The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [109]
Across the cul-de-sac, there are still cars in front of the Lamm house. Visitors have been coming and going all day. Sympathy callers. Brynne comes out onto her lawn not long after Rachel does, probably to get away from the crowd.
The two girls ignore each other, no doubt glad their houses are far enough apart that they don’t have to feel impolite. After what they’ve been through, Ginger doesn’t think they’ll ever speak to each other much. There’s too much between them for small talk. Yet in an odd way, they’ll always be friends. A paradox. Ginger doesn’t think either of them understands it.
Rachel turns her attention to the heavens, so intent and thoughtful she might just have figured out what’s behind the curtain of darkness that hangs over the yard. Sheets of unseen light. Unknowable light. Ginger’s heart contracts at the sight of her daughter contemplating a vastness she’ll always long for but never see.
Turning from the window, she goes into the kitchen to help Eddie put away the last of the dishes. It seems the only place to go.
“How much damage do you think Amy’s done to herself?” she asks, referring to the anorexic niece who fled from the table in the middle of today’s elaborate dinner and didn’t come out of the bathroom for half an hour. She’s never done that before. Pathetic as the girl always looks, she’s usually careful not to create any drama.
“Eating disorders are hard to control,” Eddie says noncommittally as he drops a fork into the velvet-lined box that holds the good silver. He doesn’t look up. Neither of them really care about the stricken girl, except to make conversation.
“Where’s Max?” Ginger asks. “Why isn’t he helping with this?”
Eddie shrugs.
Ginger’s discussions with Eddie are full of such spikes and lulls these days. Gone is the easy, loose-tongued talk of the long married. They search for safe topics (Did you get something for Larry for Christmas? What about bonuses at the store?). They choose their words, they don’t relax. It’s worse than not having sex, which they haven’t done, either, since the day of Paisley’s funeral, a day when—Ginger reminds herself—nothing happened. Eddie mentioned that Paisley helped him name the Teacher Toolshed. Ginger suggested . . . well.
Who is the more injured? Eddie has pretended to be maniacally busy, which takes some doing in the weeks before the holidays when his business dwindles to practically nothing. Ginger really was maniacally busy, but that didn’t shut off her thoughts.
Is she going to forgive him?
Both of them know what happened. Does it matter? Ginger feels wronged, yet is plagued by a quote from Christopher Marlowe: But that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead.
A terrible way to phrase it.
Putting the last of the serving platters in the china closet, Ginger turns to look through the dining room to the lit tree in the living room beyond, with its overstuffed chairs and what Max terms the world’s most comfortable sofa and the piles of gifts they opened this morning and then replaced in boxes to sit under the tree where, by old tradition, they will remain on display until tomorrow. The house—an ordinary, dependable block of a place she rarely notices—through the screen of her current turmoil looks precious indeed. The lights, the old nativity scene and angels, the chipped porcelain squirrel on the mantel that Rachel bought for Ginger’s birthday years ago, the mahogany secretary with Max’s name scratched into the writing surface—each glows with its silvered patina of care.
It has been such a strange Christmas. Max is even more oblivious than usual, wanting only for Eddie to take him out to drive, demanding it no matter what else has to be done, totally selfish. Rachel has been an enigma, more poised than she was even a few weeks ago, yet subdued and even clingy, obsessed with homey detail. This morning when Ginger was making her