I removed one of those envelopes and opened it, pulled out the yellowing paper and unfolded it.
The paper was unlined but the handwriting cut across the page in small, neat parallels. Dear Bel, it began, and continued, I thought I said everything on the phone last night but can't stop thinking about you. Writing this seems to bring you closer tho not as close as I'd like. Not as close as we were last August! I play that memory like videotape every night I can't lie down next to you.
And more, which I did not read. I folded the letter and tucked it into its yellowed envelope and closed the box and put it back where it belonged.
* * * * *
In the morning there was a knock at the door. I answered it expecting Carol or some amanuensis from the Big House. But it wasn't Carol. It was Diane. Diane in a midnight-blue floor-sweeper skirt and high-collared blouse. Her hands were clasped under her breasts. She looked up at me, eyes sparkling. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I came as soon as I heard."
But too late. The hospital had called ten minutes earlier. Belinda Dupree had died without regaining consciousness.
* * * * *
At the memorial service E.D. spoke briefly and uncomfortably and said nothing of significance. I spoke, Diane spoke; Carol meant to speak but in the end was too tearful or inebriated to mount the pulpit.
Diane's eulogy was the most moving, cadenced and heartfelt, a catalogue of the kindnesses my mother had exported across the lawn like gifts from a wealthier, kinder nation. I was grateful for it. Everything else about the ceremony seemed mechanical by comparison: half-familiar faces bobbed out of the crowd to utter homilies and half-truths, and I thanked them and smiled, thanked them and smiled, until it was time for the walk to the graveside.
* * * * *
There was a function at the Big House that evening, a post-funeral reception at which I was offered condolences by E.D.'s business associates, none of whom I knew but some of whom had known my father, and by the household staff at the Big House, whose grief was more authentic and harder to bear.
Caterers slid through the crowd with wineglasses on silvered platters and I drank more than I should have, until Diane, who had also been gliding among the guests, tugged me away from yet another round of so-sorry-for-your-loss and said, "You need air."
"It's cold out."
"If you keep drinking you'll get surly. You're halfway there already. Come on, Ty. Just for a few minutes."
Out onto the lawn. The brown midwinter lawn. The same lawn where we had witnessed the opening moments of the Spin almost twenty years ago. We walked the circumference of the Big House—strolled, really, despite the stiff March breeze and the granular snow still inhabiting every sheltered or shaded space.
We had already said all the obvious things. We had compared notes: my career, the move to Florida, my work at Perihelion; her years with Simon, drifting out of NK toward a blander orthodoxy, welcoming the Rapture with piety and self-denial. ("We don't eat meat," she had confided. "We don't wear artificial fibers") Walking next to her, lightheaded, I wondered whether I had become gross or repugnant in her eyes, whether she was conscious of the ham-and-cheese aperitifs on my breath or the cotton-poly jacket I was wearing. She hadn't changed much, though she was thinner than she used to be, maybe thinner than she ought to be, the line of her jaw a little stark against the high, tight collar.
I was sober enough to thank her for trying to sober me up.
"I needed to get away, too," she said. "All those people E.D. invited. None of them knew your mother in any important way. Not one. They're in there talking about appropriations bills or payload tonnage. Making deals."
"Maybe it's E.D.'s way of paying tribute to her. Salting the wake with political celebrities."
"That's a generous way of interpreting it."
"He still makes you angry." So easily, I thought.
"E.D.? Of course he does. Though it would be more charitable to forgive him. Which you seem to have done."
"I have less to forgive him for," I said. "He's not my father."
I didn't mean anything by it. But I was still too aware of what Jason had told me a few weeks ago. I choked on the remark, reconsidered it even before the sentence was out of my mouth, blushed when I finished. Diane gave me a long uncomprehending look; then her eyes widened in an expression that mingled anger and embarrassment so plainly that I could parse it even by the dim glow of the porch light.
"You've been talking to Jason," she said coldly.
"I'm sorry—"
"How does that work exactly? Do the two of you sit around making fun of me?"
"Of course not. He—anything Jason said, it was because of the medication."
Another grotesque faux pas, and she pounced on it: "What medication?"
"I'm his GP. Sometimes I write him prescriptions. Does it matter?"
"What medication makes you break a promise, Tyler? He promised he would never tell you—" She drew another inference. "Is Jason sick! Is that why he didn't come to the funeral?"
"He's busy. We're just days away from the first launches."
"But you're treating him for something."
"I can't ethically discuss Jason's medical history," I said, knowing this would only inflame her suspicions, that I had essentially given away his secret in the act of keeping it.
"It would be just like him to get sick and not tell any of us. He's so, so hermetically sealed.…"
"Maybe you should take the initiative. Call him sometime."
"You think I don't? Did he tell you that, too? I used to call him every week. But he would just turn on that blank charm and refuse to say anything meaningful. How are you, I'm fine, what's new, nothing. He doesn't want to hear from me, Tyler. He's deep in E.D.'s camp. I'm an embarrassment to him." She paused. "Unless that's changed."
"I don't know what's changed. But maybe you should see him, talk to him face to face."
"How would I do that?"
I shrugged. "Take another week off. Fly back with me."
"You said he's busy."
"Once the launches begin it's all sit back and wait. You can come to Canaveral with us. See history being made."
"The launches are futile," she said, but it sounded like something she had been taught to say; she added, "I'd like to, but I can't afford it. Simon and I do all right. But we're not rich. We're not Lawtons."
"I'll spot you the plane fare."
"You're a generous drunk."
"I mean it."
"Thank you, but no," she said. "I couldn't."
"Think about it."
"Ask me when you're sober." She added, as we mounted the steps to the porch, yellow light hooding her eyes, "Whatever I might once have believed—whatever I might have told Jason—"
"You don't have to say this, Diane."
"I know E.D. isn't your father."
What was interesting about her disclaimer was the way she delivered it. Firmly, decisively. As if she knew better now. As if she had discovered a different truth, an alternative key to the Lawton mysteries.
* * * * *
Diane went back to the Big House. I decided I couldn't face more well-wishing. I let myself into my mother's house, which seemed airless and overheated.
Carol, the next day, told me I could take my time about cleaning out my mother's things, which she called "making arrangements." The Little House wasn't going anywhere, she said. Take a month. Take a year. I could "make arrangements" whenever I had the time and as soon as I felt comfortable with it.