After Melanie Read online

  He arrived at his office before the rest of the staff drifted in and welcomed the quiet that enabled him to reply to his emails without distraction. Swiftly, he composed one memo after another, pressed the ‘send’ button and sat back.

  He switched his computer off and submitted to the recurring wave of sadness that washed over him each morning at that very hour. He was safe then, in the security and silence of his professional cave, before the thundering arrival of his co-workers, before phones began to ring and fax machines buzzed with staccato insistence. In this impersonal room, where his academic degrees and professional certificates hung on walls painted a neutral off-white, it was safe to submit to his sorrow. Here, he was at a remove from Judith’s uneasy concern, her impatience with his muteness, his inability to follow her lead and organize a retreat from grief.

  He sat very still in his deep leather desk chair, in front of his blank computer screen. In that odd stillness he allowed himself to remember Melanie’s trilling laughter and the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes. He closed his eyes and imagined his daughter running toward him, her cheeks flushed, her arms outstretched, her ponytail bobbing. He remembered her as a toddler and then as a schoolgirl, a twirling ballerina dancing into adolescence. Briefly, so briefly, in reverie and memory, she came alive for him. He sat immobile, his hands clutching the arms of his chair, fearful that if he moved, she would disappear from memory. He wondered why he did not weep. He would have welcomed tears. Their saline heat might melt the sorrow and anger that had frozen its way across his heart when that thin, bespectacled young doctor spoke of her death. It had been gentle, painless, he had said.

  David had wanted to break the man’s steel-rimmed glasses, to seize him by the throat, to force him to admit that there was no gentleness in death, certainly not in the death of a child. My child. Melanie. He had, of course, done nothing, launched as he was, then and thereafter, on the frigid floe of his sorrow.

  He envied Judith, who wept so quietly each night as he lay beside her, but she did not invite him to share her grief and he dared not intrude upon it. He had only this quiet hour in his silent wide-windowed office cave, shielded by the blank screen of his computer, his whiteboard gleaming. The wood-framed portraits of Brian and Judith stared down at him from their perch on a filing cabinet. He had blanketed Melanie’s portrait in bubble wrap and placed it carefully in the bottom drawer of his desk.

  ‘Melanie.’

  He struggled to say her name aloud, but it emerged as the slightest of whispers. He could not bear to give it voice. ‘My baby,’ he said instead. ‘My little girl.’

  A light knock on his office door, unusual at such an hour, startled him.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ he called, his voice harsh with annoyance.

  The door opened and a slender silver-haired woman, wearing a pale-blue dress, a blush rising to her pale cheeks, stood in the doorway. He recognized her. Nancy – her last name escaped him – a senior administrator with whom he had worked on several projects. She had been out of the office for some months. Compassionate leave, he recalled, although he could not remember why she had been granted that corporate compassion. An ill parent, most likely. The discussion of her leave, occurring when he was overwhelmed by his own loss, had not interested him.

  ‘Nancy,’ he said, apologetically now. ‘You surprised me. It’s so early.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I arranged to come in early for a few weeks, a kind of flex time, so that I can be home when my daughter gets out of school,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Of course. Your daughter.’ The words were dry as dust on his tongue.

  She approached his desk, stood very close. He inhaled the scent of her perfume. Lilac. Melanie had loved lilacs. He remembered suddenly a spring morning when she had plucked a blossom from the bush in their garden and tucked it playfully behind her ear. Its fragrance had drifted toward him as he pressed his lips to her cheek. He stared at Nancy, irrationally annoyed at her for invoking the memory.

  ‘I’ve been away,’ she said, her voice hesitant as though she feared that her words might offend. ‘Out of touch. I only heard yesterday about …’ She hesitated, searching for appropriate words. ‘Your loss,’ she continued, softly, hesitantly. ‘I wanted to offer you my condolences.’

  ‘Yes. That’s very kind of you,’ he said coldly.

  He plucked up a document, signaling his need to return to work. He wanted her gone, but she lingered.

  ‘I’m so sorry. So very sorry. I know how terrible it must be for you. I understand. I’ve been there.’

  ‘Where?’ he asked harshly. ‘Where have you been?’

  His voice was hoarse. His hand trembled. The paper he held fluttered to the floor.

  She did not answer but reached for his hand and covered it with her own, stroking it gently until the tremor was calmed. The softness of her skin, the tenderness of her touch, ambushed him. He wept then, releasing a reservoir of unshed tears that streamed down his cheeks, vagrant drops falling on her hands. She did not stir, this soft-voiced woman whose last name he could not remember, but waited patiently until the torrent of his grief subsided. Only then, as he reached for his handkerchief, did she bend to retrieve the paper he had dropped. She placed it on his desk and left, closing the door very softly behind her.

  He sat back in his chair, stared at his damp handkerchief, then went to the window and opened it. He felt the cool breeze upon his face and stared down at the sun-swept street so far below him, suffused with an unfamiliar calm.

  He waited until later that morning to ask Amanda, his assistant, about her.

  ‘Nancy. Yes, Nancy Cummings. Poor Nancy.’

  Amanda, a queen bee in the hive of office gossip, knew everything and could be counted on to reveal her knowledge.

  ‘Why poor Nancy?’ he asked.

  He kept his eyes fixed on his computer screen, his tone even and slightly bored.

  ‘She’s a widow. Her husband was killed in a car accident when she was six months pregnant. So she’s a single mother with a ten-year-old daughter. And just a few weeks ago her mother, who had been helping her, passed away.’

  ‘Yes, things must be difficult for her,’ he murmured noncommittally.

  Her mother’s death, then, was the reason for her compassionate leave, he realized, but he understood, instinctively, that it was her husband’s death that had impelled the swiftness of her compassion, her understanding of his tears. Yes, she had ‘been there’. She too had endured the bleak surreal terrain of a loss so sudden and unexpected that it defied either comprehension or acceptance.

  ‘Poor Nancy Cummings,’ Amanda repeated.

  ‘Yes. Poor Nancy Cummings,’ he agreed.

  He searched for her extension in the company directory, called her and invited her to lunch.

  She had accepted without hesitation and they sat together in a small, dimly lit bistro, mutually agreed upon because it was at a reasonable distance from their office.

  ‘I want to apologize,’ he said, when they had both ordered, surprising each other and their shy little waitress by the sameness of their selections – onion soup and Greek salads.

  ‘No need,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I presumed. But when I heard about your daughter’s death, I thought of how I had felt when my husband died. It was so sudden. So without warning. Steven left for work that morning and kissed me on the cheek. An hour later a policeman was at the door telling me that he had been killed. A head-on collision, a car going the wrong way. The policeman was very kind, very young, and as he talked, I put my hand to my cheek and thought, “No, Steven can’t be dead. I still feel his lips against my skin.” And I stood frozen in the doorway as the poor policeman went on talking. “Killed instantly,” he said. “No pain.”’

  David nodded. ‘The doctor who told us about Melanie said that she died a gentle death. No pain, he said. Every word he uttered was unbearable.’

  ‘It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know what to say – your doctor, my policeman,’ she murmured. ‘And
we did not know how to hear them.’

  ‘I know. I heard the words, the unbearable words. Dead. Gentle. But I couldn’t process them. Not until I saw Melanie.’

  He closed his eyes against the memory of his daughter, her face as white as the coarse hospital sheet on which her lifeless body rested, laughter gone from her lips, light gone from her eyes. Judith had bent forward to kiss her cold cheek, to pull her sock up so that it lay straight against her calf. As though that mattered. As though anything mattered.

  Remembering, all these months later, he thought that he might weep yet again but he did not. Nancy was speaking and he leaned forward to hear her.

  ‘Those words. Killed. Dead. No pain. Unbearable,’ she murmured. ‘I know. I did not think I could bear it. I thought that I would not be able to go on living without Steven.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘Ah, I had no choice. I was six months pregnant. I had to bear it for the child that was coming. For my Lauren.’

  ‘A daughter.’ He spoke the words in a whisper.

  ‘A daughter,’ she repeated. ‘She’s ten years old now. So I did bear it. I managed. What I could not manage was the fact that no one seemed to understand the impact of a death that comes without warning. The death of someone so young, so full of life. No one knew what to say to me, and no matter what they did say, I felt only numbness and anger. I wanted to shout at those well-meaning comforters and tell them that they could not understand. He was alive and then, minutes later, he was dead. It was so sudden. So without warning.’

  Her voice broke. She reached for her water glass, stared across the table at him and then closed her eyes.

  ‘So it was with Melanie,’ he said. ‘Sudden. Without warning.’

  He paused and wondered if his grief might have been lessened if he had been prepared, if Melanie had been ill or there had been some sort of congenital defect. Perhaps. But even then the knowledge that she was gone from his life, from their lives, his and Judith’s, would be a weight upon his heart, a heavy stone of sorrow that could neither be lightened nor shifted. At least not yet. He smiled sadly at Nancy. Her sorrow, even after a decade, had not ended, yet she had taken control of her life. He felt the barest glimmer of hope.

  ‘Yes. You managed,’ he said.

  ‘I coped. As I had to. There was no choice. And I had my parents, who were wonderful. They’re gone now, but they helped me until I could help myself. I was fortunate to have them, to have my work. And now I’m fortunate to have a wonderful child, my Lauren. We just moved into a new apartment where she’ll have her own room. No furniture yet, but she’s just excited to have her own space. She’d be a happy child if only she could understand the new math.’

  She smiled, relieved to have left mention of death behind, relieved to be talking about something as inconsequential as her daughter’s homework problems.

  ‘Melanie had problems with that damn math also,’ David said, marveling that he spoke his daughter’s name with such ease. ‘I spent hours trying to help her grasp it.’

  ‘I’m afraid that I can’t do as much for Lauren. Math was never my strong suit.’ She smiled regretfully.

  Their food arrived and, for the first time in months, he ate with appetite, aware of the taste and texture of the soup, the crispness of the vegetables.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother,’ he said, remembering Amanda’s revelation, so eagerly offered.

  ‘Yes. But she had been ill for months. Cancer. We – my brother and I – had known she was dying. She had been ill before and she was not a young woman. So we were prepared. It was a slow death. And not gentle.’

  She repeated the words he had spoken, but there was no irony in her voice. She spoke a truth they both recognized.

  ‘A riddle: what is better – a swift and painless death that leaves the survivors in shock or a lingering illness with an anticipated ending?’ he asked.

  He knew it to be an intrusive question, but even as he spoke, he felt an odd relief at his ability to share the thought.

  ‘That is a riddle for those who have not endured what we have endured,’ she replied quietly, sadly. ‘They were too young – my Steven, your Melanie. Too young for any death at all.’

  And then it was she who began to weep. He reached across the table, took both her hands in his own and held them until her tears were exhausted and the shy little waitress removed their empty plates and returned, without asking, with a carafe of coffee.

  ‘She thinks we’re lovers,’ Nancy said. ‘She doesn’t know that we’re a support group of two developing a twelve-step program.’ She smiled, her fleeting sorrow banished.

  ‘Perhaps we should tell her that we’re secret sharers.’

  ‘Yes. Secret sharers,’ she agreed.

  There was no need to speak of what they shared. They had each been struck by sudden lightning, death bolts as swift and mercurial as quicksilver. There was a mutuality to their sorrow and comfort in the gentle, honest relief they offered each other, all judgment withheld, all fear suspended.

  Such comfort, he realized with regret, was what he was afraid to solicit from Judith. Her own sorrow was too profound; he feared to add his sadness to the grief that silvered her cheeks with tears in the darkness of the night. Nancy had mingled his sorrow with her own.

  He paid the bill, leaving their shy little waitress an exorbitant tip. It was understood between them that they would meet again. They had their work in common and he knew her to be an excellent researcher. He mentioned a project he was working on and she offered suggestions. He asked for her home address and her cell phone number and wrote them carefully in his address book.

  ‘I should like to meet your daughter,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I could help her with her math.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She smiled.

  They left the restaurant separately, aware of the need for corporate propriety, although there had been no impropriety. Nor would there be, he assured himself. He called Judith when he returned to the office, but she was not at home and he did not leave a message.

  THREE

  Judith sat in Evelyn’s book-lined consulting room and tonelessly recounted her conversation with David.

  ‘He’s right, of course,’ she said. ‘We should do something about the room. Melanie’s room. I’m going to start. I told him I would. It’s just hard. Very hard.’

  ‘Why are you so reluctant to …’ The therapist struggled to find a word that would not wound, would not offend. She breathed deeply and continued, her tone neutral. ‘Dismantle her room?’

  ‘It’s all I have left of her. Her things. Her space.’ Judith spoke softly, hesitated and then added, with defiant resonance, ‘Melanie’s things, Melanie’s space.’ How strange it was, she thought, not for the first time, the comfort that came with the simple utterance of her daughter’s name. ‘It’s all I have left of her,’ she repeated.

  Evelyn nodded. ‘I understand that feeling, but you know you have more than that. A great deal more. Things are only things. Space is only space. You have your memories. You have your love. Melanie will always be part of you, but you have your life to live. You know that. It’s time to move on, Judith.’

  ‘Time to dismantle?’ Judith asked bitterly, thrusting the word back at her, but Evelyn caught it unflinchingly.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘You have a lot of dismantling to do. Actual and symbolic.’

  She glanced at her watch and Judith nodded and rose from her seat, her hour of expensive wisdom concluded.

  David is right, Evelyn is right, she told herself as she drove home. It was time to accept, time to move on, time to dismantle. She shuddered at the word, but then it was only a word. She would get on with it. She was skilled at getting on with things.

  At home she ate a swift lunch, ignored the ringing telephone without even glancing at the caller ID. It was David making a conscience call of regret and apology, she knew. Regretful and apologetic herself, she lifted the receiver on the fourth ring, feigning breathlessness,
when he called again a little later.

  ‘I just got in,’ she lied.

  ‘I was worried. I know I upset you last night.’

  ‘David, I’m fine. Really. And you were right. I’m going upstairs now to begin …’ She hesitated and settled reluctantly on Evelyn’s word. ‘Dismantling Melanie’s room,’ she continued, oddly proud of her new courage.

  She spoke reassuringly. David needed reassurance, she knew. She pitied him for the solitude of his grief.

  ‘Don’t work too hard,’ he said, and she was grateful for the caring gentleness of his tone.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured him and hung up.

  With grim determination, she carried two large black trash bags upstairs. The door to the room that had been Melanie’s was closed and a Do Not Disturb sign, purloined from a hotel during a half-remembered family vacation, dangled on the doorknob. Melanie had added THIS MEANS YOU! in magenta Magic Marker.

  Her hand trembling, her heart beating too rapidly, Judith turned the knob and paused on the threshold, to shield her eyes against the sudden brightness. She had not entered the room since Melanie’s death. The cleaning service had probably dusted the surfaces, but no one had thought to draw the candy-striped drapes and lower the blinds. The rose paint of the walls, the color that Melanie had so stubbornly insisted upon, had faded to an anemic pink. The window was tightly closed and the scent of Melanie’s lilac body gel and talc lingered in the stale air. The cleaners had barely tidied the room, leaving it in the wild disorder of a careless and carefree young life interrupted without warning.

  Rhomboids of sunlight danced across tangles of tights and a scattering of brightly colored sweaters strewn across the red-carpeted floor. One sneaker peered out of a faded backpack, its mate tossed across an open geometry text book. Amid the clutter of papers and folders on the windowsill there was a hairbrush with tendrils of dark hair still clinging to the bristles.