David was a star in the MBA program. They had rushed through their courses, juggled part-time jobs, their lives a whirlwind of achievements, a trajectory leading to security and success. And all had gone according to plan.

  The years had passed. Their dreams were realized, their careers in place, David a partner in an arbitration firm, she a tenured professor of literature with a concentration on women writers. Their home was established, their suburban life pleasant. They had thought to have at least two children. They wanted two children. Their son, Brian, conceived with ease, born without difficulty, was a source of delight as he grew into boisterous and self-sufficient boyhood. They waited. But despite their yearning, a yearning compounded by increasing anxiety, Judith failed to become pregnant again.

  Reluctantly, they searched for solutions, wandering through the maze of fertility clinics, invasive examinations, tense and futile visits to doctors that drained their marriage of vitality and caused them to retreat into an uneasy silence. She saw the sadness in David’s eyes, felt her own heaviness of heart and spirit, but she dared not share her thoughts with him. The silence that grew between them offered protection of a kind.

  Words might invoke a treacherous reality and perhaps force them into a decision they were not prepared to make. Their unhappiness was surely temporary; unacknowledged and undiscussed, it remained amorphous, unreal. They resigned themselves to waiting patiently, hopefully, for the sad season of their marriage to end.

  They knew that the new uncertainty and melancholy they felt was not unique. The marriages of many of their friends and acquaintances had not weathered the winter of midlife ennui. Each report of divorce or separation frightened them. Lorraine, Judith’s long-time friend and colleague, submitted her resignation. She was leaving her job, leaving her husband, leaving her life.

  ‘My marriage is over,’ she told Judith. ‘Seth and I have nothing to say to each other. Why should I spend the rest of my life living with a man I can’t talk to? I’m treating this as a bad chapter in my life and moving on.’

  ‘Lorraine is leaving Seth, leaving the university,’ Judith told David that night.

  ‘Why?’ He struggled to subdue his shock.

  ‘She said that there was too much silence between them, that their marriage was a bad chapter in her life. I thought to tell her that there were lots of chapters in a marriage. Maybe if she waited and turned the page, a new and happier chapter might begin. But I knew it would be of no use. Her mind was made up.’

  ‘What sort of a chapter are we in?’ he asked, an uncharacteristic question. He had surprised himself by asking it.

  She saw the fear in his eyes, felt her own fear ferment into a bilious sourness.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about our
marriage,’ she said too swiftly. ‘I’m not like Lorraine. I would not let that happen to us.’

  It was on that night, in the wake of that conversation, that they had held each other close, their bodies entangled in a swift and convulsive passion ignited by a terror they feared to acknowledge. She had always been certain that it was on that night that Melanie was conceived and the new chapter in their marriage began, all melancholy, all unease, vanquished. They were wondrously restored to each other. With Melanie’s birth, excitement filled their home. Brian shouted with delight, babbled happily about his baby sister, hovered over her crib, her playpen, offered her toys of his own design. Judith had thought he might display jealousy. His joy took her by surprise. What a son she had, what a wonderful son. She and David hugged him, held their daughter close, smiled at each other, smiled at their good fortune.

  Melanie, from the earliest days of her enchanted infancy, invigorated their lives, provided them with new focus, new hope. They spoke her name each day with loving enthusiasm. Melanie said. Melanie did. She was their mutual marvel, her presence filling their home, her future filling their dreams. Brian, given a camera as a bar mitzvah gift, took endless photographs of his little sister. Portraits sprouted on their mantelpiece; her smiling face looked down from bookcases in their offices, dangled from magnets on the refrigerator.

  Melanie at play. Melanie reading. Melanie at one birthday party and then another. Melanie and Brian holding hands. Melanie on the first day of middle school, tumbling into adolescence. Melanie laughing up at David and Judith, beaming at Brian, holding hands with Denise, Brian’s wild-haired fiancée whom she called her ‘sister-in-love’. Clever Melanie. Marvelous Melanie.

  And then, with heart-stopping suddenness, she was gone. Her death so swift, so sudden, so without the slightest warning, left them reeling with disbelief, numb with denial. It had not happened; it could not have happened. But, of course, it had. Aneurysms, they learned belatedly, give no warning, allow for no preparation.