DIED 1992
MY MOTHER’S BEST FRIEND and longtime golf partner had glistening champagne-colored hair that was always fixed in a smooth bun, merry blue eyes, and a way of lowering her voice to a throaty Bette Davis growl to make comments that would crack you up. Her handsome, wealthy husband owned racehorses, Rhodesian ridgebacks, and parking lots; they had a sprawling house on an expanse of emerald grass overlooking the ocean, full of paella plates and needlepoint pillows and every other fine thing. Their two gorgeous boys played football and ran track, were close as kittens, and, like everyone else, worshipped their mother. Even the housekeeper would have died for her. She was an excellent cook, and unlike others in her age group and social class, she had a pretty clear idea of what was going on out there. Sweetie, she said to my mom, watching my sister and her boyfriend nod out in the Mexican restaurant, why are your kids always falling asleep at the dinner table?
As in a fairy tale, everything went horribly wrong. She and her husband were having dinner with my parents when the waiter came to the table with a phone call: their older son had been killed riding his bike on Ocean Avenue. Her husband, a heartless practical joker, left her for another woman, and her younger son married and moved away. The baby girl she had after the accident was still in grade school when the ache in her gut became a swift, untreatable cancer. Though the last time I saw her she was still smiling indulgently at this screwed-up world and its denizens, at the useless macrobiotic advice she was receiving from me. Be good to your mom, she whispered. The next time we went there, the palace was empty except for the housekeeper and the motherless princess, staring numbly at the waves.