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I check my face in the visor mirror, reapply lipstick, tuck a wayward piece of hair back into place, and take a deep breath. I’ve been parked in the parking lot for fifteen minutes, waiting to see my mom’s car pull in, but then my phone pings with a text from her saying that her meeting is going to run really late, and that she will probably just plan on going to the second visitation tomorrow. Crap. Now I’m on my own.
I get out of the car, straighten my skirt, and brace myself as I head into the funeral home. The reception room is packed, and there is a small side room where I presume the viewing is, for those who want to have a quiet final moment. I can see a small throng near the viewing room where Glenn is standing, surrounded by a bunch of men who all look like him. If they aren’t his brothers, then there is a South Side Irish convention happening. I take a deep breath and cross the room to him. When he spots me, not difficult in a room where I tower over all the women and almost all of the men, his face lights up and he holds his arms open. I fall into them and he hugs me tightly.
“Thank you for being here,” he says into my hair.
“Oh, Glenn, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know . . . and I should have . . . and I . . .”
“Hush, lass. No one knew—she swore us all to secrecy. She had ‘too much to do to be ready to go, and didn’t want to deal with any nonsense.’” He does a great imitation of her, and hearing a perfect replica of her voice come out of his rugged face makes me giggle. “There you are. Don’t you feel bad for one tiny moment. You’ll dishonor her memory. She knew you loved her, and she knows it still and that is everything. The rest is just noise.”
He reaches up and wipes the tears off my cheeks.
I can’t believe he is the one making me feel better at a time like this. “Thank you for that. Is there anything you need? Anything I can do?” He seems so strong, but I know his anguish must be nearly unbearable. It feels lame to ask, but I don’t know what else to say.
“Can you make my blockhead brothers and their fussing wives go back to their houses and stop occupying mine?” he asks with a wink. “The boys are decimating my liquor cabinet, my sisters-in-law are uniformly terrible cooks, and their hellion children are destroying all the breakables and leaving sticky handprints everywhere.”
“She would have hated that.”
“She hates it now, trust me. She always said you all were her kids, the perfect kids, ones that lived in other people’s houses and didn’t require college funds. I was just always happy to have our own little bubble, the two of us.”
“I can’t make your brothers sober or their children well behaved, but I could stop by next week with something edible.”
He smiles. “That would be good for my soul, sweet girl. You are welcome anytime.” He squeezes my hand and we hear something crash and then a deep voice scolding someone in not-so-hushed tones, and Glenn rolls his eyes and leaves my side to see which niece or nephew has done what sort of damage. I make a promise to myself: What Helene did for me, for my mom, I will do for him. I will honor her memory by being there for Glenn, by feeding him and being good company. I’ll find out all the important dates, their birthdays and anniversary, and put reminders in my calendar to reach out, and I’ll ask about his favorite foods and cook them for him. My heart feels lighter, and the tightness in my throat releases for the first time since I found out she was gone. I turn to go, but then I see them.
Lynne and Teresa.
The two of them are standing near the door, signing the guest book. Lynne looks amazing—the years haven’t touched her. Her shorter hair is a new, slightly more golden shade that flatters her caramel skin and hazel eyes, and she is dressed in an impeccable navy suit that shows off her trim physique. Teresa is rounder than she was, wearing a drapey black dress with an equally drapey gray sweater over her curves. Her beautiful face has lost its childlike look and is now unmistakably the face of a woman, and her black curls are accentuated with the beginnings of a white streak over her left eye, right where her mom had one. When Lynne finishes signing the book she looks up, spots me, and raises a perfectly groomed eyebrow and shakes her head. She elbows Teresa, who looks up to see me too, and her mouth turns down and her brow furrows and her chin begins to tremble as I cross the room to them. By the time I reach them, all three of us are crying and we fall into each other’s arms, holding tight, and something deep inside me breaks open and I don’t know if I am the happiest girl in the world or the saddest, or maybe both, but I know that I feel safe.
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Another round, please,” Lynne says to the young woman who stops by our table to check on us. After our emotional meeting at the visitation, Teresa, Lynne, and I headed back north, to the lobby of the Drake Hotel for drinks. In high school we would go once a year for high tea the week of our birthdays. It seemed an easy choice, right off Lake Shore Drive and still a relatively quick trip home for all of us. Teresa now lives in Oak Park and Lynne moved back from California a few months ago and has a condo in the Gold Coast.
“So, our little ghost, where have you been?” Lynne asks me pointedly. We’ve already caught up on the basics. Teresa is the proud mom of three enormous Italian man-children, sixteen, fourteen, and twelve, each taller and broader than the next, and has been a stay-at-home mom since her first was born, nearly nine months to the day after her wedding night. Lynne is still a PR guru, divorced from a guy she refers to only as Mr. So-Very-Wrong, and was wooed back to Chicago from L.A. late last spring to take over as head of PR for a major Chicago marketing firm.
“Seriously, El, you just completely fell off the face of the earth,” Teresa says. I’m feeling slightly defensive. To hear them tell it, they have been friends “on Facebook” and have gotten together just once, for lunch, since Lynne came back. It isn’t like they have been hanging out all this time since we were last together.
“I was in France, until my dad got sick in ’09, and then I came home and just stayed with him and Mom till the end. Thought about going back, but didn’t want my mom to be here alone, and realized I didn’t have much to go back to . . .” When I left for Chicago, Bernard made it clear. If I couldn’t give him a specific time frame, he could not promise that my job or his bed would be left open for me. “So I got a job, and have just been lying sort of low, working, living quiet.”
“But why no word? It makes me feel so bad that your dad was sick and I didn’t know, and I didn’t know you were back. Why didn’t you call or something?” Teresa looks deeply wounded.