It was a Friday night not so different from any other. Graham and Audra were having dinner in their apartment with Doug and Lorelei and Doug’s mother, Mrs. Munn.
Whenever Mrs. Munn came to stay with Doug and Lorelei, Audra invited them all over for a meal. Graham was unsure whether this was a higher level of friendship or more a type of community service, but he knew Audra did it in hopes of relieving Lorelei of the stress of having houseguests. Only it didn’t really relieve the stress, it just sort of diluted it. Now, for example, instead of just Doug and Lorelei spending the evening making small talk with Mrs. Munn, Audra and Graham had to spend the evening making small talk with her, too. You know, it would be far simpler and more effective if you could march your houseguest over to a bench in Central Park and say, You just sit right there while I go home and read the newspaper in peace. I’ll be back to pick you up in two hours. And if your houseguest was of the older, feebler variety, and you feared they might be mugged or beaten in the park, you could take them to a movie, possibly a matinee. Actually, there should be a houseguests’ club, like the kids’ club in a resort, where your houseguest could watch movies and play games and have a snack while you recharged your batteries. Although, Graham recalled, Matthew had refused to attend kids’ clubs since babyhood, screaming so loudly that the staff always called them back within the hour. Now, casting a seasoned eye on Mrs. Munn, Graham suspected she would object just as forcefully.
Mrs. Munn was an overweight woman in her seventies, with extra bolsters of flesh under her chin and stacked on her midsection. She had a deceptively obliging and soft-spoken manner. She had softly complimented Audra on the “lived in” feel of the apartment, and gently praised Doug for not checking his phone all the time in company the way he did at home. She had quietly admired the long hours Lorelei worked and said it was no wonder Lorelei looked so tired. She had commented sympathetically on how boring grown-up conversation must be for Matthew and how she understood completely that he would rather have a sandwich in his room. She had sweetly congratulated Graham for feeling comfortable enough to leave guests while he spent long stretches in the kitchen (he was having some trouble with the gravy) and remarked how unpretentious it was of him to use supermarket salad dressing. She had serenely dominated the dinner conversation talking about how she understood why people lived in New York City but that it wasn’t for her while she ate large forkfuls of roast chicken and sweet potatoes. (Graham was beginning to truly comprehend how long this visit must be for Doug and Lorelei.)
Mrs. Munn pushed her plate away slightly and reached for her water glass. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This was delicious, but I’m afraid my eyes were bigger than my stomach.”
“How big is your stomach?” Audra asked in the sort of sincere but idle way she might wonder aloud how long a hummingbird’s life span was.
Mrs. Munn’s glass knocked against her teeth with a startled clunk.
The phone rang and Graham leapt out of his chair so quickly, he nearly knocked it over.
“I’ll get it,” he said unnecessarily. He ducked into the kitchen. “Hello?”
“May I speak to Graham Cavanaugh, please?” A man’s voice, unfamiliar.
“This is he.”
“My name is Ronald Perkins,” the man said. “I am a senior partner at Stover, Sheppard, Perkins, and Lemke.”
Elspeth’s firm. Graham gripped the phone more tightly. “Yes?”
“I’m terribly sorry to be the one to tell you this,” Mr. Perkins said, “but Elspeth has passed away.”
“She what?” Graham said.
“She passed away,” Mr. Perkins repeated politely. “She died.”
He paused and waited for Graham to say something, but Graham couldn’t. Died? Elspeth died? The word had no more meaning than any other. It was like playing Balderdash with the dictionary and choosing a word you were pretty sure no one knew the definition of. Bibble, cabotage, ratoon. It was a nonsense word. He could make nothing of it.
Mr. Perkins cleared his throat. “I’m sure it’s a tremendous shock to you,” he said. “It was to all of us.”
“What happened?” Graham asked finally. “Was she—in a car accident?”
“Elspeth failed to show up for work on Wednesday,” Mr. Perkins said. He had a precise way of talking, as though his sentences were perfect strings of pearls with knots between the words. “She missed several meetings and that was completely out of character. Naturally, we grew concerned, but we waited until noon, thinking perhaps Elspeth had a personal appointment that we knew nothing about. In the early afternoon, her secretary, Miss Zapata, went to Elspeth’s apartment in person. She thought perhaps Elspeth was ill. She had a spare key and let herself in after ringing the doorbell repeatedly. She found Elspeth on the bathroom floor. It appears she slipped while getting out of the bathtub and hit her head.”
“This happened Wednesday?” Graham said. It was Friday. Forty-eight hours had gone by and he hadn’t even known?
“Tuesday evening, we believe,” Mr. Perkins said. “Miss Zapata said that the bed was not slept in and some”—he coughed delicately—“nightclothes were laid out.”
So Elspeth had lain there all night and all the next day. When—when—would Graham learn not to ask questions?
“Of course,” Mr. Perkins said, “it goes without saying that we are all extremely regretful that we didn’t check on her sooner.”
Well, yes, regrets. Everyone had them. But Mr. Perkins hadn’t left Elspeth waiting in a hotel room and then never contacted her again. Mr. Perkins wasn’t the one who had divorced Elspeth and left her to live alone. And die alone.
Mr. Perkins cleared his throat again. It was clear that Graham was leaving too many pauses in the conversation. “I thought you would want to attend the funeral on Monday.”
“Yes, of course,” Graham said.
Mr. Perkins gave him the details and Graham wrote them on the scratch pad by the phone. They said goodbye and hung up and Graham rested his forehead against the kitchen wall.
Shocking. And perhaps most shocking of all was that even at this moment, a part of Graham was happy that now he wouldn’t have to sit through dessert with Mrs. Munn.
It was a strange weekend. It had no—no rhythm.
Graham woke up at five in the morning on Saturday and then fell back to sleep at his normal waking time. He woke up again in the late morning and the light was all wrong—dark golden, like rancid honey.
He made cooking mistakes he hadn’t made in years. He burned the toast for breakfast, and his scrambled eggs were tough and dry. He crowded the meatballs in the frying pan and forgot to add salt to the pasta. His hamburger patties crumbled like damp sand castles and he undercooked the potatoes, making the potato salad inedible. His timing was off, too. He served lunch early and dinner late on Saturday, and then lunch late and dinner early on Sunday, as though he were a traveler trying to trick his metabolism into some new time zone.
Audra’s rhythm was affected, too. She wanted to talk about Elspeth’s death and she would begin speaking in a sad, serious tone and say things like, “Of course, we must go to the funeral” and “You must reach out to mutual friends and let them know.”
Her voice was subdued but not very subdued. It wasn’t quite as effervescent as the first glass of champagne out of the bottle—it was more like the third glass—but there were still bubbles aplenty. Then she would get a little more upbeat and say, “Who takes baths anymore? Except for, I don’t know, eccentric millionaires and maybe very elderly British people?” and “Did she take a lot of baths when you were married?” and “Who was the last person she spoke to, do you know?”
“No,” Graham said. “Maybe someone at her office.”
“I hope it was someone she liked a lot,” Audra said. “I hope that they had a nice long satisfying conversation and the very last thing Elspeth said was ‘It made me so happy to talk to you!’ ”
Graham wasn’t sure Elspeth had ever said that to anyone, let alone as her last words.
“I wonder about last words, sometimes,” Audra continued. “What if your very last words were, you know, ‘I think maybe I left my curling iron on’? When Matthew first started going to elementary school, I would make sure that the very last thing I said to him every morning was ‘I will always love you,’ so that if something happened to me, that would be the last thing he remembered me saying. But that sort of fell by the wayside and now when I drop him off, I say, ‘Don’t tell me you forgot your backpack again!’ or ‘Jump out quickly before someone honks!’ You know, in general, I feel my standards of mothering have declined over the years. Doesn’t it seem like I would have gotten better after so much practice? Like by this point, I should just be able to snap my fingers and—poof!—Matthew’s dressed and fed and loved and secure? But instead it’s more like Downton Abbey and I had a couple of very strong seasons there in the beginning and now I’m cutting corners like crazy.”
Downton Abbey? What was she talking about?
Audra looked suddenly abashed and reverted to her semisentimental voice. “Do you remember when Elspeth said she liked my topaz earrings?”
(This was apparently the fondest memory she had of Elspeth, which was upsetting on a number of levels.)
Elspeth’s death was like—like—well, like a few years ago when they pulled up the carpet in the bedroom and had the hardwood floor restored. Graham had not realized his muscle memory was so strong, but for weeks, every time he entered the bedroom, he stepped down too hard, expecting the floor to be an inch higher than it was. The fact of Elspeth’s death was like that little jolt, surprising him from time to time.
How awful that Elspeth should die and his only symptoms of grief were a faint muscle memory and bad potato salad. Was that truly all he was capable of? But that was why the weekend had no rhythm, Graham realized. He was treating sorrow as a formality, or a temporary condition—like a room he was passing through and shortly he’d enter another room where some other, happier emotion was going on.
Before the funeral service started, Audra leaned across Graham and said to the elderly woman seated next to him on the pew, “Excuse me, but would a nice pretty lady such as yourself have a breath mint?”
The old lady gave a pleased, full-cheeked chortle. “Well, now certainly,” she said and began rooting through her purse. She was the old-ladiest type of old lady, with feathery white hair, bright red lipstick, and a little hat with white flowers on the brim.
“Here you go,” she said at last and held out a roll of peppermint Life Savers.
“Oh, thank you!” Audra said, taking one. “I had a roast beef sandwich for lunch and I can still taste the horseradish.”
“For me, it’s garlic bagels,” the old lady said.
“Garlic is the worst,” Audra said. “Did you know it comes out your pores and not just your breath? Once Graham here had lunch in Little Italy and he smelled so garlicky afterward that his office sent him home! Apparently everyone else was having trouble concentrating because there was Graham, smelling like an Italian sausage and not even aware of it.”
“Mercy!” the old lady said. She pulled back and gave Graham a long look, the flowers on her hat bobbling in a startled way.
“And don’t even get me started on tuna fish,” Audra said.
“Goodness, no,” the old lady said.
“Although,” Audra continued thoughtfully, “as I get older, this whole freshening process seems to me like a lot of upkeep. I mean, brushing your teeth, okay—that has health ramifications. But deodorant? And scented shower gel? Followed by scented lotion? And different scented shampoo, and then scented hair spray? Sometimes I think, Where does it all end? Why not just go around with bad breath and smelly armpits?”
She gestured at Graham slightly, and the old lady flicked him a little glance. Evidently he was now the world representative of body odor.
“I know,” the old lady said. “When I think how many minutes of my life I’ve spent putting on lipstick!”
“I read once that the average woman spends seventy-two days shaving her legs over the course of a lifetime,” Audra said. “And—”
Graham cleared his throat and made a little motion with his head toward the front of the chapel. Both women fell silent, although nothing had happened yet. No minister had appeared. The coffin was there, closed. The octagonal maple coffin with brass trimmings—it reminded Graham intensely of Audra’s earring box.
Audra leaned back across Graham and said, “Speaking of lipstick—”
And so it was that even on this day, the day they buried Elspeth, Graham had to listen while Audra talked to strangers about tuna breath. He supposed there was a life lesson in there somewhere. He just didn’t know what it was.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say that no one came to Elspeth’s funeral—at least two dozen corporate types, presumably colleagues, were there—but almost literally no one came to the wake. All the corporate types had pulled out their phones and checked their email as soon as the service was over, and then all of them slipped away. Even the old lady who’d given Audra the breath mint, and Graham had pegged her as the type who would almost certainly stay, especially if refreshments were involved.
But the only people who followed Graham and Audra to the tiny room in the back of the funeral parlor were the minister and an elderly man in a heathery purple sweater.
The minister had wild curly gray hair and eyeglasses with pink-tinted lenses. He looked like someone you’d meet at a Grateful Dead concert. He had delivered a strange, second-person eulogy so generic that it sounded like a horoscope. (“You were reliable, hardworking, kind, and considerate. You were a quiet person who liked to be alone.”)
Now he stood next to the buffet eating a sandwich.
“Virginia ham,” he said to Audra, who stood next to him.
“American cheese,” Audra responded carefully, evidently thinking the minister was some sort of eccentric. (Or, alternatively, she may have thought he was attempting to play a word game—she loved word games.)
“No,” the minister said. “I meant, this sandwich is made with Virginia ham. I can tell from just one bite. That’s how many wakes I’ve been to.”
“Is that so?” Audra said in a pleased voice. “I’m that way about doughnuts. I could eat the teeniest crumb and tell you exactly what kind of doughnut it came from because one summer in high school I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts. And at the end of the summer, the manager took me aside and said, ‘It’s my policy to let employees eat as many doughnuts as they like because I’ve found they get tired of eating doughnuts all the time pretty quick. But you never got tired!’ I felt so self-conscious! I thought, Well, you awful, awful man. See if I ever clean behind the spiral mixer again!” Suddenly she looked contrite and laid her hand on the minister’s arm. “I’m sorry—I guess that wasn’t a very Christian thing to say.”
“Well, it wasn’t very Christian of the manager to point out how many doughnuts you’d eaten,” the minister said.
“No, indeed,” Audra said, immediately cheerful again. “Now, tell me, were you and Elspeth close?”
The minister reached for another sandwich. “Who?”
Graham sighed and turned away. The old man in the purple sweater was right behind him. “Mr. Cavanaugh?” he said. “I’m Ronald Perkins.”
“Yes, of course.” Graham shook hands with him, and Audra left the minister’s side and joined them. She was wearing a Mexican sundress, and even though it was plain black with no sparkles or embroidery of any kind, there was something about the drawstring neckline and flowing sleeves that struck Graham as inappropriately festive.
“How nice to meet you,” she said to Mr. Perkins. “Were you and Elspeth close?”
“I was the one who hired Elspeth originally,” Mr. Perkins said. Graham saw that Mr. Perkins must be approaching eighty—his hair was a baby-fine white and he had the pointy coat-hanger shoulders old men get. “I had the greatest respect for her, but I didn’t know her very well personally.”
“Oh,” Audra said in a disappointed tone.
“However,” Mr. Perkins continued. “I am the executor of Elspeth’s estate. I was going to call you, Mr. Cavanaugh, but then I thought I might see you here today. Elspeth left you a bequest.” He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and then held it at arm’s length so he could read it. “ ‘In light of our previous relationship, I would like my former husband, Graham Cavanaugh, to choose one item from among my personal effects to keep.’ ”
“That’s it?” Audra said.
Mr. Perkins nodded. “Yes, just one item.”
“No,” Audra said. “I mean, that’s all she said about him?”
“I believe so,” Mr. Perkins said. “There is no further mention of Graham in the will.”
“That is so typical of Elspeth,” Audra said. “Now we have no way of knowing whether she meant, you know, ‘In light of how great our love was,’ or ‘In light of what a low-down dirty dog he was.’ ”
“Audra,” Graham said gently, although he was thinking the same thing.
“Oh, well, now,” Mr. Perkins said. “I don’t imagine she would have left him anything at all if she disliked him.”
(Which just proved that he really hadn’t known Elspeth at all, Graham thought.)
“But didn’t you write the will?” Audra persisted. “Weren’t you there when she said that? How did she sound? Did she say it like she was still in love with him, or like she couldn’t stand him?”
“She worded the document herself,” Mr. Perkins said. He sounded very relieved to be able to say that. He turned to Graham. “Perhaps we could meet at Elspeth’s apartment one evening this week? I would like to handle this soon, so that we can dispose of the estate.”
“Of course,” Graham said. “Whenever is most convenient for you.”
Mr. Perkins handed him a business card, and Graham put it in the breast pocket of his suit.
“So you’re saying Graham can go to her apartment and choose absolutely anything he takes a fancy to?” Audra said. “Or is it, like, all the good stuff goes to someone else and then whatever Graham doesn’t take gets hauled away by the Salvation Army?”
“No, no,” Mr. Perkins said. “He can come and choose his bequest before anything else is disposed of.”
“Choose from the whole apartment?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Well, cool,” Audra said so abruptly Mr. Perkins blinked.
After that, there really seemed to be nothing to do. Graham wandered over to the buffet, but the minister had eaten most of the ham sandwiches, leaving only the cheese ones, which looked thick and dry, like they would stick to your teeth. There was a tray of carrot sticks growing warped, and two platters of cookies. It reminded Graham of a church day camp he’d gone to as a child where they watered down the apple juice.
In the cab on the way home, Audra ate a handful of Oreos and got crumbs all over the taxi’s upholstery. “I was hoping Bentrup would be there,” she said thoughtfully.
“Bentrup?” Graham said. “Why would he be there? They broke up on such bad terms.”
“Well, maybe not Bentrup but someone,” Audra said. “Some nice older man who was Elspeth’s lover.”
Now, it wasn’t an affair if you didn’t go through with it, right? If you never so much as kissed the person in question? Then why was Graham’s mouth so dry suddenly that his tongue felt small and shriveled?
“I don’t believe she had anyone,” he said at last. “Not for a while.”
Audra pried open an Oreo and licked the filling off. “But there must have been someone,” she said. “Even if it was just sex and not a serious relationship. But everyone at the funeral just up and disappeared right away! I kept thinking some man would come up and say, you know, ‘Elspeth and I were very close,’ or ‘Elspeth meant the world to me,’ or some other thing that would be code for them having slept together. The only person who even spoke to us was that Mr. Perkins, and I couldn’t picture him and Elspeth having sex, though I tried to picture it, a little, while he was talking about codicils and stuff.”
“As far as I know, there hasn’t been anyone since Bentrup,” Graham said carefully. “I think she was going through a dry spell.”
Audra looked at him in astonishment. “What? No sex at all?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Not even a one-night stand with a drunk migrant worker she picked up in a bar or something?”
Graham couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to do that than Elspeth. He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone, ah, touched her,” he said.
“Well, I had dry spells when I was single, too,” Audra said. “But those were times when I didn’t have a steady boyfriend. I mean, there were still men who touched me. And then some.”
Mercifully, the taxi pulled up to their building. Graham paid the driver and Audra hopped out to hug Julio, who was on duty, and then there was the mail to collect, and homework to supervise, and dinner, and dishes, and all that stuff you do every day that sometimes seems pleasurable and sometimes seems pointless but never seems to end.
Later that night, in bed, when they’d turned off the lights and the darkness of their bedroom was as soft and deep as mink fur, Audra sighed.
“I hope Elspeth was at least fingered by a drunk migrant worker,” she said.
Graham pretended he was already asleep.
The worst thing, the most unjust thing, about Elspeth dying—well, okay, obviously, the worst, most unjust thing about Elspeth dying was that she died at age fifty-four and didn’t get to lead a long and happy life, and nobody seemed to even miss her all that much. But the second worst thing, the second most unjust thing, was that Graham never got to tell her he was sorry they argued about the All-Clad frying pan.
He could remember—vividly—splitting up their belongings on the day when Elspeth had moved out of their apartment all those years ago. It was a Thursday, he recalled, because Mrs. Batista, their cleaning lady, was there. He and Elspeth had moved from room to room with Elspeth pointing out which possessions she wanted and Graham obediently marking them for the movers. So great was his guilt over their separation that he had disputed no request, had relinquished every article she asked for, but every item he agreed to give up just seemed to make Elspeth angrier. By the time they got to the kitchen, her face was so flushed that her blond eyebrows stood out like white lines. Her skin was sweaty, and strands of her hair kept escaping her ponytail and sticking to her cheeks. She pointed angrily to the KitchenAid mixer, the Sabatier knives, the Le Creuset casserole dish, the copper-bottomed pots, the baking tins, and the antique cobalt glassware. Graham agreed to all of it.
Then she snapped, “And don’t for one minute think I’m leaving you the All-Clad frying pan!” and she took the pan out of the cupboard and banged it on the counter so hard it startled Mrs. Batista (who was trapped in the far end of the narrow kitchen, discreetly polishing the stove top).
And Graham had hesitated. It was true that the frying pan had been his originally. He had brought it in to the marriage and he had expected to take it out of the marriage, too. It was true that the frying pan felt as good and right in his hand as a baseball bat does when you’re on your way to the park on a sunny summer morning. He could have just said, “Fine.” Instead he’d said, “If you must.” He wanted to make Elspeth feel guilty about it. He wanted her to feel ever so slightly bad when she used the frying pan. Despite Audra, despite Marla, despite all the other Marlas, Graham had wanted to diminish Elspeth’s pleasure in a frying pan. He wanted to taint her association with it, to make her feel a little bit dishonest. God, he was a small, small person. He knew that.
The movers had come the next day and taken all Elspeth’s belongings, and even though he still had plenty of furniture and dishes and lamps and candlesticks, the apartment had the sad, deserted look of a dorm room on the last day of the year, when all that’s left on the wall are four tacks and the corner of a poster.
The next Thursday, Mrs. Batista had left him a note: I miss some of the things around here. It was difficult to tell whether this was a note of condemnation (“All your pretty things are gone, serves you right”) or commiseration (“I can’t believe she walked off with that Waterford pitcher!”). Graham guessed the latter, though, since Mrs. Batista had continued working for him, not Elspeth. In fact, Mrs. Batista still worked for him, only now she was older and brought her daughter along to do the vacuuming.
(And if you think Graham’s longest, most consistent, most satisfying relationship with a woman was with his cleaning lady, you’d be wrong. It was with his dental hygienist, Louisa. He had been her very first patient, back when he was twenty-nine and she was twenty-four. She had been a young, pretty, intense, black-haired girl who cleaned his teeth silently and thoroughly, and now she was not so young, but still just as pretty and just as intense. Every time Graham came in for an appointment, Louisa would greet him and then say to the receptionist, “He was my first patient! Can you believe that?” Then she would clean Graham’s teeth and afterward she’d say, “Still not a single cavity! You’re amazing!” and Graham would say, “I owe it all to you,” and then they would both say bad things about people who don’t floss, and that would be the end of it for six months. They never argued, never got jealous, and Graham didn’t have to remember her birthday. It was, he often thought, everything a relationship should be.)
Audra had moved in shortly after Elspeth had moved out, and they had lived in that apartment until they got married a year later. Audra had brought her own mountain of possessions and formed her own relationship with Mrs. Batista (and many of Mrs. Batista’s relatives). In no time at all, Audra’s cosmetics had littered the bathroom counter where Elspeth’s cosmetics used to be, and Audra’s jewelry rested on top of the dresser, and Audra’s clothes hung in the closet, and Audra’s books lined the bookshelves, and her prints went up on the walls, and her beaded lamp stood on the nightstand, and her former roommate’s ex-boyfriend’s grandmother’s sister’s quilt covered the bed for some reason Graham could never quite figure out. Soon the apartment lost that sad abandoned dorm room look, and took on the happy cluttered look of home.
But Audra had owned no kitchen equipment because Audra never cooked, and it was weeks before Graham got around to replacing the frying pan. He kept forgetting. He would forget all about it until he needed it. Then he would reach down to the low cupboard where Elspeth had kept it and his fingers would touch nothing but the bare dusty shelf and he would realize all over again that it was gone.
Graham opened the door of the apartment, and Audra and Julio were standing right there, two steps away. Julio wore his doorman uniform and looked oddly out of place, like a suit of armor propped up in your living room.
“That is just terrible news,” Audra was saying.
Graham felt suddenly hollow. “What is?”
“Well, Julio’s uncle— I’m sorry, Julio, what’s your uncle’s name again?”
“Enzo,” Julio said.
“Thank you,” Audra said. “Julio’s uncle Enzo and his family live in Queens and the people in the apartment above them hadn’t had their water boiler serviced in, I don’t know, like a million years and it burst and leaked through the ceiling and they have just untold water damage to their apartment now.”
“I see,” Graham said carefully.
“And apparently insurance will cover it,” Audra continued, “or some of it, which is the good news, but they can’t live there for at least several weeks, which is the bad news. So Uncle Enzo and his wife, Dominga, are going to move in with Julio’s mother,” Audra said. “But Julio’s mother and his aunt Dominga have not spoken since 1986—”
“Actually, the very last day of 1985,” Julio said.
“Because Julio’s father—whom I now believe is deceased?” Audra paused and looked at Julio, who nodded.
“Sorry to hear that,” Graham said, and Julio made an accepting sort of face.
“Well, apparently Julio’s father got very drunk at a New Year’s Eve party in 1985,” Audra continued, “and patted Aunt Dominga’s bottom in the kitchen and Julio’s mother happened to be coming into the kitchen right at that split second and saw it. And I’m sorry to interrupt myself here, but, Julio, shouldn’t your mother have been mad at your father instead of Aunt Dominga?”
“Oh, she was mad at both of them for quite a while,” Julio said. “But my father convinced her it wasn’t his fault—he said, ‘Now, honey, you know that men are just powerless over their lower urges.’ So after a while Mama decided that Aunt Dominga had encouraged it by wearing dresses that were too tight and flirting with every man in sight. And my aunt Dominga said, ‘What are you talking about? I was minding my own business, just checking the rosca de reyes in the oven!’ and Mama said, ‘It’s the way you were checking the oven, bending over like that,’ and Aunt Dominga said, ‘Do you know another way to check the oven?’ And Mama said, ‘You were all but horizontal!’ and Aunt Dominga said, ‘Well, it’s not my fault he prefers my behind to yours.’ ”
Julio was an even better storyteller than Audra. Audra told stories in her usual voice, no matter who was talking, as though the whole world spoke with breathy excitement. Julio’s voice went with the dialogue, rolling into the deep baritone of his father, rising to the indignant tones of his mother, sliding into the smug tartness of his aunt.
“And they truly haven’t spoken since then?” Audra asked.
“Pretty much,” Julio said. “Though at my sister’s wedding last year, Mama went up to Aunt Dominga by the punch bowl and said, ‘I might have guessed you’d wear red—it suits you.’ ”
Audra was shaking her head slightly and clucking. “So now,” she said to Graham, “Julio’s mother feels that she must open her home to her brother but she refuses to sleep under the same roof as Aunt Dominga, so she’s moving into Julio’s apartment, which is just a studio and nowhere near big enough, so I told Julio he should just stay with us.”
“Of course,” said Graham, who, for several minutes now, had been secretly fearing that Aunt Dominga was coming to live with them. “Of course. We would be happy to have you.”
That was the truth. Julio was an easy houseguest and Graham was fond of him. And anyway, Graham was so relieved that the terrible news wasn’t that Julio had been fired and was moving away. Graham couldn’t stand to lose anyone else right now.
Olivia arrived at the office the next day pulling a suitcase that looked about the size of the love seat in Graham’s living room. Actually, maybe the love seat was a little smaller.
“Phew!” Olivia said, blowing out a breath. Her bangs were stuck to her forehead.
“Going somewhere?” Graham asked.
“To Kentucky to see my parents,” Olivia said, fanning herself with the collar of her blouse. “I have to leave for the airport straight from here. You will not believe how much this thing weighs!”
Graham looked at the suitcase. “How much does it weigh?”
“I have no idea,” Olivia said. “That was just an expression.”
“But, I mean—” Graham paused doubtfully. “Won’t you have to pay a fee for oversize baggage?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, if your suitcase is over a certain size, the airlines charge you a fee.”
“They do?” Olivia looked shocked. “How much?”
“About a hundred dollars, typically.”
“A hundred dollars!” Olivia cried, dismayed. “That’s like twenty Frappuccinos!”
“Well, yes.”
“How heavy can it be before they charge you?” Olivia asked.
“Fifty pounds, I think.”
They both regarded her suitcase suspiciously, as though it were an alien spacecraft.
Olivia looked over at Graham. “How much do you think it weighs?”
Graham picked up the suitcase, the tendons in his arm creaking. “More than fifty, I think. You might have to repack.”
He didn’t mean right then and there, but Olivia immediately knelt down, her blue skirt pooling around her like a puddle of water, and undid the clasps on the suitcase, resulting in an explosion of cosmetics and shoes and bras and phone chargers. A bottle of shampoo rolled over to rest against Graham’s shoe and he nudged it until it rolled back.
“You see,” he said, “you’re better off buying stuff like shampoo and lotion in Kentucky, or taking really small bottles. And why are you taking a jar of pennies and that little Statue of Liberty figurine—”
“What am I going to do?” Olivia interrupted, nearly wailing.
“Let me get my gym bag,” Graham said. “And I think I have some shopping bags, too. We’ll figure it out.”
She looked up at him and nodded, her cheeks as pink as a Dresden doll’s.
He went into his office and dumped his gym stuff onto the floor of the closet there. When he returned, Olivia was still kneeling by her open suitcase, looking like someone who’d just been evicted from a very crowded apartment.
She had her cellphone to her ear and Graham guessed she was speaking to her roommate. “Yes, a hundred dollars!” she said. Then her eyes fastened on Graham. “I don’t know how he knows this stuff, he just does.”
He felt—just for the tiniest instant—very wise, very old.
You could bet Graham wasn’t going to choose the frying pan. That was certain. But what would he chose from Elspeth’s apartment? He was due to meet Mr. Perkins at Elspeth’s apartment in an hour. He went into the kitchen to say goodbye to Audra, but she jumped up immediately from her seat at the table.
“Of course, I’ll come with you, darling,” she said cheerfully. “It’s bound to be upsetting. I wouldn’t want you to be alone.”
Clearly Audra just wanted to have a good poke around Elspeth’s apartment, but it didn’t seem worth arguing about. She wore jeans and a white blouse embroidered with flowers around the neckline. Why was it that everything she wore lately struck Graham as inappropriately lighthearted?
They left Matthew at home alone. This was a new development and Matthew tended to call them on their cellphones and say things like, “I’m thirsty. Do you think I should get a drink of water?” But, hey, progress is progress. It gave Graham hope that Matthew could live independently by age thirty-five or so.
He and Audra took a cab down to Elspeth’s apartment and met Mr. Perkins in the lobby. Mr. Perkins wore a checkered blazer that made him look like an elderly bookie. Graham said hello and avoided the doorman’s eyes. Did they remember him?
“Well, I’m sure Graham will start in the kitchen,” Audra said to Mr. Perkins in the elevator. “So let’s you and I just have a little mosey around.”
Mr. Perkins looked a bit startled but he just said, “Certainly.”
“I can’t wait to look in her closets,” Audra said in a soft, happy voice.
Graham didn’t have any intention of starting in the kitchen. As soon as they got to the apartment, he went straight to Elspeth’s bedroom. He was looking for the drawer. Everyone had one, at least he assumed that. A drawer, or maybe a box on your closet shelf, where you ended up storing things of sentimental value. Graham’s own such drawer was the bottom drawer of his desk. Audra’s, oddly, was in the kitchen, and in addition to some letters and photos she treasured, it held bits of string and stretched-out rubber bands and spare batteries of uncommon sizes. (How like Audra to have everything mixed up together, the priceless and the useless.)
Graham opened the door to Elspeth’s bedroom. It was immaculate as always. It looked so much like a showroom that Graham had the sudden conviction that if he pulled back the bedspread, he would find only a bed-shaped piece of Styrofoam beneath it.
He steeled himself and stepped into the bathroom. Nothing there. But what had he expected? A pool of blood on the floor? A chalk outline of Elspeth’s body? He didn’t even know if there had been blood. Who came and cleaned up after someone died at home? It was something he’d never thought of before. Who knew death left so much garbage behind for others to take care of?
A silky lavender robe hung on a hook behind the bathroom door. Graham lifted its folds to his face and breathed deeply. It smelled of soap and maybe hair spray, but it didn’t bring Elspeth to mind the way he had hoped. He went back into the bedroom.
“Just look at this linen closet!” Audra said admiringly from the hall. “Everything folded and stacked so neatly. God, these towels look brand-new. Some of them are brand-new—I can see the tags! All this stuff is just in perfect condition. Where do you suppose she kept the old ones?”
“Old ones?” Mr. Perkins said.
“You know,” Audra said. “The faded or torn ones. What did she do when the dishwasher overflowed? Just run out and throw a brand-spanking-new towel with a scalloped edge on the floor?”
Mr. Perkins said something inaudible.
Graham opened the drawers of the nightstand on the side of the bed closest to him. Hand lotion, nail clippers, notepad, pen, phone charger, lip balm. This was not what he wanted. The drawers of the nightstand on the other side of the bed were completely empty, which was somehow even worse.
Audra was still marveling over the linen closet. “This makes me want to go home and replace all our towels. We have towels older than Matthew. We might even have towels older than Graham. My mother was the same way. In fact, when I got married, the very morning of the wedding, we had all these relatives staying with us and my mother put out the nice new towels for them, and I—the bride—had to use a thin little towel that still smelled like the cat and the cat had been dead ten years by then.”
Graham began opening the dresser drawers. Sweaters, panty hose, a whole drawer of slips, another whole drawer of camisoles. And finally—here we go. The bottom drawer was empty except for a Valentine’s Day card and a small jeweler’s box. The card had no envelope, and when Graham picked it up, it felt dusty to the touch. On the front was a silhouette of a couple under a heart-shaped umbrella. It was signed All my love, M. Well. Indeed. Graham didn’t need Audra to tell him that men only signed with their initial when they were married. He put the card back. The jeweler’s box held two wedding rings. One was Elspeth’s mother’s—he recognized it instantly. A silver octagonal ring that had always struck him as uncomfortable-looking. Or was that because he had only ever seen it on an arthritic finger? The other ring was slim and gold and, he realized with surprise, was Elspeth’s own, the one Graham had given her long ago. He put the ring in his palm and closed his fingers over it, trying to remember what Elspeth’s face had looked like when they said their vows. But all he could recall was the minister’s face—a very pink face, the color of smoked salmon, and beaded with perspiration. The minister had either been rushing from an earlier wedding or had some sort of cardiovascular disease because he had puffed and wheezed so heavily throughout the ceremony that Graham had feared the man would have a heart attack. Now all Graham could summon up of Elspeth at their wedding was a faint memory of a cool white presence in a gauzy veil standing next to him in the church, as though she had been a ghost already.
He put the rings back in the box and shut the drawer gently.
Audra and Mr. Perkins had apparently finished their tour of the apartment. (Graham later learned from Audra that the closet in the guest room was completely empty, which not only disappointed her but made her feel inadequate as a housekeeper.) They were seated at the dining room table with cups of tea. Graham walked past them into the kitchen.
“Graham and Elspeth had the most teenage type of relationship imaginable,” Audra was saying. She frequently talked about him even when he was standing right there. It was sort of like being a supporting character in a book someone else was writing. “Always either best friends or worst enemies. Actually, more like hostile roommates, even after they stopped living together. This sort of mind-set like ‘Well, you kept me up all night playing your stupid music so I’m going to hide the carrot peeler.’ That’s not an actual example, but that sort of mentality. You know what I mean?”
“Well, yes, I think so,” Mr. Perkins said tentatively.
Graham sighed and looked around the kitchen. He checked the lower cabinets and found the All-Clad frying pan, right there with the others where it should be. He took the frying pan out and held it for a moment. It was just as he remembered—the perfect weight, the perfect size. (All-Clad had discontinued this particular model, which is why he didn’t have his own. Plus Audra put everything in the dishwasher and their frying pans didn’t look as glossy and perfect as this one.) Graham put it back.
“Their whole marriage was like that,” Audra said in the other room. “Graham told me once that he moved the living room furniture around and the very next day while he was at work, Elspeth moved it all right back. And neither of them said anything about it! Both just as stubborn as could be! They just had this sort of falsely civil supper and pretended that furniture arranges itself.”
Graham had forgotten that furniture episode, but it was true. Elspeth had gone out and bought special casters to put under the legs of the sofa just so she could push it back into place without having to ask him to help. Had he and Elspeth been like teenagers? It seemed to him that their relationship had been so complicated, so layered, so intricate, that it was beyond anyone’s understanding, but maybe not.
“And even after their divorce, it was like that,” Audra said. “We never knew where we stood with her. You could call her up one day and she’d be so happy to hear from you, and the next day, she’d be all ‘What? What? I can’t hear you! Speak up!’ even when the connection was totally clear. That kind of conversation—you know?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Perkins said unexpectedly. You could never be sure, with Audra, exactly how much of the conversation the other person would be able to follow.
“Personally, I think that’s why Graham married Elspeth in the first place,” Audra said. “He was attracted by her unpredictability. Men are so gullible! He liked the way she was cold one minute and then loving two seconds later. It was really a sign of how incompatible they were, but Graham thought it showed, I don’t know, her passionate nature or something.”
“My wife was like that,” Mr. Perkins said in a soft, contemplative tone. “Fire and ice.”
“I believe ‘fire and ice’ is a certain type of oral sex,” Audra said. “But, yes, that sort of idea.”
There was a very startled silence. The apartment itself seemed shocked—Graham imagined he could hear teaspoons rattling in the silver chest.
“Well,” Mr. Perkins said. He had to make another start. “Well.”
“So what’s going to happen to this apartment?” Audra said. “Who did Elspeth leave it to?”
Undoubtedly that was confidential information, but Mr. Perkins was either too flustered to recall that or too grateful for the change of subject to protest. “Elspeth had no close relatives,” he said. “The apartment and all the contents are to go to the Global Fund for Women.”
“Even those pretty towels with the pink rosebuds?” Audra asked wistfully.
“Yes, everything,” Mr. Perkins said.
Graham turned back to the kitchen. What to take? Not something decorative—he didn’t want to stare at a reminder of Elspeth in his living room (and he didn’t want the decorative object to stare at him, either). And not something distinctive, because he didn’t want Elspeth sneaking up on him in the form of a vintage nutmeg grater when he opened the cupboard and least expected it. Of course, he could take nothing at all and just go home, but he didn’t feel right about that. And he planned to use whatever he took, because taking some little knickknack and sticking it in the closet and then throwing it out one Saturday when the clutter of your closet got too overwhelming—well, that was too apt a metaphor of Elspeth’s existence.
At last Graham chose a plain rectangular wooden cutting board. Because although Graham loved many things about cooking—the predictability and the orderliness and the almost immediate gratification—he loved the mindlessness of chopping vegetables most of all. When he was chopping vegetables, he could achieve a mildly stoned state of reflection. Sometimes, on weekends, he made a very complicated minestrone from scratch just because it involved so much chopping. It went without saying that he owned several cutting boards, and one or two were nearly indistinguishable from the cutting board he held in his hands now. That was why Graham chose it. Maybe, if he was lucky, it would get mixed in with all the others, and after a while, Graham would never know which one it was.
Julio moved in on Friday night. He brought with him only a Tupperware container, a small leather toiletry case, and his doorman uniform in a dry-cleaning bag.
“Oh, that is so sad!” Audra whispered to Graham. “Imagine moving through life with so few possessions.”
Graham could imagine it. He thought it was probably wonderfully freeing.
Julio handed the Tupperware container to Graham. “Mama sent you this,” he said. “It’s her one-pot chorizo-and-potato stew for us to have for supper tonight.”
Julio’s mother sent them supper and they didn’t have to even meet her, let alone endure an evening of small talk? Now there was a relationship Graham could get behind. It was even better than pizza delivery because not only did you have to pay for the pizza, but the delivery guy had a tendency to hang around and talk to Audra about his romantic life. (He was seeing this girl who posted cat GIFs all the time and— Oh, never mind.)
“Thank your mother for us,” Graham said. “I’m sure it will be delicious.”
“She said to serve it with sourdough bread,” Julio said, “and sends her apologies for not having a fresh loaf ready for me to take.”
Homemade bread? It was very possible that Graham might be in love with Mama Julio.
“Oh, I’m sure just regular bread will be fine,” Audra said. She would think that. She was so—so offhand about food.
“I’ll go out and get some,” Graham said. “I don’t mind.”
He just had time to walk to the bakery on the corner. They closed at six. He took the Tupperware container into the kitchen and opened it. Even cold, it smelled delicious.
He walked back along the hall toward the door. He could hear Julio and Matthew in Matthew’s room. Julio was speaking in a mock-tough voice, “What’s this shit about you watching porn on the internet? You better not do that while I’m here.” Matthew’s laughter was soft and pleased.
Graham had never wanted a big family—all that noise and disruption—but maybe he’d been wrong about that. Maybe he just wanted a family that consisted of people who’d already grown to adulthood, of kind and funny young people who had been expertly raised by women thoughtful enough to send whole meals. That kind of family would suit Graham just fine.
Outside, Graham walked through the warm evening air to the bakery. He pushed open the door, and even this late in the day, there was a line of people waiting and the smell of fresh bread was everything you wanted love to be, but it so often isn’t: hot, sweet, comforting, full of promise, and so heartwarming it made you want to do nice things for other people.
He had read once that everyone responded to the smell of freshly baked bread that way—that it was merely a common physical reaction to the aroma of fermenting yeast and not anything to do with a sentimental flashback to one’s grandmother’s kitchen. But knowing this didn’t make Graham appreciate it any less. He inhaled deeply.
How strange. How strange. Here was Graham smelling fresh bread and Elspeth was doing nothing at all. She wasn’t chopping celery or doing her taxes or drinking wine or yelling at a cabdriver. Graham felt a second of sorrow, but it was like a spark from a campfire—shrinking to a pinpoint and then blinking out. You couldn’t even see where it had been.
Graham sighed, which caused the woman in front of him in line to shoot him an annoyed it’s-not-my-fault look. But Graham didn’t see her. He was thinking about the time Matthew had gone through a period of intense infatuation with geocaching, and Graham and Audra had had to spend all their weekends hiking through the woods, searching for worthless trinkets and leaving their own trinkets there for others to find. (It was either geocaching or origami—when would Matthew become a sullen teenager who spent his free time getting stoned on the fire escape? It couldn’t happen soon enough.) Graham thought his relationship with Elspeth was a little like geocaching. They went long periods without speaking and then one of them would leave some sort of emotional coordinates (a phone call or an email), and sometimes the other one followed the coordinates and located the treasure, and sometimes they didn’t. But Graham had assumed that the treasure would always be there, that it was just a matter of finding a free weekend to track it down. He didn’t know until now that sometimes it just stays hidden, forgotten—that it will always remain something you meant to do.