Chapter 19
Poster What?
Cecily
Kaitlyn’s funeral was a hard day for me. Joshua was a mess, and her daughters were inconsolable. I know, sometimes, Kaitlyn felt like the kids were closer to Joshua than to her, that they remembered the time when she was postpartum after they were born or the echoes she felt after that, and had never bonded with her properly, but it wasn’t true. I often told Kaitlyn that she had a kind of dysmorphic disorder about motherhood. She saw herself in a completely different light than her children did, or anyone else who was watching. Those girls doted on her, emulated her, looked to her first when they said or did something they were unsure of. Joshua was a good father, patient and kind, but it was Kaitlyn who was the star of their everyday life.
Sitting on the hard church pew that was starting to feel too familiar, we clung to one another, Henry and Cassie and the girls and Joshua, as the service went on and on. We rode together in the limousine to the house, Kaitlyn’s daughters shuddering on either side of me, Cassie and Henry still brittle from Tom’s funeral two days before. A car full of broken people; how were we ever going to be made whole again?
Joshua’s cousins had stayed behind to get the catering ready, to make sure the canapés were hot and the crudités were cold, that there was enough booze to go around. I heard someone remark, as I went in the front door, that she’d been subsisting on cheap wine and spanakopita for a week, that she’d lost two pounds already. Then they saw me, and one of them turned red and the other said, “Sorry,” and I just shook my head because what did I care? They were right. If I hadn’t lost Tom and Kaitlyn, I might be one of those women, annoyed that I had to wear black for weeks on end, tired of the sadness, the endless parade of receptions and sermons, and happy that my clothes were fitting looser than they had in years.
Hell, I was one of those women. I would’ve given anything to avoid it all, to throw out every black thing I owned and never wear anything but bright colors again. But I couldn’t forget that if things had been different by a couple of inches, in the grand scheme of things, then I would’ve been on the other side of it and might not be there at all.
The cousins had forgotten to open the windows, so it was stuffy in the house. I settled the younger children in the basement with a video, then went to the kitchen to do just that. As I pried open the window over the sink, I noticed a group of women standing in the backyard, smoking cigarettes. It had been a while since I’d seen that. It felt illicit even watching them, like my first hidden puffs taken in a clearing with my girlfriends up behind our high school, worried a teacher would find us.
Only these women weren’t furtive; they weren’t hiding their sins; they were shaking their heads as if they couldn’t believe the story they were hearing. One of them kept glancing over her shoulder at the house. Something was off. People were acting strangely. Not just sad but upset.
No, that’s not the right word. Disturbed.
I walked around the first floor. The furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and there must’ve been more than a hundred people in the house, pushed up against one another because the house wasn’t that big. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but when I saw her, I approached with a sense of foreboding. She was at least fifteen years younger than the other women, early twenties, overweight, with dark-brown hair that had suffered a bad perm a few months earlier (did people still get perms?). I searched the brain tape, but I’d never seen her, though there was something familiar about her. She was wearing a black dress that didn’t fit her very well, falling to an awkward place below her knee that made it difficult for her to walk.
She was the only person standing alone, and despite the lack of space, there was a clearing around her, as if it was dangerous to stand too close to her.
“Hi, I’m Cecily.”
She held out her hand limply. We shook. Her hand was clammy, like a damp fish. It didn’t feel as if it had the right number of bones in it.
“Nice to meet you, Cecily.”
“Are you a friend of the family?”
“No.”
I felt annoyed. I’d heard about this, strangers coming to the funerals of the Triple-Tenners so they could be in on the action, walk past the fence of media, feel a part of it all. Or maybe she was trolling for free booze and food, another person on the funeral diet those women out front were talking about, only this time, she’s happy to be eating it because she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I’d heard about that, too.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing here?”
She looked at me for a moment, sizing me up.
“Were you a friend of Kaitlyn’s?” Her voice was strangely flat, as if she was masking an accent.
“She was one of my best friends.”
“And she never mentioned me? Not even once?”
This woman whose name I didn’t know started tearing up. I had an odd reflex to comfort her, even though I knew she was about to tell me something that would change my life again, like Tom’s errant texts.
“I . . . Who are you?”
“I’m Franny. I’m Kaitlyn’s daughter.”
A small part of why I’m up so early sifting through the contents of Tom’s office is so I can hear it when it happens, that slap of the newspaper as it hits our front door. Call me old-fashioned, but I still love the smell of newsprint in the morning. And since it was a family tradition, dividing up the paper into our individual interests, I still do it with the kids. It’s usually Henry who collects it, my early riser, the way he’s been since he was a baby, but I can’t let that occur today.
When I hear it happen, I’m already waiting behind the front door, and I have it open to grab the paper before Henry can get to it.
I needn’t have worried; there’s nothing there. I must be getting full of myself, thinking I might be in the real paper because I kissed a man. I watch the kid who’s delivered our newspapers for years ride away on his ten-speed, unsure of what to do. The photograph is online, and someone’s sure to point it out to at least one of the kids. How will I explain this to them? Although Cassie knows something about the date, that’s not enough. I didn’t say enough last night to make this okay.
The pavement beneath my bare feet is cold, but I can’t seem to make myself move. Then I hear the click, click, click of a camera, rapid-fire like the paparazzi use. It takes me a moment to spot him, because he’s across the street, leaning up against the Hendersons’ tree. I throw the paper down and run toward him.
“Stop it! Go away!”
He lowers his camera for a moment, then lifts it again. And even though I know this means that now he has even better shots of me coming after him like a madwoman in my pajamas, I don’t care.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He lowers his camera again. He’s young, midtwenties, wearing an oversize hoodie with the words DON’T CRITICIZE WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND written across it.
“Hey, lady. Calm down.”
“Don’t you tell me to calm down, Bob Dylan. I want you to erase those photos.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. What do you want, money? Is that what this is about?”
“I’m just doing my job.”
“Bullshit. This isn’t a story. Me in my bathrobe is not a story.”
“Of course it is. You might not like it, but it is. Why else do you think they sent me here?”
“Were you here last night?”
“What?”
His surprise seems genuine. While his shape is similar to the man I saw through the window, jumping over my hedge as he ran away, I’m guessing he’s not stupid enough to come back here after escaping the cops.
“Give me your card.”
“Why?”
“I want to buy the photos.”
He gives me that look again, the one that tells me I’m completely naive.
“Come on,” I say. “What’s the harm?”
He fumbles for a moment, then hands me a card. CARL HILTON. PHOTOGRAPHY FOR ALL OCCASIONS.
“You should leave it,” he says.
“We’ll see. Now get, will you?”
“Mom!” Cassie calls from across the street. “What the hell?”
I turn around. Cassie’s holding her phone straight out from her body like an accusation, a look of shock and hurt on her face.
Carl snaps another picture.
“Okay,” I say twenty minutes later, after I’ve gotten Carl to delete the picture of Cassie after pointing out that she’s underage and barely dressed. “Family meeting.”
Henry groans. Cassie’s still clutching her phone to her chest like she used to hold her special blanket.
“Why does it have to be a ‘meeting’?” Cassie asks. “Why can’t we just have a conversation like a normal family?”
Family meetings were always Tom’s thing. I thought they were a bit corny, but he took them seriously, so eventually I did, too.
“Come on,” I say. “You know the rule.”
“If someone calls a family meeting, we all have to attend!” Henry says. His voice is on the verge of cracking, and I wonder if he’ll end up sounding like Tom. He already stands and walks like him; from behind, he’s a carbon copy except for his hair color. It’s disconcerting, sometimes, when I see him suddenly, when I’m not concentrating. A bit of rage rises up without my being able to stop it. Another thing to hate Tom for, a list that’s too long.
“That’s right. Let’s go.”
They follow me into the living room. We each have our assigned seats. Henry’s is the wingback chair Tom and I found on one of our first furniture outings. It’s covered in a green chintz fabric whose hues match the modern striped rug we found several years later. Cassie’s is the love seat I brought with me from college, re-covered in a dark gray. I take the sectional, making sure to place myself squarely in the middle, using my body to fill the void Tom left.
“So you’ve seen the picture,” I say. “I went to dinner with Teo last night, Henry.”
“Cassie told me.”
“You said nothing happened,” Cassie says.
“Nothing did.”
“You kissed him.”
“I did. He kissed me, and I didn’t stop it.”
“I like Teo,” Henry says with a bit of defiance.
“We all like Teo,” I say. “But this isn’t about him. This is about us. And about what happened last night.”
“This is such bullshit.”
“Cassie. Enough.”
“Who was that guy outside, Mom?” Henry asks. “Was he the same guy who tried to get in the house?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why did he do that? Why do they care?” Cassie asks.
“It’s because of that photograph. The one Teo took.”
“That’s right, Henry. The one Teo took. You know how much attention that photograph brought me. Us. People are interested in our family. I wish they weren’t, but they are.”
“It’s so stupid,” Cassie says. “Like we’re these celebrities because our dad died.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Can’t you make them stop?”
“It’ll go away eventually—soon, probably, now that the memorial’s over.”
Cassie crosses her arms over her breasts. “How come you didn’t try? I mean, you, like, say you don’t like the attention, but you’re on all these committees, and you’re in that documentary, and if you wanted them to go away, why didn’t you just say no to all that stuff?”
Cassie’s words are crushing. She sounds exactly like my inner voice, the one I’ve only been able to respond to with because, because, because.
“I thought it was the best thing to do given the circumstances.”
“What circumstances, Mom? We’re not the only family who lost someone.”
“There are things . . . I was worried that if I didn’t go along, they might come looking.”
“Who might come looking? For what?”
“The press. Journalists.”
“Why? And who cares? You have the most boring life ever.”
I smile. “I wish I did. I wish there was nothing to find.”
“Do you do drugs, Mom?” Henry asks, looking serious, all those school assemblies having an impact.
“Mom doing drugs? That’s a laugh.”
Isn’t it funny, how little your kids know you? Not that I do drugs now, but back in the day, in college and the years after? For a while, Tom grew pot in his closet.
“No, Henry. It’s nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
I look back and forth between my children. They have a view of me, of their father. It’s like that photograph Teo took—true enough but not the whole truth. And like my initial decision to keep all this hidden, the idea of telling them, of changing that image for good, seems like the wrong choice. But they’ve learned enough about life from another source, so I take a deep breath, and then I confess.