Golden Girl(26)

Does he sense me? she wonders.

Cruz follows his father into the church.



Vivi spies a man hurrying down Main Street; he turns left at the Hub, heading for the church.

It’s…Zach Bridgeman.

Well, okay, there have been latecomers to every church service in the history of the world, and today, for Vivi’s memorial, the latecomer is Zach. Pamela must already be inside, seated with the elder Bonhams. Zach takes the church steps two at a time on the diagonal. When he opens the door, Vivi hears organ music and sees everyone rise. Time to go inside.

But instead of going up to the front, Zach slides into the far corner of the vestibule.

“Huh,” Vivi says. Maybe he has to get back to the control tower, maybe he wants to sneak a cigarette, maybe he doesn’t want to call attention to his tardiness by walking to the front of the church while everyone is watching.

“This will make sense to you later,” Martha says.

Martha is starting to annoy Vivi. She knows everything. She’s the omniscient narrator that Vivi never asked for. (Vivi prefers close third-person.)

“Sorry, not sorry,” Martha says.

“Is there something going on with Zach?” Vivi says.

Martha nods.

Well, okay, then, Vivi thinks. She’s a novelist. She’s intrigued.



The processional hymn is “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” one of Vivi’s favorites. So someone (Willa) listened to Vivi on the rare occasions when they made it to church and Vivi mentioned that she’d like this hymn sung at her funeral.

After the hymn, everyone sits.

The kids are in the first pew, sandwiched between JP and Savannah. The three of them are a soggy, weeping mess.

As a mother, Vivi wasn’t perfect, not even close. Willa, for example, wanted Vivi to be more like Rip’s mother, Tink Bonham—cool, elegant, reserved. Vivi was, admittedly, none of these things. She occasionally ate noisily and snorted when she laughed and she swore like a sailor and she honked and flipped people off when she drove (but only off-island) and she ugly-cried at sad movies and video clips of servicemen and -women returning from overseas and surprising their kids at school. All of this embarrassed Willa and, Vivi thought, inspired just the tiniest bit of disdain.

Carson, meanwhile, wore her disdain for Vivi like a neon feather boa. Vivi often felt like she could do nothing right in Carson’s eyes. Any détente, any period of friendship and affection, was always temporary and followed by a blowup (such as the fight they had the morning Vivi died). And yet, Carson is sobbing like she’s holding her own broken heart in her hands.

Leo is usually the stoic. When he dislocated his shoulder in a middle-school lacrosse game, he didn’t make a sound. He never cried getting shots as a baby. He had a high tolerance for pain and discomfort; his sisters used to fling him around, draw on him, dress him up. Willa once dropped him on his head in their gravel driveway. Vivi thought Leo might meet the fact of her death with quiet strength, and while there are occasional flickers of that—he takes a breath, mops his face, focuses—he always dissolves again.

My babies, she thinks. They need me. I never had to be their best friend, I never had to be cool or funny, I didn’t have to make all those snacks or bring them treats from the grocery store or lavish them with gifts the Christmas that JP and I split; I didn’t have to drive them to the beach, picking up half a dozen friends on the way, when they could just as easily have ridden their bikes.

All I had to do was hug them, kiss them, rock them to sleep, read to them, tell them I was proud of them and that I was happy, so happy, that they were mine.

I’m here, she thinks. I’m here.

Vivi wants to let the kids know she’s watching. Should she use one of the nudges? What would she do? Have a car drive past blaring “Spirit in the Night,” by the Boss? Create a spontaneous, out-of-nowhere lightning storm?

“I want to use one of my nudges,” Vivi says. “Let the kids know I’m here.”

“I’d wait,” Martha says. “Until they need you.”

“Are you not watching? They need me now.”

“They’re fine,” Martha says. “This is normal.”

Vivi supposes it is normal—their mother died suddenly, without warning, and they had no time to prepare or say goodbye.



The thing is, Vivi knows exactly how they feel.

Just like that, she’s sucked out of this church and plopped into the front row at St. John Bosco Catholic Church in Parma, Ohio. It’s February 18, 1987. Vivi is seventeen years old, a senior in high school. Her applications to college have all been mailed in, and her father has just killed himself by running the family car, a 1982 Ford Country Squire station wagon, in the garage.

Her father’s death is not only a tragedy (a person dying in the prime of his life); it’s also a scandal. There are whispers in the church, in the neighborhood, and in the community as a whole. Why did he do it? Was there a note?

There was no note, no explanation.



Vivi’s father, Frank Howe, works for the phone company, Ohio Bell. He’s a “manager,” so he wears a shirt and tie to the office but no jacket. Vivi knows nothing about his work life; what it is he manages, she has no idea and doesn’t ask. Once a year, Vivi and her mother, Nancy, go to the “company picnic,” which is held at Frank’s boss’s house in a subdivision that’s nicer than the Howes’. Mr. Ricard, the boss, has an in-ground pool and a tiki bar, and Vivi appreciates these things even though she dreads the company picnic because she’s expected to hang out with the other employee kids, none of whom she knows. She always brings a book and spends the afternoon on a chaise, reading. On the way home, her mother always calls her “antisocial,” and Vivi shrugs and says under her breath, “Sit on it.” One year when Vivi attends this picnic, her reading is interrupted by the sound of a barbershop quartet singing “Coney Island Baby.” This is startling enough, but Vivi sits bolt upright when she realizes that the man singing the baritone part is her father.