LILLIAN
On light obituary days, I visited the dead. I always started at the north end of the cemetery, where the freshest graves were, and worked my way up and down the rows, putting a daisy stem on each name that I knew.
The last one I visited was always Marcella’s.
I put the remaining daisies at the base of her headstone. It was a simple one—not as ornate as some, but substantial, especially for such a small grave. The engraving was simple.
MARCELLA PRAWN
DEC 15, 2002–MARCH 1, 2010
MAY YOUR LAUGHTER AND SMILE CARRY YOU INTO HEAVEN.
I liked it. That line was the final one in her obituary. I’d been tempted to use it since, but it had felt wrong, like wearing a dress you’d stolen from a friend. I did that once in college. Jenna Forester left a Betsey Johnson at my house, and I knew it was hers, and I should have given it back, but I didn’t. I wore it to Whiskey Bar on a weekend that she was out of town, and felt like a thieving bitch the entire night.
I sat with Marcella for a minute, then continued to the older section, where I found her father sitting underneath a tree, his eyes closed, legs splayed open, the hem of his cemetery uniform exposing some of his hairy, swollen belly.
I waited for a moment before interrupting him, my mind comparing this version of Lenny with the man I’d first met, more than ten years ago. When I had gotten the predeath obituary order for a young child, my heart had ached at the request. The little girl was in hospice and wanted to contribute to her own obituary, a unique but not impossible request. With my stomach in knots, I’d rung the doorbell to the hospice center and been greeted by a man with a stern, almost military bearing, his face lined in stress and fear.
Since that time, Detective Leonard Thompson had lost his job, his purpose, and his health. Now the cemetery groundskeeper, he watched over his daughter’s grave, consumed an unhealthy amount of alcohol, and begrudgingly allowed my friendship.
“Hey.” I crouched beside him and patted his shoulder. “Lenny.”
He jerked to attention, then relaxed when he saw me. “What?”
“You know, one day you’re going to get fired for sleeping on the job.” I sat beside him and dug in my backpack, bringing out the extra chicken salad sandwich I’d packed. “Hungry?” I placed it on the thigh of his faded black cargo shorts.
“Don’t you have someone else to bother? A puppy that needs rescuing?”
“Puppy rescues are only in the afternoon.” I withdrew my own sandwich, along with a can of Sprite, which I set in the grass beside him. “Right now, it’s lunchtime.”
I took a big bite of my sandwich and chewed, holding his eye contact. His beard needed trimming, the wiry nest now past his collarbones. “No onions, right?” I nudged the edge of the sandwich bag, which was still lying on his leg. “See? I listen.”
“I said that I like onions.” Lenny glared at me as he grabbed the green soda can and wedged a dirty fingernail under the tab.
“Shush, you did not.” I used my tongue to dislodge a piece of salad that was stuck to my gums. Turning my head, I watched as a mower attendant drove down an adjacent aisle. “Who’s that?”
“A new guy.” Lenny brought the soda to his lips and took a long drink, then belched. “Won’t last.”
“It does take a hardy sort,” I said solemnly, and earned a rare Lenny chuckle.
He bit into the sandwich and I did the same. Chewing slowly, I caught him watching me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and considering that he was probably seeing two of me, his gaze was remarkably sharp.
“Nothing.” I took another bite, and stifled a groan as he set down his sandwich and glared at me, waiting. “It’s my husband,” I admitted, after swallowing my bite. “I think he’s cheating on me.”
“Husbands typically do.”
I laughed despite the anxiety in my chest. “Thanks, Lenny. Very reassuring.”
He lifted both shoulders in a shrug. “You catch him in a lie?”
“A few.” San Francisco hadn’t been the only one. There had been an expensive cologne gift he’d lied about, scratches on his back that had looked suspiciously like nail marks, and an overall detachment from me that seemed to be increasing. Three months ago, I’d considered confronting and leaving him.
I’d abandoned the idea by morning. Was protecting my personal pride worth ripping apart my family, especially when Jacob was only two years from graduation?
And maybe Lenny was right. If most men cheat, why trade a known for an unknown?
“I cheated on Marcella’s mother.” Lenny wiped at the edge of his mouth with one dirty knuckle. “Didn’t do a great job of hiding it. I didn’t really care if she found out. It was my lazy way of getting out of the marriage, of making her take that step. Is he being sloppy about it?”
That was a hard question to look into, mainly because I was afraid of what I’d find. “Sloppy isn’t a word that ever describes Mike,” I hedged.
Lenny chuckled, and I knew he could see through me. “Just think about it.”
I didn’t want to think about it. It was one thing to view Mike as being selfish and wanting to have his cake and eat it too. It was a bigger, uglier situation if he didn’t want my cake and was plotting his way out.
I didn’t know if it was the former or the latter, but I did know one thing about my husband, and that was that he thought everything through. If Mike was planning to leave me, I needed to be prepared, because he would have contingency plans on top of contingency plans and the risk was high that I had already been set up for failure.
CHAPTER 3
LILLIAN
My mother used to say that she’d cut the balls off any man who ever cheated on her. It would have been funny, except that my mother was just crazy enough to do it. Every time she made the reference, whatever man she was dating would invariably shift uncomfortably in his seat, his legs crossing to protect his sacred treasures.
When I married Mike, she conveyed the threat to him, her eyes flat and watery from three Bloody Marys, the edge of a nipple peeking embarrassingly free of her yellow formal dress as she leaned over the wedding reception table and stubbed out her cigarette on the rose-decorated china. Smoking was forbidden, as a hotel employee had mentioned twice already, but that was my mom for you. Rules, as with income taxes, common courtesies, and speed limits, didn’t apply to her.
When I was young, I was ashamed of her. Now, with my fortieth birthday looming . . . I almost envied the reckless disregard she had for other people’s impressions. She wanted something, she took it. She found something entertaining, she did it. She disliked someone, or something they did, she let her opinion be known.
I had fought so hard to avoid any similarities to her, but maybe, beneath the foul language, slutty outfits, and afternoon martinis . . . maybe there was something valuable there. Something that would have distinguished me from the bland individual I had become. Some color.
God, I could use some color. Right now I was so boring I was falling asleep on myself.
I left the cemetery and decided to swing by the Los Angeles Times office. I hadn’t visited the El Segundo office in almost three months, and I rode the elevator up to the editorial floor with a bit of nostalgia as I thought of our previous downtown location, which had been the home of the Times for over eighty years. Now we were in a building that had gone out of its way to avoid any uniqueness or beauty. Mike was convinced the company was on its last legs. Print, in his opinion, was dead—and if my morning e-book purchase was any indication, he was right. Still, I’d hold on to the feel of newsprint as long as I could, especially when my name appeared weekly in eight-point font on its obituary pages.