“You live inMassachusetts,” David reminded her. “Fang central. Mom should get a place in Florida. A condo in a retirement community.”
“I will come visit you both when I can,” I told them. “But your father and I put away enough in the bank for me to stay here in Manhattan. I’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”
They exchanged looks. “You’re not used to being on your own,” my daughter said.
Nigel’s loss already felt like a black hole, dragging everything toward it. I couldn’t imagine my future without him. But at least I would have our familiar places. I could get a bagel at the same corner store. I could browse the books at our local bookshop and visit my favorite gallery. I could write poems in the corner of the room where Nigel and I had worked on his plays. Giving up New York wouldn’t erase my grief; it would only give me a new thing to grieve. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“We have to talk about Dad’s estate too,” Diane said, changing her angle. “Do you have the number for his lawyer?”
I did, of course. Harry was also my lawyer. I felt vaguely insulted by the assumption thatthey—who had not even seen most of Nigel’s plays—were going to take over as executors of his estate, but that would all be in the will. If Nigel had entrusted them with the rights—very unlikely, but possible—and they wanted to allow some sketchy Hollywood producer to option his plays for a pittance, well, why not? It couldn’t hurt him anymore.
“This place has to be worth millions.” David glanced around the apartment, which was overstuffed with books and papers andmidcentury furniture. But it was true that if you hung on to a piece of New York real estate long enough, you would almost certainly turn a profit, and we’d had this place for fifty years. “Mom, you should really think about selling. You could invest the money. My business—”
“I like it here,” I reminded him. “And it’s not like the value is going down.”
“We just lost Dad. We want to make sure you’re safe,” Diane said, although she mostly sounded annoyed I wasn’t going along with their plans. “Please just consider it.”
“No,” I said sharply, surprising all of us. I could not remember the last time I had given anyone an unequivocal no, without so much as an explanation.
Diane and David left the next day with a lot of kisses and some sighs and reminders that I could change my mind. When I met friends for lunch the following week, they told me I was lucky that my children wanted me to be close to them.
May 9, 2004
It’s been a month since Nigel’s death, and I have been working on his final play. I have added what I hope will be a touching bit of fiction about him dictating the last parts of it to me in the hospital, to cover the timing. I only wish I’d had the presence of mind to say something about it during his celebration of life.
I realize that part of my doing this is to give my mind something to focus on other than his being gone. Perhaps in some way he feels less gone to me when I can do this familiar thing with him one more time.
When I’d drafted parts of his plays before or even when I’ddone extensive revisions on them, I was always bound to his belief about how plays ought to work. He thought that excessive emotion had no place in a truly great production and often remarked how my work veered into melodrama. He said it was still useful to him because in paring it back, he could discover interesting possibilities. With him gone, I find myself acting as both of us—the passionate one and the one trying to strip all the passion away.
January 1, 2006
Goodness, it’s been a long time since I wrote in this journal. I suppose the play somewhat took over my life. It turned out to be quite successful—staged quickly, perhaps because of his death and the importance of it being his last work. In particular, it was praised for its warmth and greater humanity, which I’ve tried not to be smug about.
At night, I’ve watched the news much the way I did in the hospital. Of course, I saw footage of Coldtowns springing up all over the US: zones of infection, walled off by government edict, trapping the infected and uninfected together in grisly disharmony. I gaped in horror along with the rest of the world. I witnessed the protests and the cruelty. Saw the footage from those who couldn’t get out but could still livestream video of what was happening inside via satellite. Newly created vampires understood how to set up cameras and cell phones. Soontheywere speaking to us directly, staring into the cameras with their garnet eyes and talking with the faint lisp of recently formed fangs.
It’s a frightening new world. I’ve adjusted to a curfew at nightfall. I’ve also adjusted to life without a husband. I started to writefor myself again, something I hadn’t done in many years—there had always been too many projects of Nigel’s. I got rid of half of our old furniture and all of our drapes. I put Nigel’s papers in bins and then sent them off to the university to which he had deeded them, for some grad student to sort through. I binged all the British murder mystery shows I wanted. I went to plays and ate bagels and listened to music. I lived.
I will attempt to keep this journal with greater frequency going forward.
February 3, 2006
Attended a play about vampires today. The sort of thing Nigel would have hated. Portrayed them as cursed to eternal misery, when it seems clear from the livestreams out of Coldtown that they’re having a great deal of fun. Only a young person could complain about being young forever.
Went out with George and Eunice and had champagne after. While she was in the bathroom, he put his hand on my thigh and started talking to me about how I must be lonely. It’s all the same rubbish. I removed his hand and told him that I appreciated his concern, but I was just fine. Men! You’d think they’d be different after seventy, but you’d better think again.
February 7, 2006
The writer of that melodramatic vampire play sent me a message that she was a fan of Nigel’s and she’d love to get coffee and chat to me about her career.
Nora—that’s her name—complained about all the usual things, and I gave her all the usual advice. Gossiped a bit, which I think we both appreciated. She offered to send me her new play, and I told her I would give her some notes. She seemed so young! Just a baby!
After, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was a coward never to have written on my own. Even if I was a flop, even if it hurt my marriage, I would have had something that was all mine.
November 1, 2008
Lunch with Harry. We went over my will and the conditions of the estate. He worries about a lot of things that I would never have considered, but of course that’s why he’s a lawyer and I am just a retired homemaker. He’s set up trusts for the grandchildren and a trust for me that separates the bulk of the financials into investments, leaving what I live on separate, so that the principal can continue to grow. Set up the future of Harry’s literary estate. And mine, even though it’s just a smattering of unpublished poems and notes for projects I will never complete.
One never likes to contemplate one’s own demise, but a few martinis make everything easier to wash down.
