FM: Yes.
TJ: Was there anything else that happened that day? Something that stands out?
FM: There sure was. We had the TV on for hours and hours. We all sat in the booths and kept our eyes glued to the screen. Everyone thought it was another attack at first, like a terrorist attack, and that tour bus never did leave. And then it was dark, night, and they started releasing the names of some of the victims. I began to get this feeling, this shaky feeling, you know, like my life was about to change.
TJ: Why did you feel that way?
FM: I’m not sure. But I had this connection to Chicago, right, and then there it was, a huge tragedy there, and I felt like I knew. I just knew.
TJ: What did you know?
FM: I know it sounds crazy, but I swear—I knew my mother was dead even before they said her name.
Chapter 3
Our House
Cecily
I don’t need any alarms to wake me the next morning, even though I set three and asked my mother to give me a wake-up call, fearful I’d be up every hour on the hour, then fall into a deep sleep around four and miss the allotted time. But instead, I went to sleep easily and dreamed I was skiing—Tom and I used to take yearly trips to Jackson Hole with the kids—and the powder was fantastic and I was laughing the way you do sometimes when you’re having pure fun.
And then I skied off a cliff.
Normally, in one of those horrible falling dreams, you wake with a start, your heart shuddering. Instead, as I was tumbling into a white oblivion, I told myself: this is a dream. It’s a trick I learned long ago, a way to wake up without a flood of fear, to somehow remain conscious enough to push away the panic. This is a dream, I thought again, and pulled myself back from the edge.
I open my eyes.
I’m safe in my bedroom—our bedroom—sleeping on my side of the bed as if Tom’s body is still a barrier to stretching out. The last book he was reading—a thriller by Mary Kubica he took from my bookshelf—is cracked open on the nightstand, its spine broken. I remember how mad I was when I saw him do that. He knew I loved keeping my books pristine, never folding the pages or bending them open, keeping my place with a tissue, or memory, because breaking the spine on a treasured book is a sin, isn’t it?
I used to think so before real sins became everyday currency.
But he’d done it, and we’d had a fight, a stupid fight. We’d gone to bed in angry silence, the air thick with our words. We lay with our backs to each other, two opposing forces in the bed, our anger a reverse magnet neither of us had the strength to match. But then the next morning, that morning, Tom apologized and said things would be different going forward. He kissed me on the forehead and said he’d see me later. Don’t be late . . . I couldn’t quite tell if he was being serious or trying to tease me. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and did my best to move past it.
And maybe things would’ve been different if death hadn’t intervened. It’s one of the things that drive you crazy, the what-ifs of unexpected loss, even though life is full of them, too.
But he’s gone now, and I still take a shower every morning in a stall filled with his shampoo and favorite soap and the last razor he used sitting in its niche. I pull my clothes from a closet full of his—business suits and pressed shirts and his “good shoes” and his “comfortable shoes” lined up like soldiers across the floor because Tom had a thing about his clothes and how they had to be arranged just so. Our grocery delivery still contains the same amount of low-fat milk, even though the kids and I don’t drink it. Every week, I place the containers in the fridge and vow I’ll call and amend the order, then drain them into the sink a week later, untouched, right before they turn sour.
I’d meant to change all this. I had a plan, even, that involved a few close girlfriends and wine and doing something symbolic like rearranging the furniture or getting rid of the chair that didn’t match the rest of our living room that Tom insisted on keeping because it was a comfortable place for him to fall asleep in after a long, hard day.
That never happened, either.
My friend Sara has said more than once that it’s like I live in a shrine. She’s even taken to calling me “The Widow Grayson” in moments of levity. I get mad at her sometimes for that, though I know it comes from love, but she’s not wrong. I will forevermore be Cecily Grayson, stuck with a last name that still doesn’t feel like my own but that I took for the sake of our children. “So we can be a real family,” Tom said, though I never understood what my last name had to do with whether we were a family or not.
Whether asleep or awake, I’m stuck. I have no idea how to move forward or even where I want to go. Someday soon I’m going to have to do something. I can’t go on living in stasis, trapped under the glass of the public’s glare and unceasing sympathy. But today’s not about moving on, it’s about remembering, so I’ll play my role and smile through the worst of it, and tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll make a plan.
“Why’d you agree to the documentary, then?” Sara asked me the night before, when I was circling the rim of a glass of Chablis, my complaints nothing new, her advice still unheeded.
“I didn’t at first. It took a while for Teo to convince me.”
“Ah,” she said, reaching for the half-empty bottle. “Teo.”
“It’s not like that . . . It was easier to agree than to fight.”
“You always take the path of least resistance.”
If it were anyone else, I might’ve been upset at this bald assessment of my character. But Sara was Sara, and Sara was right. “That’s a pattern I need to break, too.”
“Easier said than done, though, right?”
I agreed with her. If things had been like they were two years ago, Tom and I would sit down at the kitchen table while the kids were asleep and make a list. What are the pros of being involved in Teo’s film? (Remembering, helping others deal with their grief, raising money for the Initiative.) What are the cons? (I miss my privacy, I feel like a fraud, what if Teo finds out?) And then we’d decide, together, what was best.
But it’s too late to do that now. I can’t back out without raising questions, so I’ll have to take it like I have everything else. One day at a time.
My cell phone buzzes on the nightstand. It’s my mother, my wake-up insurance.
“Hi, Mom. Thanks for calling.”
“You sound awake.”
I flip onto my back as anxiety gathers. The crack in the ceiling seems larger than the last time I looked. Another thing to take care of tomorrow, tomorrow.
“I am awake.”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
“It’s okay. It was bound to happen.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“They’ve only given us three seats together. You might not even be able to get in.”
My mother gives one of her patented humphs. “You let me take care of that.”
“No, truly. I promise. We’ll be all right. I feel horrible saying this, but . . .”
“It might be easier without me?”
“Is that terrible?”
“Perhaps a little. But I understand.”
“Thanks, Mom. Are you okay?”
“I’m thinking about your father.”
“I know.”
My father died six years ago. He was the love of her life, and his death hit her hard. She’d been doing better before Triple Ten, making new friends and joining a walking group, playing bridge. But having her own daughter become a widow set her back, and in some ways, this last year has been harder for her than for me.
“I’ll be thinking of Dad today,” I say. “Thinking of both of you.”
“I love you, Cecily.”
“I love you, too.”
The clock radio turns on as I hang up. It’s playing one of those Justin Bieber songs all my girlfriends love for some reason. I slap the “Off” button and track through the list of what I need to accomplish to get us to the ceremony on time.
I cannot be late today.
I cannot.