All Adults Here(65)
Barbara’s sister nodded. “He’s a wonderful man. They were a great couple. One for the ages.” She looked skyward. “I think we’re going to start soon, if you’d like to find seats.”
“Thank you, we will,” Astrid said, and guided Cecelia by the shoulders to the last row, nearest the exit. “I bet you a million dollars that Barbara hated her sister. Two million. One for the ages, my ass. Do you think her sister knew that Barbara was living at Heron Meadows? I doubt it. You think all those cats of Barbara’s are purebred? No way.” Astrid looked toward the door and saw Birdie.
She was as dressed up as she got. Birdie was wearing a navy blue button-down shirt and some pin-striped pants, with a skinny silver bolo tie. The tie made the silver streak in her hair—a blaze, Astrid had learned it was called, like Susan Sontag, or Cruella de Vil—sparkle. At least that’s what it looked like to Astrid. She stood up and waved, smiling perhaps a little too broadly for the occasion.
It came and went, her courage. She had felt it this morning, a little cloud floating above Birdie’s side of the bed. Birdie, who had always been herself. Astrid had never lied, but she had also never been loud. She tried to imagine what Russell would have said, if she’d told him that she had sometimes imagined being with a woman. Not more often than she imagined being with a man, just sometimes. Every so often, once every five years or so, there would be someone who caught her eye, and Astrid would imagine a first kiss with that person, and having sex, and being married, and after a few months, the feeling would pass. Porter’s fifth-grade teacher had lingered; he had been tall and brawny, and once Astrid had had an extended fantasy about him taking her camping in the Catskills, and what he would do to her body in the tent at night. Another was a woman with beautiful dark eyebrows who had worked at Susan’s Bookshop and then left to go to library school. Russell had been sensitive, self-conscious, and he would have been hurt if he’d known. But if he had lived, she would have stayed married, and she wouldn’t have ever told him anything. That was the truth of a successful marriage that Astrid understood: All you had to do was not get divorced or die! Everything else was fair game. Taken was taken. All love settled. Not settling for something less than you deserved, just settled down, the way breath settles in a sleeping body, not doing more than necessary. Was that what Nicky and Juliette were trying to avoid, the boredom of an average marriage? Was that why Elliot and Wendy seemed so miserable? Astrid understood. It sounded old-fashioned, and depressing, but that’s how things used to be, she wanted to tell her children. All three of them needed to hear it! This is how it was! Do you think your grandparents and your great-grandparents and your great-great-grandparents were always in love? You heard about those couples, the ones who danced beside their dining room tables every night, who held hands every day until they were ninety years old and then died two days apart because they couldn’t bear the loss, but those were the exceptions, weren’t they? Astrid thought so, but she couldn’t be sure. She and Russell had been a good couple but not an extraordinary one. He listened to terrible music. They argued and pointed fingers; they had both spent nights sleeping on the couch, too angry to stay in bed beside the other one. If he were still alive, they would no doubt be fighting still. And would she and Birdie have started going out to lunch? Would they have gone to the movies and shared popcorn, their hands digging into the buttery bag at the same time, knuckles knocking against each other? And would Astrid have felt a tiny zip up her spine? She didn’t know, she didn’t know.
“Gammy, I think you’re a Barbara stan,” Cecelia whispered.
“What is that, a country? Afghanistan?” Astrid craned her neck, watching Birdie make her way through the crowd to their row. Memorial services were exactly like weddings—you never talked to the people whose names were on the invitation, and you spent the whole time catching up with acquaintances while holding disposable plates and paper napkins.
“No, it means stalker/fan. You’re her stan.”
“I see,” Astrid said. “Now, be quiet, both of you.” She stood up and scooched Cecelia and Porter over so that Birdie could sit on her other side.
“Hi,” Birdie said, when she’d finally reached them. “Got the cheap seats, I see.”
Astrid laughed and then kissed Birdie lightly on the lips. Birdie looked pleasantly surprised, which made Astrid feel simultaneously horrible that it had taken her so long and joyous that she’d finally done it. They squeezed into the pew and faced forward, attentive. Astrid wondered if anyone had seen, if she’d hear about it later, gentle questions on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store.
A woman with a black robe and a rainbow-colored woven scarf walked up to the podium and nodded at everyone, making eye contact until the crowd hushed.
“We are here to celebrate the life of our friend, neighbor, sister, and wife, Barbara Baker,” the woman began, and much to her own surprise, that was all Astrid needed to burst into tears. Birdie reached for her hand and intertwined their fingers. They’d never done that before, not in public, not like this, in the middle of the day, surrounded by the entire town. That made Astrid cry harder. Now that she’d told her children, she could tell anyone. And it was Barbara Baker, unlucky Barbara Baker, who had made it all possible, somehow. A woman in the row ahead of them—Susan Kenney-Jones, who owned the bookstore and whose children were roughly the same age as Astrid’s, but living elsewhere—passed back a travel-size package of Kleenex. Susan’s bookstore was two doors down from Shear Beauty—they saw Susan every day. Astrid had known Susan even longer than she’d known Barbara. Susan’s husband had died, too, maybe four years ago. Brain cancer. More tears. Astrid had never cried so much, not in public or in private. Porter looked over, alarmed.