“From a heart problem.”
“What kind of heart problem?”
The boy shook his head. The black and white of his eyes never for a moment blurred. Dry-eyed-ness was a virtue Lilia endorsed. She thought of pulling the teacher or her young assistant aside and asking if the boy’s mother had killed herself (and if so, how). A death from a heart attack and a death from heartbreak were different. It was essential that whatever happened should be told just the way it happened.
After Lucy died, Gilbert had wondered if they should tell people that it was from a sudden illness, some complication from being a new mother. No, Lilia said, we don’t lie about death. When Katherine was old enough to ask about her parents, Lilia had said that Steve, her dad, had not been qualified to be a father, and Lucy had been ill. She understood that no doctor could help her so she took care of the matter herself, Lilia said. She knew she could trust us to take care of you. People will say all sorts of things about those who’ve committed suicide. But, Katherine, your mom was a brave woman.
Katherine, barely six then, had not asked for more detail. She hadn’t later, either, and Lilia had not brought up the subject again. But on family TV nights, whenever a suicide joke came up in a sitcom, Katherine would laugh, more loudly than Lilia, as though they were in a competition. It was one of the few moments when Lilia recognized Lucy’s willfulness in Katherine. Between themselves they rarely mentioned Lucy’s name. For Lilia, this family life after Lucy was a new one. For Katherine, the only one.
Jean clapped her hands to herd the residents toward the snacks. Lilia prompted the boy to thank her for the interview. He did, and instantly began rolling on the rug with another boy.
From the corner, on a baby grand piano left to the facility by a man who had lived to 104, someone started to play, tentatively at first, and then, when even the noisiest boys calmed down, more boldly. Frank moved close to Lilia and told her that it was a Bach minuet. Frank took pride in his knowledge and could not refrain from sharing it with Lilia whenever he deemed it necessary.
Ever so expectedly, it was Lilia’s girl interviewer who was enchanting the roomful of people. Always eager to be more than what she is, Lilia thought. Those who had finished their snacks were looking for a spot to sit down. Walter, one hand on his cane, was conducting with the other arm. When you’re closer to death, you don’t need much of an excuse to play at being alive again.
Lilia walked around the room, looking for the boy orphan. He was sitting under a table, on which sometimes cut flowers would be on display but today the vase was empty. Again his face took on that obtuse look. Lilia beckoned him, and he did not move.
The world might not love the boy. The world might never be in love with him. But that was okay, because there was a secret, which nobody but Lilia could reveal to him: Let me tell you something that most people don’t know. They’ll expect you to always remember the sweetness of being your mother’s child or the bitterness of losing her. They’ll bring you replacements, thinking they’re doing you a favor. But trust me. The days after love are long and empty. It’s up to you and me to make them less so. Those others, they are of no use to us.
LILIA, YOU’RE THE KIND OF girl my future wife would disapprove of.
Roland had said that to Lilia the second time they met, the day Lucy had been conceived. Sometimes Lilia thought she could recall the exact tilt of Roland’s head and the expression on his face when he said it, but when she tried harder, the man she imagined began to look more like Humphrey Bogart. How do you remember a moment as precisely as it happened sixty-five years ago? Roland’s words were all that Lilia had. And Lucy, though Lucy too had become a memory. Nothing about her could be forgotten, but if Lucy had left a book, Lilia would have never opened it.
Every time Lilia turned to page 154 of Roland’s diaries, she relished that line: L—the kind of girl my future wife would disapprove of. Roland had a habit of repeating things in his diaries. The same verdict was delivered again two pages later, though this time Lilia was mentioned alongside several other women, all of them deemed unsuitable as his wife. All went by single letters.
Roland spared no one from his repetitiveness. There was G, a ballerina, who showed up three times within ten pages in 1943, and in all three entries Roland had compared her to a pinwheel that would not last a month or two. There was S, “a doll who mistakes sentimental for romantic,” and the short-lived affair (three weeks in 1956) was twice called “a bath taken out of self-hatred, in the tepid water already used by another body, with a stranger’s suds clinging to one’s skin.” In 1972, C was said to be “widowed just at the right time.” This was repeated a few pages later, with the additional words “C is a godsend. I am a godsend to her, too.” But C disappears within the next twenty pages, while Hetty has another fifteen years to live as Roland’s wife.
On that day, when Roland spoke of his future wife to Lilia, he had been sitting in the hotel bed and smoking what he said would be the last cigarette. It was late afternoon, and the fog from the Pacific was coming in. The Golden Gate Bridge, framed by the west-facing window, was half suspended in the mist, and it would soon become invisible when the night fell. Lilia was incredulous that they were there alone. It was a perfect movie set for a perfect love affair. He was worldly and handsome, she was young and seductive. Where were the people who should be busying themselves around them with cameras and lighting?
Why so quiet? Roland asked when Lilia didn’t reply. I meant it as a compliment.
Why would your future wife disapprove of me? Lilia asked.
Why else would I marry her?
Later, when Lilia was getting ready to leave, she asked him when their next meeting would be.
Why? Roland said.
Because there’s always a next time, Lilia said.
Nobody can guarantee that, he said. I could be run over by a streetcar the moment I step out of the hotel. You could fall in love tomorrow and be married by Saturday.
But things like that don’t happen to us.
Why not? What makes you and me different from others?
We aren’t nice people, Lilia said. Tragedies only happen to people nicer than us.
And love at first sight?
To fools.
Roland laughed. You’re the kind of girl who could charm Sidelle Ogden, he said, when she’s in the mood to be charmed.
On that day Lilia didn’t ask herself why Roland mentioned Sidelle. Later she would understand two things: Roland’s need to talk about Sidelle with someone was urgent, and Lilia mattered so little that she might as well be the headboard.
The kind of woman who is a cross between a nymph and a witch, Roland had said when Lilia asked what Sidelle was like. This did little to help Lilia. Yet what did she fear? She was sixteen. Sidelle, even though Roland did not reveal her age, was much older. The younger woman always wins.