At first it was a cakewalk. For half an hour, the edges of our personalities, the burden of our history and of the present, were blurred by grief and good will. We were relief workers at the aftermath of a tornado; one of us would switch to being a survivor, and then we'd dive backward into the opposite role. We were as close as we had ever been. There was no courtesy not indulged, no tenderness denied. We were so finely attuned to each other's needs, the whole thing could have been choreographed by George Balanchine.
"I came right away because I wanted to say goodbye to him," she said, holding my arm as we approached the luggage carried off the plane.
"Of course," I said, kindly, lying, lying. I would tell her the truth in the car, dispense it in small bites the way I had learned it; no point having it land on her all at once like an avalanche.
"Susanna's trying to get here tomorrow. I had her neighbors drive up the mountain to the cabin last night and tell her. She and Daddy hadn't spoken for months."
"I was afraid of that." Actually, I had pushed that fear to the back of my mind until this moment; that's how much distance there was between this family and me. Now I carried Ginny's bag to the car with a new fear: that all of our gentleness would evaporate before the hour was up. I still was not used to the island breeze, the lightness of the air, the terrible closeness I felt to her, terrible because it had taken this death to bring it on, because I knew how fragile it was. Then we were off, on the long road to Evan's.
"Susanna was furious that Daddy didn't come to California to see her when little Rose was born."
"I was too. I did everything I could to get him there." Rose had arrived six weeks before I left. Will's refusal to go to see her-and his daughter and son-in-law-helped push me out the door, allowed me to see that Will was so tangled up in his fears that he could not make the most basic parental gesture. If he could cut himself off that thoroughly from his beloved children, who was he? If what he wanted in this world-or if all he could handle-were retreat and isolation, why had it fallen to me to stay and be his lifeline? "He was afraid," I said to Ginny.
"Of a two-day-old baby?"
"Of his feelings. All his guilt about Jesse"-his son who had died many years before-"and his sadness that Susanna lived so far away. He never let go of the idea that she lived out there in order to avoid him. Maybe he thought that seeing Rose would bring back his grief over Jesse."
"Susanna sort of gave up, after he wouldn't come. When he called and left messages with her neighbors, she wouldn't call him back. He wanted to buy her a cell phone, but she said the reception was terrible on the mountain. He wanted to buy her a computer so that he could send her e-mail. But she needed a phone for that too. He wanted to be in touch with her but only from a distance."
"How did she take the news that he'd died?"
"She asked if he'd killed himself, first thing. That's what our mom asked too." Why didn't I tell her right then that it was a possibility? It would have been easier than what we went through later, but I was still raw from everything Ben had told me, and from reading three weeks of Will's mail. According to the phone bill, the last call he made was at 10:05 the night of May thirty-first, a Wednesday, to his friend Diane in Cambridge. They had talked for fifteen minutes. His last ATM withdrawal was that afternoon: $200. The last charge on his credit card was a week before, for a CD from Amazon.com. There was also a curious letter he had written to someone named Crystal Sparrow; it was stamped RETURN TO SENDER: NO FORWARDING ADDRESS. The address was a rural delivery route on the West End of the island, about halfway between the airport and Evan's house. In the handwritten letter, he asked her out on a date. I'd stuck it in my purse, intending to track her down. And there was a postcard from the video store: the movies he rented 5/31/00 were overdue.
I did not know where to put the fact that he had been dead for three weeks while I had romped around in bed with Daniel, playing mother to his children, playing the carefree divorcée. All the great mad joy I'd felt on returning to New York had gone to dust, ashes, rot.
"How come you didn't call me right away?" Ginny said in the gentlest tone, almost as an afterthought, like someone genially tying up loose ends, someone other than my perennially angry stepdaughter.
"I tried. The number I had for you was disconnected, and I couldn't remember the call letters of your TV station. I was going to look for your father's address book in the house. I'm sorry you found out the way you did. And sorry it's been so long since we've talked."
"It's all right." This in the same understanding, unfamiliar voice. "I thought about calling you once or twice, but, I don't know, it seemed disloyal to Daddy."
"I understand."
The island's great beauty rolled alongside the car, a ticklish distraction not only from the shock of Will's death but from the high wire on which Ginny and I teetered. It was always that way with her, things going along fine, then a flare-up, spontaneous combustion. Would we make it to Evan's house in one piece?
"I know you feel guilty, Soph. I do too."
"About what?" Might she know about Daniel? Had she spoken to Will's friend Diane?
"Not being with Daddy when he died. When I was little and he traveled, I was always afraid the State Department would call and say he was dead in a country I'd never heard of and couldn't pronounce. When I was seven I learned the name of every country and capital in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Some weird, like, self-defense. When I was fourteen and Daddy retired from his job, when you and he were first together, he confessed he'd never worked for the State Department and he'd hardly ever gone to the places he told us he'd been. He and Mommy would say he was in London, and he would be in, like, Cambodia. Then I had to rethink the geography of my whole childhood. That's how I feel right now, like Daddy said he'd be in a particular place, and I was counting on it, but he's not."
I reached across the gear shift and took her hand, and she let me hold it.
"I don't remember a funeral parlor on this end of the island," Ginny said. We were more than halfway to Evan's place, heading into island farmland, rolling meadows, the ancient cemetery I had written about when I first arrived.
"There isn't one."
"Then where are we going?"
"To Evan and Mavis's house. Where did you think?"
"I thought you were taking me to say goodbye to Daddy. That's why I came so soon."
"There's an autopsy. Off-island. The medical examiner ordered it."
"Why didn't you tell me? When will he be back here?" The questions had sharper edges, arrowheads, say, but not steak knives. Not yet.
"I had no idea you thought we were going there now. I'll call the coroner as soon as we get to Evan's and find out when they'll be through with the body." I should have said everything at that moment, instead of storing it up, but I was trying to spare her, give her a few more hours before she had to endure another round of horrors. "You remember Evan and Mavis, don't you?"
"I just saw him on Ted Koppel. My boyfriend has to watch it every night, like that disease where you have to wash your hands every five minutes. I said to him, 'My almost-ex-stepmother used to be his girlfriend.' 'Ted Koppel's girlfriend?' He was, like, wow. So I said, 'Don't you think I'd have told you that when you first made me watch this? The lawyer's girlfriend, the guy who's sticking up for the German girl who killed the baby.' He was, like, 'Your stepmother dated that guy? He would defend Slobodan Milosevic if it would get him network TV time."
"I hope you told him it was when Evan was in law school, and that he didn't defend any celebrity murderers before he passed the bar."