At last we reached the end, and the coffin was lowered slowly into the ground, at which point Anna Lysenko let out a howl of grief so visceral that it made me shiver. She fell back into the arms of some male relative, almost as if it had been orchestrated, but despite her clear theatrics, tears streamed down my own face. I was a mother, too.
By the time we made it back to the church social hall for the luncheon that followed, the children were snarling at one another and Michael had joined Matthew in complaining about the need to use the bathroom. They disappeared down a hallway while Lucy and I entered a large room with round tables set with white cloths and fake flower arrangements. Along the sides were long buffet tables laden with a strange mixture of American picnic food (potato and macaroni salads and coleslaw, all dripping copious amounts of mayonnaise, plus Jell-O in various Day-Glo colors) and Ukrainian specialties, heavy on meat, cabbage, and potatoes. There was also a separate table piled high with Eastern European pastries, the sight of which made Lucy perk up.
As we joined the buffet line, I realized that I recognized the couple in front of us—neighbors of Heather’s, elderly, old-money WASPs, making their way down the line with the focused interest of anthropologists. The silver-haired man paused before each dish to ask the church ladies serving for the name and ingredients, inquiring, “What is this called again? Ha-lush-ki. And it’s cabbage you say? Why of course I’ll try some—just a small serving.” And his wife, in a tweed suit with her iron-gray bob held back by an Alice band, gave each woman a bright smile reminiscent of a lady of the manor visiting tenant farmers, as she murmured, “How lovely this is, just lovely.”
Michael joined us in the line, holding tight to Matthew, who’d spotted a fountain spewing some cherry-red liquid over on a drinks table. “He tried to dip his hand in it,” my husband complained, giving our son a little shake.
“If you don’t behave you can’t have any cookies,” I said to him and Lucy, resorting to being the sort of parent I’d always promised myself I wouldn’t be.
Sarah passed by the buffet line carrying a full plate and raising an even fuller glass of wine to me. “This makes the whole thing bearable,” she said in a low voice, nodding toward a corner where a man behind a bar was expertly pouring what looked like bourbon. We made it through the food line more or less intact—just a single spilled pierogi quickly squashed under a stranger’s shoe—and wended our way through the crowded room, holding the plates aloft and instructing Lucy and Matthew to stay close so we wouldn’t lose them. When Michael spotted a table with four free seats, we took it, and then he went in search of drinks.
The event had the atmosphere of a wedding, albeit more somber, large numbers of unconnected people coming together to celebrate the life of the man smiling out at the room from a blown-up headshot mounted on an easel. A special table for Heather and her in-laws was nearby, and she sat there like a bride in black, watching with apparently rapt interest as various people stepped up to the open microphone set up next to the photo to give speeches about her dead husband. It was mostly his colleagues, who told long rambling stories of Viktor’s prowess as a surgeon, using so much technical jargon that only the other medical professionals in the room had a clue as to when we were supposed to laugh or cry.
“To Viktor,” each person would say at the end, holding a glass aloft.
“To Viktor!” everyone in the room would echo, glasses raised. Matthew giggled as he held up his glass of punch, his lips already dyed red like a clown’s. Lucy disappeared from the table only to come back bearing a plate piled high with cookies, nibbling her way through them like a determined mouse, taking a bite from one and then a bite from another, probably to stop her brother from claiming any.
I drank a vodka tonic in record time and headed to the bar in search of some water, literally bumping into Sarah on the way. Or rather she bumped into me, her second (or was it her third?) very full glass of wine sloshing dangerously. “Watch out,” she said with a smile, her speech slurred so that it sounded like, “Wash out.”
“Be careful,” I said in a low voice. “The police are probably here somewhere.”
“Don’t worry—I’m fine,” she said, waving my concern away, but her smile was loopy and her eyes were glassy.
Seeing Sarah like that should have stopped me, but when the bartender asked what I’d like I found myself ordering another vodka tonic instead of water. I drank the second one too fast, also, sucking on the lime-soaked ice and avoiding Michael’s raised eyebrows when I wandered back to our table. On rare occasions I had more than one drink, mostly because I was a lightweight, capable of feeling a pleasant, blurry buzz from a single drink. But if there were ever an occasion to drink heavily, I thought, the funeral of a man you helped kill would be the time. For a moment I thought I’d said that out loud, looking from my glass to Michael’s face too quickly, the room spinning. “That was a joke,” I said.
“What was?” he said, and my vision steadied enough to see that his expression was confused and I hadn’t revealed anything. I shook my head and he laughed. “Good thing I’m the designated driver—I’ll get you some water.”
He wandered off toward the bar, and the children found friends to play with, including Sam and Olivia. “Where’s your mom gone to?” I asked. They pointed vaguely and I craned my head to see, but there were too many people. An older man carrying a plate of food sat down at one of the empty spaces at our table and gave me a polite smile.
“Are you a family member or a friend?” he asked after a minute of silent eating.
“Friend,” I said. “Although I’m better friends with his wife.”
“Ahh, yes, Heather.” He smiled again. He was picking carefully at his plate, cutting a cabbage roll into tidy segments before spearing one with his fork.
“You?” I asked, more to be polite than out of any real interest. “Friend or family?”
“A friend. A colleague, too, actually. I’m a surgeon. Viktor and I worked together.”
“Oh, I see.” That explained the careful operations he was performing on his plate of food. “One of the rare gifted healers.” That came out sounding much more sarcastic than I’d intended—I was as drunk as Sarah. Careful, I thought. Be careful.
He smiled a bit uncertainly and gave a little laugh. “We try.” Another speared bite of cabbage, again chewed carefully and thoughtfully. He was meticulous, like Viktor. Perhaps this was true of all surgeons. I thought of how displeased Viktor would have been by the messy, gaping hole the bullet had left in his skull. All that blood and brain spatter. My stomach suddenly rose and fell, like the tide slapping against a dock, and I swallowed hard, trying to steady myself. The man was looking at me quizzically, his fork poised halfway to his mouth, and I realized he’d said something and I hadn’t answered him.
“Pardon?”
“Isn’t it sad about Daniel—first his mother dies of cancer and now his father. That’s some rotten luck.” He popped the bite in his mouth and then shook his head while chewing.
Something in that story—it wasn’t right. I shook my head, trying to clear it. “You mean Janice?”
He looked surprised. “Yes. Did you know her? A lovely woman—”
“No, no, I didn’t.” I shook my head too hard and my stomach protested again. “But it wasn’t cancer—her death, I mean. She fell.”
He thought about that for a moment, but then shook his head. “No, I’m pretty certain it was cancer.”
Maybe that’s what Viktor had told his colleagues. He certainly wouldn’t want them to know that he’d used his wives as punching bags. Before I could say that, Michael appeared with a glass of water. “Here, drink this while I find the kids. Let’s take off before it’s time for happy hour.”
*
“I’m not going into work,” Michael announced as we drove home. “I’ll telecommute for the rest of the day—that was exhausting.”