Chapter 2 #2
“I did it with Hallie.” Sabrina laughed, looking at both her daughters.
They looked beautiful and fresh and young.
They were like a breath of air. They glanced around at the touches she had added since they’d last been there.
They hadn’t been to Malibu in months and had stayed in Bel Air during their father’s final weeks.
Sabrina had brought their outdoor furniture from Bel Air.
The Malibu house had a huge pool, and a tennis court.
And the sisters knew that their father kept his vintage sailboat at the beach club.
They wondered what their mother had done with it, but neither of them wanted to ask.
Malcolm had been crazy about his boat, the Sabrina Fair.
The original film with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn had been one of his and Sabrina’s favorite movies.
It was made long before they were born but they loved it anyway.
Malcolm was a big Humphrey Bogart fan, Sabrina loved Audrey Hepburn, and they both loved classic films. They tried to get their children interested in them, but never succeeded, although once in a while Coco watched them as part of her fashion research, to see the clothes.
She agreed with her mother about Audrey Hepburn.
She was the chicest woman who had ever lived.
The children did enjoy watching their grandfather’s films. He was a Hollywood legend and had made some great movies.
They loved watching their grandmother in her early movies, before she married and gave up acting to be a wife.
And it always struck them how much their mother looked like her, and Coco too.
Lizzie went to get the bags out of the car.
She had brought one very compact suitcase, and Coco had brought two big ones.
They’d each brought something nice to wear on Christmas and casual clothes for the rest of their stay.
They had no plans and didn’t want to make dates to see their old friends until they saw what kind of shape their mother was in.
It didn’t seem to be the right year for them to be socializing, with their father so recently deceased.
And a number of their school friends had moved away to other cities to find jobs after college.
Several were in New York, and Lizzie saw them when she had time, which wasn’t often because of law school.
A gardener working outside the house carried the bags upstairs for them, and Sabrina thanked him with a warm smile and a few words.
Then he came downstairs and went back to working outside.
Their old housekeeper from the Bel Air house had semiretired, and was coming two or three times a week to check on the cleaning service and to buy groceries for Sabrina.
Otherwise, she knew, Sabrina wouldn’t eat.
They walked into the house together, and the girls smiled when they saw the tree.
They recognized their favorite decorations and Christmas balls immediately and thanked their mother for bringing them to the new house.
It was a thoughtful gesture they appreciated.
She was always attentive to them, as she had been to their father.
They followed her into the kitchen where she made tea for them, and they sat at the kitchen table for a few minutes and talked about nothing special, while the girls tried to get a feeling for how Sabrina was.
The circles under her eyes told their own tale.
She looked tired, and there was a look of despair in her eyes that Lizzie didn’t like, while Coco admired her silver shoes.
When they finished the tea, both girls went upstairs to freshen up, and Coco wandered into Lizzie’s bedroom and closed the door.
“Mom looks so tired and she’s so thin,” Coco said, worried about her.
She could see now why Lizzie was concerned.
The soundtrack seemed okay, and Sabrina sounded lively, but the picture wasn’t good when you looked closely.
“She probably isn’t sleeping, or eating,” Lizzie said.
“She must sit around thinking about Dad all day. Her life must be pretty dismal without him, and lonely.” They both felt sorry for her.
They missed their father too, but they had lives and school and jobs and friends, and interactions with other people.
Sabrina had nothing except memories and a silent house.
It made her daughters sad for her. Being there brought it all into sharper focus.
But she was putting on a good front for them.
Lizzie and Coco sat on the patio with her when they came back downstairs. There was a stack of blankets on a chair near them, which they didn’t need in the daytime. There were large pool towels too, in case anyone wanted to swim, which the girls didn’t.
Half an hour later, Justin arrived. His plane had been on time, and he was as happy to see the girls as they were to see him.
The three of them hugged and then he hugged his mother.
He was delighted to see all of them, and he FaceTimed Arabella to tell her he had arrived safely.
It was the first time Sabrina had seen her.
She was a very pretty young blond woman with an aristocratic look.
They had dinner together that night, having ordered takeout from Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica.
It took a long time to arrive, but they had a delicious meal.
Then Justin made a fire in the white marble and glass fireplace and they shared a bottle of wine their mother poured for them.
Lizzie laughed, remembering all the times she had gotten in trouble in her teens.
Coco had been easier and rarely balked at her parents’ rules.
Lizzie had been bolder and more argumentative.
Lizzie had reminded Justin of when he had stolen their father’s car from the garage and taken it for a spin, without a license, when he was fifteen.
“And I got a flat tire,” he added sheepishly, “and had to call Dad for help. He didn’t even know the car was gone until I called him. I was grounded for a month.” Their parents had been more lenient with Coco, because she was younger and Sabrina said they were “broken in” by then.
It was hard for Sabrina to believe how quickly the years had flown. Even the girls were aware of it. It all seemed so far away, and what had been dramatic then, and so serious, seemed funny now. They had grown up to be decent people. Sabrina was proud of them.
They went for a walk on the beach the next day, all four of them.
They were a cohesive little unit and every time she saw them together, Sabrina was acutely aware that someone was missing.
It was constantly apparent and she still had the feeling that Malcolm would walk in at any minute and tell them it was all a joke.
But it wasn’t. It was deadly serious, he was gone, and never coming back.
She had to make her peace with it, but she still didn’t see how.
She loved being with her children, but it made her miss her husband more.
He belonged with them, still making plans for his retirement, so they could spend more time together, and now that time would never come.
They followed all their usual traditions, which was comforting.
Sabrina said grace at the beginning of the meal, as she always did on holidays.
Malcolm had left that to her. They played games after dinner, Clue and charades and card games.
Malcolm had liked to play liar’s dice with them, but Sabrina hadn’t brought the dice out.
It was too sharp a reminder of their father.
It had been his favorite game, and they were all good at it.
But he had been the grand master of the liar’s dice games.
The evening ended well, and in the morning, they exchanged their gifts and had a late breakfast in pajamas.
Sabrina had hired caterers to prepare their Christmas dinner, and she was relieved the day after when it was over.
They had made it through Christmas without Malcolm, and Sabrina was grateful she and her children had been together.
Being in Malibu had made it easier for all of them, since they had never celebrated Christmas with him there.
“So what are your plans now, Mom?” Lizzie asked her mother gingerly as they were putting the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher on the twenty-sixth.
Justin and Coco had gone to play tennis at the tennis court on the property.
Justin had said he was going surfing that afternoon.
Sabrina had brought his wetsuit from Bel Air. It was in his room.
“I don’t have any plans,” Sabrina said quietly.
How could she make plans without Malcolm?
It seemed like a sacrilege, to make plans and have fun without him.
It seemed disrespectful. And she didn’t have the energy or desire to plan anything.
After the children left, she was going to sink back into the quicksand of her solitude again.
It wasn’t a plan, it was inevitable, with nothing to look forward to.
Lizzie had been trying to think of ways to pull her mother out of her slump. Sabrina covered it well for them, but Lizzie could sense how unhappy and lifeless she was under her pretense to them of being “fine.”
“I’ve been thinking about something, Mom,” she said cautiously, not sure how her mother would respond.
“I remembered how much Dad wanted you to get an apartment in Paris. He talked about it again right before the end. It meant a lot to him. You should think about that now, to honor his memory. It was what he wanted for you.” Lizzie was hoping that by framing it as her father’s dying wish, her mother might be more receptive to the idea.
She expected her to balk at first, and she did.
“What would I do with an apartment in Paris now?” Sabrina looked shocked. “It was for both of us, and he wouldn’t be there to share it with me. It makes no sense.”