“She had a migraine,” Rachel said.
“People with migraines need to be in dark, quiet rooms. She was watching Gilmore Girls.”
“It’s a drag for her, being the youngest. She’s the odd one out. The rest of us come in pairs.”
“Not Mama.”
“Doesn’t she? I always feel as if Papa is with her, somehow.”
“You’re such a romantic, Rachel. He’s in-Bali, with his girlfriend, the one who lived at Horizon House. I always wanted to get a good look at her, see what the attraction was.”
“They’re not in Bali.”
“Israel, then. Wasn’t that always the other rumor? That he bought a new life for himself by investing heavily in Israeli bonds?”
“I think you’ve confused Papa with Meyer Lansky.”
“Oh, Rachel, the great romantic. Do you really think Papa yearns for our mother after all these years?”
“I met her,” she said.
“You saw her. You told me, back when it happened. And it’s not as if she announced her plans to you that night. It was probably already in the works, don’t you think? And all that other stuff she did was meant to obscure it.”
Nana Ida came over to Linda and Rachel, pushed her way between them and linked arms. The sisters were not particularly tall, but they dwarfed Nana Ida.
“Harriet loved you both so much,” she said of her older sister, with whom she had not even been on speaking terms until two years ago.
Linda nodded carefully, while Rachel made a noncommittal noise. They were not fans of Harriet.
“And although she didn’t specify, I know she’d want you to have mementos. We’ll go through her jewelry box, see what’s left.”
Rachel hoped her expression stayed neutral. She knew that her mother had-with Harriet’s full consent-sold the better pieces. But everything was to be willed to her mother, Harriet’s godchild, so what did it matter? Her mother had sold off things precisely to keep the estate below certain levels in order to avoid the inheritance taxes. She wrote checks over the years, too, although never enough to pay a gift tax. Yet Harriet would never let Bambi see her financial accounts, and that was where the real money was.
“She probably would have wanted you to have a little money, too,” their grandmother said. “But we’ll have to see what’s what when the dust has settled.”
Even as Rachel was sorting out her grandmother’s syntax, Linda said sharply: “You sound as if you’re the executor.”
“Oh, no,” Nana Ida said. “That’s the lawyer. But the estate will be split between your mother and me. Well, not fifty-fifty. Your mother will get a cash gift, and I’ll get the rest. Harriet changed it six months ago. We became so close, living at the Windsor Towers. She had resented me all our lives because I was the baby, but she finally saw how silly that was. Plus, she knows now how much I helped out-tuition and such. I put you girls through Park.”
“We appreciate it,” Rachel said, as she always said when this came up, and it came up a lot.
“Does Mama know?” Linda asked.
“I told Harriet she should tell her.”
“Does Mama know?” Linda repeated. Rachel realized how quick her sister was to recognize a nonresponsive answer, given that her professional life was based on giving them.
“I couldn’t say,” Nana Ida said, looking down into her coffee cup. “It’s not so very much, I’m sure. Money shouldn’t matter in families.”
But Linda had already broken away, plunging through knots of people to reach their mother. Rachel watched her go, remembering how it was Linda, all those years ago, who told her that Julie had been just the latest girlfriend, not the only one. Linda had always known how to break bad news.
Linda tried to move quickly, but she couldn’t just plow through the well-wishers. How much money could it be, anyway? Two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand? Probably not enough to get Bambi’s head above water. Did Nana Ida have any idea how close to the bone Bambi lived, how she sweated the property taxes every year, worried over utility bills, and let repairs go as long as possible? The reason Bambi had asked the Gelmans to hold the shivah was because she couldn’t bear for people to see the house’s condition-the cracking window frames, the patchy roof. She had been able to maintain the “public” rooms, which required little more than regular paint and the occasional reupholstery job, done on the cheap with tacks. But the kitchen was stuck in the seventies, as were the bathrooms. The Sudbrook Park house was frozen in time, like something out of a fairy tale. Her father had paid it off before he left, perhaps the last decent thing he did. Bambi should have sold it immediately, downscaled. Instead, she held on to it, mortgaging it and remortgaging it. Why hadn’t she sold it?
Because, Linda knew, she expected him to come back. She still expected him to come up the walk. So she wouldn’t petition for his life insurance, or even ask for the modest veterans’ pension to which he was entitled.
And her mother had been so good to Aunt Harriet. Linda remembered an incident a few years back, before Harriet had to go to the nursing wing of Windsor Towers. One of the aides had called Bambi in alarm, and, for once, it wasn’t because of something hateful that Harriet had said. When Bambi got to the apartment, the aide showed her that the kitchen drawers were stuffed with packets of sugar and artificial sweetener, cellophane packages of soy sauce and plum sauce, mustard and mayonnaise. It boggled the mind, how Harriet had ever gathered all these things. She must have gone into restaurants and shoved them in her pockets willy-nilly. When the aide had tried to throw them away, Harriet had become enraged and thrown a tantrum like a child. Bambi had soothed her and packed up her “treasures” in marked shoeboxes. Where had Ida been then? Maybe they should contest the will. But, no, it would end up in the news. Just this past July, a reporter had called about doing a story tied to the twenty-fifth “anniversary” of Felix’s disappearance. No one in the family had cooperated, but that hadn’t stopped the reporter from doing a clip job.
Linda found her mother in the kitchen, sitting at the long, padded bench in the breakfast nook. She looked drained. Had someone else already told her about Great-Aunt Harriet’s last spiteful act?
“Drink this,” Lorraine was saying to Bambi. “It’s decaffeinated.”
“I thought you said it would be days, maybe even a week or so, Bert. But if a reporter called you here-”
“The reporter was sniffing. He doesn’t have anything solid.”
“Even if it is her,” Lorraine said, “it has nothing to do with you. Nothing.”
“But they’ll write about it soon enough. Not tomorrow perhaps, but it’s going to be written about. They’ll dredge everything up again.”
“No one’s going to pay attention, given what’s happening in the world at large,” Bert said. “It’s a blessing of sorts.”
“The attacks?”
“The discovery. Now you know. It has nothing to do with Felix. She never went to him.”
“Do I? Is that what I know, Bert? And do you think the newspaper will care about that distinction?”
Linda could hold still no longer. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?”
“Tubby got a tip from a detective this morning,” Bert told her. “They think they’ve found Julie Saxony’s body. They still have to do an official ID, and there’s no immediate determination on cause of death, but apparently some items-her driver’s license, I guess, because that would be plastic-survived. I thought the news wouldn’t get out until they had matched dental records, done an autopsy-”
“Where?” Linda asked because it was the only thing she could think to ask.
“Leakin Park.”
“And no one found her until now?”
“It’s a big place,” Bert said. “They say a dog found her on the far side, where there’s no path to walk. And they still have to make an official ID. All they have for now is a body, maybe a license. She could have left that body there herself. We don’t know for certain it’s her.”