The aloneness was a huge adjustment, especially when it came to school functions—going to parent-teacher conferences and class cocktail parties solo. （At Carrie’s preschool orientation, I looked at all the couples sitting on folding chairs and was seized by sadness—they glanced at me uncomfortably as I broke into a full-on ugly cry.） Figuring out what to do on a Saturday night, often asking married friends if I could join them for dinner—grateful for their willingness to let me tag along. Taking in the day’s ups and downs alone, in the dead quiet of the apartment after the girls went to bed.
Staying busy was my elixir. We’d head to Arlington and spend the weekend with my parents. We’d drive to Darien to visit Clare, her husband, Jeff, and their kids. We’d hop on the shuttle to Boston to visit Kiki and her family. Anything to outrun our sadness. In the city, we had a busy rotation of dinners with friends. On some weekends, we’d get in the Monavan and drive to Millbrook.
It was hard to be there. Jay had adored that house and cared for it so lovingly—poking around antiques shops for the perfect umbrella stand for the entryway, walking the property, trimming the grass around the paving stones with fingernail scissors. His office was full of the militaria he collected: soldiers’ hats on stands, the document box that had belonged to Union officer Joshua Chamberlain when he became president of Bowdoin College, daguerreotypes of young men headed to war whose uncertain fates are reflected in their stares. I remember walking by and feeling a chill go down my spine, a kind of “rabbit ran over my grave” sensation.
The whole house scared me a little, so I imported friends, whose children brought diverting chaos and kept my mind from going there.
We’d drop into the Millbrook Diner, where the sweet waitresses always asked me how I was doing. We’d sled down the big hill near town—the same hill where we’d watched the Fourth of July concert with Jay describing every troop movement as the “1812 Overture” played. We’d visit the bookstore, lap ice cream cones at a picnic table outside the Dairy Queen, and get elephant ears or sticky buns at the Mabbettsville market on Sunday morning. I’d make dinner in the kitchen Jay and I had designed, filling the house with the smell of roast chicken. We’d build a fire and watch DVDs of Faerie Tale Theatre. I had become a strange hybrid of grieving widow and camp counselor.
One weekend when my mom and dad came to visit, we were drinking tea at the kitchen table when I saw my father’s hand start to shake. He placed his other hand on top to try and still the tremor.
“Dad,” I said, “what’s the matter?”
“I’m just a little nervous,” he told me.
Later, my mom called and said he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In the terrible aftermath of Jay, they had tried to keep it from me as long as possible.
WHEN JAY FELL in love with the Millbrook house, I told him we could buy it under one condition: that we spend two weeks every summer at the beach.
We rented a place on Ocean Road in Bridgehampton with charming English flower beds and a thick rope for a banister; Jay threw me a surprise baby shower there when I was pregnant with Carrie. After he died, we found a cottage on Quimby Lane. Summer dresses and dining alfresco, barbecues and bonfires, a warm group of friends cycling through at all times…I just wanted to feel normal.
That October, Matt married Annette Roque, a sleek Dutch woman whose model name had been Jade. The wedding was in a little church in Bridgehampton, and the party was on the panoramic lawn of one of Matt’s wealthy friends. Jeff and Caryn were my dates; I tried to have fun. The newlyweds looked so glamorous and Matt seemed happy. What more could he want?
The one-year anniversary of Jay’s death fell on a Sunday. After the girls went to sleep, I opened the Maeve Binchy novel I had started dozens of times. Grief made it impossible to concentrate. After reading the same paragraph over and over and over again, I gave up and settled in to watch Rushmore, the quirky coming-of-age movie starring Bill Murray. I don’t remember much about it, except feeling my organs twist. The loneliness, longing, and sadness that had set in a year earlier were attacking me from the inside.
42
“There’s Been a Shooting”
BY SPRING, OUR new apartment was ready. I’d been intent on making it as warm and inviting as I could. No shades of eggshell and slate—I wanted it to look like a color wheel had exploded all over our living room.
The apartment was a large prewar four-bedroom with great light. While higher floors are more coveted, I liked that this one was on the third, with its catty-corner view of Brick Church, which I had joined, and cherry blossom boughs reaching skyward. To me, it felt more like a house than an apartment, which I loved. Come April, the Park Avenue median just outside was a carpet of blooming tulips—the girls and I would take an annual family photo there for years to come. Every Christmas, I’d open my bedroom window and listen to the throngs of Upper East Siders singing carols at the annual lighting of the Park Avenue Christmas trees. Tight-knit and family-friendly, the neighborhood had the feel of a quaint town within the big, bad city.