Sarah drove to the cemetery in Colma, past the long line of car dealerships, and reached Cypress Lawn just before nine. She let the secretary in the office know why she had come, and she was waiting in the mausoleum for the cemetery people to arrive with Stanley's ashes at nine o'clock. They placed the urn inside a small vault, and it took another half hour to seal it up with the small marble slab, while Sarah watched. It unnerved her to see that the slab was blank, and they assured her that the one with his name and dates on it would replace it in a month.
Forty minutes later it was over, and she stood outside in the sunlight, looking dazed, wearing a black dress and coat. She felt momentarily disoriented, looked up at the sky, and said, “Good-bye, Stanley.” And then she got in her car, and drove to the office.
Maybe Phil was right, and she was being unprofessional. But whatever this was, it felt awful. She had work to do for him now, the work they had completed so carefully in the three years they had worked together, meticulously preparing his estate, and discussing tax laws. She had to wait to hear from his heirs. She had no idea how long it would take, or if she would have to proactively pursue some of them. Sooner or later, she knew she'd round them up. She had a lot of good news for them, from a great-uncle they didn't even know.
She tried not to think of Phil, or even of Stanley, on the drive back. She went over a mental list of things she had to do today. Stanley had been buried, as simply and unpretentiously as he had wanted. She had put the wheels in motion to probate the estate. She had to call a realtor to discuss putting the house on the market, and have it appraised. Neither she nor Stanley had had a precise idea of what it was worth. It hadn't been appraised in a long time, and the real estate market had gone up drastically since the last time it was. But the house also hadn't been touched, remodeled, or even freshened up in more than sixty years. There was a huge amount of work to do. Someone was going to have to restore the house from basement to attic. More than likely it would cost a fortune. She was going to have to ask the heirs, when they surfaced, how much work they wanted to do, if any, before they put it on the market. Maybe they would just want to sell it as it was, and let the new owners worry about it. It was their decision. But she wanted to at least get a current appraisal for the heirs before they turned up for the reading of the will.
She called a realtor as soon as she got to her office. They made an appointment to meet at the house the following week. It was going to be the first time Sarah got a full tour of the house herself. She had the keys now, but she didn't want to go there on her own. She knew it would make her too sad. It felt intrusive to her somehow and would be easier to do with the realtor, keeping things professional, as Phil had said. She was doing her job for a client, not just a friend. She had watched his interment as his friend.
She had just hung up after talking to the realtor, when her secretary buzzed her and told her that her mother was on the line. Sarah hesitated for a moment, took a breath, and answered the call. She loved her mother, but not the way she never failed to invade her space.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, sounding bright and breezy. She didn't like telling her mother her woes. It always led to things she didn't want to discuss with her. Audrey was never afraid to push her way past whatever boundaries Sarah had. Audrey's many years in twelve-step groups, and therapy, had failed to teach her that. “I got your message last night, but you said you were going out, so I didn't call,” Sarah explained.
“You sound awful. What's wrong?” So much for bright and breezy.
“I'm just tired. I have a lot going on at the office. One of my clients died yesterday, and I'm trying to organize everything for the estate. It's a big job.”
“That's too bad.” Audrey sounded briefly sympathetic, which was at least nice of her. Sarah didn't mind the sympathy, she just didn't want everything else that usually went with it. Her mother's questions, and even her gestures of kindness, were always invasive and excessive. “Is something else wrong?”
“No. I'm fine.” Sarah could feel her voice get small, and hated herself for it. Up, up, up, she told herself, or Mom will nail you. Audrey always knew when Sarah was upset, no matter what she did to hide it, and then the interrogation, and eventually accusations would begin. And worse yet, the advice. It was never what Sarah wanted to hear. “How are you? Where did you go last night?” Sarah tried to distract her mother. Sometimes that worked.
“I went to a new book club with Mary Ann.” Mary Ann was one of her mother's many women friends. She had spent the twenty-two years of her widowhood hanging out with other women, playing bridge, taking classes, going to women's groups, even taking trips with them. She had dated a few men over the years, who always turned out to be alcoholic, problematic, or secretly married. She seemed to draw dysfunctional men to her like a magnet. And after she disposed of them, she then went back to hanging out with other women. She was in one of her celibate phases again, after a brief romance with an owner of a car dealership, who had turned out to be yet another alcoholic, or so she said. It was hard for Sarah to believe there were that many on the planet. But if there was one in the area, Audrey was sure to find him.
“That sounds like fun,” Sarah said, referring to the book club. She couldn't think of anything worse than attending a book club with a flock of women. Just thinking about things like that kept her seeing Phil on weekends. She didn't want to end up like her mother. And despite years of her mother's entreaties, she had never gone to Adult Children of Alcoholics, a twelve-step group her mother was absolutely certain was right for Sarah. Sarah had seen a therapist briefly between college and law school, and felt she had dealt with at least some of her “issues,” as much about her mother as about her father. She had never dated an alcoholic. The men she chose were emotionally unavailable, her specialty, because in a way, despite his physical presence in the house, she had never really known her father, thanks to his drinking. He had been shut off from all of them.
“I wanted to let you know that we're having Thanksgiving at Mimi's.” Mimi was Audrey's mother, and Sarah's grandmother. She was eighty-two years old, had been widowed for ten years, after a long and happy marriage, and had a far more normal dating life than her daughter's or even Sarah's. There seemed to be a limitless supply of nice, normal, happy widowers at her age. She was out nearly every night, and very rarely with other women, unlike her daughter. She was having a lot more fun than either of them.
“That's fine,” Sarah said, making a note of it on her calendar. “Do you want me to bring anything?”
“You can help cook the turkey.”
“Is anyone else coming?” Sometimes her mother brought one of her friends who had nowhere else to go. And her grandmother sometimes invited friends, or even her current boyfriend, which always irritated Audrey. Sarah suspected she was jealous, but never said it.
“I'm not sure. You know your grandmother. She said something about inviting one of the men she's going out with, because his children live in Bermuda.” Mimi had a vast supply of men and friends, and had never been to a book club in her life. She had far more entertaining fish to fry.
“I just wondered,” Sarah said vaguely.
“You're not bringing Phil, are you?” Audrey asked pointedly. The way she said it spoke volumes. She had pegged him correctly as a problem, right from the beginning. Audrey was the expert in screwed-up men. She said it as though asking if Sarah was bringing a test tube of leprosy to their dinner. She asked the same question every year, which never failed to annoy Sarah. Audrey knew the answer without asking. Sarah never brought Phil to Thanksgiving. He spent holidays with his children and never invited Sarah to join them. In four years, she had never spent a holiday with him.