Wreathed (10 page)

They had started the lunch on time but I was just ten minutes late and there were mounds of food in the communal dining area. After a fairly stressful morning, my body was screaming out for calories, so I got a plate full of homemade pierogi and meatballs and fruit salad. I saw Adam at the center of one of the long tables in the room, surrounded by a crowd of old bats who were plying him with noodle kugel and sympathy. I sent him what I desperately hoped was a sultry nod, and his face lit up, just for a second, before he realized that he wouldn’t be able to ditch his well-wishers right away. I took my plate to one of the smaller round tables over by the side, figuring he would come over and join me when he could.

I had not so much as eaten one delicious Central European dumpling before three incredibly old, wrinkly men sat down next to me. “So you’re Emily’s daughter,” one of them said. They all had giant mugs of coffee that read
Victorian Cottages of Cape May.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We haven’t met.”

“I’m Ed,” he replied. Ed was bald with thick glasses and a thick sprouting of ear hair. He had been the one to read the Psalm at the funeral. “This is Hans and Paulie.”

Hans had a mat of thick iron-gray hair and a sweater that looked as though it had walked off the set of
The Cosby Show
and was currently trying to swallow him whole. Paulie was short and thin, with an alarmingly large nose and a lime-green T-shirt with an unprintable pun about beaches.

“We were at the funeral. You probably didn’t see us because we were in the back,” Paulie said.

“I suppose not,” I said. “My name’s Wendy. I was up front with my mother.”

“Wendy,” Hans said. “That’s a nice name. You know Peter Pan?”

I shot Hans a withering glance, which I hoped was Emily Thornhill–quality, or close enough. It shut him up, which was all I was after.

“Hans thinks he’s a comedian,” Paulie said.

“That was her, right?” Ed asked. “That was Emily? Sheldon’s Emily? Sitting up front with you?”

“That was my mother, yes, and her name is Emily, and she used to be married to Sheldon, fifty years ago.”

“Fifty years ago,” Paulie said, “I was in Puerto Rico on shore leave. Aboard the USS
Sea Owl
. That’s a submarine, you know, or it was before they scrapped it. It was left over from World War Two.”

“Just like you,” Hans said.

“Who, me? I was just a kid back then. Wet behind the ears.”

“He’s only telling you about his submarine,” Hans said, “because it was long and hard and full of seamen.”

“Stop it, both of you,” Ed said. “We’re being rude to our guest. Let me apologize for these two. They got old, but they never matured, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “So, you were Sheldon’s friends? What was he like? I never met him.”

“He was an obsessive,” Paulie said, as he took a big slurp of coffee. “Big-time.”

“He was a model-airplane guy,” Hans said. “That’s all he liked doing. Ruined his eyesight, just about. But he knew his shit. He could tell you about every turbine and every strut on every plane the Air Force had, and drive you crazy doing it.”

“That, and talking about your mom,” Ed said. “He loved her, very much. Still did, after all those years. Sheldon talked about her all the time, so it’s kind of like we know her, too.”

“He talked about her way too much, if you ask me,” Paulie said. “I mean, they hadn’t seen each other since the Nixon Administration. You think you’d give it up after a while. But not Sheldon.”

Ed reached over and patted my knee, just enough to make it seem avuncular and not enough to make me want to swat him. “We don’t want you to think he was unhappy all the time, because he wasn’t. But there were days he was so miserable that you couldn’t talk to him. And there were other days he was so miserable that he couldn’t get out of bed, all because he was still sad and blue because he was still in love with your mom.”

“You have to understand, though,” I explained. “She never knew that. She thought he had gone on with his life, the same way she went on with her life after they divorced.”

“Oh, we’re not blaming your mom,” Hans said.

“It was a nice thing she did, coming to the funeral,” Paulie said. “Even though she didn’t talk to anybody, or come to the wake. It was what Sheldon would have wanted, the big dummy. You make sure you tell her that, now.”

“She knows,” I said. “It was important for her to come.”

“Well, we’re spoiling your lunch,” Ed said. “We just wanted you to tell your mom that we appreciated her coming, on behalf of Sheldon, and that he loved her, right up until the end.”

“I will,” I said, and they left me alone with a plate of cold Eastern European delicacies and a big lump in my throat.
Poor Sheldon.

It did not take me long to notice that none of the women at the wake—and it was about eighty-percent women there, if not more—were interested in coming over and saying hello to me. Those that looked in my direction were giving me a fishy stare, if not the evil eye. God knows what Sheldon had been telling these women about my mother, but I would bet money it was different from what he’d been telling his male friends. For all I knew, he’d been leveraging his supposed romantic depression into getting nookie from every gray-haired biddy in sight, and more power to him if he had. Whatever the reason, they were making a point of ignoring me, while they were hovering around Adam like fruit flies on a Carmen Miranda headdress.

He didn’t look like he was enjoying it all that much. He had more food piled in front of him than any reasonable person could ever hope to eat, and there was a large plate of pastry and brownies close at hand. I didn’t have any place else to go, so I just sat and watched him nibble at his food for a while. He still had his dark suit on, but he’d loosened his tie, and it looked charming on him.

I eventually had the bright idea to get up and cross in front of him on my way to where the coffee urn was. I went with less coffee than I would normally drink and more creamer, because I didn’t need the jitters and strong coffee is contraindicated with too much Eastern European dumplings. I took my time stirring and adding sugar, and sure enough, Adam came over before I was done.

“Sorry,” he said. “I meant to come over earlier, but I had a hard time just convincing them that I was capable of pouring my own coffee.”

“They’re just trying to be nice,” I said. Adam took his coffee black, which I thought was a very positive sign. Generally speaking, the more junk a man puts in his coffee, the fussier he is about other stuff. Guys who drink nutmeg and cardamom soy milk lattes are the same guys who will give you grief for having a Maroon Five CD in your car or not knowing what Pokémon are.

“The problem is that they’re succeeding. How’s your mom?”

“She’s been better. Today was kind of hard for her.”

“I can see that,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy for me, either, but I can see how it would be worse for her. Speaking of things that aren’t easy, um, I wonder if I could ask you for a favor?”

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound bright and animated. I guessed that he was going to use the opportunity to ask me for free legal advice, and hoped that he wasn’t going to ask me to help him change the oil in his car.

“I have to finish cleaning out Uncle Sheldon’s room before I go,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to move boxes or anything like that.”

“Oh. Good. Not that, you know, I have anything against moving boxes, you know. In principle. I’m just sort of overdressed at the moment. With the heels and everything.”
Shut up, woman,
I told myself.
You’re babbling again.

“The apartments here are furnished, so there’s no furniture to move, thankfully. I got all of the heavy stuff loaded last night. There are just a few personal things left—most of them are fragile. And there is something I think your mother might like to have.”

I couldn’t imagine what Sheldon might still have that my mother might want. My best guess was that she would want to forget that today ever happened. But it wouldn’t hurt to check out whatever it was Adam wanted me to look at, and I wasn’t going to turn down a chance to spend time with him.

“I’d be happy to help,” I said.

“Thanks. If you’ll excuse me, there’s a whole bunch of little old ladies that will be real disappointed if they don’t get another chance to give me indigestion. I’ll meet you out by my U-Haul in ten minutes, if that’s OK.”

It wasn’t the most romantic invitation I’d ever gotten in my life, but these days a girl can’t afford to be that choosy. “See you there.”

Chapter 13

If I hadn’t known which apartment was Sheldon’s by the U-Haul truck parked out front, I would have known it from the wreath on his door. It was a big heavy thing, with white roses and some other orange flowers that weren’t roses. (I do not know the name of those flowers, because my parents spent a lot more time making sure I knew about the importance of the prime interest rate and the composition of the New Jersey delegation to Congress than they did the names of flowers.) The door was locked, which ruled out any solo snooping, not that I would ever do such a thing. I pulled a paper napkin out of my purse and wiped off part of the back bumper of the U-Haul, took a seat, and applied myself to
Candy Crush Saga
.

It only took Adam a couple more minutes to shed his well-wishers and make his way over to his uncle’s room. I heard him open the driver’s side door of the truck and I switched my phone off and went around to join him. He was taking off his jacket and I got a better look at his shoulders, which were solid enough that you could bounce a hubcap off them. I decided I was letting him carry all the heavy boxes.

Adam slipped his tie off and tossed it on the passenger’s seat. “God, that feels so much better,” he said. “It’s the one thing I had in common with Uncle Sheldon. He hated ties, too. He always said the Air Force was the best employer in the world because they wouldn’t make a man wear a tie if he didn’t want to.”

“Not a slave to fashion, I see.”

“I tell my clients that there are lots of financial advisors out there that wear very nice silk ties that they bought with their clients’ hard-earned money.”

“Does that work?” I asked.

“Up until the point they see me drive away in my Jaguar.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his knuckle. “God, that sounded pretentious, didn’t it? Sorry. ”

“Not at all,” I said. “As long as you can afford it, you should be able to drive whatever you want.”

“Believe me, I’m not trying to impress you,” he said. “I’ve had the car for ten years, and it was ten years old when I bought it. It’s starting to rust, too.”

“OK,” I said, which is what I say when men start talking to me about cars. I like
my
car, because it is pretty and shiny and I picked it out myself, but I have rather less interest in anyone else’s car, and if he had started talking about gear ratios or transmissions just then, I would have howled.

“But the real problem with the Jaguar is that you can’t load very much in it. Hence the U-Haul. Shall we?” He beckoned towards the door with the wreath on it.

Adam had done a good job of cleaning out Sheldon’s things, to the point that you couldn’t tell that anyone had ever lived in his apartment. The only items of any personal value left were three or four large Air Force recruiting posters up on the wall, complete with heroic airmen looking up as though they were tracking the progress of enemy planes in flight.

“I haven’t figured out how best to pack those,” Adam said. “I suppose I ought to have them boxed up or something, but I didn’t bring any boxes that size, and I don’t want to drive all the way back up the Parkway to find ones that fit.”

“Do you have any blankets?” I asked. “Wrap them up in those for the time being and they should protect the glass well enough.”

“Gotcha,” he said, and went back to rummage around in the truck. He emerged with wool Hudson Bay blankets, just like the ones I’d seen in Great-Grandfather Borden’s mansion in Philadelphia. I guessed Sheldon had acquired them in Alaska. I helped Adam wrap up the frames and he carried them out and stowed them in the truck. Adam followed instructions beautifully. I like that in a man.

“Is there anything else you need help with?” I asked.

“I have some glassware to pack in the kitchen, but that’ll just take a minute,” Adam replied. “While I’m doing that, the stuff for your mother is in the bedroom—just poke around, you’ll find it.”

All that was left in the bedroom was a bed, a nightstand, and an IKEA bookcase on the far wall. (If you are an IKEA fan, it was, one of the larger EXPEDIT units, with square bays.) The bed had plain dark-blue sheets and another one of those Hudson’s Bay blankets. The sheets looked clean and the bed was made, as though Sheldon had just left overnight and expected that he would be coming back.

There weren’t any books in the bookcase, which was a disappointment. I am not a huge snoop but when you go to someone’s house, the fastest way to tell what kind of person they are is to look at the titles of the books they have bought. Instead, the bookcases were full of model airplanes. A couple of them were sleek fighter jets, but most of them were huge ungainly things with multiple engines. The old guys at the luncheon had been right; Sheldon had been obsessive about model planes. Except for a matte-black stealth bomber on the top shelf, they were all painted with incredibly small and detailed designs. A white FedEx box sat on top of the bookshelf, which I guessed held more planes that Adam was shipping somewhere else.

Some of the planes had pictures of women prominently displayed. I checked them carefully to see if one of them sported my mother’s name, but none of them did. Could Sheldon have left one of the planes for Mother as a memento? It would not have been anything I would have chosen to give her, but then I had spent my childhood listening to lectures from her about the military-industrial complex. I was looking at a particularly detailed bomber plane when Adam came into the bedroom.