Like a Sister(47)

So instead, I texted Erin excuses about being busy, followed by my address—adding that the delivery person shouldn’t leave the package with our next-door neighbor, Ms. Paterson, if we weren’t home. She’d “accidentally” opened one more than once. Then I finished it all off with a Thanks!!!!!!, crying emoji, and heart eyes. The text version of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I closed the app just as Mr. Buck pulled up to Mel and Veronika’s building on Park Avenue. The Pierce family should’ve been downtown in Tribeca with the rest of the celebs, only traveling to the Upper East Side once a year for the Met Gala. But Mel loved going where he didn’t belong. Urban legend had it that fresh off his first twenty million, Murder Mel attempted to purchase a Park Avenue co-op in the second most exclusive building on the UES. He’d been unanimously rejected by the building’s board. It was a money thing as much as a color thing. He had enough of it. He just hadn’t had it long enough.

But while they were rejecting Mel in their boardroom, their kids were blasting his artists in their bedrooms, part of the middle-and upper-class white-boy set consuming 80 percent of hip-hop. So the same year Free Money artists performed at a bar mitzvah for the head of the co-op board’s son, Mel purchased an apartment in the most exclusive building on the Upper East Side. Once moved in, he’d stayed put for twenty years and counting.

Mr. Buck dropped us off, the doorman let us up, and Tam let us in. I was surprised to see her. The office was her domain. The apartment was all Veronika’s. Yet here she was sans both Mr. and Mrs. Pierce. It threw me.

I hadn’t spoken to her since our argument in the office two days before. For a split second, I wondered if that was why Aunt E had dragged me here. Maybe Tam wanted to apologize. But no. Aunt E got a hug. I got a question. “You talk to that reporter yet?” she said as she closed the front door.

I paused ever so briefly, not expecting it. “Yep.”

“Great,” Tam said. “Let’s sit in the living room. There’re a few things we need to discuss.”

She didn’t say where Mel or Veronika was. Neither of us asked, just followed her down the hallway. The apartment was a “classic six,” as much an Upper East Side staple as the nannies and the 6 train. The living room was large, with floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, hardwood floors, and an oversize gray rug that underscored two mismatched white couches.

I sat on one, smile ablaze. Tam did the same on the other, pulling out a notebook. She’d brought notes. Great. Lucky for me, I didn’t need any. I’d placed first in debate championships senior year of high school. I ran through both my constructive and rebuttal speeches.

“Thank you for talking to the pastor,” Tam said to Aunt E. “I spoke with the cemetery. There’s a plot near Mrs. Pierce available.”

Her words took forever to reach my brain, then slammed into my cerebral cortex like a runaway train. We weren’t here to play nice. We were here to talk about the funeral.

My fingers flew to my wrist.

I’d spent a lot of time thinking about Desiree dying. Watching her life had been like watching a driverless car. You knew she was heading straight toward a brick wall at one hundred miles an hour. You knew you couldn’t stop it. You knew it was going to be painful and messy and hurt like hell. But for all the minutes, hours, years I’d spent thinking about Desiree dying, I’d never thought about what would happen after she did.

She and I certainly had never discussed it. It hadn’t even come up. Not after Gram’s burial. Or my mother’s homegoing. Or when her tutor got hit by that car. I had no clue what she’d want. I could only guess.

My gram had a plot. My mother did too. I’d gone to visit them both exactly once, and even that was at Aunt E’s forced suggestion. I had no problem with cemeteries. I just didn’t think my sister belonged in one.

The idea of her being stuck in a box for the rest of eternity—makeup eaten off by rats and slugs and whatever the hell else hung out underground—just didn’t work. It couldn’t work. Not for someone like Desiree, whose energy couldn’t be contained. Even in photos she looked 3D, like you were viewing her through those cheap plastic IMAX glasses that always left you a bit discombobulated.

“It’s not unreasonable that an entire restaurant doesn’t want to close down so Veronika can host Desiree’s repast there,” Aunt E was saying as Tam scribbled like she’d be quizzed later. “What’s wrong with the church basement? They just redid it.”

“Cremation,” I said.

Aunt E stopped talking, and they both looked at me. I spoke again once I had their full attention. “Desiree should be cremated. Ashes spread in Puerto Rico.” She’d loved it there. “And you need to get her a dress. From one of the fall collections.”

Tam didn’t write any of that down. Instead, she glanced at Aunt E, then back at me. “We were going to pick out something from her closet,” she said.

“When is it?”

“Right now the plan is to wait until the end of the month. Give people time to fly in.”

That meant they had time to get her something designer. “When’s the last time Desiree repeated an outfit?” It felt weird for something so silly to be so important. But still. “She needs two. A separate one for the viewing.”

“This is a funeral, Lena,” Tam said. “Not the Oscars.”