All These Things I've Done (Birthright #1)(69)
Leo sat up straight and nodded solemnly. ‘I promise.’
‘Good,’ said Mr Kipling. ‘In terms of administration of this household, most everything else will continue as it always has.’ Of course, I already knew this. Mr Kipling was really speaking to Leo. ‘Your finances have been placed into a trust that I will manage until Annie is of age.’
Leo didn’t question these arrangements, nor was he insulted by them, as Nana had feared he might be. He accepted all of it unquestioningly, and this was a relief. Despite Simon Green’s gaffe, Mr Kipling had done well in making Leo feel valued. We went on a while, discussing plans for Nana’s modest service. Mr Kipling was adamant that the wake shouldn’t take place in our apartment, but that it needed to be at some private location where our mafiya relatives would feel comfortable paying their respects. ‘Mr Green and I will come up with something.’
We were just about finished with all the immediate business when the doorbell rang. It was the undertaker, come to take Nana’s body to the funeral home. Leo excused himself to his bedroom. (I think he was a little afraid of Nana’s corpse.)
‘Why don’t you go see if the undertaker needs any help?’ Mr Kipling said to Simon Green. Simon Green was being dismissed and he knew it.
Mr Kipling was perspiring, so I suggested we go out on to the balcony.
‘How is your health?’ I asked him.
‘Much better, thank you. I almost feel sixty-two per cent normal. Keisha is watching everything I eat. She doesn’t want me to accidentally end up getting something with flavour.’ He put his arm around my shoulders in a paternal way. ‘I know how much you loved Galina and how much she loved you. I know how sad you must be.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘I worry about you. The way you keep everything inside, Annie. It’s not healthy.’ Mr Kipling laughed. ‘Though I don’t know who I am to be giving health advice.
‘Annie, there’s something you and I haven’t discussed. I hesitate to even bring it up, but I feel I must.’
‘Yes?’
‘The Delacroix boy,’ Mr Kipling said. Of course, he’d seen the news stories just like everyone else. ‘Silverstein has finally announced his retirement, which means that Charles Delacroix will surely declare his candidacy for DA any day now. And when he does, it will bring attention to him and everyone in his orbit.’
Yes, I understood what he was getting at, and it was something I’d thought of many times myself. I’d said as much to Scarlet back in November. ‘You think I should end it with Win?’
‘No, I’d never presume to tell you that, Anya. But the timing of things – of Galina’s death and Leo becoming your guardian and Mr Delacroix’s political aspirations – might not be ideal. I wouldn’t be a good adviser to you if I didn’t at least pose the following question: is this relationship worth the potential scrutiny?’
My brain said no.
But my heart!
‘You don’t have to answer right now,’ Mr Kipling said. ‘We’ll be in touch a great deal over the next several weeks.’
Through the glass door, I could see Simon Green beckoning us back into the living room.
Mr Kipling apologized for Simon Green. ‘He shouldn’t have suggested the autopsy in front of your brother. Simon means well and he isn’t without intelligence, but I’m afraid he still has much to learn.’
Mr Kipling and I went back into the living room, where the undertakers needed Mr Kipling to sign some paperwork regarding the transfer of Nana’s body. At the moment, Nana’s body was on a gurney, enclosed in a black vinyl bag with a zipper that ran down the middle. Seeing her there, it occurred to me that no priest had given Nana last rites. I worried for her soul and mine.
‘No one gave her last rites,’ I said to Mr Kipling. ‘She told me she was dying, but I didn’t listen! I could have gotten her a priest. It’s all my fault.’
‘Annie,’ Mr Kipling said gently, ‘your grandmother wasn’t a Catholic.’
‘But I am!’ I moaned. ‘And I don’t want her to go to Hell!’
Mr Kipling said nothing. We both knew that Nana had done some hard things in her life, and it wasn’t worth pretending that it was otherwise. Galina Balanchine would have needed every possible advantage if she were to have any chance of making it to Heaven.
That night, after Nana’s body had left for the funeral home in Brooklyn, after I’d served Leo and Natty macaroni, after I’d stripped the bed in Nana’s room, after I’d confirmed with Mr Kipling that the Pool was an acceptable location for Nana’s wake, after I’d made Natty take a shower and put her to bed, after I’d given Leo an aspirin for a headache so bad it made him cry, after I’d prayed that Leo’s headache wouldn’t turn into a seizure, after I’d gone to bed myself, only to be woken by Natty having a nightmare, after I’d comforted my sister, after Leo called for me on my way back to my room (wanting me to please check and see that Nana’s window was open and her door was closed), after I’d done that and gone to bed a second time, after all these things I’d done, it was quiet. It was quieter than I could remember the apartment having been in years and years. The machines that had kept Nana alive had been so noisy and yet I had grown used to the noise, I suppose. And it was this strange, new silence that seemed noisy to me now. I couldn’t fall back asleep so I got out of bed and went into Nana’s room. As long as Nana had been ill, the room had always smelt a bit sour to me, and now it smelt like nothing. How quickly that had happened!