The Imperfects Read online

  * * *

  Beck remains at Helen’s side, stroking her grandmother’s cheek until the paramedics, the police, then the medical examiner arrive. She answers the police officers’ questions in a daze, relieved when it’s over quickly. Afterward, Beck sits alone in Esther’s living room, waiting for Esther to return from the kitchen with a tray of cookies Beck won’t eat, a pot of tea she won’t drink. Beck reaches for her cell phone and taps the mail icon. She types her sister’s name into the address line, her mother’s, debates for a moment, then adds her brother’s, too. Of course he should be on this email. He’s close to Helen, or as close as he can be, given he lives 2,500 miles away. Still, it’s hard for Beck to voluntarily include him.

  The time on Beck’s phone reads 4:07 p.m. In the subject line, she types: Helen is dead. This is indelicate, she realizes. Every other subject she considers—News About Helen, Bad News About Helen, News or simply Helen—feels misleading, so she sticks with Helen is dead. In the body of the email she explains: Sorry to have to tell you like this. I just found her at the house. I’ll be in touch when I know more.

  Beck hits Send and rests the phone in her lap. A few hours ago her most pressing concern was avoiding Tom on the way to the bathroom. Helen would have said there’s nothing like a death to get you to stop wallowing over some unworthy man.

  Outside, the ambulance pulls away from the curb, taking her grandmother away. Its lights aren’t flashing. Its siren has no reason to be on. The weight of the brooch in her blazer pocket tugs at the side seam. Beck pulls it out and fingers the sharp tips of the leaves, the rough holes where the rhinestones have fallen out. Why hadn’t Beck fought harder to make Helen understand that she would never steal from her? Helen died of natural causes. Still, Beck can’t help but think that her grandmother might still be alive if Helen had never lost the orchid brooch.

  Two

  Once the ambulance is gone, Esther sits on the couch in her apartment beside Beck. Her living room is almost identical to Helen’s, same layout, same parquet floors. She hesitates, then hands Beck an envelope with Helen’s will.

  “A few months before we moved my mom—” Esther’s voice cracks. Joyce, Esther’s mother, had been Helen’s longtime neighbor. A few years ago, Esther and her brother relocated Joyce to Brith Shalom House. Then, rather than put the house on the market, Esther elected to move back. Beck remembers, last fall, Helen telling her that Joyce had passed.

  “I was sorry to hear about Joyce,” Beck says, taking the envelope.

  Esther rubs her arms to ward off the chill of her mother’s death. “I took her and Helen to the library. There was this website, with form wills. I was both their witnesses.” Her voice falters again, and Beck wonders why Esther has chosen this moment to give her the will, until Esther adds, “Instructions for the funeral are in there, too. I’m not sure if you’re aware, with Jewish funerals, everything needs to be done right away.” Even though Esther says this delicately, her words sting. Does Esther really think Beck knows that little about Judaism? Sure, she wasn’t bat mitzvahed; she doesn’t know how to bless wine or the dead, but she knows the dead must be buried quickly.

  Before Beck can get too offended, Esther hugs her, clinging like she’s sending Beck off to war.

  “You were her favorite,” Esther whispers, and Beck thanks her, not knowing what else to say.

  Beck returns to Helen’s house and stares at the disarray consuming the living room, unsure where to begin. She assembles the pillows on the couch and sits down, not quite ready to confront the mail, the magazines tossed about the living room. How many times has she sat on this couch, talking to Helen with a candor Beck didn’t have with many people? Other nights, too, when they didn’t talk, just played hand after hand of gin rummy or watched episodes of Perry Mason. Helen was her best friend, Beck realizes. The moment she cleans the house, the moment she heads to her apartment, her best friend will be gone.

  It takes her hours to muster the courage to clean the mess and call a car home.

  Sorry I didn’t return your calls, she writes to her family once she’s returned to her apartment. Each Miller has called and texted and called again. It’s been a long day. Helen’s with a shomer (not sure I’m spelling that correctly) at the funeral home. Beck can’t bring herself to write “Helen’s body.” She isn’t religious. She isn’t even spiritual, but she’d like to believe that part of Helen will bear witness to the funeral she meticulously planned. Helen wanted everything according to tradition. Technically, she should be buried tomorrow. I can’t arrange everything that soon, and she can’t be buried on a Saturday, so we’ll have to wait until Sunday. Is that enough time for everyone to get here? I’m thinking we will sit shiva for three days? Up to you how long you want to stay. Beck knows the hostility they will read into this. Part of her craves it. None of them had to find their grandmother’s rigor-mortised body. None of them had been accused of being a diebin.

  Breathe, she tells herself. It isn’t their fault that she wasn’t here for Helen at the end.

  Also, I’m attaching a copy of the will. As executor, it’s my responsibility. Beck knows the smug tone they will read into this, too.

  As you can see, the will is straightforward, Beck continues. Helen left Deborah the house and the rest of the estate to Jake, Ashley, and me; although I’m not sure what else there is besides the house. She didn’t have a bank account or retirement fund. Helen famously didn’t trust the bank. “Like my undergarments, I keep my money close,” she’d once told a horrified Beck and Jake. I’ll need everyone to sign an agreement while they’re in town, so I can file the probate paperwork and settle Helen’s estate. These words are too formal for family, too official for Helen’s memory, but Beck writes as the executor, not as the bereaved. Still, she adds, I hope everyone can make it. I know Helen would want you here.

  Beck was confused and a little offended to see that Helen had left the house to Deborah. Deborah, who at seventeen had left as quickly as she could. Deborah, who had forsaken her children in that home. Deborah, who out of obligation saw Helen once every few months, whereas Beck visited her weekly out of a genuine desire to spend time together. Deborah, who would mortgage the house into foreclosure.

  Otherwise, there were few surprises in the will. What money Helen had tucked away in coffee cans in the kitchen and potpourri satchels in the spare bedroom and envelopes beneath her bed was to be divided evenly among Beck, Ashley, and Jake. It was all standard other than one exception Helen had written into Article IV: My yellow diamond brooch goes to Becca.

  Beck finds her blazer and locates Helen’s brooch in the pocket. The brooch is too heavy to pin to her T-shirt, so Beck holds the orchid to her chest, staring at the large crystal in the mirror above her dresser. Tarnished and abused, the brooch can’t be particularly valuable. It’s costume jewelry just gaudy enough to be hip. Although if Beck had tried to explain to Helen why the missing rhinestones made it cooler, Helen would have shaken her head, saying young people were idiots. Still, this brooch meant something to Helen, and she wanted Beck to have it. At least, she had wanted Beck to have it when she’d drafted her will. Then she’d accused Beck of stealing her own inheritance.

  * * *

  Ashley is wrapping the leftovers from dinner when her phone chimes with Beck’s second email. She wonders whether Ryan knows she lies about cooking the dinners that are clearly professionally made, whether he notices that there are never dirty baking sheets or pans. Of course he doesn’t notice. He’s too busy with his own secrets to notice anything that’s going on with her. Relax, she futilely reminds herself. Anger won’t help. She puts the chicken thighs in the fridge and reaches for her phone.

  Burial will be Sunday... Shiva for three days... I know Helen would want you here. At the sink, Ashley stares onto her dark backyard. Would Helen have wanted her at the shiva? She and Helen have never been close, not like Beck and Jake were with Helen, not even like Deborah was
in her own way. Ashley was seventeen when they moved in with Helen, both eyes toward life after high school, beyond the reach of the Miller family. In turn, Helen didn’t try to protect or mother her the way she did Beck and Jake.

  An arm wraps around her waist, jarring Ashley out of her thoughts. A set of lips kiss her cheek. Ashley recoils, then feels guilty. Action and reaction, disgust, then pity—it pretty much captures her entire relationship with her husband these days.

  Ryan pretends not to notice. He lets go of her, walking over to the island.

  “Kids are asleep,” he says, leaning against the granite countertop. “They’re still a little spooked.”

  This is the children’s first death outside of school pets and television. Ryan was raised Protestant but only felt strongly about a Christmas tree and an Easter ham, never church or the afterlife. Even after Googling it, Ashley still isn’t clear how, as a Jew, she is supposed to feel about the afterlife, so they didn’t tell the children that Helen was in a better place. Instead, they explained that Helen was very old and had lived a full life. Even as she’d said this, Ashley had questioned whether it was true. Helen was from Vienna. Sometime during WWII, she’d come to the US alone. She’d married, had Deborah, then her husband had died. And after that...she’d crafted wedding dresses and skirt suits for women much richer than she was. She’d been a steady presence in the decaying house on Edgehill Road. Ashley wasn’t sure any of that constituted a full life.

  “You okay?” Ryan asks Ashley, pointing to her neck. She rubs it absentmindedly, remembering the car accident. Not even an accident, a tap so light it hadn’t scratched either car. Still, the other driver, an older man, had insisted on calling the police. It consumed most of the afternoon. Tyler had missed soccer practice; Lydia, rehearsal for the spring recital. Both children were confused and scared, even before Ashley told them about Helen.

  “I’m fine,” Ashley says coolly, hungry for a fight. She closes the dishwasher and stares at her husband. She hates that she recoils from his touch. She is still attracted to him, yet she can’t shake her anger. Anger over what he’s done. Anger that it broke him. Anger that he exposed that brokenness to her and now, despite his handsome face, despite how much she wants to want him, all she sees is a weak man before her. A weak man who is going to be fired, possibly worse.

  Ryan works as in-house counsel for an international chemical company in charge of its patent applications. Due to the amount of patents they need to file, it’s common practice to hire outside patent lawyers to do the extra work. Instead of hiring multiple part-time attorneys as was policy, Ryan hired one attorney. His friend Gordon, a DUI lawyer in Las Vegas. Gordon had no business completing the patent applications, but he was broke and he was Ryan’s best friend. So Ryan corrected Gordon’s mistakes, submitted the applications on his behalf and fed him more work. Then it just became easier for Ryan to complete the applications himself, and, since he was doing the work, adding extra hours to his already consuming job, it didn’t seem fair that Gordon was being paid for Ryan’s time. They arrived at an arrangement where Ryan’s company paid Gordon, then Gordon returned a percentage of the money to Ryan. Ashley didn’t know the details, how long it had been going on, how much money Ryan had made off his side job. Recently, the company had initiated a random internal audit and discovered the unsanctioned arrangement Ryan had set up with one DUI lawyer in Las Vegas.

  “What’s going on with the audit? Any updates?” Ashley knows he won’t tell her. He only revealed the arrangement to her because she’d found him huddled on the bathroom floor beside the toilet, rocking himself and muttering incoherently about how he’d trusted Gordon and now he was going to get fired. It had taken two glasses of Scotch to get him back to sleep. In the morning, he immediately began downplaying the story he’d told her. Ashley had seen the fear in his eyes, the desperation in his quaking body, as he said, “I’ve ruined everything.” She trusted that memory more than her husband’s reassurances that everything was fine.

  “It’s just an internal audit,” he says. “Please. We’ve been over this.”

  “Have you talked to Gordon?”

  “I don’t want to get into it.”

  “I have a right to know. This doesn’t just affect you.”

  Ryan walks over and takes her in his arms. She doesn’t push him away. She doesn’t hug him back, either. “It’s sweet of you to worry. I overreacted. It’s just some paperwork that needs explaining—I’ll sort it out.”

  “Would it help if I went back to work?” She tries to say this casually, but her voice betrays her. Ashley was the one who had wanted to quit. Even though she loved her team, her clients, she knew with that first bout of nausea that she didn’t want to balance a family and career. For the first few years, when Lydia was little, then Tyler followed, she loved spending full days at the park, the zoo, children’s museums. When they got older and started school, they didn’t need her as much, and her responsibilities quickly became less maternal, more domestic. Ashley had always hated doing laundry, cooking, had never had a domestic bone in her slender body.

  “You already have a job,” Ryan says, kissing the top of her head. “The hardest job in the world.” He gives her a final squeeze before walking out of the kitchen.

  They weren’t always like this. When she and Ryan first met, she was making more money than he was, and one of the things that drew her to him was that he wasn’t intimidated by her success. Instead, he supported her, stocking her fridge when she was on a deadline so she wouldn’t have to think about feeding herself, leaving her little love notes or drawings when he left for work before she did. Gradually, the idea of caring for her took over so much that now he saw it as an affront to his responsibilities as a husband when she mentioned returning to work. It grew out of his love for her, for the children, but it made her dependent on him in ways she didn’t like, even before she’d found him curled up on their bathroom floor.

  Ashley checks Beck’s email again. Burial will be Sunday... Shiva for three days. Ashley and Ryan have already agreed that she will drive down for the day and go alone to the funeral, but she writes, I’ll stay through the shiva. Let Ryan figure out what to do with the kids while she’s in Philadelphia for a few days. Let him see just how hard the hardest job in the world is.

  * * *

  The chime from her phone startles Deborah awake. Momentarily, she isn’t certain where she is. The dream was so real she hadn’t realized she was sleeping. She’d drifted to childhood, to a vacation she and Helen had taken when Deborah was twelve. Helen had pulled her old Chevy out of the driveway, and they took I-95 to Portland. Deborah could feel the wind on her face as she stuck her head out the window before her mother told her she wasn’t a dog, to get back in the car. It was stifling with the windows closed, and to distract herself Deborah turned on the radio. Helen quickly turned it off. It became a game—at least Deborah found it fun—turning on the radio every few minutes before her mother clicked it off again, until Helen snapped, “I’m trying to concentrate.”

  They drove the rest of the way to Maine in silence.

  In the hotel room, Deborah had sulked. Helen ignored her, standing before the mirror, coating her lips in the bright pink lipstick she continued to wear for the next fifty years. “Tomorrow, we’ll drive up to Bar Harbor where we’ll eat lobster. We can go fishing, if you’d like.”

  “I hate fishing,” Deborah claimed, even though she’d never been fishing before.

  Helen put down the lipstick and stared intently at her daughter. “This is a privilege, you know. Not everyone lives the kind of life where they can go on vacation.”

  “I never asked to go on vacation with you.” She waited for Helen to take the bait, for them to fight, because Deborah did want to be on vacation with Helen; she just wanted her mother to take her to Atlantic City where they could go on rides on the boardwalk. She wanted cotton candy, not lobster.

  “Sho
uld we turn around and go home, then?”

  “No,” Deborah pouted.

  “Good,” Helen said, closing her lipstick. “Because I’d really like to go whale watching. I’ve never seen a whale.”

  The room is almost dark. As her eyes adjust, Deborah recognizes the shape of her mattress on the floor, the couch separating the two-burner stove and refrigerator from the rest of the studio. It all comes flooding back to her—the vacation in Maine; the word privilege, which became one of Helen’s favorite English words, a reminder to her daughter of all the privilege that was stripped from her in Austria; Helen’s death just that afternoon.

  Deborah turns on a light and stumbles into the kitchen for something to eat. It was bright out when she’d fallen asleep. She’d only meant to shut her eyes. Now, it’s ten thirty and she’s famished. There’s one large pot and an array of hot sauces in her fridge. She puts the pot on the stove to warm the remains of the lentil stew she’d made earlier that week, only to discover that there isn’t enough left to heat up. She’d kill for a burger, but it’s been six months since she last cheated on her vegan diet, and she is determined to make it to a year. Or seven months at least. Her phone chimes again, and she reads Beck’s email.

  Helen left her the house on Edgehill Road? And they were going to sit shiva? Was this some sort of twisted punishment from beyond, insisting that all the Millers gather for three days? She finds a spoon and begins to eat the remnants of the cold stew. The texture of the clumpy yellow mash makes her queasy. She throws the spoon back in the pot, feeling even more nauseous as she realizes this is Helen’s attempt at reconciling them.

  “Oh, Mom,” Deborah says to the globs sticking to the sides of the pot. She rarely called Helen Mom, and she relishes it now. Mom. This house is a privilege, even if she’d sworn after high school that she’d never go back. But she’d already moved back with her children after Kenny left. Maybe she was always destined to return to the house on Edgehill Road.