Bob said, “I’ve taken on the Matthew Beach case, and it makes me tired.”
Katherine shifted the package she was holding to her other hip, and she said to Bob, “I heard you’d taken the case. Oh Bob.”
“No, no, I’m fine. How are you? How are the kids, and how is Elton?”
“We’re all fine.” Katherine looked away. Then she looked back at Bob. “I’m a little worried about Elton. Ever since he retired, he’s been…oh, I don’t know. But I’m worried about him, Bob. He’s just—I think—a little depressed.”
“How depressed?” Bob asked. He really wanted to know.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell if he’s just depressed or if there’s something cognitive going on. But he won’t see a specialist, so I guess we’ll just have to roll with it.” Her face was worried, she looked older as he watched her. And then she said, “I’m getting ready to retire myself, but I have clients I care about, and so I can’t just say, Okay, that’s it, good luck.”
At that moment Katherine reminded Bob of Lucy—it was her genuineness, he realized. “I get it,” he said. “Well, you sure have helped a lot of people.”
“Thanks, Bob.” She said this quietly.
“Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. Let me take that for you.” And she gave him the package, which was not so much heavy as bulky. It turned out that they were both parked in the big parking lot, and as they walked, Bob said, “My sister-in-law, Helen, just died.”
“Oh Bob!” Katherine stopped walking and turned to him and said, “Oh, you loved her, didn’t you? And didn’t Margaret not like her, or who am I thinking of?”
“No, Margaret met her and my brother once a few years ago when they brought their grandchild up here to summer camp, and you’re right, Margaret was not impressed. And also, Susan was never able to stand her either.”
They continued walking till they reached Katherine’s car. Katherine unlocked the car and took the package from Bob and stuck it into the backseat, then turned to Bob. “It’s because she was rich, right?”
Bob thought about this. “More than that, I think. Helen was…limited, in a way.”
“Who’s not limited?” Katherine said.
“I know.”
They stood in silence for a moment, and then Bob said, “You must be really good at what you do, Katherine.”
She shrugged. “Who knows.”
“I know,” Bob said. And he added, “Let me know about Elton.”
“I will.” Katherine opened her arms to him, and they hugged once more before she got into her car. He felt her bones against his bulk. And as he walked away, he thought, I am so grateful for her.
*
At this point in time the nature of Bob’s relationship with his wife was vaguely puzzling. Did she hold him? Did he hold her? In truth, not that often. They did have an intimate life, although Bob felt that Margaret was not always as interested as she used to be, and in fairness, Bob was not as interested either. And when they were intimate, afterward Margaret only held Bob a few minutes and then she would get up while Bob fell asleep. She had joked about this for years. “Sex energizes me,” she said, “and it puts you to sleep.”
But in terms of holding each other: No, they did not do that much anymore. And this is one reason that Bob was grateful to Katherine Caskey, to feel her arms around him. He was just appreciative of those moments.
It may be that not enough is said about this sort of thing, older people and how much they might appreciate the touch of another human being. Mrs. Hasselbeck, for example: How did she live without any human touch to her skin? Charlene Bibber? Somehow they existed without it, many people do. Yet one has to wonder about the toll it takes, the lack of being touched or held. So many people are not.
Bob was thinking about this as he drove back to Crosby.
7
The funeral of Helen Farber Burgess was held at St. John’s Episcopal Church in the neighborhood of Park Slope in Brooklyn. Bob could remember Jim and Helen going there at Christmas, though he couldn’t remember that they went there a whole lot more during the year. In any event, this is where Helen had wanted her funeral to be, and she had planned everything, right down to the white roses that adorned each pew entrance. Margaret went with Bob, and Pam was there. Pam had asked Bob to ask Jim if she could come, and Jim had said, “Sure, who cares.”
So Pam sat on one side of Bob and Margaret sat on the other; the two women were very kind to each other, never having met before. And the funeral went on forever: This is what Bob thought. In front of him sat Jim with his three kids and their spouses, and his eldest grandchild; the two babies had been left with a neighbor. The girls—women now, of course, Emily and Margot—both spoke about their mother, Margot weeping copiously, and Margot spoke of when they were little, and their mother would make pancakes in the shapes of their initials. “A big M,” Margot said, drawing it with her hand, tears wetting her face as she pushed back her long dark hair with her other hand.
Bob thought: Oy, Helen.
Then Emily spoke; she was slightly more controlled. She told a story about how kind her mother had been when a boy in middle school had broken up with her. “She was just the best,” Emily said, blowing her nose. “The best in the whole world.”
When Larry got up, Bob’s heart folded over. The kid was a mess. His eyes were so red that they appeared smaller. Larry went on and on about summer camps he had been sent to as a kid and how he had hated them, and his mother had been so kind about that, she had always wanted him to come home. “But I didn’t,” Larry said, glancing down at his father. “And my mother sent me a letter every single day.” He wiped his face with his arm. “Mom, you’re in heaven right now. And I want—” His lips quivered. “I want you to save me a place.”
Jim did not speak, he just sat there dry-eyed, and as Bob turned to look behind him, he saw that the church was at least three-quarters full, and many of the women were weeping; these would be Helen’s friends. Bob was impressed with their weeping. He did not weep, he did not feel much of anything as he sat there (except for being so sorry for Larry), and glancing at Pam he saw that she was dry-eyed too. She glanced back at him, and a kind of quiet acknowledgment passed between them: This was sad, but it was empty—for them—of real feeling. Why?
But when the priest described how Helen had planned every detail of the funeral, Bob felt deeply sad for Helen; he could not feel her presence in the church. The organ played and there were white roses everywhere, especially all over her casket, and Bob could not stop himself from thinking: Oh Helen! It’s your funeral, and yet— He did not know how to finish his thought.
—
When it was over, they drove behind the hearse nearly two hours to Connecticut to the town in which Helen had been raised. Pam rode with Margaret and Bob, and she kept thanking them profusely for allowing her to do that, and Margaret—God bless her, Bob thought—was very nice to Pam, turning in her seat to look at her, asking straightforwardly about her AA meetings, and Pam answered straightforwardly in return. They were great, Pam said, they were changing her life. “When I heard myself say, My name is Pam and I am an alcoholic, boy, that was something.” Then Pam said that part of recovery was going around to people who had been hurt by her actions and making amends, and that was hard, Pam said. Adding, “But so meaningful,” and Margaret nodded.
When they arrived at the cemetery, everyone gathered around the open plot—it was mid-April by now—and Bob watched Jim, standing there in his long black coat, who seemed very alone.
On the drive back to the city, Bob said to Margaret and Pam, “I felt nothing, but I loved her very much.”
And Margaret said, “Don’t worry, Bob. Grieving is a strange thing.” And Pam, in the backseat, said quietly, “It sure is.”
—
Back at the house, Jim sat with his small grandchildren, who had been returned by the neighbor. A few of Helen’s friends had come straight from the funeral and brought over food. There were little sandwiches and platters of cheese and prosciutto, and wine was served, and a decanter of whiskey sat on the shelf across from the fireplace.
Margaret surprised Bob. She went from friend to friend, asking how long they had known Helen, and listened as these women talked to her. Pam stood by Bob’s side; she was wearing a mask, had been wearing one all day. He looked at her with irony. “I bet you want a drink.”
