All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,43

a moment to say whether it’s her or me, I usually have to look at the clothes. She had wonderful style, furs for every occasion, sensational hats, but that’s how alike we look—I have to see what she is wearing before I know it’s not me.

The day she died was unlike any other. She had cancer and no one told me. When she lost weight, they told me she was dieting. When she lost her hair and needed a wig, they told me she was just experimenting with a new look. I wanted to wear a wig, too, because she did. My mother bought me one, a long blonde one. I was thirteen. When she died, it was a complete shock. I hadn’t seen her in over a month, she’d been in the hospital but I was told she was in Europe visiting friends. Then one night Mother pulled me away from the television.

“I have something important we need to discuss,” she said.

And she told me, quite matter-of-factly, that Grammy was gone. And it was like I was standing between a wrecking ball and a decrepit building: first the ball hit me, which hurt, then it scooped me off the ground and crashed me into the building at full force. I was crushed. All the air went out of me.

“When?” I asked. “How?”

“She’d been ill for some time,” Mother said stoically. “She died the day before yesterday. There is a new dress upstairs for you to wear to the funeral.”

“What do you mean she’d been ill? I didn’t know she’d been ill.”

“Darling,” my mother said, her voice going to that place it always does when she explains something she thinks I’m not capable of understanding, “I just couldn’t bear to tell you.”

The next day at the funeral, what I remember most was wondering how anyone else could be having a regular day. I remember seeing construction workers at a job site, lunchboxes at their sides, eating sandwiches and drinking from thermoses, and all I could think was: How in the world are they just going about their business as though everything is normal? Don’t they know Grammy is dead? Don’t they know I’ll never feel those long nails scratching my back again? Don’t they know how chewy her oatmeal cookies were? Don’t they remember when she took me to see Annie on Broadway and then bought me the soundtrack and how we would sing the song “Maybe” together at the top of our lungs? How can they just be going about their business as though this is just any regular day? Don’t they know everything is different?

That’s the kind of different day I hate.

But today is the kind I love. Because tonight is the night. Today is Scott’s birthday. Tonight he gets his gift. I felt the tingle in my stomach the moment I woke up. Driving the kids to school, stopping at Whole Foods, stopping at Soleil Toile for something special to wear under my robe, arranging the bedroom, readying the fireplace, placing the candles, choosing the music. Then placing the book of photos Pamela made into a velvet box, tying the ribbon, attaching the birthday card the kids designed. (“I signed it for you,” Megan told her brother. Twins are so funny.) Then dropping off the two of them at Mother’s for the night. When Scott comes home, it will be just the two of us. And it will be different from any other night. In the good way. I’m not even going to make him lock the door.

SAMANTHA

BACK IN THE HOTEL room, I reversed the seating arrangements.

This time I took the chair in the center of the room and put him on the couch. He looked a good deal less comfortable on the couch. Men like Robert know how to sit erect in hard-backed chairs, they know how to maintain the crease in their pants, how to keep their suit coat from rising up in the back. I guess that comes from years of experience in classrooms and boardrooms, or, in Robert’s case, courtrooms. They’re a lot less comfortable on couches. No matter how distinguished the man, no matter how well-dressed, if you look at him seated on a couch he still looks like he’s asking your father for permission to take you to the prom.

Now Robert was on the couch in my hotel room, fidgeting with his clothes, trying to get his pants and shirt and sport jacket straight. His legs were crossed and he had