The Mother-in-Law(83)

“Yes,” he says after an eternity. “Okay. We’ll be right there.”

“What is it?” I ask, when he hangs up the phone.

“It’s Nettie,” he says. “She’s dead.”





62: NETTIE


PAST

Who are we after we’re gone? I wonder. It’s a good question to ponder. Most people can’t come up with an answer right away. They frown, consider it for a minute. Maybe even sleep on it. Then the answers start to come.

We’re our children. Our grandchildren. Our great-grandchildren. We’re all the people who will go on to live, because we lived. We are our wisdom, our intellect, our beauty, filtered through generations, continuing to spill into the world and make a difference.

Most people end up with some version of this. Then they will nod, satisfied and secure in their contribution, certain that their lives will not be void of meaning.

Of course, there are plenty of ways to give your life meaning beyond having children. Everyone says this. Some people believe it. But in the end it doesn’t matter because I don’t believe it. And this is, after all, my life.

The problem is, Patrick came home at exactly the wrong time. I was sitting up in bed, in my pajamas. After extensive googling to ensure that one bottle of Latuben would be enough to kill me, I’d poured it into a coffee mug. It was on my bedside table. On my lap was a notepad and a pen. I had just put pen to paper when I saw Patrick’s car pull into the driveway.

I’d planned to write a note, explaining everything to Patrick, absolving him from blame and guilt and responsibility. I wanted to give him that. Even after all that’s happened, I had affection for Patrick. He’d tried his best. If I had only gotten pregnant easily, Patrick and I would probably still have been happy. People underestimate the role fate plays in our lives. Silly them.

And so, when I see his car, I lift the mug to my lips and drink it down in one almighty gulp. Then I lie back and close my eyes. I’m out.





63: LUCY


PRESENT

Dad arrives early on the morning of Nettie’s funeral with a bag of donuts for the kids. He stays to help as Ollie and I as we roll about the house like marbles, searching for missing socks and neckties (for Archie, who now, he tells us, has a funeral uniform). The photographers are outside again today. They’d arrived two days after Nettie’s death, when the whole twisted story had hit the press. “MONEY, GREED AND FAMILY: INSIDE THE SOCIETY FAMILY MURDER-SUICIDE.” The article didn’t have much in the way of facts, but the police had warned us that more would likely come out. There was something about the uber-wealthy falling from grace—people were insatiable for information, and the more sordid, the better. The police had also warned us that photographers would almost certainly be outside the funeral, trying to get a shot of us crying. (Yesterday Harriet had given the photographer the peace sign and trout pout lips as she hoofed her way out to the car. It was probably today’s cover story, but I didn’t have the heart to look.) “How are you holding up?” Dad asks me. I am ironing Edie’s only clean dress that she will have to wear with odd socks because I can’t find a pair that match. In light of everything else that’s happened, I can’t find a reason to care.

“Honestly? I feel like nothing will ever be the same.”

“It doesn’t last forever, honey.”

I look up from the ironing board, blinking back the tears that come to my eyes with such ease these days. “How do you know?” I ask, a childish question, but then again, he is my Dad.

“I know because . . . I’ve been there.”

Even as an adult, it’s easy to forget that your parents are people. Now, it occurs to me that of course he’s been there. My mother’s death had come right on the heels of Dad’s mother, my nana. It’s not something I’d thought much about back then, after all, my dad had been a grown-up and I was just a kid. And Nana, as far as I was concerned, had been old (sixty-one). But it was only a year later, almost to the day, when Papa, Dad’s dad, dropped dead of a heart attack. He had been sixty-seven.

It was a lot of people to lose in just over a year.

I put down the iron. “How long does it last?”

He offers me a sad smile. “It lasts . . . a while.”

“Muuuuuuuuuuum,” Harriet calls. “Archie’s watching the iPad!”

“I’ll go,” Dad says.

The kids are sad about Aunt Nettie’s death. All of them have cried, multiple times, even Edie, but their grief is wonderfully fickle—here one moment, gone the next. This, too, I’m becoming familiar with.

“How do I look?” Ollie says.

He stands in the doorway of the laundry room in what I think of as his “Eamon suit.” It’s tight-fitting, navy blue. A recruitment suit. He looks handsome in it.

“I’m going to sell it tomorrow,” he says. “On eBay.”

There’s no point in telling him not to worry about it now, or that we could talk about it in a week or two. Ever since Nettie’s death, Ollie has been on a mission to do anything he can to make money, save money or reclaim money. We’ve sold our watches, all of my jewelry, a handful of other items that have value. It’s got a frenzied, avoidance-of-grief type feel to it, but at the same time, I find myself comforted by it. As though he’s recommitting to his role in the family, showing us the kind of person he wants to be.