After Nico died, their mother spent twenty years drinking. Fiona knew she was crushed, but she couldn’t forgive her. They had done this to Nico, her mother and father. Her mother had stood there, crying, arms crossed, the night their father kicked Nico out, but she hadn’t done a thing to stop him. She hadn’t even given him any money. She’d gone and found his duffel bag in the basement, as if that were a favor.
Over the years, Fiona visited them less and less. She withheld Claire.
And maybe Claire would have been better if she’d had grandparents, a safety net, extended family.
Our bridges can no longer withstand your gestures of love.
Well, fuck.
She peeled her fingers from the railing.
She walked back to Richard’s, climbed the stairs toward the smell of browning garlic.
1986
In the morning, they ate their too-sweet cherry cobbler, and Bill nursed his hangover, and they watched the snow fall. “He won’t make it, will he,” Roman said. “The counsel.”
Yale said, “I’m more concerned the rest of them won’t. They’ll say they have to delay because of the snow, we sit around three more days, it all falls through.”
Even one extra day might mean more interference from Frank, an intervention from Cecily, a telegram from the president of the university.
“Good God,” Bill said. “Who called in the doom brigade?”
Roman stammered an apology. His hair, still wet, hung in clumps. One clump had left a spray of water across his glasses. He said, “I mean no one’s called yet, have they? That’s good. It’s a good sign.”
* * *
—
The three of them were there at 9:50, waiting in the car until the bank unlocked its doors. At ten, they stood in the lobby trying to warm back up. Yale cursed himself for wearing Nico’s shoes, which had gotten wet in the snow and let the slush onto his socks. But they’d brought him luck last time, and he was superstitious. Why couldn’t he have claimed Nico’s scarf instead? It might even have smelled like Nico, like Brut and cigarettes. It was Nico’s favorite joke to try to convince people that Carly Simon’s song was about him, about his apricot scarf. “And I am so vain!” he always said. “So you know it’s true!” (“That scarf is not apricot,” Charlie always responded. “It’s orange and gray.” Nico would reply that British men were known to be color-blind.)
Yale tried not to look at the clock above the counter. Despite the snow, despite Nora’s obstructive family: If this didn’t happen today, it would be his failure, his embarrassment. It was a magnification of how he felt when he was the one to pick the movie out of the listings: Although he couldn’t control the action on the screen, he was the one who’d set it in motion, and if anyone had a bad time, it was because of him. Instead of simply watching the movie, he’d watch it through Charlie’s eyes, glancing over for the reaction, listening for laughter. And right now he wanted Bill Lindsey thrilled. He wanted to give Roman the experience of a lifetime. He wanted these curious bank tellers to keep watching, with fascination, as art history was made.
The snow continued falling in huge, lacy chunks.
Roman said, “I’m worried the roads are getting worse.”
But just then Debra walked in, wrapped to the eyeballs in a brown coat, a blue scarf. She said, “One of you has to help Stanley unload that wheelchair.” Yale felt something unclench in his lower back, a muscle he hadn’t even felt cramping.
Bill went out to the van while Debra talked to a teller, and by the time Stanley and Bill came back through the doors with Nora and her chair, everything was in order. The whole group—Frank hadn’t arrived yet, thank God—followed the teller into the safety-deposit room.
“Our counsel is on his way,” Yale said to Stanley. They could proceed without him if need be. But then . . . but then, but then.
They started piling their coats on the long table in the middle of the room, but Bill needed it clear for inspecting the work. He handed out the white gloves they’d optimistically brought from the museum. Debra refused hers.
Nora wheeled herself up to the table. She said, “This is just ideal, isn’t it? Now we have to tell you, I’ve absolutely bought Debra off.”
Debra didn’t respond, just nervously twirled her key ring. Her fingers were red from the cold.
Nora said, “There’s more in here than art, and we’ve decided it’s time to hand some of that over. Jewelry, you know.” Yale wondered why this would be a compelling payoff when Debra could just as easily wait for Nora to die. Maybe it was a matter of everything passing through Frank, the possibility of Frank giving necklaces to his wife instead.
Yale was afraid to bring it up, but he said, “Where’s your father?”
“We killed him,” Debra said. “I smothered him with a pillow.”
Nora burst out cackling. “Well, that would solve things, wouldn’t it? Don’t scare them, dear, they’ll think you really did it. No, what Debra’s done for us is promise her father that nothing will get signed till this afternoon. A lie, but a white one.”
“I promised him too,” Stanley said.
Debra said, “He’s sleeping in.”
But it was 10:15, and Yale imagined that when Frank woke up fully, when he looked around the empty house and thought about the fact that everyone was at the bank without him, he’d show up. Or worse: He had let them leave only to wait on the front porch for the lawyer he’d asked to speed down from Green Bay. Or he was polishing his shotgun.
Debra’s hands shook as she tried to settle the key in the lock. She looked not just annoyed but terrified. Like someone who’d cut her losses and sold out her father, her rather vengeful father, for what was left of the pie. Yale was still struggling for a response when Roman touched Debra’s elbow. “You did the right thing,” he said.
Debra said, “Okay, there’s two boxes, but I can never remember which is which.”
The teller helped her slide out the first large container and carry it to the table. It held the shoebox—Yale carefully lifted the lid and took in the edges of envelopes and folded pages and white-rimmed photographs—plus some velvety jewelry boxes and a large envelope that, when Debra opened it, seemed to contain birth certificates and old deeds. Yale replaced the shoebox’s lid, resisting the temptation to paw through.
They held their breath for the second container, and when Debra opened it and reached in herself, gloveless, Bill made a noise like a frightened bird. He said, “Please, let me, let me.” Nora, at eye level to the tabletop, couldn’t have seen into the box yet. She sat still, hands folded across her lap, taking long, patient blinks. Yale wondered how long it had been since she’d seen the pieces in person. Stanley stood beside her, attentive.