Eve, Carl, and Daphne would be arriving tonight. This should be the most magnificently awkward meeting in the entire canon of life gone awry, I thought. They had to come. They had known Clarabeth nearly as long as we had. And they loved Ted. And it wasn’t like Ted would be swarmed by the families of Clarabeth’s ex-husbands and old friends showing up for the first time in decades. We were a small tribe, and their absence would be conspicuous and hurtful to Ted. But it would be awkward. There was no doubt about it. I assumed they would all stay at Cookie’s, but maybe I was wrong. It didn’t matter to me where they slept, but boy, who slept where was becoming a popular topic for discussion.
I got out of bed as quietly as I could. I headed for the shower, where I would stand under the water for as long as I could take it and rinse away all the germs from the long flight from Corfu to Athens to New York to Charleston. I was probably carrying a hundred different viruses. Then I would blow out my hair, dress, and make breakfast for my boys. After I had looked at them from head to toe and decided they were all right, I’d go get some groceries, because I knew without looking that Adam had not been to the store. He probably didn’t even know where a grocery store was.
By seven thirty, I was in the kitchen frying sausage patties from the freezer and scrambling eggs when Luke appeared.
“Hi, sweetheart!” I said. “How are you?”
He threw his arms around me and hugged me hard.
“God, I love my mom! We got any coffee?”
“In the pot,” I said. “Help yourself. What time did you get in? There’s some milk in the fridge.”
He took a mug from the cabinet and filled it with milk and coffee.
“Right at midnight. Dad was snoring his guts out in his recliner. Max rolled in around one.”
“So, how are you? You doing okay?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m doing great. Too bad about Miss Clarabeth, huh?”
“Terrible. But at least it was quick. And she was eighty-seven. Although I suspect the closer you get to eighty-seven, the younger eighty-seven seems.”
“That sounds right. So, what’s the drill? When’s the funeral?”
I gave him the plans and he said, “I skipped two days of classes and I could’ve just come down on Saturday?”
“That’s true, but your grandfather is pretty torn up. Having you around will be a great source of comfort for him.”
I scrambled two eggs in a bowl for him and melted a pat of butter in my skillet. Just as I was about to empty the bowl into the pan, Max came strolling into the kitchen and hugged me.
“Hey, baby!” I said. “You hungry?”
“Starving!”
I cracked two more eggs into the bowl, added a little more milk, and whipped them around. Just as I was about to pour them into the sizzling butter, Adam showed his face.
“Family breakfast? Just like the old days! Good morning, gentlemen. Eliza.” He came around the stove and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I let him, as the boys were right there watching.
I got a bigger bowl and deposited the contents of the small bowl and two more eggs into it. Then I reached into the freezer and pulled out the emergency English muffins I kept there, as there was not a crust of bread to be found in the pantry. I opened the whole package, broke them apart, and put them into the microwave to defrost. I added more sausage to the other pan and opened a new jar of my strawberry jam, placing it on the counter. I should’ve known I’d be hosting a kitchen party this morning. Men are just like houseplants. They flourish when tended to and become dull and lackluster when you ignore them.
“So, how’s Pop handling this?” Max asked.
“He’s devastated,” Adam said. “Worse yet, he blames himself.”
“Let’s go over there after breakfast,” Luke said.
“Absolutely,” Max said.
“And I think part of the reason for the Saturday night dinner is he couldn’t get the ashes until then,” I said.
“Cremation is weird,” Luke said.
“I don’t know,” Max said. “Considering the world population? Pretty soon there won’t be any room left for cemetery plots. Cremation reduces carbon footprint.”
“What?” Luke started laughing. “Reduces carbon footprint? That’s some bull, brother.”
“Okay,” Max said, “maybe it’s a bit of a stretch.”
Adam said, “Clarabeth might have left us unexpectedly, but she sure did it with style.”
He told the boys the details of her plans for her own small memorial service and they were impressed.
“Cool. She was always a very classy lady,” Max said.
“Yeah, she was,” Luke said. “But, man, she sure liked to work her jaw.”
“Yep, she could go on and on about nothing forever,” I said. “I loved her. And I’m going to miss her.”
“Me too,” all three men said.
And men they were. It was hard to reconcile the near adults my boys had become with the way I felt about them in my heart. To me they were still little boys with skinned knees, full of the devil, my ever-reliable source of endless happiness and laughter. It seemed like I turned my back on my sweet little fellows one day and on the next they were strapping young men, boys no more. I looked at them and marveled at how they resembled the best of Adam and me.
Adam and the boys moved everything from the counter to the table and actually set it without being asked, another sign of their approaching maturity. I put a platter of scrambled eggs and sausage in front of them with a basket of hot English muffins, butter and homemade jam to go with it. My boys descended on it like locusts, but Adam didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.
“Remember how Rufus used to sit under the table, hoping we’d feed him something?” Max said.
“What’s life without hope?” Adam said and looked my way.
“Cue the violins,” I said.
Ignoring us, Luke said with a sigh, “He was a great dog.”
After breakfast was cleared away, the balance of the day was spent with Ted. Televisions were on wherever there was one, because we needed white noise. We took walks around the property. Mountains of sandwiches were consumed. Later in the afternoon, Cookie’s caterer dropped off a rib roast and a potato casserole with a container of roasted root vegetables. The fragrance of all the onions, garlic, and red meat made our mouths water. I took the task of setting the dining room table with Clarabeth’s best. That’s what she would’ve wanted.
Her formal china was white with cobalt blue bands edged in gold. I liked that kind of china because a simple design worked with the food. Busy plates loaded with food seemed to detract from the overall look of the table. And I found a chest of dinner-sized sterling silver flatware. To my surprise and relief, it was untarnished. In the buffet drawer was a beautiful white linen tablecloth with matching napkins. By the time I was finished playing house with Clarabeth’s gorgeous things, I had set a table worthy of royalty.
At around six, when the cocktail hour was nigh, Carl, Eve, Cookie, and Daphne arrived. I watched them get out of the car from the dining room window. Their faces were serious, as was appropriate for the occasion. Cookie was wearing Chanel from head to toe with a triple strand of pearls. They didn’t know, and neither did I, that Adam intended to get everyone through the evening together in an alcoholic haze. He was already pulling corks and shaking martinis.