Page 6

“It’s worth it,” I said. “You embrace both sides, right? Like Lucia says—said. The dark and the light. Il dolce e l’amaro. The bitter and the sweet.”
“Don’t you dare, Nance.” Nell gave me a dark look. “Don’t start up with the sentimental stuff and get us all wound up again. Did Lucia keep any painkillers?”
“As I recall, she disapproved of them on principle, but I have you covered,” I assured her. “I have a witch’s brew of Tylenol, aspirin and caffeine in my purse that’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Yum,” Vivi said. “Bring it on.”
We took turns in the bathroom, washing up. I swabbed off the ill-fated remnants of yesterday’s makeup and wound my hair back tight enough to make my forehead hurt. When I got downstairs, coffee was ready and Nell was gazing in dismay at the total wreck of the kitchen.
She poured me a cup. “It looks just terrible in here,” she said, handing it to me. “I would clean it up right now, but I have to proctor an exam today, and Vivi has to drive me back to the city to get there in time. But we’re not dumping this all on you, understand? We’ll come back here and deal with it. Don’t you dare do it yourself. You’ve done enough.”
Hah. Like I was constitutionally capable of leaving Lucia’s kitchen looking like that, knowing how Lucia would have felt about it. Lucia had been a passionate neatnik, and she’d passed the quality on to me, and only me, of the three of us. It got lonely and frustrating, being the only neat-freak sibling.
I waved a vague hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No way!” Nell said forcefully. “Don’t do it alone, or we’ll writhe in guilt. You always do that. Stop that shit. Don’t be the martyr. It’s not good for any of us.”
“Okay, okay,” I lied, holding up my hands. “We’ll all do it together later.”
My sisters gathered up their things, and I followed them out to Vivi’s gaudily painted Volkswagen van, which was parked in the driveway. I gave them both long tight hugs.
After they got in, Nell leaned out of the passenger-side window and shook her finger at me. “We’ll hook up after I finish that exam. Don’t clean up yet, or I’ll make you sorry you did. Take it easy. Rest. Recover.”
“I can’t rest, Nell. I’ve got a million things to?—”
“Yes, yes. Of course you do. But you need to take care of yourself first of all,” Vivi was scolding me now, leaning over Nell’s lap from the driver’s side.
Take care of me? I didn’t even know what that would mean. I watched Vivi’s taillights glow in the morning mist until she turned the corner and was gone.
The sky had a heavy, bruised look, altogether appropriate for my mood. Sunlight would have been discordant and painful. Our drunken revels had been cathartic at the time, but in the moment, I felt as if I’d been scraped off the bottom of a shoe.
Time to get busy. My frantic schedule would save me. All the things that I’d put off last week because of Lucia’s death and funeral would keep me too busy to think, or hopefully, feel. Constant activity was my number one coping mechanism, and lucky for me, my career choice—managing an eclectic bunch of singer-songwriters and folk bands—involved ceaseless admin.
Back in the day, I’d dreamed of being a musician myself. Eventually, I grew up and accepted the fact that I didn’t really have the musical chops, practice as I might.
I had, however, identified other talents while helping my musical friends get gigs in college. I was good behind the scenes. I figured out how to make myself indispensable. Got hooked on the feeling of being in the middle of it all. The one who made it happen.
Everyone had their gifts. When it came to niggling, detail-minded, dogged, tenacious determination, I was unbeatable. It was good to identify one’s strengths, even if they weren’t the glamorous, shiny ones that most of the world noticed and admired.
I’d steadily nudged my handpicked group of folk artists and ensembles out of the pub and coffeehouse concert series circuits and into bigger theaters and more prestigious folk festivals. I’d been getting more airtime on radio stations, marketing them hard on all of the social media platforms, and my efforts seemed to be paying off. A few of them were actually poised to break into the big time.
If that finally happened, I would be able to call this activity an actual career, and not just an extremely expensive, time-consuming, more-or-less delusional hobby. I just had to slog onward, toward that glorious day when I could hire a staff, instead of being a one-woman outfit. I would break through that brick wall eventually.
But today, a long ‘to-do’ list suited me fine. If I was zipping around at high speed, all hands waving like a dancing Shiva, with a phone in every one of them, I wouldn’t have time or space to feel that black hole of grief at my core. Or if I did feel it, it would be on the periphery of my consciousness. Not smack-dab in the center.
Coping mechanisms got a bad rap, but damn, they kept the world duct-taped together. I was a big fan.
I pressed my hand against the sucking pain in my midriff and tried to breathe. I had never put my coping mechanisms to the test like this.
First things first. I needed an appropriate hideous tablecloth to cover the precious intaglio writing table. I drove down to the dollar store and stood in the aisle pondering the relative merits of hideous florals or plastic plaid in dull hues of beige and taupe.
I concluded that in the context of the understated elegance of Lucia’s front room, the beige and taupe plaid mumbled “Please don’t notice me,” while the hideous floral squawked “What’s wrong with this picture?”
I was probably giving mouth-breathing burglars too much credit. As if those bottom-feeders were going to listen to what the plastic tablecloths whispered to them.
It was starting to rain when I got back, and I darted up Lucia’s steps, holding the plastic bag that held the tablecloth over my head.
“Excuse me?”