They May Not Mean To, But They Do(69)

“I study my Hebrew,” Ruby said. “I go to services. What do you want from my life? I’m very assiduous.”

You are very supercilious, Coco thought. Put that in your adolescent vocabulary book. But she took a deep breath, reminded herself of the angst of being twelve, an angst she could still remember all too well, and she looked lovingly at the skinny girl sucking on her braces and said, “The party, honey. The invitations. The, you know, the theme. Like the girls on YouTube…”

“Mommy!”

“… I suppose you could make a Katy Perry video. You like her.”

“Mommy, stop! I don’t want to be on YouTube. That’s, that’s … suburban.”

Relieved, infinitely relieved, Coco silently thanked the heavens above. “No Katy Perry, then?”

“Mommy, Katy Perry is for babies. Honestly, Mother.”

“Oh.”

“Katy Perry,” Ruby was muttering with disdain. “God, Mommy, you should know me better than that.”

“You don’t want a Tom Sawyer party, I suppose.”

Ruby burst out laughing. Her braces sparkled in the lamplight. “You’re hilarious,” she said, leaning companionably against her mother.

They sat like that for a few minutes, enjoying the contact. Don’t grow up, please, Coco thought. Just don’t do it. Just don’t.





48

Joy checked the gigantic calendar she had gotten for Aaron to help him keep track of passing time. She allowed herself a moment of pathos: Time is no more for Aaron Bergman. Time has passed him by. Then she lay down on the couch and elevated her legs and prayed for time to pass a little more quickly for herself. Only a few days until she could escape to Upstate. She was rattled by Karl’s proposition. A temptation, there was no doubt about that.

The pleasure of existing in a man’s memory as someone young and beautiful and alluring, and the place Karl held in her own memory, a young man besotted and devoted—those were powerful forces that rose delightfully to the surface whenever she saw him, when she thought about him, too. There was also the physical frisson, it was still there, the few ancient remaining hormones rearing their heads like old warhorses at the sound of a trumpet.

Standing beside Karl beneath an awning on Fifth Avenue during a sudden rain shower, close, their shoulders pressing.

Just the two of them.

And the red walker. And Marta.

Well, a nice diversion from bereavement and lamentation, that’s how she put it to herself. And added to that was the thought of not being alone. Solitude is not my thing, she said out loud. But was living with a new old man her thing? She didn’t know, and all she wanted to do was to see her house in Upstate New York, her white-shingled house with its wavy asphalt roof and rusting porch swing, her own house, nestled among its trees on top of its hill, the stream running merrily below. Someone like Karl, a man who had made his fortune and kept it, might not think much of a house like hers. But it was hers, her own house, unencumbered; she had fought to keep it safe, and now, she thought, it would keep her safe.

She wished she had named it the way people do in English novels. The Remedy, she could call it.

But they all just called it Upstate, and she loved it whatever its name. Every room looked out at different trees she had watched grow over the years, maple trees and birch trees and a weeping willow. The floors squeaked exactly where she expected them to.

She wanted to be in the house immediately, almost feverishly. She could feel the give of the noisy floorboards beneath her feet. She would yank open the windows and let the breeze in, let in the sound of leaves rustling.

Everything in her life had changed when Aaron died. But not the house. The house was not shaken by Aaron’s death, it had been through death already, her father’s, then her mother’s, and it had survived. Once she got to the house, Joy thought, she would finally feel at home again.





49

For the last decade, ever since Aaron had begun to fade, Joy had hired a car to drive them and their stuff to the house Upstate for the summer, always the same car and driver, an aging Vietnam vet from the town nearest their house. The car, a resplendent used limousine he had gotten from a national limo service when it was a mere six years old, was close to twenty now. The driver, Mr. Bailey, was in his seventies.

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought Mother,” he said, nodding toward a small white-haired head just showing above the passenger seat. The ancient limousine rocked and swayed. The two heads swung back and forth, rhythmic and synchronized. “But she likes an outing, don’t you, Mother?”

Mother did not answer.

“Very thoughtful of you,” Joy said. She glared at her children, one on either side of her, both giggling like infants. Daniel hummed the Psycho shower music under his breath. In the enormous well of the car were a pile of black garbage bags, like so many lumpy corpses—Joy’s luggage.

“Thank you for taking the dog,” Joy said.

“Oh, we love dogs, don’t we, Mother?”

The traffic was heavy. Where were they all going? Why couldn’t they stay home and tend to their business? “This is a disaster, darling,” she said to the dog.

Daniel looked at the trees, so green and full. “Traffic or no traffic, the house will still be there.”

“You’re too complacent, Danny.”