After Melanie Read online

  She would tell him about Jeffrey Kahn and ask him whether she should accede to his request. They would talk about it. It would, at the very least, give them something to talk about. That and the plans for his home office. The carpenter’s questions lingered. Did David want the room painted or paneled? She looked forward to such a conversation. Drinks before dinner perhaps, their voices rising and falling in easy exchange, the pattern of their earlier years recreated at the sunset hour. Normalcy restored. She accelerated, chose a shortcut. She wanted to be home before David arrived.

  EIGHT

  As they sipped their after-dinner coffee, Judith told David about Jeffrey Kahn’s visit. He was sorry to hear that Sylvia Kahn had died and he thought it would be kind of Judith to help Jeffrey. But only if she had the time. Only if it would not be too much of a strain.

  ‘I worry about you, you know,’ he said.

  He did not look at her as he spoke. He feared that she would not believe him, would not welcome his concern. He knew how proud she had always been of her independence, and he, in turn, had been proud of how easily and happily she had maneuvered her way through both her professional and personal landscapes.

  With Brian’s birth, she had curtailed her teaching schedule, canceling an entire semester so that she could nurse him, urging David to witness how avidly their son sucked at her breast, how strongly his tiny fingers tightened about their own. He had laughed, she had laughed. They were bonded in joy. In time, she had found an au pair and returned to the university, rushing home each day to cuddle Brian, to prepare the odd treats he favored – slices of banana swathed in peanut butter, bits of frankfurter sandwiched between Ritz crackers. She had delighted in his toddlerhood, waved goodbye as he rushed from her on his first day of school and sped away to attend a conference on George Eliot.

  She had managed Melanie’s birth with similar ease, although Melanie had not been as pliable a child.

  ‘Girls are more vulnerable,’ Judith had said, always fiercely protective of Melanie.

  She had, in fact, scheduled her sabbatical year to occur at what she called a crucial juncture, at a time before Melanie was overtaken by the perils of adolescence.

  ‘I want to organize things to do with her, experiences that will always mean something to her,’ Judith had said, and he had understood that she wanted to create an archive of happy memories for their daughter.

  An inveterate list-maker, she made a list of such ‘meaningful experiences’ in one of her ubiquitous moleskin notebooks. Fun things, Melanie had labeled the plans which they discussed with shared enthusiasm, shared anticipation.

  It would be fun to spend a weekend in the city with Melanie, fun to take her skiing in Vermont, fun to organize Denise’s bridal shower with her. It would be fun for the whole family to go on a cruise together.

  ‘Please, Daddy. It will be such fun. Denise and Brian want to do it.’ Melanie had been complicit. The word fun came easily to their golden girl.

  She had pulled David’s ear, grasped his hands and danced him around the room.

  ‘Please, Daddy.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  His laughter had matched hers, that shared merriment a kind of acquiescence. He had called a travel agent, asked for cruise brochures. They had arrived the day of Melanie’s death.

  A month later he had found Judith’s moleskin notebook in the wastepaper basket, the pages covered with lighthearted fun plans shredded. He had not spoken of it to Judith. He was careful not to violate the privacy of her grief.

  Even now he regretted telling her that he worried about her and braced himself for her reaction.

  ‘Why would you worry about me?’ she asked, slapping down a fork, arranging the plates in a pile. ‘I’m managing. I get excellent advice. Evelyn says that I am making progress. She tells me that I must be strong, take on new challenges, new diversions. She says I must make my way through the stages of grief until I get to acceptance.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘A stupid idea. Will I ever accept her death? Will I ever reach acceptance? Will you?’

  He shook his head. Acceptance. The very word repelled him.

  She began to clear the table, her face averted, unwilling to look at him as he struggled to answer her unanswerable question. He abandoned any effort to do so.

  ‘I’m worried because I know how difficult it was for you to deal with …’ He hesitated. ‘Her room. Her things,’ he continued, the words so softly intoned that she strained to hear them.

  ‘Melanie’s things. Melanie’s room,’ she said daringly. ‘I hardly think I’ll have a problem sorting through Sylvia’s clothing. A very different experience. No emotional involvement there.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I understand,’ he agreed. ‘It’s different. Very different.’

  He turned away, but not before she saw the glint of unfallen tears in his eyes. She moved toward him, but too swiftly he rose from the table and left the room. Within minutes she heard the strains of Mozart’s Requiem and knew that he sat alone in his deep chair, surrounded by the music of sorrow, his refuge as poetry was her own.

  She remained alone at the dining-room table, staring down at her empty coffee cup, In this, their shared home, they were each isolated on separate islets of sorrow. She heard his cell phone ring, heard him talking very softly. He did not tell her who had called and she did not ask him.

  ‘I won’t be home for dinner tomorrow night,’ he said when she came into the living room.

  No excuse was offered, no explanation. She nodded. She needed no excuse, no explanation. She understood that he would be having dinner with silver-haired Nancy, probably to discuss a project they were working on. But why, then, did he not tell her as much? It puzzled her that she felt no sense of betrayal. What would Jane Austen or white-gowned Emily Dickinson, the literary heroines of her academic discipline, have said to that? A foolish question. Childless and unmarried, they had never experienced the loss of a child, the loss of loving ease. They would have no wisdom to offer her.

  As always, she went up to their bedroom earlier than David. As always, she undressed in the darkened room and lay awake, her eyes closed, listening for his step upon the stairs.

  She kept Jeffrey Kahn’s card in her wallet and glanced at it now and again as the days passed. She would call him – of course she would – either to agree to his request or to decline it, but she had not yet arrived at a decision. She was, she acknowledged, reluctant to disrupt the new and soothing rhythm of her days at the thrift shop.

  ‘It’s a relief to wake up knowing what I’m going to do, where I’m going,’ she told Evelyn.

  The therapist nodded. ‘A routine is one way to practice avoidance,’ she said drily.

  ‘And what am I avoiding?’ Judith retorted angrily, although she knew the answer.

  She was avoiding her own despair, David’s silences, his withdrawal, his absences. She was avoiding sharing her mourning with him. They were drifting away from each other, she and David, and she wondered if they could ever return to the mooring that had secured their marriage for so many good years.

  She stared angrily at Evelyn, who glanced at her watch and smiled, her gentle indication that their session was over. She walked to her car, thinking, not for the first time, that it was time to terminate a therapy that no longer seemed therapeutic. Her fault, perhaps, for remaining silent. Evelyn’s fault, perhaps, for being so confrontational. She did not want confrontation. She wanted the avoidance provided by her new daily routine.

  Each morning she greeted the workmen who invaded her home, smiling at the electrician and his assistant, the carpenter and his two agreeable red-faced sons, who trudged heavily upstairs to the room that she no longer called Melanie’s bedroom but did not yet think of as David’s office. She took phone calls from the floor scraper who canceled one appointment after another. It had been decided that the room would be reconfigured, although the window would still face the apple tree on which Melanie had charted the changing seasons.

  Mommy
, there are green leaves. Mommy, there are white flowers. Mommy, look, tiny apples! Her daughter’s voice, trembling with excitement and delight, echoed in memory.

  The window would, in fact, be widened.

  ‘More light,’ the contractor had said, and she had nodded her agreement.

  By ten o’clock on most mornings she was on her way to the thrift shop. Suzanne Brody had given her a key.

  ‘There are mornings when I may be late,’ she had said, ‘and I’m sure I can rely on you. The other volunteers have so many obligations – you know, kids, family stuff. You and I are empty nesters.’

  ‘I understand.’

  There was no discussion, although she wondered about Suzanne Brody’s son, Eric. Obviously, he was gone from her home. Clearly, Suzanne’s nest was as empty as her own.

  On mornings when Suzanne was late, Judith turned the key in the lock, grateful for that brief respite of silence. She flicked the light on and inhaled the commingled odors of clothing and various objects offered for sale, each one redolent of a vanished past. Unpolished candlesticks nestled against chipped candy bowls; teacups, bereft of their saucers, littered scratched end tables.

  The volunteers, like children playing house, enjoyed arranging the orphaned curios in attractive displays. Walnut bookends, carved in the shape of birds, supported brightly jacketed bestsellers, the titles changed from one week to the next. Now and again a small table was set with a discarded luncheon service and golden-hued wine glasses. Dessert forks of silver plate, polished by Lois in off hours, were placed beside each setting. The table itself and its settings were from different homes, each item the once-precious possession of a house-proud woman. Judith speculated that they might have been wedding presents, treasured legacies, perhaps an anniversary gift, now sadly rejected and unwanted.

  In the quiet of those early-morning hours, she wandered through the shop, straightening the piles of clothing, rearranging the dresses and suits on the racks, organizing coats and jackets according to size. This was what she loved to do, what David had once called her special talent, her gift for organizing time and objects, arranging her family’s life and her own.

  Evelyn would probably call such obsessive organizing avoidance, she supposed as she moved on, arranging sweaters and shirts into neat piles that she knew would soon be in disarray. Avoidance, she decided, was not always to be avoided.

  The pace of the mornings was often slow. Purposeless wanderers drifted in and out, the unemployed clutching cell phones that did not ring, young mothers pushing strollers grateful for a place to go, elderly men and women inventing errands to fill empty hours.

  One Monday morning, the first customer arrived only minutes after Judith opened the door. She was an old woman, her hair very white, her cheeks very pink, her hands threaded with erupting blue veins, standing tall and erect.

  ‘I’m looking for a black handbag, dearie. Not a shoulder strap. And nothing that’s too worn,’ she said imperiously.

  Judith found a black handbag. It contained a wallet and the wallet, when the old woman opened it, contained a dollar bill. She handed it to Judith.

  ‘Some people,’ she said angrily, furious with the unknown woman who had been careless enough to give away a bag without checking it. She did not buy the bag.

  An old man was in search of a cane, and Judith walked him over to a corner where three pronged canes and walking sticks with ivory and bronze handles leaned against the wall. She pointed to one topped with a carved wooden bird’s beak, but the old man chose another of heavy wood because it had a brand-new rubber tip. He bargained valiantly to pay less than the five dollars marked on its tag. Judith entered into the game, resisted his first offer, countered it and settled at last for three dollars. They smiled at each other and he lumbered out, each step accompanied with a triumphant thump.

  Students from the neighboring high school, on a break between classes, barreled through, the girls pausing at bins that contained still-sealed tubes of lipstick and bottles of cologne, the boys rummaging through the very small supply of baseballs and mitts, tossing a cap with a faded logo to each other. They laughed and called to each other and dashed out without buying anything.

  A shift of volunteers arrived – Lois bubbling with tales of the exploits of her clever twins, Libby depressed because of a quarrel with her demanding mother-in-law. Judith smiled at a new volunteer, a middle-aged woman who wore latex gloves, because, she said, she feared that the donated merchandise might be full of germs. Perfectly coiffed, her hair sprayed into place, impeccably dressed, she stayed only for an hour; when she removed her gloves, Judith saw that her very long fingernails were painted the same blue as her eyeshadow.

  ‘We’ll never see her again,’ Lois said wryly.

  Judith filed each incident away. Amusing stories to share with David. She would try. Try to share, to wend her way back to where they had been. Before. The fortress of silence had to be penetrated. There was too much at stake, too many years of happiness and sorrows shared, hopes realized, hopes denied.

  One slow afternoon Lois and Libby tried on donated gowns, preening themselves before the cracked mirror. Briefly masquerading as prom queens, the young mothers laughed as they modeled bouffant dresses. They persuaded Judith to model a nurse’s uniform. She agreed reluctantly, grinned at herself and adjusted the starched white cap to a becoming angle on her shining dark hair. Libby insisted on dotting her cheeks with a touch of blush. She laughed aloud, her first spontaneous burst of pleasure, she realized, since … since Melanie died. She congratulated herself on completing the thought.

  ‘You don’t look a day over thirty,’ Lois crowed.

  ‘If only,’ she retorted.

  At thirty she had been the busy mother of an active small boy, chasing after Brian on weekends, capturing him in a fierce embrace, brushing his cheeks with kisses and smoothing his hair. At thirty she had been an untenured instructor focused on becoming an assistant professor, her life ribboning happily out before her. She would get tenure and have another child. She and David had wanted at least two children, perhaps three. At thirty she had not realized that she could be ambushed by sorrow, defeated by death.

  Too swiftly, she peeled off the uniform. ‘Thirty was a long time ago,’ she said, and they all laughed uneasily.

  Suzanne Brody arrived, carrying extra shopping bags, extra hangers and an armload of new donations. She haunted neighborhood dry cleaners who gave her unclaimed items. She cajoled boutique owners to donate outdated, unsold merchandise.

  ‘You have to know where to go, how to get them to donate,’ she advised the others, displaying her gains, smiling proudly. She clearly knew how to do both. Hurriedly, then, they hung up the new acquisitions.

  Everyone was needed when the lunchtime crowd invaded. The stacks of clothing Judith had folded so carefully were tossed about, racks were stripped, rejected suits and dresses discarded or carelessly rehung. Weary women, hospital aides still in their pale-blue uniforms, cafeteria workers, their hair still gathered in snoods, ferreted out clothing for themselves and their families. Men rummaged through suits.

  A very young pale man needed a jacket. ‘For church. For my son’s christening,’ he explained. ‘He was premature, too small, but now he’s fine.’

  A portly older man in grease-stained overalls wanted a suit. ‘A funeral. The wife’s uncle. A pretty old guy. But a nice guy.’

  Birth and death, weddings and funerals, were all part of the thrift shop experience. The inventory was routinely exhausted and replenished.

  Emily and her baby appeared once or twice a week, and always Judith offered them the choice items she had plucked from new donations. Almost new onesies, apple-green and lemon-yellow. A white sweater with colored wooden buttons shaped like balloons. One button had been loose and Judith herself had tightened it. Emily smiled, thanked her and offered her scraps of news. The baby was sleeping through the night. She no longer disturbed her husband when he studied. Yes, her James was a student. A medical student.
Oh, he was a smart man, her husband. Her eyes sparkled when she spoke of him. Judith smiled, remembering how the very mention of David’s name during their early years together had filled her with the warmth of love and desire.

  Late one afternoon, when she and Libby were at the counter, the man whose IOU remained in the register came in.

  ‘Mr Jameson,’ she said, proud that she remembered his name. ‘How nice to see you again.’

  Libby looked up and held her hand out. She too had not forgotten the dignified man who had needed a suit so desperately.

  ‘Can we help you find something Mr Jameson?’ she asked.

  He smiled in return. ‘Yeah. You can find my IOU. I got the job and, like I said, I’m paying you with my first paycheck.’

  ‘But—’

  Judith’s protest was cut short. Libby held up a cautionary hand as she searched through the register. Within seconds she found the flimsy IOU.

  ‘Here we go, Mr Jameson,’ she said, and he counted out one ten-dollar bill and five singles.

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to buy myself a sweater.’

  ‘Important to take his money,’ Libby murmured. ‘He’s not a man who would want charity.’

  ‘I can’t wait to tell Suzanne he came back,’ Judith said maliciously. ‘She doesn’t trust anyone.’

  ‘She has her reasons,’ Libby said quietly. ‘Trust is hard for her after what she’s been through.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Her husband. He left her. Walked out one morning and never came back. Left all his clothes hanging in the closet, his books on the shelves, even his underwear in the drawers. I guess Suzanne figures if she couldn’t trust her husband, how can she trust anyone? It’s a tough attitude, but I sort of understand where she’s coming from.’