The Other

You learned the news of Charles’s death on Thursday afternoon. His secretary delivered the blow with the expected indifference you’ve come to know and understand from her. She was the mule that shouldered your weight. The only person in his compact little world he trusted enough to know what you meant to him. You suppose that after she hung up the phone, she reared back in her chair and kicked her little feet like a giddy child to be rid of you. Her indifference wasn’t what bothered you, of course, it was the abruptness of it all. The great finale of his heart as he walked with a to-go club sandwich from Loeb Boathouse through Central Park. She said she thought you would want to know, and then there you were—left to digest this in the middle of your immaculate living room in the midday sun. You gnawed at a fresh manicure and tried to imagine a man as robust as Charles in a lifeless state, but you couldn’t.

You suppose it was kind of the rigid bitch at his desk to let you know. How would you have truly found out otherwise? When you arrived at the tarmac on Friday with your matching luggage to wait on his car that wouldn’t come? You would’ve suffered the indignity of calling an Uber and would’ve returned to your apartment and believed in your heart that he had stood you up for the second time in six years. You wouldn’t have called him, of course, because that was agreed upon a long time ago. You don’t call him. He calls you.

Would the papers have reported it? Probably not. Charles was of the kin and creed of Finance Bro. Those are a dime a dozen in Manhattan. One drops dead, and another steps confidently into his place—a carbon copy of the one that came before, down to the starched blue shirt and Loro Piana vest.

You checked your watch. The diamond-studded Cartier he gave you for your thirty-first birthday. You love this watch, because you loved him. You went to the fridge and pulled out the one friend who would understood the gravity of this moment at noon—Kim Crawford. She’s a blessing to you. One glass became three and suddenly you were on your balcony gazing absently over Central Park from the West because you were not permitted to be in the same neighborhood as his wife and children. Charles was always so paranoid that somehow Donna could recognize your perfume from five blocks at any given moment, as if there weren’t a hundred women in Manhattan that wore Baccarat.

Your phone rang and it was Bethany. She was crying, and you paused for a moment to wonder why you hadn’t cried. You thought it would most likely happen somewhere around the time that the wine reached the bottom of the Kim Crawford label. Bethany had just found out via Facebook; an acquaintance from her spin class had posted a picture of her and her husband with Charles and Donna in Sag Harbor saying, “The world won’t be the same without you Big C! 😭😭"

Big C…

In a way you were glad Bethany discovered this independently. It saved you having to explain it yourself. You never were very good with emotions, especially sadness. Bethany was always so pragmatic about the whole thing, unlike your sister who was a total fucking prude and said you had no business being in a situation like this. That it was demoralizing and that you would scandalize the family. You sat for a moment and thought about a time in the last six years you felt scandalized and couldn’t arrive at a single one. You dreaded having to make that phone call. You could already imagine your sister’s smug little face and her twisting the cross at her throat in an act of pious thanks to the creator. You could already hear the, “I’m sorry to say this honey, but I did warn you.”  

___

Bethany wants you out of the house. She insists you need to breathe fresh air and relays that it has been 24 hours—as if you didn’t know. She demands you take a shower and a cab downtown to make sure your credit card still works. That is something you haven’t considered until now. How long…how long until the world Charles provided rolls up the rug?

Bethany decides you both should return to the scene of the crime. Where Charles first sat at—or rather tumbled—to the bar to offer you a drink. Securing a seat at the bar of Delmonico’s on a Friday night is a blood sport, but you’re still attractive in your early thirties and there are still some men with chivalry left in Manhattan. Two men securing pre-meal bourbons excuse themselves so you and Bethany might have a seat. You order the house Manhattan because Bethany’s routine supply of champagne seems celebratory, and you’re anything but.

She asks all the hard-hitting questions—more like a TMZ reporter than best friend.

“Is your power still on?”

“Do you know where the deed to your apartment is?”

“Is the apartment even in your name?”

“Is anything in your name?”

Then finally the big one…

“Are you going to the funeral?”

This is the one you’ve mulled over since Charles’s secretary called you the day before. Would you go to the funeral? You can feel Charles getting angry by the mere thought of it. The merging of his two very private lives. You know you shouldn’t. There’s a part of you that wants to pack up your immaculate apartment, sell off the ungodly expensive furniture, and retreat in the middle of the night. There’s the other part of you that knows you could never move on from this—Manhattan, the Upper West Side, Delmonico’s, none of it—not until you see Charles dead in that coffin.

You tell her you think you have to. She insists she’ll go with you if you need moral support, foregoing the TMZ routine and returning to best friend.  Until a more pressing reality sets in for her.

“Fuck…how on earth are we going to get back out to the Hamptons?”

Poor Bethany, you think. Your future summers now rest solely on her God-given breasts. Your days of coy flirtations are over.

___

The Church of the Transfiguration was like something out of a storybook. Ornamented to the teeth with Jesus H. Christ and all his workings immortalized in stain-glass and pressing down with ceilings so low you wish you hadn’t utilized so much hairspray.

“My personal tragedy will not interfere with my ability to do good hair…” – Annelle Dupuy aka Daryl Hannah.

You should bolt like a deer and call Bethany and curl up and cry to Steel Magnolias for the rest of the night…but you don’t. And, Daryl, honey, that is a lie—personal tragedy one hundred percent affects one’s ability to do good hair.

You had consumed three martinis at Eleven Madison Park and that makes you wish you had opted for more modest heels, but you persevere. You try to minimize the sound of them against the ancient mosaic marble so it doesn’t interfere with the hunchbacked woman banging out How Great Thou Art on the organ. You wish you had asked Bethany to come, and push away the image of your sister, twisting her cross and saying, “You shouldn’t be here.” Not only in the moral six-year-deep mistress sense but, that in retrospect, you hadn’t taken communion or knelt in confession in about ten years. You make the sign of the cross nonetheless, stopping at the back row to feel among the hymnals for a pack of Big Red gum—the go-to hiding spot for your grandmother’s stash of gin masking agents.

Finding none, you start to sweat. You feel Charles saying, “I told you to stay out of this.”

You see the rigid lot he hailed from. His fraternity brothers; his colleagues; his boss; that bitch who told you he had dropped dead in the park. You are out of your depth, sister. You haven’t even looked up through the stupid veil Bethany conned you into buying from Bergdorf’s…again to make sure the line of credit was still open. Then you see them. A simple line of three figures. You recognize them only through photographs because you were not allowed to traverse the Upper East Side alone between noon and seven-thirty for six years.

Donna…Jesus—next. You’ll circle back.

Start at the casket. Your darling Charles…you’re not ready for that yet, either.

Right to Left:

Brexton—Brex—stone-cold stud who secured Donna the bag when she happened to “forget” her pill case in Manhattan the weekend she went out to Stanford to visit Charles when he had a collegiate case of cold feet. You think, here it is Bethany, your one chance to get us back into the one house in the Hamptons where we know how to use the bidet.

Amanda. She’s crying uncontrollably but also having an allergic reaction to the lilies Donna has placed on every surface that stands still. She’s stunning, even with her puffy features. She’s twenty-four, and a computer whiz—the future of tech to hear Charles tell it. She doesn’t look up at a single passerby offering condolences.

You don’t realize how far you’ve come. Maybe it’s because lady Quasimodo has started banging out Be Not Afraid on the organ. You now pause, because you realize Charles hasn't taken communion since you’d known him either. You reason that they can’t bury him in Central Park, and this was closest to the office.

Donna. You’re shaking her hand. She’s smelling the perfume she was not permitted to understand outside of the occasional whiff off the back of Charles’s blazer as he ripped it off. You realize she’s actually beautiful—not in a gaudy veil—and has been in an hours-long battle with her mascara. She smiles at you with genuine affection.

“Thank you for coming,” she says in a way that suggests she has said it incessantly to a flock of at least a hundred people and meant it every time. She holds your hand for a moment and squints at you. You’re done for. But she simply places her other hand on top of yours and squeezes it. “Thank you.”

You want to die.

But you continue down the line. Amanda can hardly see you through her allergies. Brexton, however, he has your number. At least he wishes he did. You shake his hand that’s clammy with sweat and as he smiles you can see the white corner of a ZYN pouch peeking from under his thick upper lip.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” you finally say to someone.

And then there’s Charles.

Your whole world stops for a moment. You look down at him and it’s him…just…just…peaceful? You wonder if you had really ever known the man when he was at peace. You just assumed you were his peace, but you’ve never seen this expression on his face before. His tan has waned. The Poconos and Southampton have been methodically drained from him, leaving a shell of a man in Tom Ford.

Before you realize what you’re doing, you’re placing a hand on his chest. You’re crying! You’re gripping his tie in your hand as if you’re about to jerk him up out of the coffin and throw him across your back.

Brex looks at you with concern, ignoring the other mourners in the line.

“How do you know my father?” It doesn’t take him long to understand, but he allows you a response anyways.

“I’m one of the others,” you say lamely. “I knew him…from way back.”

The Other Woman.

Brexton knows in an instant what you are, and he shakes his head at his old man lying in modest state.

“Figures,” he says, giving you the once-over. “Figures.”

As you turn to leave you blink back tears and wish you hadn’t worn these godforsaken shoes. You're almost out—back to Bethany and martinis—when Charles’s secretary wrinkles her nose at you from the fifth row.

“Slut,” she hisses.

Praying that some Episcopalian grandmother had some foresight about her, and finding that she had, you reach into the pew behind her and remove a paper fan and give the old broad a thwack on the back of the head. You vow in that instant to finally move to the East Side of Manhattan.