Big Summer(86)

I breathed in, reminding myself that high school was over, and that we were all grown-ups now, that Darshi was fine and that Drue wouldn’t be tormenting anyone, ever again. In the former chapel, a high-ceilinged room with wooden pews and arching stained-glass windows donated by long-dead alums, I was touched to see that the Snitzers had come to pay their respects. I greeted the doctors and bent to whisper hello to Ian and Izzie. “I’m very sorry that your friend died,” Ian said.

I squeezed his hand. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m very sorry, too.”

I found the seat my parents had saved me, three rows from the front. A lectern stood between two waist-high urns full of pungent white lilies, their scent overpowering the classy perfumes of a hundred ladies-who-lunched, all of them dressed in their funereal best. I saw sleek black skirts and sharp black jackets, fitted dresses and sky-high black stilettos, designer sunglasses, even, here and there, a black straw hat. It was part funeral, part fashion show, and I was glad of Leela’s gift, which made me stylish enough to fit in but was comfortable, with pockets for my sunglasses and my tissues.

A minute before the service began, Darshi slipped through the door and into the seat beside me, in a fitted black suit, a white blouse, and a pair of black high-heeled shoes. Her curls were pulled back into a sleek bun, her eyes were lined. She nodded at my mom, smiled at my father’s “namaste,” and returned my “Hello” with a muttered “Hi.” Darshi hadn’t wanted to come. “I hadn’t been Drue’s friend in a long, long time,” she’d argued. “Why would I come to her funeral?”

“Because I need you,” I’d told her. “Please.” Finally, she’d agreed to take the morning off from school.

“When are they going to start?” she whispered as ten o’clock came and went. The room was getting warmer; the mourners were getting restless. Just as Rabbi Medloff stepped out from the wings, I heard a familiar voice murmur, “Excuse me.” I looked up and saw Nick Carvalho finding a seat in the center of a row just behind us.

“Nick!” I whispered, waving.

“Oh, jeez,” Darshi murmured.

“Who is that?” asked my mom. Darshi widened her eyes—You didn’t tell her? I glared back, hoping my expression communicated that I’d had no desire to give my parents the details of my post-party hookup.

“Nick!” I whisper-shouted. When I’d caught his eye, he gave me a wave and a nod. I wanted to ask what he was doing here, why he’d come, and where he was staying, but the rabbi had reached the podium. The crowd stilled. The rabbi stood behind the lectern, holding it on each side, before bowing his head.

“Friends. Family. We are gathered to celebrate the memory of Drue Lathrop Cavanaugh. Drue was a daughter, a sister. A colleague, and a friend. A beautiful, talented young woman with a brilliant life ahead of her.” A sob ripped through the silence. I looked and saw Ainsley Graham, Drue’s former wingwoman who hadn’t wanted to be in her wedding party, red-faced and crying. I recognized Abigay, the Cavanaughs’ cook, a few rows back, with a handkerchief fisted in her hand. Drue’s mother was in the front row. Her face was veiled, her body so motionless that I wondered if she was on sedatives. She didn’t seem to be crying. Or breathing, for that matter. Drue’s father sat beside her, handsome and impassive in a navy-blue suit and blindingly white shirt. I guess he’d concluded his business on the Cape with his secret daughter, and was now prepared to mourn his public one. Drue’s brother, Trip, sat on his mother’s other side, his shaggy blond hair unkempt, his face slack, his expression blank and shocked.

“We mourn for what could have been,” said the rabbi. Which was smart, I thought, insofar as what had been was not great. Drue had left mostly wreckage behind her, burnt bridges and broken friendships and hurt feelings. Not to mention the husband she hadn’t loved and had more or less bought. Better to focus on what she could have done, who she might have been—the wife Drue would never get to be, the work she would never get to do, the children she would never get to bear, or raise. Maybe babies would have softened her. Maybe she and Stuart would have fallen in love for real, or maybe she’d have divorced him and spent a happy life with some other man. Maybe Drue could have built incredible skyscrapers, or inventive affordable housing. Maybe she could have been a wonderful mother. Maybe she could have changed the world.

“Drue’s brother will share some memories with us first,” said the rabbi. Trip walked to the lectern with a sheet of paper in his hand.

“If you knew my sister, you know she was the kind of person who could turn a trip to the bodega into an adventure,” he began, his voice a wooden monotone, his eyes on his written speech. “When we were little, she’d make up games. She’d tell me that the living room was the North Pole, and we’d pretend to be explorers trying to make it across the ice floes. Or she’d say that the kitchen was the Gobi Desert, and we’d have to gather supplies. Which usually meant me sneaking past Abigay to get potato chips from the pantry.” I saw smiles at that and heard a sprinkling of laughter. In the front row, Lily Cavanaugh sat, unmoving, as if she’d been frozen in place. Her husband patted her back, the motions of his hand as regular as a metronome.

Trip’s voice got a little less stiff, a little warmer as he continued. “I’m probably mangling this quote from Oscar Wilde, who said he saved his truest genius for his life—that his life was his real work of art. That was Drue. She had a genius for living.”