“Simple, simple, case closed,” she said, quoting Mattei.
“For most people,” he said.
“Evidently not for my people,” she said.
“True enough,” he said.
His glass was empty, and he filled it again. He started to fill hers, but she put her hand over the top. “I’ve had enough,” she said.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“I don’t have any idea,” she said.
“Do you want to postpone the wedding?” he asked. “I mean, in light of what’s going on with your father.”
“We probably should,” she said.
“But you still want to get married,” he said.
“I never said I didn’t,” she said. “You were the one who said that.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, we can postpone,” he said.
She wanted to say something else, something definitive. She knew she should, that he was waiting for something more from her, but nothing came. She was exhausted. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Are you coming?”
“No,” he said. “I think I’ll stay up for a while.”
She could hear him pouring himself another glass as she walked down the long hall to the bedroom.
LATE THAT NIGHT MICHAEL FINALLY crawled into bed next to her, rolling them both into the sagging center of the old mattress. Zee awakened to the smell of good wine turned sour on breath. Michael was kissing her.
Instinctively, before she was awake enough to catch herself, she turned her head away.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she saw the hurt look on his face and realized what she had done.
She knew he was angry, but he was also very drunk. And she was too exhausted to talk about it now.
She picked up her pillow and went to the den to sleep, leaving him the bed.
By the time she woke up the next morning, Michael was gone. The note on the table was short but clear.
Dear Zee,
You were right. I am angry. I’ve had enough.
21
ZEE CRIED MOST OF the day on Wednesday. More than a few of the tears were relief; because it was over now, she had no big decisions to make. Some of the tears were for the last three wasted years of her life. Some were for Finch, some for Maureen and The Great Love, and some were for Lilly Braedon.
She listened to her thoughts roll around her achy brain. Her sinuses were swollen from crying, she didn’t dare look in the mirror. She went into the bathroom, ran cold water in the sink, and splashed it onto her face.
Outside, she heard the sound of Finch’s walker. Jessina was in the kitchen making breakfast. Zee dried her hands. She noticed the engagement ring on her left hand, wondered what she should do with it. Should she send it back to him? Should she even call him? She didn’t want to, realizing on one level how relieved she was not to have to call and, at the same time, understanding that she would have to get in touch with him eventually to pick up her things. Eventually, but not now.
WHEN SHE COULDN’T STAND BEING in the house any longer, she decided to take a ride, driving Lafayette Street into Marblehead, then taking a left onto West Shore Drive. There was something she’d been meaning to do, and now was the time. She stopped at the Garden Center and picked out a grave planter basket, with geraniums, trailing petunias, and dracaena spikes. Then she kept going until she reached Waterside Cemetery.
She pulled the Volvo down the narrow, tree-lined lane and up to the office, where she parked and walked inside.
“Hi,” she said to the woman sitting at the desk. “I hate to bother you, but do you think you could direct me to Lilly Braedon’s grave?”
Cathy took in Zee’s blotchy face. Normally she might have had to look up the location of a grave site, but Lilly Braedon’s headstone had been installed only yesterday, and Cathy had seen Lilly’s husband and kids come by to visit it as she was leaving last night. So sad, she thought, wondering what would have caused the young mother to make the leap from the Tobin Bridge into the Mystic River. She felt particularly sorry for the kids.
Cathy walked Zee to the door and pointed up the hill. “It’s right up there next to the pavilion,” she said. “Under that big oak tree.”
“Thanks so much,” Zee said.
Zee left her car by the office and carried the flower basket up the hill, stopping at one of the faucets to water it. When she reached the top of the hill, she took in the view. From here she could see all of Salem, from the Willows to the Gables, to Shetland Park and the old mill buildings with their peaked rooflines that looked like a row of white tents. Beyond Shetland was the district called the Point, with the tenement houses where the mill workers had once lived-the Irish, the Italians, the French Canadians. The mills were long gone, but the housing remained. These days it was mostly Dominicans. Jessina and her son, Danny, lived in the Point.
Zee found Lilly’s gravestone. It was simple granite, a matte gray. On it just Lilly’s name, her date of birth, and the day she died. Zee found herself doing the math. Lilly was thirty-four, only two years older than Zee and the same age as Maureen had been when she committed suicide, but Lilly had seemed younger than Zee ever remembered her mother being. Certainly more naive, she thought, though it was odd to make that judgment, Maureen’s era would have almost certainly dictated a lesser sophistication than Lilly’s. Looking back on it now, Zee realized that it was the filter of a child’s vision that had clouded her perception. If she saw them next to each other, most likely they would have seemed the same. In many ways, of course, they already did seem the same, at least in Zee’s mind’s eye. It was barely possible to keep them separate while Lilly lived, but now their images were blending more and more.
Zee placed the basket on the flat base of Lilly’s grave. She hadn’t thought past doing it, but now she thought she ought to say a few words or, barring that, at least a silent prayer or something, but nothing came to her.
She tried her best to clear her head, to think about Lilly, but when she looked at the gravestone, she just wanted to cry again, which would have been appropriate except that she didn’t think she could stand to cry anymore. Her head ached so much from crying that she willed herself not to. Instead she walked up to the pavilion and sat looking out over the harbor toward Salem.
The House of the Seven Gables was partially visible from here. She tried to identify Finch’s house, but it was blocked by the boatyard across the street. The light from the Salem Harbor power plant blinked on and off, and for some reason, standing here, she thought for a moment of Gatsby standing and looking out at Daisy’s pier, though that light was green and not white, and lower to the ground and not on top of some coal-fired smokestack that people in both towns were trying their best to get rid of.
Zee fell asleep watching the harbor. It surprised her, first that she could sleep in the daytime-she had never been one to take naps-and second that she could sleep out in the open in a public place. The added confusion of an interrupted dream cycle meant that for a few seconds after she woke up, she had absolutely no idea where she was.
It had been the sound of an engine that had awakened her. A red truck was moving along the narrow lanes, driving first up one side of the hill and then down the other, taking each parallel street slowly, finally stopping and backing up when it came to Lilly’s grave. Adam didn’t turn off the engine before he got out of the truck. It idled and sputtered, creating a sound track that in retrospect would make what Zee saw him do seem more like a film than real life.
Adam walked over and stood for a long time in front of the grave. He looked at the headstone and then at the basket of flowers. Then he looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He picked up the flower basket Zee had just laid on the grave and heaved it. She watched as it arced in slow motion up and over the gravestones, finally landing on the pavement, where it smashed and scattered. Then Adam got into his truck and took off.