She patted the seat next to her, but Laurel climbed in her lap instead. Julia began to hum the same song, holding her granddaughter tightly, and soon tears streamed down her slack and chalkish powdered cheeks.
Six long hours later, it was Kathryn who hung on tightly to Laurel as she ran through the waiting reporters at the front doors of their apartment building.
“Kay, I’m sorry,” Evie said. “We should have hired some security.” She blocked the closing elevator doors as a couple of persistent newsmen shouted questions at them.
Thankfully no one was on the tenth floor while Kathryn waited for Evie to unlock the apartment door. “Look, Evie. Laurel’s sound asleep. I want to be a child, oblivious to that chaos downstairs. I want to wake up and have it be a bad dream.”
Evie quietly closed the door behind them. “Go on. Put her to bed.”
A few minutes later Kathryn walked into the living room.
Evie stood in the corner over a bar cart with an ice bucket and crystal bottles of decanted liquor. “I’m getting us drinks. Strong drinks. God knows I need one.” She studied Kathryn for a second. “What am I saying? I should probably just give you a straw and the whole bottle.”
Kathryn unpinned her hat and tossed it on the coffee table. “Today was bad.”
“Your mother-in-law didn’t make it any easier. Look at me, Kay.” Evie patted her cheeks. “Am I pale? Do you think I have any blood left since leaving Julia’s, or did she suck it all out of me?”
“You’re awful.”
“No, she’s awful. I’m truthful.”
Kathryn unbuttoned her suit jacket, sank into the sofa, and let her head fall back on the pillows. Above her was the hole in the acoustical ceiling left over from a swag lamp. One of those things they’d meant to fix. The iron poker near the wood box was bent from when the movers ran over it. The mirror over the fireplace hung a little crooked. Everything was the same, yet nothing would ever be the same again.
“You’re a sweetheart for putting up with that woman. She’s so critical.” Evie dropped ice cubes into a couple of highball glasses. “What do you want to drink?”
“Anything.”
“I don’t know where you get your patience. Pop used to check his watch every two seconds if anyone kept him waiting, and Mother was just like I am: intolerant of anyone who disagrees with us. You are the saint of the family, Kay.”
“No, I’m no saint. I just loved her son.”
Evie paused, ice tongs in her hand. “It broke my heart when Laurel started to sing.”
“My first urge was to put my hand over her mouth.”
“I can’t think of anyone better to sing a Jimmy Peyton song than his daughter. The only reason you didn’t know what to do was because Julia makes everything so uncomfortable.”
“It’s not Julia. I don’t understand the world anymore. It seems so wrong, Evie, so unfair. I want to shout and shake my fist at God and tell him he made a huge mistake. Jimmy had so much left to give the world. He was going to make it big. I knew it. You saw it.”
“Everyone saw it, Kay.”
“We had such big dreams. The sheer waste of his life makes me want to scream.”
“You can holler the walls down if you want. It is unfair. Do whatever you have to do to get through this horrible thing.”
It was a horrible thing. Everything was changing and out of her control. Her skin hurt; it felt too small for her body, like the changes to her were happening in a matter of days. She glanced at the crooked mirror above the fireplace to see the ravages of sudden widowhood right there on her face.
Evie clattered through the bottles on the cart. “Where are those silver things that go on the bottle necks to tell you which liquor is which?”
“Laurel thought they were necklaces. She put them on her storybook dolls.” Kathryn dropped her hands away from her strained face. “It drove Jimmy nuts, but he didn’t have the heart to take them away from her.”
Evie held up two of the bottles. “I wonder which one is the scotch.”
“The brown one.”
“Funny.” Her sister sniffed one of the bottles. “Bourbon.”
“I’ll take bourbon and Coke.”
Evie dumped bourbon into the glass and splashed a small bit of Coke over it.
“One night Laurel made me tell her what each necklace said. She named her dolls Bourbon, Scotch, Rum, Gin, and Vodka. Jimmy and I laughed about it.” Strange how his laughter was still fresh in Kathryn’s mind, and for just the briefest of moments, she didn’t feel locked in some dark, parallel dimension made for those left behind.
Here.” Evie handed her a drink and sat down, folding her legs under her. They didn’t speak.
Her years with Jimmy filed through Kathryn’s mind like frames in a documentary. His laughter, his fears, his tears of excitement when he first saw their daughter in her arms, squalling and hungry. She could hear him singing the songs he had written to her, and for her. She heard the first thing he ever said to her—and the last: Just one more night on the road, babe. I’ll be home tomorrow.
Her sister set her glass down. “Lord, that tastes good. Maybe a few drinks will wash away the bitterness of Julia’s tongue.”
“Do you think what she said was true?”
“I doubt it,” Evie answered. “But which tidbit of your mother-in-law’s viperlike wisdom are we talking about?”
“That society treats women without men as nonentities.”
“Oh.” Evie laughed bitterly. “The idea that widows should be strong because it makes people uncomfortable to see someone’s grief.”
“Well, she is a widow. She should know.”
“She’s a black widow. They eat their mates. She deals with her grief by denying yours. She also said single, independent women have their life preferences questioned.” Evie raised her chin and mimicked Julia’s husky voice: “‘You are a divorcée, Evie dear, and marrying a divorced woman is like going to the track and betting all your money on a lame horse. Divorcées are only fair game for men who want to get them into the bedroom but would never consider marrying them.’”
“You shouldn’t let her get to you.”
“You’ve had more practice dealing with her than I have, Kay.”
“I might be getting a lot more practice.” Kathryn rested her glass on her knee and stared into it. “Julia wants me to give up this place and move in with her.”
Evie turned sideways on the couch, facing her. “You cannot live in the same house with that judgmental woman who will suck every bit of life from you. Half the time I want to muzzle her. Even now, when I should feel terribly sorry for her, she can say something that makes me just want to pop her.”
“Underneath, Julia is as fragile as I feel. You saw her in the car. She needs Laurel, and with Mom and Pop gone, Laurel needs to know her only grandparent.”
“The woman is an emotional vacuum.”
“She’s never that way with Laurel. It’s sad, really, the way she was talking today about her son the star, as if all she had left of him would be those few minutes when some radio station played one of his songs. I have Laurel. Maybe Jimmy’s mother should, too.”
“You’re Jimmy’s wife. She should treat you better.”
“He used to say it wasn’t me. She couldn’t let go of him. I look at Laurel and I’m so scared about what kind of parent I’ll be. What if I cling to