Bright Young Women(36)

When asked why he thought Denise had been targeted, Sheriff Cruso had reportedly run a hand down his face. “I hate to make the Andora family feel bad,” he’d answered, “but Denise knew a lot of people. We think it was probably someone known to her, and the other girls were collateral damage.”

Denise knew a lot of people. The polite language was what gave the appearance of impropriety. Denise was gorgeous and got asked out a lot, and she knew how to enjoy sex, which was a quality I admire about her to this day. It was the dancing around the truth that made it seem like she had something to be ashamed of, that gave others license to blame, and you better believe they used it.

“Remember,” Aunt Trish said, patting Mrs. Andora’s bare upper arm, “we are setting the record straight today.”

“Can I help?” I asked.

Aunt Trish glanced at Mrs. Andora, who nodded. “There’s a reporter from the Tallahassee Democrat doing a piece about Denise,” began Aunt Trish. “We’ve invited him back to the house after the burial. He’s looking forward to speaking to you about Denise. Who she really was, from her best friend and the president of the smartest sorority on campus.”

I clasped my hands at my pelvis and said with regret, “I was told not to speak to the press.”

“Who told you that?” Aunt Trish laughed brashly. Whomever had said such a thing was sorely mistaken.

“An alumna. Her name is—”

“You’re the president. I thought you decided.”

“Certain things I can.”

“People are looking at us like it’s our fault, Pamela,” Mrs. Andora said in a pleading voice that didn’t sound right coming from her. Mrs. Andora was someone who lived life with élan. She was a prankster who seemed to have an inside joke with everyone she knew. I’ve always thought there was something quietly seditious about a funny woman, but he took her humor when he took Denise. “The Shepherds asked us not to attend Robbie’s funeral.” Mrs. Andora stared at the floor as she said this, and I remembered that public humiliation was still a judicially sanctioned practice in some countries.

“You saw the person.” Aunt Trish did not have to remind me. “You are the only one who can reliably say that he wasn’t anyone Denise knew.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek, feeling torn in two.

“Put that in a nice bowl,” Aunt Trish said of the fruit salad, as though the issue had been settled, then huffed away, in search of more of my work to rectify. The old Mrs. Andora would have rolled her eyes, whispered a clever remark, shared a laugh with me. This Mrs. Andora gazed around her house like she hated every square inch of it.

“What would Denise make of all this?” she asked with an ugly sneer. I followed her eyeline. The flowers, the food, the rented plastic chairs we’d set out in the den for extra seating.

“She’d still be upstairs doing her hair and wouldn’t have seen any of it yet.” I was reassured when Mrs. Andora nodded, agreeing. I’d said the right thing, the thing that showed I knew Denise the way she knew Denise.

“Do you know I told everyone no lilacs, because Denise is allergic to lilacs?” Mrs. Andora laughed, squeezing and releasing her long, thin neck with one hand, over and over, like it was a second-by-second decision to allow herself to keep breathing. “In case she walks through the door, I don’t want her sneezing. That’s how much I still don’t believe it.”

I cast around desperately for another right thing to say, but all I could come up with was what she was prepared to hear so many times that day that it had already been rendered meaningless. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Andora.” I stepped forward, timidly, wondering if I should offer her a hug. But Mrs. Andora put up her hand. Stop. Don’t come any closer.

“You were there,” Mrs. Andora said, amazed, as though just realizing this for herself, as though she hadn’t heard my worthless platitude at all. “She got to be with someone she loved at the end of her life. Someone who didn’t care about the smell or the sound of it.” She looked right at me, and I saw that the light was indeed on in her eyes. That she had heard me say I was sorry, and she was doing her best to forgive me. “It should have been me. But at least it was you. So it’s okay, Pamela.”



* * *




Most people don’t know that Denise and Robbie are buried in the same graveyard, that their funerals took place just one cool, muggy day apart in Jacksonville, Florida. The new round-shaped Holiday Inn in San Marco offered the press a promotional deal—two nights for the price of one. I tripped over a camera cord as I left Denise behind, her steel casket kept dry under a thorny layer of single roses.

“At least the rain held off until the last few minutes,” Brian said as we made our way back to the car.

“At least,” I agreed flatly. Some parts of her funeral were easier than I’d imagined, but the ones that were worse had left me pulverized. The members of The House had gathered around Denise and sang to her as she was lowered into the ground, a song Denise had learned as a pledge, the song we were all meant to sing at graduation and at one another’s weddings. I couldn’t stop thinking about the day our pledge class met in one of the rehearsal rooms at the new Ruby Diamond Concert Hall to practice. The song opened and ended with a solo, and Denise had volunteered herself for the job, boasting about her beautiful singing voice. We all readied for a moving performance and then we practically fell to our knees with laughter when Denise opened her mouth and brayed the opening verse. Who told you that you could sing? We were gasping, tears streaming down our faces, while Denise stared at us, confused. Everyone! she’d cried, at which we became inconsolable. Well, they lied, someone managed to choke out, and Denise flipped her the bird, but she was laughing too. And I was realizing that any time I wanted to visit Denise in my mind, I would be looking at her and thinking, You’re going to die soon, and I wouldn’t want to see her anymore. My memories of Denise made me feel like I was keeping a terrible secret from her.