Goodbye for Now (5 page)

In stark, stark contrast, there was Meredith’s cousin.

“Dashiell Bentlively.” He offered Sam his hand and toothpaste-ad smile.

“But not really?” Sam smiled tentatively, not wanting to offend but pretty sure that couldn’t be anyone’s real name.

“Nope, not really”—Dashiell winked—“but that’s the one I use. Even Mom admits it’s a better fit than the one she chose.”

“I hadn’t met him yet when I picked the original,” Meredith’s aunt Maddie shrugged.

Dashiell was Julia’s brother Jeff’s son. He and Meredith were born on the same day, so they considered themselves twins though in fact they had little in common but a birthday and a grandmother. Dashiell lived in L.A., sometimes gay, sometimes straight, making money hand over hand over hand over fist somehow near Hollywood but not actually in the film industry. Meredith didn’t understand or pretend to understand or ask too many questions, but they were close anyway.

“I guess I’m the matriarch of the family now,” he said after the funeral.

“What about me?” said Julia.

“You don’t have the legs for it,” said Dash. He was making a good show of it, but he was a bit of a mess.

After the funeral, after everyone finally went home, Meredith’s parents crashed at her place. Uncle Jeff and Aunt Maddie went to a fancy hotel downtown, Aunt Maddie’s argument being roughly, “When life gets you down, order room service.” Dashiell stayed at Livvie’s. So Meredith went home with Sam who, finally, had her all to himself, had her in his arms, had the reunion he’d flown half round the world dreaming about. It wasn’t quite the one he imagined, and he was at something of a loss—so ecstatic to be with her again, so sorry she was so sad—but he whispered love against her sea-smelling skin and made do.

“I’m hungry,” she said suddenly.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Weird, right?”

“There’s nothing in the house. I’ve been away for two weeks.”

“I remember,” she said, smiling, and then, awed, “I forgot.”

Sam found a couple cans of soup to heat up and some crackers. He tried to stay sad, but he couldn’t keep the happy down, so overjoyed was he to be back with her.

“I missed you,” Sam admitted, an understatement and a subject change.

“I remember,” she said, smiling. And then, awed, “I forgot.” And then, giggling in spite of everything, “You better remind me.”

WHAT LIVVIE WOULD SAY

I
t was a hard week. Meredith and Dash both took the week off, and together with their parents, they went about packing up a life. Sam tried to be elsewhere, to give everyone space, but he was unemployed, and here, finally, was a way for him to be helpful. On Monday, Sam wrapped wineglasses in newspaper. He wrapped plates and mugs and vases and bowls and cordials and goblets. He wrapped lamps and a porcelain statue of two dancers from Livvie’s honeymoon in Paris and a ceramic duck Meredith made in the second grade. Sam became gradually covered in newsprint. He put each carefully wrapped item in a box.

Julia came into the kitchen. “What on earth are you thinking?”

“I’m wrapping breakables?”

“And putting them all in a box?”

“Yeah?”

“No, everything needs to go in separate boxes, double-boxed, carefully labeled. Maybe I should do this. I move ceramics for a living.”

“Grandma wouldn’t care,” Meredith yelled from the living room.

“We’ll never find anything again if we just throw things willy-nilly into boxes,” said Julia.

“Grandma would say it’s nice to be surprised when you open up the boxes,” Meredith shouted back.

“I don’t know when I’m ever going to open up these boxes,” Julia muttered. “I’ll never use this stuff.”

“Grandma would say this is everyday ware. Grandma would say no point in saving the good china for a special occasion because special occasions don’t happen often enough.”

On Tuesday, they did clothes.

“Grandma would say toss it all,” said Dash, hands on hips, looking skeptically into her closet.

“We should at least donate it somewhere,” said Meredith.

“To the Old Ladies’ Salvation Army?”

Julia squeezed between them and took a much worn orange cardigan off a hook on the back of the door, slipped it on, and walked away.

On Wednesday, they did paperwork.

“Grandma would say toss it all,” Dash said again, but instead Sam made sandwiches and popcorn while everyone else sat around on the floor and sorted a million pieces of paper into a semblance of organization: personal letters versus business correspondence, old bills versus outstanding ones, accounting records, trash.

“It’ll be so different when we go,” said Meredith. “No one writes me letters on paper. I don’t get paper bills or bank statements or tax records. My grandkids can just highlight my whole e-mail account and press delete, and that’ll be the end of it.”

She came across a green flyer she folded up and stashed in her pocket. Later, she came across a blue one and a pink one and stashed those, too. In the kitchen with Sam, she surreptitiously stuffed them in the recycling bin.

“What are those?” Sam asked.

“Flyers for a ceramics guy at my grandmother’s farmers’ market in Florida. She was always on my mom to build a website like Peter the Potter and take custom orders like Peter the Potter and make garden gnomes like Peter the Potter. She thought he must be rich because there was always a huge line of old people waiting to buy his stuff. My mom thinks he’s a hack. It drove her nuts. I just thought I’d spare her the annoyance.”

Julia walked into the kitchen, fished the flyers out of the recycling bin, and smoothed them on the counter.

Meredith raised her eyebrows at her mother. “I thought making ceramic gnomes was undignified and small?”

“Right, small. So I was thinking elves.” Julia managed a little smile to accompany her little joke.

“You’re keeping flyers for sentimental value?” Meredith wondered.

“Nagging from the great beyond,” said Julia. “Best kind.”

On Thursday, everyone needed a break. Uncle Jeff and Aunt Maddie took Kyle and Julia for a fancy lunch at their fancy hotel. Dash and Meredith—secretly, guiltily thrilled—went through Livvie’s jewelry.

“Grandma would say toss it all,” declared Meredith giddily from the center of the bed surrounded by piles of pearls, gold chains, pewter charms, fake and real diamond necklaces, jade bracelets, and giant rings. Some of it was valuable. Most of it was not. Some of it was gorgeous. Most of it was not. She was wearing three strands of pearls (white, pink, and mother-of), two gold necklaces (one with a locket that wouldn’t open, one with a poodle charm from when Livvie’d owned a dog—before Meredith’s time), a newly paired pair of earrings (one dangly silver hoop, one blue stud), and four rings which ranged from Livvie’s wedding band to a red-and-purple plastic one Meredith had won for her at a fair in sixth grade. Dash had on one very fake diamond tiara, a macaroni necklace he had made himself, rings on every single finger (few of them even as elegant as the red-and-purple plastic one), and, over his heart, competing ivory brooches.

“Give me one of those,” said Meredith.

“They’re a matched set,” Dash protested.

“One’s a dragon and one’s a tiger.”

“Exactly. They’re going to duke it out. We have to see who wins.”

He looped a charm bracelet around his ankle. It dangled four gold pendants with silhouettes of Jeff, Julia, Dash, and Meredith as babies.

“You’re taking all the good stuff,” Meredith whined.

“Girl, I am rocking this family anklet. You could not pull this off.”

“At least give me the tiara.”

“Okay look, four piles,” said Dash. “One for your mom, one for you, one for me, and one for OLSA.”

“OLSA?”

“Old Ladies’ Salvation Army.”

“Even they wouldn’t want some of this.”

“Grandma would want me to have these,” said Dash, holding up clip-on coral sun and moon earrings.

“Grandma would have said those earrings are hideous,” said Meredith.

“They’re hers.”

“And I’m sure they were very stylish when she bought them in 1947, but they are not now.”

“I will rock these earrings,” said Dash, clipping them on.

“Do her proud,” said Meredith.

On Friday, they were down to what was left. It was a lot, and it wasn’t much. Her telephone, her knitting supplies, her junk drawer full of what everyone’s junk drawer is full of—Scotch tape and extra scissors and delivery menus and expired coupons and rubber bands and paper clips and empty key chains. They found M&M’s she’d hidden for Meredith and Dash one afternoon when they were five and bored (they had found most of them but not all, apparently) and VCR tapes that had fallen behind the TV and unused coloring books either forgotten from when she had small grandchildren or maybe just in case any little kids stopped by. And all her furniture. They’d called the actual Salvation Army and were waiting for them to come by, and Uncle Jeff was on the phone with a real estate agent—it got that far—before Meredith said:

“I’m moving in.”

“Where?” said her mother absently.

“Here. Grandma’s house. I want to move in.”

“It’s an old-lady apartment,” said Uncle Jeff.

“Grandma lived here when she was a newlywed,” said Meredith. “She had little kids here. She had teenagers here.”

“Lot of history,” said Dash. “Lot of memories.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“Might be hard. Might be too heavy.”

“Grandma would want me to live here,” said Meredith.

“Lot of ugly furniture,” added Dash. It was true. Some of the furniture was ugly enough to resist even nostalgia.

“I’d get rid of my place and pay you guys rent,” Meredith said to her mother and uncle.

“Don’t be silly,” said Uncle Jeff. “You’re family. It’s yours as much as anyone’s. It’s not about the money.”

“Grandma would want you to live here,” her mother acknowledged, “
if
that’s what you want. But not if it’s going to make you sad and depressed and mopey. Not if it’s just because you can’t let go.”

“I can’t let go,” said Meredith. “But that’s not why I want to stay.”