Seven Minutes to Noon (13 page)

What ruined it was waking up to today. Lauren’s funeral was at one o’clock. Alice squeezed shut her eyes, trying to press away the anguish. She wanted to take her mother’s advice but didn’t know how. After a while, Nell and Peter crept upstairs and burrowed under the sofa bed covers in a crowd of wiggling limbs and kisses. Alice knew she would have to learn her mother’s lesson. Lauren’s killer could destroy many lives, if Alice let him; but how to cast him out of her soul?

Lauren’s funeral was held at the Scoletto funeral home on Court Street. Tim stood in front of the double brown-stone, smoking under the leafy branch of a magnolia long past its bloom. Austin hovered nearby in a little dark suit and striped clip-on tie, struggling to control a squishy lime green yo-yo ball that veered in all the wrong directions. Nell broke away from the family to join him.

On their way over, the sky had suddenly darkened, and now Alice found herself shivering. Lizzie pulled her close.

“What a good girl she is,” Lizzie said as Nell showed Austin how to handle the yo-yo ball. Peter stood with them, watching.

“It’s good for Austin we brought them,” Mike said.

Alice hoped it had been the right decision. Maggie and Simon were bringing Ethan too. The adults had decided it was best to expose the children to the truth up front, answer questions they may not have known how to ask. Show them the stark wrongness of Lauren’s death so they wouldn’t grow up thinking she had simply gone away. “Lauren is dead,” Lizzie had told the children that morning when Alice and Mike couldn’t bring themselves to. “She was killed. Today we’re all going to say good-bye.”

Lizzie had made it seem so simple, but Alice knew what response that notion would get.
Whoever said it
was simple? You do what you have to. These children need to know.
But they didn’t cry and Alice suspected they didn’t really understand, that it would hit them later — days, months, maybe even years later. They had asked a few obvious questions: who, where, when, why. To all that, there was still just one answer: she died at seven minutes to noon on Friday. It was all they knew.

Mike walked over to Tim and drew him into a long hug. Tim seemed slight and deflated in a dark gray suit that now hung off him. The burning end of his cigarette was squashed between two yellowed fingers that dug into Mike’s navy suit jacket. From where the children were clustered — now including Ethan, who had arrived with Simon — Alice saw Austin’s glance at his weeping father. There was such anger in the little boy’s eyes; it was as if he had been brought to some dreaded event against his staunch objection.

It
was
a dreaded event, Alice thought; it was the worst possible thing. Austin’s anger was absolutely right. She stepped in front of the children and looked at him, not smiling, and let his green eyes fight her. Then she crouched in front of him and held him in her arms. It was a mother’s complicity, a plain acknowledgement that life was a beast. It was the best and only thing she could give him. He did not push her away for a full minute, a long time for a child with friends and a toy within easy reach.

When she stood, Alice found Tim watching her with bloodshot eyes that looked sunken, almost bruised.
Thanks,
he mouthed, as Mike drew an arm around his shoulders and led him into the funeral parlor. The double doors had been opened; the service was about to begin.

Just then Maggie ran up, panting, and immediately spun Austin into a hug. “Aunt Mags has got you now!” she said in a tone that Alice found too buoyant. Grating, almost. But then Austin laughed and Maggie’s onslaught seemed, on the contrary, perfectly tuned. She carried
Austin through the front door. Lizzie ushered in the other children. Alice, Mike and Simon followed.

They were led through a large lobby into the first floor chapel. It was a wide room, painted taupe and slate blue, with an aisle separating two banks of pews. There was an absolute symmetry to the chapel, Alice noticed, with two large urns of white nasturtiums whose spicy sweetness could not overcome an odor of mothballs and formaldehyde. The huge flowerpots sat on pedestals at the foot of a shallow set of stairs leading to a platform where, set behind the urns, was Lauren’s casket. The golden-hued oak wood was highly glossed, with large brass handles at either end. The casket was closed.

Alice saw Maggie’s back collapse as soon as they came into view of the casket. She held herself together long enough to set Austin down on the floor. He slid along the first row bench until he was pressed against his father, then coiled into a ball, tucking his head between his knees. Lizzie, Alice, Mike, Nell and Peter slid in next to Austin. Maggie, Simon and Ethan were behind them in the second row. Muffled sobs floated around them like remnants of a cloud that had lost its foothold in the sky.

Soon the chapel was full. Friends from the neighborhood had come, but mostly Alice didn’t recognize anyone. It seemed as if everyone who had ever known Lauren was there, from her childhood through her college days through her early years in New York before settling down with Tim. Alice was part of Lauren’s motherhood life, and it struck her now what a small slice of time that had been. She felt a thin vapor of loneliness, sitting there among so many strangers who had loved Lauren or at least cared enough to see her off. Alice suspected, though, that some of the mourners hadn’t ever met Lauren but knew her story and had come out of curiosity. The ones standing at the back of the chapel were clearly reporters, with their casual clothes, notepads, and cameras slung over their necks.

Alice spotted Frannie standing among the reporters. She was dressed in a black skirt suit and black high heels. Her hands were folded behind her back and she leaned against the wall. She nodded, smiling sadly, when she noticed Alice looking at her.

The service lasted over an hour, with Tim following the rabbi as the first speaker. Alice had never known Tim to have trouble with words — as a lawyer, persuasion was his strong suit — but now he struggled to find something to say. “I can’t really believe this is happening,” he began in a voice that was tinny and thin, scratched from too many cigarettes. From crying himself to sleep or just crying. Alice wanted to rush up to the lectern and save him from the necessity of burying his wife. But she didn’t. Couldn’t. It had to be done. She stayed in her place on the bench, an unofficial sister, listening as Tim struggled to define — and conclude — a marriage, a woman, a love, a life.

“I met Lauren in law school,” he began. “We were married eleven years....”

Then his face seemed to fall apart, shattering like a broken mosaic. And he just wept.

Pressed next to her mother, holding hands, Alice felt her fingers suddenly pressed in a steely grip. She turned to see Lizzie staring intensely at her and realized she had stopped breathing. As soon as she took a breath, Alice found she couldn’t swallow enough air. How her mother had known this was beyond her but it became clear Lizzie was worried. She hovered and tended Alice like a child throughout the reception, bringing her plates of food just as Alice and Maggie brought Austin food, though he wasn’t interested in eating.

Alice wished she could unleash her mother’s doting onto Austin, who stood in the corner and played with the other children. They were taking turns with the yoyo ball, jointly blocking out the roaming visitors they didn’t know and all the voices they didn’t want to hear. When a reporter snuck up to take Austin’s picture — the stark image of a gaggle of overdressed, smileless children
fixated on a single toy — it was Simon who stepped forward to block the shot. Alice was relieved he interceded, preventing one more misrepresentation by the press. She could just see the caption,
An American child at his mother’s funeral,
leaving gaping holes for the reader’s imagination to fall into. None of the tragic stories Alice had read over the years in the daily papers had come close to the truth. The truth was
this.
And there was no explaining it.

“Off with you,” Simon ordered in his deep voice.

The reporter, a skinny young woman, skulked away as Simon crouched among the children. He took the yoyo ball from Ethan, who was just starting his turn, and squeezed the gelatinous ball, warping it to reveal a hidden eyeball.

“Gross!” Austin said, and all the children giggled.

Simon stood to his full six-foot height and yo-yoed the ball up and down; it jerked with a rubber spasticity that returned it every time.

“What are we going to do about Austin?” Maggie had snuck up behind Alice and Lizzie.

“We’ll take care of him,” Alice said.
“We’ll
be his mothers.”

Not wasting a minute to begin her quest to win the little boy’s love, Maggie marched over and pressed herself between Simon and Austin. Simon raised his eyebrows and smiled hugely before draping an arm around Maggie’s waist. She wiggled closer to him. Austin blushed. All the children knew about Maggie and Simon’s bitter divorce, having lived through it at the side of their good friend Ethan. Alice had once eavesdropped on Ethan mimicking his parents’ arguing: “I said I was at the chemist’s!” “Who spends three hours at the chemist’s?” “A devoted father getting medicines for his child. Who do you think?” “Well then,” a hearty Maggieesque laugh, “it must be another one of your children, because ours isn’t ill!” During his performance, Ethan postured in vivid mimicry of both his parents’ sublime dramatic personae. He had perfectly captured their absurdities
and the impossibility of agreement. Every marriage had its own unwinnable argument and theirs had been simple but enormous.
SHE:
You are unfaithful,
HE:
I am not. They had parted over this irreconcilable difference.

Mike came up with a small plate of finger foods for Lizzie, who pinched his cheek, then dug in hungrily. “You’re a mensch, Michael,” she said. “Screw the diet. I’m
starving.”

Alice didn’t bother asking,
What diet?
There
was
no diet. This was one way her mother had come to match life: by refusing its petty denials in advance.

“Wow, will you look at that.” Mike spoke through a mouthful of bagel and cream cheese, having just noticed the Maggie-and-Simon show playing to the children in the corner.

“They’re doing what they know how to,” Alice said.

“Power to them,” Lizzie said through a bite of mini quiche.

Tim seemed to float across the room like a lone boat seeking familiar mooring. When he saw Lizzie, he nodded politely. “You must be Alice’s mother.”

“You don’t have to make small talk,” Lizzie answered.

Tim nodded again, a small, tight nod, as if to stopper an onslaught of emotion.

“Tim, I want to help you,” Alice said softly. “Let us take care of Austin as much as you need. After school when you’re at work, evenings, weekends, anytime.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I appreciate it.”

“We’re here for you.” Mike patted Tim’s shoulder. “Anything at all, just say the word.”

Without responding to Mike’s comment, Tim’s foggy eyes pinioned themselves to Alice’s face, as if there was something he needed to say but couldn’t. Not because he didn’t have the words, this time, but because he couldn’t bring himself to issue them. It was a strange, chilling moment in which the unbearable weight of his grief momentarily evaporated. Alice glanced from face
to face to see if anyone else had seen it. She wouldn’t have been able to explain what had happened, but something, in that moment, had changed.

Then, finally, he spoke. “I don’t know if she told you, but it was my idea to have another baby. I wanted that little girl so badly. Now I’ll never be able to hold her in my arms.” His face grew paler as he spoke, his voice more vaporous. “I don’t know what to do.”

Alice’s heart pounded heavily.

That little girl.

Alice followed Frannie out of the funeral parlor onto Court Street, into a heavy rain.

“Frannie!”

She turned around. Her black suit was getting soaked.

“Can I talk to you a minute?” Alice stood in a dry strip under the awning.

Frannie nodded but stayed in the rain.

“Come under,” Alice said. “Don’t get wet.”

“I have to be somewhere.” Frannie hesitated. “But I guess I can take a minute.” She stepped onto the strip of dry pavement, next to Alice.

“Did you hear that?”

Frannie nodded. “I did.”

“Tim didn’t want to know the baby’s sex when Lauren was—” Alice couldn’t say it.

“Was alive,” Frannie finished the sentence.

“He
refused
to know. He wanted to be surprised. Lauren would have told me if that had changed.” This was something Alice felt sure of, they had discussed Tim’s
not
knowing so often.

Frannie cocked her head to the side. Her dark eyebrows clamped down. Only now did Alice notice the detective’s bright red lipstick.

“Alice, I hate to say this, but don’t you think it’s possible there are things about your friend’s life you didn’t know?”

“No,” Alice answered, realizing her absurdity even as she spoke. “It isn’t possible.”

“Alice...” Frannie shook her head, gently touching Alice’s arm.

“Lauren said that only Maggie and I and Dr. Rose, her obstetrician, knew the baby’s sex and her name. The doctor promised not to tell Tim.”

Frannie was listening. “And?”

“I don’t think Dr. Rose told Tim about the baby being a girl,” Alice said, “and I don’t think she told him Ivy’s name. And neither did you. You never told him the baby was a girl, Frannie, did you?”

Frannie’s face was stony, pale. Alice knew she was getting somewhere.

“The doctor didn’t tell him anything. If she had, she would have also told him the baby’s name. He would have used Ivy’s name just now,” Alice said.

“How do you know that, Alice? There really isn’t any
way
to know that.”

The funeral parlor door creaked open. Alice glanced behind her to see Lizzie standing in the door and felt herself shivering again, suffocating almost. She took a deep breath.

“It’s just a feeling, I guess,” Alice said.