Wilmington, North Carolina 2010
It seemed like only a few weeks since I’d sat in this same church for Sam’s memorial service, and I’d had to force myself to come today. Emerson and I had planned the service in a daze. Em had asked me if I wanted to sing, which I did occasionally at weddings or receptions, but I’d said absolutely not. As I listened to one of my fellow choir members sing Fauré's Pie Jesu in her beautiful soprano, I was glad I’d passed. My voice would never have made it past the lump in my throat. Not here, where the memories of Sam’s service still hung in the air of the church. And not now, when I still couldn’t believe our Noelle was gone.
Noelle’s mother sat to my left. I hadn’t seen her in about a year, and at eighty-four she was showing the early signs of dementia. She’d forgotten my name, although she remembered Emerson’s and even Jenny’s, and she certainly understood that Noelle was gone. Sitting next to me, she pressed one crippled fist to her lips and shook her head over and over again as if she couldn’t believe what was happening. I understood the feeling.
Grace sat on my right next to Jenny, Emerson and Ted, twirling a strand of her long hair around her index finger the way she did when she was anxious. She’d pleaded to stay home. “I know it’s hard,” I’d said to her that morning. I’d sat on the edge of her bed where she had cocooned herself beneath her sheet. Her blue-and-green polka-dotted comforter lay in a heap on the floor and I had to stop myself from picking it up and folding it neatly on the end of the bed. “I know it reminds you of going to Daddy’s memorial service, but we need to be there to honor Noelle’s memory,” I said. “She loved you and she’s been so good to you. We need to be there for her mother. Remember how important it was to have people come to Daddy’s service?”
She didn’t respond and the hillock her head formed beneath the sheet didn’t move. At least she was listening. I hoped she was listening. “It wasn’t for Daddy that people came,” I continued. “It was for us, so that we’d feel their love and support and for people to be able to share memories about—”
“All right!“ She snapped the sheet from her head and pushed past me out of the bed, her hair a tangled mane down her back. “Do you ever stop talking?” she said over her shoulder. I didn’t criticize her for her rudeness. I was too afraid of pushing her even further away.
I noticed now that Grace was clasping Jenny’s hand between them on the pew and I was glad to see her comfort her best friend that way. Jenny looked even paler than usual. She’d already lost the little bit of tan she’d gotten over the summer, while Grace’s skin still had a caramel glow. Jenny had inherited Emerson’s too-fair skin and Ted’s thin dark hair, which she wore in a sweep across her forehead that nearly covered her left eye. She was cute and I loved her to pieces, but to my biased eyes, she nearly disappeared next to Grace. When I saw them together at school, I couldn’t help but notice the way the boys reacted to them. They would approach Grace and Jenny with their eyes glued to my daughter … until they all started talking. Then it was as though a magnet pulled them toward Jenny and my quiet child became invisible.
But Cleve had chosen Grace, not Jenny. Cleve was a handsome boy, the son of a white mother—Suzanne—and a black father, with killer blue eyes and a smile that could nearly make me weak in the knees, and I knew Grace thought she’d found The One. Now Jenny was seeing a boy named Devon, and Grace had to be feeling very alone. Father gone. Boyfriend gone. One inadequate mother remaining.
Ian sat in the pew behind us. He’d been the one to tell Emerson and me about Noelle’s will. He’d known of its existence for months because he found it while going through Sam’s files, but of course he’d said nothing to me about it and I’m sure he never expected it would be needed so soon. The will was fairly recent, written only a couple of months before Sam’s death. I was frankly surprised that Noelle had drawn up a will at all; she was never the most organized person. But I was even more surprised that she’d turned to Sam for it. True, she’d known Sam as long as she’d known me and they’d always been good friends despite a rough patch now and then. But the contents of the will were such that she’d had to have been uncomfortable talking to him about it, and I’m sure he felt a little awkward hearing her wishes.
In her will, Noelle had named Emerson her executor. I felt hurt when Ian told me. I couldn’t help it. Emerson, Noelle and I had always been very close. A threesome. I’d sometimes felt a little left out but I’d convinced myself it was my imagination. Noelle’s choice of executor told me I’d been right all along. Not that anyone would want the work involved in being an executor, yet I couldn’t help but wonder why Noelle didn’t have us share the job. Did Sam even think to suggest that to her?
More telling, though, was the division of her assets. She’d lived simply, but she’d managed to save a little more than fifty thousand dollars over the years. She wanted Emerson to be sure her mother’s needs were met first. If there was money left over, it was to be put in trusts for Jenny and Grace in a seventy-five/twenty-five percent split, with Jenny getting the larger sum. How did Sam feel as Noelle made it clear that she favored Ted and Emerson’s daughter over his own? I knew the division was fair. It was right. Jenny had helped Noelle with the babies program and she seemed to appreciate Noelle in a way that Grace did not. The money itself didn’t matter. It was the jolt to my solar plexus, the realization that the friendship between Emerson, Noelle and myself had been more lopsided than I’d imagined.
Also in her will, Noelle had requested that Suzanne take over the babies program if she was willing, which she was. Suzanne sat in the pew behind us next to Ian. Her big fiftieth birthday party was right around the corner and now I wondered if we should cancel it. Long ago, she’d worked as a doula with Noelle and they’d been friends ever since, through Suzanne’s divorce and two bouts with cancer. After this last time, her hair grew in curly and full and snow-white. When I greeted her before the service, I noticed how healthy she looked. Her huge round blue eyes always made me think of an awestruck little girl and it was hard to look at her without smiling, even in the days when she was sick and bald from chemo. Those eyes would hold you captive.
I’d imagined that all the women who had been Noelle’s patients would have turned out for this service, but when I glanced over my shoulder I saw that the small church was less than half-full. I put my arm around Noelle’s mother, willing her not to look behind us. I didn’t want her to see that the people Noelle had touched had not cared enough to come.
The mayor was giving the eulogy and I tried to pay attention. He was talking about how they’d tried to give Noelle the Governor’s Award for Voluntary Service for her babies program and she’d refused to accept it. So like Noelle, I thought. None of us had really been surprised. Noelle didn’t think helping others should be treated as anything special.
I felt a tremor run through her mother’s body as we listened to the mayor and I tightened my arm around her shoulders. At Sam’s funeral, I’d sat with my arm around Grace. We’d been like two blocks of wood that day. Her shoulders had felt stiff and hard and my arm had simply gone numb—so numb that I’d had to pry it from her shoulders with my other hand. I remembered sitting so close to her that day, the length of our bodies touching. Now there was nearly a foot of space between us on the pew, nearly two inches of distance for every month Sam had been gone. Too much space for me to reach across. I couldn’t put my arm around her now if I tried.
I wondered if, like me, Grace thought about the what-ifs. What if Sam had left the house five seconds later? The three of us had been rushing around the kitchen as we always did in the morning, not talking much, Sam pouring coffee into the hideous striped purple travel mug Grace had given him for his birthday years ago, Grace scrambling to find a book she’d mislaid, me straightening up behind them both. Sam forgot the mug when he raced out the door. I’d glanced at it on the counter, but figured he’d already pulled out of
