The Loose Ends List(70)

“Is that your dream?”

Enzo opens a bottle of water and takes a big gulp. “The dream is terrible. It’s the way I saw the tubes when I was a kid, like serpents crawling into Dad and eating him alive. In the dream, the serpents are crawling into me.” He shudders. “When you’re sitting there for weeks, there’s never a good-bye moment. It’s suffering, and then relief when the suffering stops. We never had a good-bye.”

I wrap my arms around Enzo and hold him as tightly as I can. I don’t know what else to do. Nothing I say will exorcise that memory.

“Now you know why I used to avoid patients on this f*cking ship. Or tried, at least.” He gets up and walks out, leaving me to endure a miserable, sleepless night.





TWENTY-ONE


MY AUNT ROSE is dead in a freezer.

Uncle Billy found her curled up under the covers, dead and smiling. It’s not that her dying was so surprising, but this was all about Gram’s death trip. It’s like when one sister elopes in Vegas days before the other sister’s wedding.

Aunt Rose painted papier-maché bottles for Heinz all day yesterday. She recited our family’s plum pudding recipe—in perfect order, even—for Gloria’s book. Now she’s in a freezer in the underbelly of the ship because she wanted to be buried with Karl near their Charleston house.

Gram holds Aunt Rose’s sweater to her face. “To be perfectly honest, my initial reaction was Of course Rose dies smiling in her sleep. She’s the easy sister. But now I realize it was a gift. Deep down, Rosie knew I was worried sick about her. I know I had you people to look out for her, but we ate lunch at our place on Madison three times a week and talked on the phone every day. She was a pain in the ass, but she was my pain in the ass.”

“She was a sweetheart,” Bob says. “And a very pretty lady. I remember when we were young, she’d meet us for root beer floats and talk about her dates. She always wore red lipstick and smoked cigarettes.”

“Aunt Rose smoked?” I say.

“Everybody smoked, Maddie,” Gram says.

“How is this happening? She’s gone, just like that.” Wes shakes his head. “It’s going to be strange not to hear her talk about Karl in Central Park.”

“And how her plumbing didn’t work,” Dad says.

“And the dead dogs. ‘Where’s Tippy? Is Karl walking him at this hour?’” Uncle Billy imitates Aunt Rose’s high-pitched voice.

“Is that you, Weebles?” Wes squints at Uncle Billy’s face. Even Gram cracks a smile.

“You know, guys, those stories are silly to us, but she lost the majority of her mind, and those are the ones that stuck.” Mom pauses. “Those were Rose’s snow globe moments.”

“See, people? We don’t need to scale mountains. It’s all about the little things,” Wes says.

“Like reproductive problems and getting gas from kielbasa,” Uncle Billy says.

“You’re such a jerk, Billy. C’mon, Assy, let’s have a service for her here,” Wes says. “We’ll do a luncheon because we all know Aunt Rose lived for luncheons. We can dress Easter chic and talk about all the fun we had in Charleston.”

“Good idea, Wessy,” Gram says. “Now, everybody clear out so I can mourn my sister in peace.”



The luncheon is full of tea roses and Dixieland music. I wear my pink dress, Aunt Rose’s favorite color, and Bob and Eddie surprise Gram with side-by-side enlargements of the old and new Bled photos. It’s all very elegant, just like Aunt Rose. It feels like she went the way she was meant to go, on her expiration date.

Gram breaks down when Uncle Billy and Wes leave to pack up Aunt Rose’s cabin. I watch her through the eyes of a little girl terrified to see a grown-up cry.



It’s late, and insomnia is rampant on this ship. The closer we get to the end, the longer the line is for Whac-A-Mole. For a small woman, Paige can smack the hell out of those moles.

Enzo and I have spent hours on Mom and Dad’s balcony, eating popcorn while Dad shows us the constellations in his fuzzy slippers.

It’s almost midnight, and I get a text from Uncle Billy: Run?

“Be back in a little while.” I kiss Enzo’s cheek.

I pass the Skinny Dave chair and the Grotto and climb the stairs to the track. I walk up behind Uncle Billy, who’s leaning over the railing.

“Hey, Mads. Thanks for coming up. I needed a running partner who can’t talk and run at the same time.”

I stretch out my calves. “Hey, I think that’s an insult.”

“Oh my God. Wes won’t stop talking.” He laughs. “I actually tried to stuff a sock in his mouth, but he managed to talk through it.”

We sit on the floor and stretch in silence, bathed in starlight.

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” he says, staring at his running shoes.

I nod. “You were her favorite,” I say.

“You guys never knew the younger version of Aunt Rose. She was still sweet, but she was a force of nature.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, screw the run. Let’s walk and talk.” We jump up and walk at a fast clip.

“As you might have noticed, Mother was not happy about Trish marrying a Jewish guy.”