After Melanie Read online

  ‘But why?’ she asked. ‘Why did he leave her?’

  Marriages that came undone had always intrigued her. They were grist for the novelist’s mill. She had written a well-received paper on literary marriages mired in unhappiness, concentrating on Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.

  ‘I’m just curious,’ she said apologetically to Libby. ‘I knew them slightly years ago, when our sons were in the same class. They seemed happy enough.’

  ‘That’s what everyone says when a couple gets divorced,’ Libby said.

  Judith remembered Stanley Brody, a florid-faced man who had occasionally accompanied Suzanne to parent meetings. He kept his laptop open and checked his email during presentations, now and again glancing impatiently at his very expensive watch. Asked to serve on a committee, he always declined. Asked to make a contribution to a class project, he always wrote a very large check.

  ‘He never seemed like a man who would walk away from his life,’ she said.

  Libby shrugged. ‘Midlife crisis, I guess. Or maybe another woman or maybe both. And there were problems with their son. Big problems. Suzanne, of course, never talks about it, although in this community everyone sort of knows what happened, and if they don’t really know, they have theories. It was bad. Drugs, probably. But after the divorce Suzanne took charge of the thrift shop and turned it into a real money-maker for the synagogue. She runs it like a pro. Everything in place, everything organized. She’s really made a difference. I respect her and I guess I feel sorry for her,’ Libby said.

  ‘You’re very kind, Libby,’ Judith replied, teased by a sudden insight.

  She and Suzanne were very much alike, she realized. Suzanne’s life, like her own, had careened out of orbit. The governance of the thrift shop was within her absolute control. Its daily routine, expertly managed, served as a life-preserver, a protection from drowning in a whirlpool of sorrow. In the rush of activity, stale marriages, a difficult son, a dead daughter could be briefly forgotten and dark and dangerous thoughts avoided. As Evelyn had said, routine encouraged avoidance, but Judith was increasingly convinced that avoidance might be all to the good.

  That evening, as she and David sat in their living room, holding unread books, cocooned in their separate silences, Mendelssohn’s violin concerto playing too softly, she thought of Suzanne and wondered if she lived alone in the elegant house her husband had abandoned. She went to the window and closed the drapes.

  David looked across the room and smiled at her, a shy, tentative smile. ‘Cold?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine. I’m just wondering what to do about helping Jeffrey Kahn sort through Sylvia’s things. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s entirely your decision, Judith,’ he replied, his tone even. ‘Just consider how much of your time it will take. And, of course, there’s the distance.’

  He rose to turn the music off. He would not say that he did not want her to spend long hours alone with a grieving widower. He, after all, spent long hours alone with a grieving widow. He shrugged the thought away. ‘Jeffrey is a nice man, a kind man, as I remember him,’ he added.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, her voice vague. ‘I’m not even sure he still wants my help.’

  But the phone rang the next morning even before she had her coffee. Jeffrey Kahn, his voice hesitant, his greeting apologetic. ‘I hope I’m not calling too early,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to catch you before you left for the thrift shop. I wondered if you’d come to a decision about helping me.’

  ‘No. It’s not too early,’ she assured him. ‘And I must apologize for being so remiss. I had meant to be in touch with you, but it’s been a busy time. Things keep piling up.’

  The lie came with surprising ease. It was not a busy time and nothing was piling up. She had simply wanted to protect the new and fragile routine of her daily life. That was not an excuse she could offer him.

  ‘But I have thought about your suggestion,’ she added.

  ‘It was presumptuous of me to make such a request,’ he said too quickly. ‘I realize that. Altogether too much to ask. I’ve heard that there are professionals who do that sort of thing. Consignment shops. But I really don’t want to sell Sylvia’s things. She wouldn’t have wanted that. My daughter told me that charities like Big Brothers or Vietnam Vets will come in and just take everything, cram everything into cartons and trash bags but that seems so …’ He hesitated, searching for the word.

  ‘Disrespectful,’ Judith offered.

  ‘Exactly. Disrespectful.’ He spoke the word slowly as though surprised by its aptness.

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  She had learned during her time at the thrift shop that the possessions of the dead had to be respected, handled with care, dispensed with wisdom. They were the talismans of vanished lives. Donations were carefully folded by bereaved relatives. Widows brought in garment bags bulging with men’s suits, stiff boxes containing newly laundered shirts. A woman, whose elderly mother had died, placed a pile of freshly laundered colorful tea towels on the counter.

  An elderly man and his son had carried in a stack of hat boxes. ‘She loved her hats, didn’t she, Mark?’ he had said, and the younger man had nodded.

  He had opened one box and removed a soft gray cloche. ‘See? Almost new.’ He held it tenderly in his large hands. ‘You’ll be careful with them, won’t you?’ he had asked.

  ‘Very careful,’ Judith had assured him. It was a need she understood.

  She remembered how she had carefully fastened each pearl button on Melanie’s pink cashmere cardigan. Jeffrey Kahn’s wife’s possessions were to be handled with care.

  ‘I don’t want to impose,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not an imposition. It’s good of you to think of donating to the thrift shop. You know we’re always in need of’– she searched for words that would not offend – ‘gently used things,’ she said at last, choosing Suzanne Brody’s often-repeated refrain.

  ‘When would it be convenient for you?’ he asked. ‘I’d be glad to drive you. We – I – live several miles north.’

  ‘That’s all right. I have a GPS. Let’s say tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be at the thrift shop in the morning but I can be there at about one o’clock.’

  ‘Fine. That’s fine,’ he agreed. Enunciating very carefully, he gave her his address and added his home phone number. ‘Just in case there’s a problem,’ he said.

  She did not remind him that he had scrawled that number on his card which was still in her wallet.

  ‘See you then.’

  She hung up and wondered if she should ask Lois or Libby to join her as Suzanne had suggested. It was sure to be an overwhelming project. But she knew, even as the thought occurred to her, that she would go alone.

  NINE

  That evening, Judith told David that she would be driving to Jeffrey Kahn’s home the next day.

  ‘I want to see what’s involved,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll get home. Perhaps we should plan on going out for dinner tomorrow night.’

  He coughed, averted his eyes and spoke with the slight stutter that assailed him at moments of stress. ‘I meant to tell you. I’ll be home late. I’ll grab something in the city. If that’s all right?’

  She stared at him, waited for him to tell her why he would be home late. A meeting? An urgent project? But he was silent. Subterfuge was not his way. He would not tell a lie, he would not invent an excuse. If she asked, he would answer truthfully, she knew, and she knew that she did not want his truthful answer.

  ‘I suppose it’s all right,’ she replied coldly. ‘By the way, I wonder how Melanie’s furniture fit into Nancy’s daughter’s bedroom?’

  He flushed. Her question had taken him by surprise, but he answered calmly. ‘Everything looks fine,’ he said. ‘The bureau, the bookcase. The curtains were an exact fit for her windows.’

  He waited, but she did not ask him how he knew. He would have answered honestly, but she left the room before he could speak. The
truthful answer he had meant to offer her remained unspoken. He retreated into the living room, to the solace of his music and the softness of the single circlet of lamplight.

  Alone in the kitchen, Judith rinsed the wine glasses very slowly and stared into the mirror – Melanie’s mirror. She had wanted David to answer her daring question with the same honesty and openness that had belonged to their younger selves. A simple explanation of why he had visited Nancy’s apartment would have sufficed, she told herself, even as she acknowledged that she feared just such an explanation.

  They were exceedingly polite to each other the next morning.

  ‘Drive carefully when you go up to the Kahn house,’ he cautioned.

  ‘I will. Of course I will.’

  She did not ask him when he would be home that evening.

  She drove to the thrift shop, worked for two hours, then collected empty cartons from the storeroom. ‘I’m going out to the Kahn house,’ she told Suzanne, who helped her carry the cartons out to her car. ‘We’ll need these, I imagine, for the amount of clothing Jeffrey Kahn described.’

  Suzanne nodded. ‘You’re probably right. And take one of my smocks. Lint and dust settles on black. You probably should have worn jeans.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Judith said.

  She had, in fact, hesitated before selecting the tailored black pant suit she usually wore when she lectured. She had not, she assured herself, dressed for Jeffrey Kahn. She just wanted to look good so that she might feel good. It was a tiny step, she supposed, toward the reclamation of normalcy. Evelyn, who had advocated a new haircut and long walks as leverage against the quicksand of grief, would surely approve.

  She tossed the smock that Suzanne held out to her on to the back seat.

  The Kahn home was in the less developed northern part of the county. Judith remembered that when Sylvia had told her they were moving all those years ago, she had enthused about having more land and more privacy.

  ‘It’s not quite the country,’ she had said, ‘but almost. No other house even visible from ours.’

  It was strange that she remembered Sylvia’s words so clearly, Judith thought as she drove northward, passing from one suburb to another. Obedient to the soft voice of her GPS guide, she emerged at last on a country road. She recalled that the Kahns’ decision to move had bewildered her then and it perplexed her still. Their home, with its spacious garden, had been directly across the street from her own. Their daughters had been happy in the neighborhood. She had wondered then why they had chosen to uproot themselves and settle in a relatively remote area. The unanswered question lingered.

  ‘You have arrived at your destination,’ the GPS informed her, and she turned on to the long gravel driveway.

  Jeffrey Kahn emerged from a sprawling red-brick house that overlooked a stretch of greenery that was more meadow than lawn. He waved to her and hurried to open her car door.

  ‘You found it,’ he said. ‘It’s not so easy.’

  ‘The miracle of GPS. But it is a bit out of the way.’

  ‘Yes. Well, that’s what we wanted. What Sylvia wanted. Serenity. Security. Very important to her.’

  She thought to ask him why but refrained. Her curiosity was unwarranted and perhaps invasive. She was here as an emissary of the thrift shop, offering help to a one-time friend. No need to ask unwelcome questions.

  ‘We should get started,’ she said, and as though to prove the seriousness of her intent she shrugged into the smock.

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed and carried the cartons up the path.

  She followed him into the house, startled by its subdued elegance. Sunlight poured through the wide windows and formed golden circlets on the polished hardwood floors. He led her through the large living room, dominated by a baby grand piano, the walls lined with bookshelves. A deep sofa, upholstered in pale-blue velvet, unmatched easy chairs – the one a dusty pink, the other an apple-green – faced the wild garden. Their feet fell soundlessly on the scattered area rugs – one richly patterned in shades of violet and aqua, another of pure white sheepskin. No decorator had had a hand in the room, Judith knew. It was Sylvia Kahn who had created this interior pastel island of peace and beauty.

  Her eyes rested briefly on the photographs in silver frames that stood on the mantelpiece. The Kahn daughters, Amy and Beth, in cap and gown on their graduation days, the faces of both girls bright with happiness. A color portrait of Amy in her bridal gown and then as a young mother, smiling down at a fuzzy-haired infant. There was a candid shot of Sylvia and Jeffrey standing together in their garden. His arm draped her shoulders, her face aglow. The photographer had caught them in mid-laughter.

  Staring at the portrait, Judith remembered that Sylvia and Jeffrey had been one of those couples who looked so alike that they were often thought to be siblings. Their narrow faces and sharp features, their gray eyes set too far apart and their high cheekbones lent them an air of familial aristocracy.

  ‘I remember your daughters when they were much younger,’ she said. ‘They are so lovely. You must be very proud of them.’

  ‘Yes. We are.’ He paused, remembering that there was no longer a we. ‘I,’ he corrected himself, ‘I am very proud of them. They’re wonderful girls, probably because Sylvia was a wonderful mother. They were the center of her life. She gave them strength. When Beth was born, Sylvia gave up her job as director of a university press and worked at home as a translator so that she would always be a presence in their lives.’

  Judith nodded. She had not given up her job when her own children were born, although she had taken a semester off to revel in the miracle of the infant Brian, and with Melanie’s birth she had arranged a curtailed teaching schedule. It was not a decision she had regretted. At least not until … until Melanie died. Bravely, she finished the thought, allowing the silent admission that she envied Sylvia Kahn who had never missed a moment of her daughters’ lives.

  She wandered over to the bookcases, studied the titles. Classics and poetry. Another shelf devoted to volumes in German and French. Of course. Sylvia had been a translator. She lifted a beautifully shaped blue ceramic bowl and set it down.

  ‘It’s a beautiful room,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Jeffrey Kahn replied proudly. And then, as though anticipating the question she had not asked, added, ‘Sylvia did this all herself. She loved this house. It was very important to her.’

  Judith nodded. Again, she did not ask why, although the question teased.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

  She buttoned the smock, aware that he was watching her closely and oddly pleased at his attention. They went upstairs and he opened a door at the top of the steps.

  ‘Sylvia’s dressing room,’ he said. ‘Everything is in here.’

  They entered and she gasped in surprise. It was the size of a more than adequate guest room, but the only furniture was a floor-to-ceiling bureau, a full-length mirror, and a vanity table on which small compacts of blush and powder, tubes of mascara and lipstick and two different atomizers half full of pale gold perfumes were neatly arranged. Their fragrance wafted through the dust-filled air. Sylvia’s fragrance, Judith knew, and she supposed that Jeffrey Kahn visited the room simply to inhale the scent of his wife’s vanished presence.

  He walked past her to the far wall and slid open the door of a spacious walk-in cedar closet. Suits and dresses, blouses and slacks, evening gowns and lounging robes all neatly hung on quilted hangers. Judith saw at once that the garments were arranged according to seasons. Woolens to the left for wintry weather, linens and delicate cottons for the summer to the right. Sweaters, all neatly folded, formed even piles on built-in shelves, and below those shelves, crafted of pale ash, there were closed drawers. Lace sachets, filled with lavender, dangled from the walls. The profusion overwhelmed.

  ‘There’s so much here,’ she said, realizing that it would take weeks to sort through the closet and drawers.

  He nodded. ‘I know. Sylvia loved her clothes and she took very
good care of them. She bought only the best and she rarely discarded anything. I suppose it was because of her past, her childhood.’

  He hesitated and Judith waited for him to continue, but he was silent.

  ‘You’re sure you want to donate everything to the thrift shop?’ she asked as she fingered one garment and then another, the silk of a dressing gown cool to her fingers, the wool of a cashmere jacket soft to her touch. ‘Didn’t your daughters want anything?’

  ‘They took what they wanted. Mostly scarves and capes. Sylvia loved capes and they each took two or three. They picked out a few things to give to their cousins, my sister’s children, and they asked friends if they wanted anything. Very few people did.’ He shrugged.

  ‘I know,’ Judith said.

  There was an unease about wearing the clothing of the dead, a fear perhaps of the contagion of grief and loss. Suzanne had cautioned her never to tell purchasers that the items they selected had been the property of the recently deceased.

  ‘Buyers might think that ghosts hide in the sleeves of sweaters or in the hems of skirts,’ she had said.

  It was an acute insight that supported Judith’s recognition that her initial judgment of Suzanne had been too superficial. Suzanne was skilled at concealing her own sensitivity.

  ‘If they ask, just stress that everything is gently used. No need to offer them a history,’ Suzanne had added.

  And very few customers did ask about the origin of a garment. The mother who had so eagerly seized upon a snowsuit of fire-engine red for her small son did not want to know that it had belonged to Joshua Greenstein, dead of leukemia two days before his fifth birthday. Mr Jameson, so proud of the suit purchased for his job interview, had not been told that it had belonged to a successful lawyer who had developed early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. No need to taint such garments with tales of death and despair.

  Jeffrey Kahn glanced at his watch. ‘I suppose we’d better get started.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They worked steadily for the next two hours, in an easily established routine. He took the garments out of the closet, removed them from the padded hangers and handed them to her. She, in turn, examined the pockets, folded each jacket and dress carefully and placed them in the yawning carton. By tacit agreement, they began with the winter clothing, the heavy suits and the soft wool dresses. Now and again he told a story about one item or another.