Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! (36 page)

Lee Kingsley had called Dena and told her they were going to scatter Howard Kingsley’s ashes in a quiet ceremony from his boat, the
Lee Anne.
“We want you to be there. I know Howard would have liked that, he thought so much of you. So please come.” Dena said she would. They met at the house in Sag Harbor and went aboard the boat around four—Lee, Howard’s daughter, Anne, her husband, and their two children, Howard’s close friend Charles and his wife, and six or seven friends of theirs she didn’t know. Dena had never been to a funeral of any kind before and was frankly nervous about how to act or what was going to happen, but, Lee took over with her usual grace and made everyone feel comfortable. Anne had come up to her right away and said, “I’m so glad you could come and be with us. Dad thought the world of you.”

They rode out and the water was calm and quiet except for the seagulls following the boat. When they dropped anchor, Lee served champagne. A little later, as the sun was beginning to set, Lee stood up. “As you all know, Howard loved this place from the day we came here thirty-seven years ago. He fell in love with the town and the people, and this boat was where he spent some of his happiest hours. When he was particularly troubled he would get in it and just
ride around out here for hours. We never talked much about death but I somehow think this is where he would want to be buried. I asked him once why he never went out any further. And he said, ‘Lee, I love to look for miles across the horizon and clear my head and think about what’s beyond but I never want to lose sight of home.’ And I think that’s how he lived. With his eyes on the horizon but never losing sight of home.”

One by one, those present said a few things about Howard. Dena was too moved to say anything. A friend, John, spoke last. “You know, I thought of hundreds of things I could say, things I’d like to say about Howard. About the kind of man he was, the kind of friend. But you know—even now I can hear that old bastard saying, Get on with it, John, we don’t want any of your overblown sentimental schoolgirl prose. So I’ll just say, Good-bye, and safe harbor, old friend.”

The sun was beginning to fade as they watched the mild wind that had suddenly come up blow the ashes across the water and Lee played Howard’s favorite record. For such a serious man, most people would not have guessed the Cole Porter tune was the one he loved to sing. As the last of the ashes disappeared, Fred Astaire sang:

Everyone held up their glasses to toast Howard, except Dena, who totally and unexpectedly lost complete control. She burst into tears and began to sob. She tried to stop but she couldn’t; watching those ashes disappear had triggered something inside her. It was so
final.

If anyone was surprised by her sudden burst of emotion, they could not have been more surprised than Dena, who prided herself on control at all costs. She was a master at sidestepping feelings, batting them away, avoiding them. She was horrified.
What must they be thinking? I am the one person on this boat who knew him the
least.
Several people came over to her and she kept saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.” One man put his arm around her shoulder and held her up. She knew she was making a fool out of herself but she couldn’t stop. Finally, Lee came over, sat her down, and tried to comfort her. But she was crying harder than she had ever cried in her life, trying not to make noise, trying to stop. Her nose was running and she didn’t have any Kleenex. Oh, God, she wanted to die. They were all going to think she really had had an affair with him, the way she was carrying on.

As they turned and headed home, they saw that boats of many shapes and sizes had lined up behind them. The boats sat silently, motionless in the water, their owners flying their flags at half-mast as a tribute to their neighbor. The boats remained still until after the
Lee Anne
had passed, then they all rode out in single file and made a slow circle around the area where Howard’s ashes had been scattered and headed back to harbor.

When Dena saw that, she sobbed even more. By the time they got to the house, Dena had to be put on a bed in a room off the living room. Lee brought her a cold, wet washcloth and put it across Dena’s eyes, now red and swollen. “Sorry … I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m sorry, really.”

“You just lie here and try and relax,” Lee said. “I’ll be back.”

As Dena tried at last to calm down, she could hear them out in the living room, talking and even laughing, glasses clinking. It was so strange; everyone was working so hard to keep up a brave front, talking about everyday things, as if that would lessen the loss. Dena heard the children in the den throwing a ball to the dog, who was excited to have playmates. It all seemed so unreal. Howard was gone but life went on and all that was left was an empty chair. At that thought she started to cry again.

Lee came back in after a while, sat on the bed, and took her hand. “How are you doing?”

Dena shook her head. “I don’t know … I’m sorry.”

“It’s perfectly OK, Dena, it happens. Something touches you and sets off old memories, some old loss. It’s OK. You just take your time and come on out when you feel like it.”

After Lee left, she tried to think. What in the world was she crying about, so deeply sad about? Could it all be Howard’s dying? She had not cried when she heard the news. She had been upset, but she had not cried. She liked him, she respected him, she would miss him, but not enough to break down like this. Was it something about saying good-bye? Was it about her own father? She didn’t think so; she had not even known him.

What was wrong? Maybe she was just weeping about living in a world without Howard.

Dena arrived home from Howard Kingsley’s memorial service at about twelve-thirty that night and the minute she came in the door she opened a bottle of vodka, put her nightgown on, and drank much of the bottle. At about 4
A
.
M
., drunk as a loon, she got the idea that she would finally tell Ira Wallace what she thought of him. She went to her typewriter, sat down, and started typing.

Dena finished writing at about five-thirty in the morning and felt a great weight off her; she felt free, went to bed, and slept like a baby for the first time in weeks. At around one o’clock that afternoon she woke with a new hangover from hell and a terrible stomachache. She made herself coffee, had Maalox and three aspirins, and read the letter she had typed. What a pile of sanctimonious crap. Who was she to point the finger at anyone? Who did she think she was to imagine herself in the same category with Howard Kingsley? Such a bunch of holier-than-thou, self-righteous drunken babble … Then a wave of panic hit her when she realized she might have gone out and put it in the mail chute. Thank God she hadn’t mailed it. Last night she had been so sure she believed all this stuff, but today she realized all she was doing was spouting off some of Howard’s thoughts. Last night the vodka convinced her that she really believed all she had written. Today she had no earthly idea of what she really thought or felt about anything anymore. Who in the hell was
she
to judge? Did she really care about anybody but herself? Ira Wallace at least loved his kids and that was more than she could say; at least he loved something. She ripped the letter to shreds and threw it in the wastebasket. A fresh sheet of paper was in the typewriter. She typed a few sentences before she went back to bed with a Valium.

Across town Gerry O’Malley was leaning over the center-island counter in his kitchen, wearing his red baseball cap, scribbling out another one of the many letters he had started.

Gerry stopped writing and reread what he had just written and thought: That’s the most sickening, most embarrassing pile of hooey I’ve ever read in my life. And wadded it up and threw it in the trash can along with the others and started a new one.

He stopped, tore that up, and said out loud, “God, why don’t you just call her, you idiot!” He went to the phone and dialed her number. But she had unplugged the phone.

One of the hundreds of things Dena did not know about Gerry O’Malley was that he believed in true love. His father and mother had been madly in love with each other so he knew that it did exist and what it looked like. His father had been in the military and had a big job at the Pentagon and his mother usually left their home in Middleburg, Virginia, to go to Washington to be with him during the week. They hated to be apart even for a few days. Gerry and his father adored her. She was so bubbly, so alive, so much fun to be around, until his sister was born, with cerebral palsy. After that their lives had changed. His sister needed constant care and his mother, who had been the toast of the Washington party circuit, almost never left the house anymore. Gerry was sent to military school at the age of twelve.

As she got older, his sister’s condition grew worse, and as hard as his mother tried to take care of her, she could not. His sister finally had to be put in a special school in another state where she could receive twenty-four-hour medical care. It devastated his mother when she was forced to let her go. Each time he came home from school he noticed that his mother was drinking more and more, and his father would come downstairs to breakfast alone, saying his
mother was sick that morning. He and his father had never discussed it then and so it was not talked about.

A year later, she never left her room.

The only time he had ever seen his father cry was one day after he and his father had been to visit her in the convalescent home. After they left, his father put his head on the steering wheel and sobbed. Gerry knew that he was crying over having to leave first his daughter and now his wife, who had slowly retreated into another world and had left him so alone.

His mother died of acute alcoholism the first year he was in college. His father had become so despondent from years of watching his wife slowly destroy herself and feeling helpless that he too withdrew from the world and left Gerry feeling helpless, not knowing what to do to reach him. The feeling of wanting to help but not knowing how or what to say was what caused him to change his major from music to psychology. Years later, his father remarried. It was nice. He had someone, but it wasn’t love. He never got over his first wife. Gerry knew it took courage to love like that. He knew firsthand how painful and dangerous it could be, but as it turned out he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Gerry recognized the woman he loved at once, remembered her as one remembers an old dream, and he was at once lost, at once found. His life was as changed as if he had gone to bed in one place and the next morning found himself clear across the world, a world vaguely familiar but new and full of wonder, as bright and fresh as the world had seemed as a child after a rain when the sun came out, a place of endless possibilities. He had all but forgotten that old dream of finding her. But dreams have a way of crashing through the darkest of places, the thickest of walls, and there it was, and her name was Dena.