The Violet Hour: A Novel (10 page)

“We’ll have to tell everyone there’s no party,” Eunice said. “And talk to Wendy about the flowers.”

“It’s under control, Mom,” Mary persisted. Estella made a snuffling sound and bit off a lurid blue ring from her candy necklace.

“Don’t forget the cemetery people. Your father had a deal with Frank for a plot on the west side, but I don’t know where those papers have gone.”

“Really, Mom.” Howie patted her hand again. “It’s Sunday. We’ll do everything tomorrow.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted us to drag our feet,” Eunice snapped.

“Well, he wouldn’t have wanted to break his goddamn neck either!” Cassandra cried out from the bottom of the bed, where she lay curled around her mother’s feet like a spaniel. “But he did! So he’ll just have to be patient while we grieve.”

“Shh, shh,” Mary said.

“I’m fine,” Cassandra said. “It’s fine.”

“Oh, Grandpa!” Estella cried, before burying her face in Mary’s chest.

“Are you okay, Howie?” Cassandra looked up at her brother. His shoulders were shaking, and his face was wet.

“No,” he said.

“Me neither.”

“Me neither,” said Max, who appeared fine.

“I can’t stop thinking about the timing,” Cassandra said. “The day before his birthday. With all of us here. It’s just plain eerie.” Howie reached down to squeeze her hand.

Elizabeth sat on the floor, her knees pitched, her back against the wall. Kyle was on her left, and now and then, she rested her head on his shoulder. This was her family. It really was a wonder he’d been alone when he died. How was it that half of them were at the store, and the rest no better than deaf? How, she wondered, had she not heard?

“I should have been out there,” she said.

“Oh, Lizzie, no!”

“What could you have done?”

“Don’t blame yourself!”

The chorus of protest was instinctive and sure—the voices of people who knew the ritual of death, but had not yet mastered the feeling.

A
FTER DINNER
, Toby went upstairs to his room. He no longer felt right in DC, where his mother lived so blissfully with her husband. Toby and Ruth had been extraordinarily close when he was growing up—just the two of them—but she’d changed with the ascendance of Ed. The things Ruth said no longer interested Toby; he felt increasingly that she’d turned out to be a member of another species, predestined to miss the point.

He sat now on a low stool with his guitar in his lap, his shoulders erect and calm. A blank notebook and pen lay within reach on the bed, though he didn’t really need them. This wasn’t practice, but something else, more central to his health. He played gently, his body hardly moving as his gaze shifted from the wall to the windowsill to the tips of his curling fingers.

When something caused Toby pain, he often found himself holding the guitar, passing hours in focused stillness. He thought through the instrument, made decisions in progressions of chords, and when he emerged he knew how he felt, knew what he needed to do. The music he made during these trances was never much good, but then, it wasn’t that kind of music, not meant for an audience to hear.

In time, there came a knock. He turned to see his mother cracking the door.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” she said.

“It’s fine. I was only thinking.”

She moved halfway into the room, hands clasped behind her as though hiding a present. “I love my orchid,” she said at last. “And I’m touched that you thought to buy me a plant.”

“That’s great, Mom. I’m glad you like it,” he said, wishing he could slip back into solitude. Maternal fawning was no substitute for real conversation.

“No, really,” she said. “This is important. I don’t think most men your age are as aware of their mothers’ interests as you.”

He shuddered at the word
men
: a stretch. “Well, it was the best I could find.”

“It’ll be a new challenge for me, caring for it.”

He looked at the blank page in his notebook. “I’m sure you’ll succeed.”

She came in further, studying his bookshelf; she wasn’t getting the message. “My mysterious son,” she said to the rows of his high-school paperbacks. “College graduate. What are you up to these days?” At dinner, he’d told her about an exhibit he’d seen at a gallery downtown. He thought that would have been enough.

“I’ve been studying some new jazz recordings. Maybe I’ll tell you about them tomorrow.”

“You haven’t mentioned anything about your girl.” Now that she’d found Ed, it was clear she wanted him to find someone, too. Before, she’d probably have been content to stay a widow forever, as long as Toby was around.

“She isn’t mine,” he said, thinking of Ramona with the short blunt hair, the most recent in his string of casual heartbreaks. He wasn’t actually sure which girl his mother meant, but it didn’t matter; nobody was his. He stood and set his guitar on the bed. “I’m meeting up with John tonight. I don’t want to be late.”

Her smile vanished and she bobbed her head, suddenly embarrassed. “We have all week.” She backed into the hallway to let him pass, forcing a tiny laugh. “I only hope I won’t have killed the orchid by then!”

“No,” Toby said, “don’t.”

He wasn’t actually meeting up with John, a friend from high school whom he hadn’t seen in years, but he’d had to give some reason to leave the house. He backed his mother’s teal Subaru out of the driveway, and at the strip of luxury stores turned left, away from downtown.

Driving provided another kind of trance. He held the wheel and turned this way, that way, letting the suburbs surprise him. Even the suburbs were sometimes capable of this. In the late evening light, he cruised down the avenue, admiring trees and stone houses, turning onto a side street now and then for a closer look at a painted door or a line of gingerbread trim. Before long, he’d wound his way to Bethesda, an affluent hub that had expanded even since he’d last been home. He parked in a garage and strolled along a sidewalk freshly poured that spring, according to a date someone had scrawled when it was wet. Two teenagers approached with their arms flopping around each other’s waist. He crossed the street to avoid them and found himself in front of a multi-level bookstore. Inside, he browsed the tables until he came to one showcasing paperback fiction, finally deciding on a Western-themed novel that had been a finalist for a significant prize.

Having paid, he went down the street to the Starbucks. He’d heard all the arguments against corporate coffee, but was never persuaded to give it up. He felt that Starbucks was good, felt its dominance proved this, and considered himself more honest than the snobs for embracing it. Wiser in many ways, too; you gained back your own perspective when you entered the ubiquitous thing. He ordered a decaf espresso, tipped the bar staff, and found a plush corner chair in which to sit with his book.

He read two chapters straight through, pausing only a few times to contemplate a woman fidgeting with her sandal in the opposite chair, and a man in line who was disappointed to learn he’d ordered a drink that didn’t exist. It was Sunday evening, quiet, when most in the suburbs were at home. He fingered the stone in his pocket and decided he’d come again the next day, and every day that week, until DC felt like any other place, for which he harbored no expectations.

E
unice was up early Monday, occupying the kitchen. With a damp cloth, she gently cleaned a set of turquoise salt and pepper silos, followed by a set that looked like a peasant boy and girl, and one that resembled two chicken eggs lightly flattened at the base. She’d chosen each set herself, all of them perfect pairs, delightful little objects that felt sturdy in her hand. By the time she opened the dishwasher, she was deep in the domestic zone. There, in the top rack, crouched four of her eleven diamond-cut tumblers—because, she suddenly remembered, she had only eleven of them now. Was that even enough for them all? She counted hurriedly on her hand, beginning with her thumb—Howie, Cassandra, Mary, Elizabeth, Max—then refreshed her fingers and began again—Estella, Eunice. That was it. How could she forget! Kyle. And eventually—ring finger—Vlad. Even so they were only nine, her pinky still drooping on her palm. She stared at it a moment: a shriveled thing with a tattered white cuticle and a tough old nail that was foggy as a horse’s hoof. She closed her fist and hid it behind her then looked back at the glasses in the rack. It may have been the day after the worst day of her life, but she still had a house to keep straight.

Half an hour later, Cassandra paused in front of the round window
on the second-floor landing. A teenage boy was standing on the footpath in the front yard, his head bowed as if in prayer. So the world already knew. Cassandra peered closer. His stance seemed to require a hat, held demurely behind his back. Fragmented by the window’s soldered panes, the image of the boy reminded her of a modern movie set sometime in the iconic past. Who stood that way anymore? Her parents’ house had always attracted the oddest visitors.

Eunice was distributing forks and spoons among the silverware drawer’s dividers when Cassandra entered the kitchen. It was not yet 7:30.

“There’s a boy in the front yard,” Cassandra said, starting the coffeemaker.

“People will be coming by all day.”

“But this early?”

“Death doesn’t keep an ordinary calendar, Cassandra.” Grief axioms never failed Eunice—even when the grief was her own.

The doorbell rang at eight. “That will be the first of the flowers,” Eunice said.

“I’m sure it’s not. We haven’t even ordered them yet.”

“I mean the flowers from other people. Trust me.” Eunice went for the door.

But it was not flowers. It was Dorothy Chamberlain, Eunice’s best friend, and also her most officious. A transplant from the South, she was a tall woman who dyed her short hair blond and wore dramatic eye makeup and heels even in the kitchen. She and her husband, Jules, had left Dallas fifty years before when he came to work for the Defense Department, and she spent the next five decades telling everyone she’d never forgive him. But Jules had died of a heart attack, several years had passed, and still Dorothy was not making any effort to return to Texas.

The moment Eunice opened the door, Dorothy was talking. “I told myself I’d wait until morning,” she said. “The family needs that time at first to themselves. And I knew you were all here together—dare I say it: a blessing—and so I thought, ‘Best leave them to themselves.
Eunice is a big girl. She can take care of herself.’ But oh my Lord you poor thing: look at you, just look at you.”

She pressed Eunice’s head to her padded life raft of a shoulder.

“When my Julie died, I sat on the floor and cried for
weeks
. Wasn’t it weeks?” She released Eunice. “But look at you, you’re standin’ and carryin’ on just like you always do. My Lord, how
terrible
. To fall from a
roof
!”

Eunice smiled grimly. “I always say you have to carry on the best you can.”

“Well, enough of that! I’m here to help. You’ll do no more carryin’ on today. Did you know there’s a boy in your front yard?”

When the doorbell rang again that hour, it was a deliveryman, bearing the first of the condolence flowers.
Our deepest sympathies,
read the card, from an undertaker in DC.

“You see,” Eunice said to Cassandra. “I know how these things work.”

Cassandra experienced the rest of the morning as a steady stream of flower deliveries, phone calls from distant relatives who’d received Mary’s message, and visits from neighbors and business associates with food. The family awoke one by one and began moving about the house like automatons, drinking something, eating something, sitting in one chair, sitting in another. Elizabeth had been the next person up after Cassandra, and yet they’d found little time together. Too many other voices and bodies, and Kyle was always nearby.

Dorothy ran the kitchen, baking casseroles and organizing the delivered food on trivets all around the house. She was a proud widow; the first to come and the last to leave whenever another woman’s husband went under.

Meanwhile, Alvin Dao had arrived. It was supposed to have been a day off for him, and he had a family, but he was nothing if not a dedicated worker.

“Alvin,” Cassandra cried when he came through the front door. They were alone in the hall; the voices of the rest of the household
crackled in other rooms. “Thank God you’re here.” She nearly hugged him.

“I wouldn’t usually come into the family home,” he said, blinking rapidly through small round spectacles. “But I wanted to pay my respects in the proper fashion.” He was a consummate undertaker, almost a parody of the profession: careful with the living, stiff as their dead. “Your father,” he continued, “would have wanted it this way.”

Cassandra nodded, her eyes watering, suddenly overcome with affection for the dour man who’d shared her father’s business interests for so many years. She looked at Alvin, tacitly begging him for information. His eyes blinked several more times, and in an uncharacteristic gesture, he clasped her hand in both of his. Then, after a curt nod, he released her and hurried into the kitchen like a messenger with urgent news to share. Several rooms away, Cassandra heard Eunice’s voice rise almost happily to receive his condolences, followed by a flattered mumble from Alvin himself. Cassandra had come to suspect that Alvin liked her parents more than he liked his own family. She thought of his solid, tidy wife and backpack-wearing school-aged boy, and felt sad.

The rest of the day, the Fabricants moved spastically through emotions and rooms. Eunice had always maintained that there was a hierarchy to grief: widow first, young grandchildren second. The children and older grandchildren who knew how to cope were last, expected to help with the planning and management of grief. It was a pecking order that Eunice, the Grande Dame of Grief Decorum, had developed assiduously over the years, promulgating it at every funeral she staged. This time—this one time—the hierarchy would focus on her.

Cassandra, Howie, and Mary were prevailed upon to decide where things should go, which calls should be answered, and who else should be notified of events. The most emotional of the three, Cassandra was the least equipped for such work. But she didn’t want to disappoint her more stoic siblings, who were counting on her assistance. Between accepting hugs from near-strangers, she
answered questions, took the phone, and tried to keep her mind focused on minutiae. Her eye sockets buzzed like lightbulbs, her body flew through space, numb and indefatigable. She had the sense that nothing could kill a person in grief.