Resolved, I settle into the lounge chair. I’ve no sooner tucked my feet under my bottom, though, when he comes out of the shadows. I’m not sure where he was hidden, but here he is, sliding a hand from my head down my neck to gesture me forward.Resist,a tiny voice cries. But that quickly I’m lost. Once I’m forward, he swings a leg over the lounge behind me, lowers himself, and draws me back between his raised knees. My head fits into the crook of his neck, but, having surrendered, that isn’t enough for me. I know what’s coming tomorrow and need an infusion of strength. Jack has always offered that. Turning sideways, I wrap my arms around his middle and press my face to the spot under his jaw where stubble ends. Thescent of his skin is as familiar to me as my own, memory and reality for once just the same.
I’m right to dread Tuesday. It is as grueling as I imagined. I’ve always thought myself to be socially adept, certainly when it comes to making small talk. Isn’t that what a peacemaker does? Or a mom sitting with other moms at the Spring Sing at school? Or a photographer whose client trails her from room to room to room?
But endless hours of small talk with a steady stream of people coming to pay respects to my father? Exhausting. Years later, thinking back on this day, I will remember the most glowing of the comments—the people Tom helped, the friendships he held, the justice he served. Paul was right about that. They did capture Tom at his best.
Today, though, it all blurs. As crystal clear as memory and reality were on the lounge chair with Jack last night, not so in the house on Tuesday. Whether I’m in the living room with the pastor, in the kitchen with a high school friend—of whom there were a bunch—or on the front porch with the woman who served as U.S. Attorney for the State of Rhode Island while Dad was on the bench, the moments run together like streaks of sand swamped under an incoming wave. I remember Joy being by my side much of the time. And Paul maintaining a low profile while serving as the impromptu facilitator of the event. And Jack, whose presence may be controversial for Anne but acceptable for the rest of the town.
By evening, when the last of the visitors have left, we are too exhausted to think about burying Dad the next day. That’s the point, I guess. The kitchen is packed with food that Lina has efficiently stored, but she, too, has left. And Anne, who needs to reclaim a semblance of control, decides to grill chicken. No matter that there is more chicken than anything else in the fridge, she can’t fathom eating any ofthat,she declares in distaste, and sets to work.
I’m not about to argue. The truce between us is fragile. Far be it from me to risk breaking it.
We let her direct us—salad bowl there,she orders Joy with the hitch of her chin, andthin-slice that zucchini,she instructs me with a nod at the cutting block. She sends Margo to the market for fingerling potatoes, sends Bill to the package store for beer. Then she spots tall, tousle-haired, stubble-jawed Jack planted against the dining room jamb, and when he asks what he can do, she stares.
Leave,she’s about to say when I step in front of her. Truce or not, I can’t be silent. Jack is here for me, maybe even for Joy. “Please?” I whisper.
Her eyes snap to mine, and I brace myself. But her tone is surprisingly mild. “Dad would not want him here.”
“Dad won’t know,” I offer in apology. “Please?Let him help.”
I’m not sure whether she feels he’ll be a buffer between us, whether she concedes for the sake of Bill, who does like him, or whether she’s just too tired to fight. But after a minute, she says, “Fine,” and looks at Jack. “You, set the table.”
Joy laughs.
Anne shoots her a dark look before grabbing the grill brush and heading out back.
My daughter rounds innocent eyes on me. “What? He can scrape the grill. He can vacuum the living room or… or fix the doorbell, which, FYI, does not work. What does he know about setting a table?”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Jack murmurs with a smirk and, straightening from the jamb, pivots into the dining room.
After slicing the zucchini, I join him. He has managed to find the basics and is circling the table with napkins and plates. Leaning against the peach-painted wall with my arms folded, I consider the absurdity of what he is doing—and where—until he’s done, at which point he puts a shoulder to the wall close beside me. This is the first time all day that we’ve been alone.
His voice is low. “Doing okay?”
I lean just that little bit sideways so that we touch, my form of self-medication. His warmth always loosens me up, and I need that after the day that was. “Weird,” I say. “So many people. To hear them talk, he was beloved. Is that seriously what they remember?”
The corner of his mouth twitches in a smirk, just barely contained. “It’s selective memory. They wanted to help you. Did they?”
“Some. I had no idea he went to bat to help the Eigers’ son get into Harvard. Why didn’t he tell us that?”
“Maybe because he didn’t go to bat to help you get in there. Maybe because he was too busy making your life miserable.”
I want to scold him for speaking ill of the dead, but if his bitterness is loyalty to me, how can I fight that? “Maybe he did talk about it,” I whisper. “Maybe I just don’t remember.”
But Jack’s eyes have drifted off. I follow them through the front hall to the living room, where they focus on Dad’s chair. It still bears the imprint of his body. None of us fluffed its cushions, not even Lina. Incredibly, as though there was a sign with Dad’s name, it stayed empty all day.
“Hard to believe he won’t sit there again,” I say, to which Jack threads a piece of hair behind my ear, then snakes an arm around my shoulder and tugs me close. It isn’t until he speaks again that I realize I’m comforting him, as much as the other way around.
His voice is reverent. “For me, it was the dressing table where my mother did her hair. I used to hate it, because when she sat there, she was getting ready to leave.” I look up at him, but the memory has him in full grip. “The chair was a stool with a low back. It fit all the way underneath. When I was six, or eight or nine, I don’t know, I used to pull it out, like she had just left it and would be back. Dad pushed it in. I pulled it out again.” Taking a deep breath, he returns to me, looking down with eyes that are sad and resigned. “Yeah, it’s hard to believe. All of it.”
I brush my cheek against his shirt collar, then draw back and touch it in awe. He had worked early that morning, but had showered and changed before coming here. A pressed shirt and slacks? Sonot like the Jack I remember, but apparently like the Jack he is now, because there are no price tags in sight.
He cocks his head at the empty chair. “Tell me what you feel.”
“You, first. About him.” If this is a moment of truth, I want it all. There was no love lost between my father and Jack. Jack has a right to blame Tom Aldiss for that empty dressing table. I’m okay with his being happy Dad is dead. Isn’t that poetic justice?
But “happy” isn’t the word he uses when his eyes fall to mine. “Relieved.”
“Really.” Milder than I thought. “That he’s dead?”
