I swung the door open and left him there. And nearly crashed into Clive, who looked curiously behind me.
I pushed the door shut. “Just snooping,” I said, trying to steer him away without raising his hackles. “That’s some weird panic room. How’s your brunette?”
“Quite fun, and also, full of tidbits,” he said. “The Heath-Hedwig divorce is in a ghastly state over custody of their peafowl, and she said the most awkward thing about Rich—” He stopped as we reached the terrace, a strange look on his face. “Is that Lacey?”
“What’s wrong?” Freddie asked, appearing at my shoulder.
“Where did you come from?” Clive asked. “Weren’t you outside?”
But I ignored them. Everything had become fuzzy except the sight of my twin bolting frantically up the lawn. I could hear her calling my name, but it sounded distant, as if I were underwater. Her makeup was ruined. She was hyperventilating. A cold psychic misery gripped me; she didn’t have to say the words. As I felt a piece of me crack and fall away, I just knew.
* * *
The weeks following my father’s death were a devastating blur that, paradoxically, I can recall in the sharpest relief.
I remember clinging to Lacey as Freddie and Clive hustled us to privacy. Hearing Gaz cry with us. Cilla getting us on a flight. Lady Bollocks waving us off down the long gravel drive, kinder than I had ever seen her. I remember my mother’s face, too, stoic and empty, more wrenching than if she had greeted us in tears. I remember how brave she was, moving her trembling finger down the phone list, repeating to friends what none of us could believe. I remember understanding what a brutal thing it is to be the bearer of truly bad news—to break off a piece of that misery and hand it to other people, one by one, and then have to comfort them; to put their grief on your shoulders on top of all your own; to be the calm one in the face of their shock and tears. And then learning that relative weight of grief is immaterial. Being smothered a little is no different than being smothered a lot. Either way, you can’t breathe.
I remember saying good-bye. Caressing his cheek. Seeing his lively, joyous face reduced to a remote serenity, his mouth curled into a final half smile that was only an eighth of how big it had seemed when he turned that smile on you. I remember the sense that it wasn’t him. Not anymore. And I remember feeling gutted, hollow, as if someone had scraped out my insides. Busywork was all that sublimated the pain: planning, organizing, shepherding, greeting, hugging, hosting, organizing the casseroles—an endless parade of aluminum-wrapped apologies from friends who wished they could bring Dad back instead. I’d flip the switch and plow through the list with robotic efficiency, then flip it back and lie awake, destroyed, disbelieving, devastated.
It was such a stupid damn thing, too. He’d missed going to games, so he drove to Cincinnati to see if he could break the Cubs’ five-game losing streak. He never made it. The doctors said it was fast, that he may not have known it was the end, likely never felt his heart quit on him, much less the median. And the Cubs still had the indecency to lose. There was cold, dark comedy in realizing he was right; the Cubs were the death of him.
The church was packed. Dad would have been so embarrassed and so pleased. I kept making fruitless mental notes to tell him about all the people who’d come, from grade school friends whose soccer teams he coached, to employees at Coucherator, Inc., tearstained and swollen. There were the regulars and bartenders from his local, The Shortstop; classmates of ours who’d deemed him the parent they’d most like to acquire in a trade; and teachers from as many as two decades ago, armed with stories about what a great guy he was. Hardware Pete, Auto Sal, and Electric Bruce of Bruce’s Electric sat shoulder to shoulder in the same pew, with the barber who cut his hair. I don’t remember giving a eulogy, although I know I sat up all night trying to write it, my Hot Cubs of Yore looking at me with silent, yellowing support. I’d been compelled to chip Derek Jeter off the wall and hide him in a drawer, because my father thought the Yankees were Hell’s foot soldiers, and it seemed disloyal to let