Last night’s halibut turns over and over in her stomach, and she retches in the sand. As she’s fumbling for the phone in her pocket, Catherine screams and she screams and she screams.
Jade
Twenty minutes, Mrs. Sanchez had said. Jade stood outside the door Mrs. Sanchez pointed to, wondering if she should knock or go in or run away. A woman in green scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck, peeling off a pair of latex gloves, came out.
Would he recognize her? Would he talk to her? Would he even be awake?
“You the daughter?” she asked.
“Friend,” said Jade. She looked nothing like George, and was too young to be his daughter.
“Go on in. He’s sleeping.”
George’s bedroom was on the same side of the building as the one Jade had spent four nights in, so it shared the same view across Fifth Avenue and down onto Central Park. The same sets of children and nannies were still walking around.
It was warm in the room, almost as warm as it had been outside. George’s eyes were closed and Jade watched him, wondering if he was thinking or dreaming. He was wearing navy-blue striped pajamas and his hair, thin enough to reveal the age spots along his hairline, had been dampened and parted neatly on the side: he was part decaying body, part patient, but also part the spit-shined schoolboy he must have once been.
“George,” she whispered. He didn’t stir.
It wassohot in the room. Jade was wearing a pink tank top under the blouse she’d worn to work so she removed the blouse and laid it across her lap. She watched George’s eyes move back and forth under his eyelids.
George, who had listened and encouraged and fed her when she was hungry and cared for her when she was hurt. George, the only person in the world who thought Jade was capable of all the things she herself thought (knew) she was capable of. George, who’d made her promise she’d start LookBook, no matter the risk, even though she believed risks were for people with safety nets, not for people like her.
After a time his eyelids fluttered. “Jade?” The eyes closed, then opened again. “I knew you’d come.”
“Of course I came,” she said. “I’m here, George.”
He nodded, and his eyes stayed open. He watched her, considering. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. His voice was low, no more than a dry whisper, really, and she had to lean closer to him to hear it. “A real and true beauty. Your youth...” He trailed off.
His hand was lying on top of the bedsheet; she placed hers on top of his and squeezed it. This is a dying man, she thought. This is a kind, dying man.
She took her hand from his and held it against his cheek, and then, without thinking twice about it, she kissed him, her full, young lips against his old, papery cheek. She leaned her forehead against his, pouring out her respect and her sadness and, yes, her fear—fear of death, fear of mortality, fear of being left alone again. She poured gratitude for his real, pure love, the purest love she’d felt up to this point in her life.
The affection cost her nothing; it was a punctuation, a grace note.
It cost her nothing until an unfamiliar voice said, “Dad? What. The Fuck. Is going on in here.”
And then it almost cost her everything.
In the doorway stood a woman; behind her was Mrs. Sanchez with an expression on her face that said, very clearly, that Jade’s twenty minutes had come and gone. Jade had never put a blouse on so fast in her life.
“This is Mr. Halsey’s daughter,” said Mrs. Sanchez.
“I was just leaving,” said Jade.
“I should hopeso,” said the daughter. Then she said, “Jesus, Dad. Really?”
Jade wouldn’t learn the daughter’s name until three days later, when theTimesran George’s obituary. She looked like a Cleo, a short name with a hard edge, a name that brooked no contradictions. Smooth hair, simple gold jewelry, tailored pants that most definitely did not come from Zara. A slender leather belt around a slender waist. But in fact her name was Serena, which had a softer sound; which implied a calmness and an amicability that this woman did not exhibit. The son was named Edward.
Jade went to the funeral. It was Catholic. Catholic! This surprised her, especially considering what she’d gathered of the Upper East Side. Jade had received her First Communion, and after that, nothing. But now, in the back of the church on Eighty-Third Street, some sort of sorrow and familiarity clutched at her heart: the priest’s words, the responsorial psalm, the intercessions, these all rang a bell in her distant memory. When, at the end of the service, the choir sang “Be Not Afraid,” Jade cried, and her tears were genuine. The only person who had believed in her was gone.
(That wasn’t in the court filings; wasn’t in the deposition, the way Jade felt at the funeral.)
After the funeral Jade introduced herself to the daughter. (She knew she’d made a mistake in the bedroom, but she didn’t know yet, of course, what was coming.) Serena smelled like jasmine and she had a chestnut bob that was so sleek, so bluntly cut, that Jade wanted to reach out and stroke it. She had one of those upturned noses, smalland perfect. Eyelashes that could have been real or could have been subtle extensions.
“I’m Jade,” she said. She put out her hand, and the daughter, looking Jade up and down, ignored it. A familiar sense of shame and dismissal enveloped Jade.
“You’re the one from his bedroom.”
