What Happens in Paradise(3)

Russ’s footprint in Iowa City all but disappeared after he took the job with Ascension thirteen years ago. Russ used to know everybody in town. He worked for the Corn Refiners Association and was a social creature by nature. He would drop off Baker and Cash at school and then go to Pearson’s drugstore on Linn Street for a cup of coffee with “the boys”—the four or five retired gentlemen known as the Midwestern Mafia, who ran Iowa City. Russ’s coffee break with the boys was sacred. They were the ones who had encouraged him to run for the Iowa City school board, and they’d suggested he join the Rotary Club, where he eventually became vice president.

All of the boys were now dead, and Russ hadn’t been involved with local politics or the Rotary Club in over a decade. Irene occasionally bumped into someone from that previous life—Cherie Werner, for example, wife of the former superintendent of schools. Cherie (or whoever) would ask after Russ and then add, “We always knew he would make it big someday,” as though Russ were a movie star or the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears.

But who from Iowa City remained in Russ’s everyday life? No one, really.



Now that the business of Milly’s death has been handled—her body delivered to the funeral home, her personal effects collected, the probate attorney from Brown Deer enlisted to settle her estate—Irene has no choice but to face the daunting task of contacting the family attorney, Ed Sorley, to tell him about Russ.

“Irene!” Ed says. His voice contains cheerful curiosity. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon. Everything okay?”

Irene is in the amethyst-hued parlor, pacing a Persian rug that the same Chicago carpet dealer who’d sold her the Excelsior-suite rug had described as “Queen Victoria’s jewel box, overturned.” (Irene had bought it immediately despite the fact that it cost even more than the other rug.)

“No, Ed,” Irene says. “It’s not.” She pauses. Russ has been dead for ten days and this is the first time she’s going to say the words out loud to someone other than her sons. “Russ is dead.”

There is a beat of silence. Two beats.

“What?” Ed says. “Irene, what?”

“He was killed in a helicopter crash on New Year’s Day,” Irene says. “Down in the Virgin Islands.” She doesn’t wait for Ed to ask the obvious follow-up question: What was Russ doing on a helicopter in the Virgin Islands? Or maybe: Where are the Virgin Islands? “When I called you last week to ask about Russ’s will, he was already dead. I should have told you then. I’m sorry. It’s just…I was still processing the news myself.”

“Oh, jeez, Irene,” Ed says. “I’m so, so sorry. Russ…” There’s a lengthy pause. “Man…Anita is going to be devastated. You know how she adored Russ. You might not have realized how all the wives in our little group way back when thought Russ was an all-star husband. Anita used to ask me why I couldn’t be more like him.” Ed stops abruptly and Irene can tell he’s fighting back emotion.

Anita should be glad you weren’t more like him, Irene wants to say. Anita and Ed Sorley were part of a group of friends Irene and Russ had made when the kids were small—and yes, Anita had been transparently smitten with Russ. She had always laughed at his jokes and was the most envious on Irene’s fiftieth birthday when Russ hired an airplane to pull a banner declaring his love.

“I need help, Ed,” Irene says. “You’re the first person I’ve told other than my kids. The boys and I flew down to the Caribbean last week. Russ’s body had been cremated and we scattered the ashes.”

“You did?” Ed says. “So are you planning a memorial, then, instead of a funeral?”

“No memorial,” Irene says. “At least not yet.” She knows this will sound strange. “I can’t face everyone with so many unanswered questions. And I need to ask you, Ed, as my attorney, to please keep this news quiet. I don’t even want you to tell Anita.”

There was another significant pause. “I’ll honor your wishes, Irene,” Ed says. “But you can’t keep it a secret forever. Are you going to submit an obituary to the Press-Citizen? Or, I don’t know, post something on Facebook, maybe?”

“Facebook?” Irene says. The mere notion is appalling. “Do I have a legal obligation to tell people?”

“Legal?” Ed says. “No, but I mean…wow. You must still be in shock. I’m in shock myself, I get it. What was… why…”

“Ed,” Irene says. “I called you to find out what legal steps I need to take.”

There’s an audible breath from Ed. He’s flustered. Irene imagines going through this ninety or a hundred more times with every single one of their friends and neighbors. Maybe she should publish an obituary. But what would she say? Two hours after the papers landed on people’s doorsteps, she would have well-intentioned hordes arriving with casseroles and questions. She can’t bear the thought.

“When I called you before, Ed, you said Russ signed a new will in September.” Irene had shoved this piece of information to a remote corner of her mind, but now it’s front and center. Why the hell did Russ sign a new will without Irene and, more saliently, without telling Irene? There could be only one reason. “You said he included a new life insurance policy? For three million dollars?” She swallows. “The life insurance policy…who’s the beneficiary?” Here is the moment when the god-awful truth is revealed, she thinks. Russ must have made Rosie the beneficiary. Or maybe, if he was too skittish to do that, he made a trust the beneficiary, a trust that would lead back to Rosie and Maia.