Chapter 13 Victoria
“Victoria! I got your email last night. I’m SO sorry. Obviously, I was so honored you, like, shared that with me.” Harper put her hand over her heart. “But it’s so terrible.”
“Thanks, Harper. I’m going to work remotely for a few days while I go to the funeral.”
“Omigod, you’re in mourning. I’m sure you’ll need more than a few days.”
Victoria considered. Was she in mourning?
She was shocked and saddened, of course, in the way you were supposed to feel certain emotions in response to specific events.
Truth be told, Victoria felt like she was grieving the loss of a possibility that would now never materialize, much like her actual father.
When Victoria had called the landline of the house she grew up in—digits emblazoned upon her mind despite their habitual disuse—her mother had answered and Victoria asked, in what she hoped was a measured, reasonable tone, whether anyone was planning on telling her that her father had died.
Her mother had chided Victoria for making it all about her.
Then she had handed the phone to Jimmy, who told her that their mother was taking it really hard and he probably would’ve remembered to call Victoria eventually.
Victoria then asked if any arrangements had been made.
That they had managed to plan a funeral in record time before—or without—bothering to notify her felt like an additional blow.
“Was he old?” Harper asked.
“Seventy-three. So, relatively. To you, that must seem ancient, of course—”
“No! Not at all!” Harper protested too vehemently. Victoria remembered being Harper’s age, when fifty felt futuristic and old age would surely be accompanied by flying cars.
“It was a brain embolism.” Victoria thought about her father’s fate. There was no way to predict or prevent such a thing. It was a trick of faulty wiring, a malignant shooting star.
“Sometimes when I sneeze when I’m driving, I get worried I’m going to crash my car,” Harper said solemnly. “There’s a lot of scary stuff out there and so much of it is completely out of our control. We have to, like, live in denial about our mortality or we’d just be paralyzed.”
As Victoria was taking in the astuteness of this observation, she saw a flash of a familiar salt-and-pepper coif heading down the hallway accompanied by—Victoria felt like she had been slapped in the face.
Nash was meeting with Mark? Harper saw her expression and followed Victoria’s gaze to the source.
“Ugh. Do you want me to spread rumors about Mark in the assistants’ Slack channel?”
“It’s okay,” Victoria said, trying to maintain her equilibrium. She was surprised that Nash was willing to meet with Mark and disheartened to see that her estimation of the billionaire—and his ability to size up a person—had fallen short.
Before she could spend more time mourning the loss of Nash to her odious coworker, Victoria’s cell phone rang, and she had to deal with the loss of her father.
Ace had just landed in London and had no doubt received Victoria’s text saying that everything was fine, but please call her when he could.
Victoria gestured to Harper that she needed to take the call and Harper backed out of the room, making a heart shape with her hands.
“What’s wrong?” Ace asked immediately.
“My dad died. I didn’t want to tell you over text. Which, incidentally, was how I learned about it.”
“What happened?”
“Brain embolism. He dropped dead in front of the TV.”
Victoria thought about her parents. Regardless of their lack of affection for her, they had tethered their lives together for nearly fifty years.
Victoria wondered how her mother would go about her daily routine when half of its focus had been erased.
And if—no, when—this happened to Victoria and she lost the person she had built a life with, how would she cope? How did anyone bear it?
“I’ll book the next flight back,” Ace said.
“No. I’m fine.”
As Victoria said it, she wondered if she truly was. Maybe she was still in shock, but she felt strangely dissociated from the fact of her father’s death.
“I know how strong you are, and even if you are quote-unquote fine, you’re my wife. I want to be there for you,” Ace said.
“I know and I appreciate that, but we can talk on the phone. There’s no need for you to physically be here.
I would tell you.” The silence that followed conveyed Ace’s skepticism.
“I would,” Victoria insisted. She didn’t want to explain to Ace, who had never met her family, that introducing him over a casket would only intensify the awkwardness and hostility thrown her way.
Victoria looked out the window, down to the manicured streets of Beverly Hills, which were only now beginning to awaken.
A shoeless homeless woman, her matted hair sticking up at haphazard angles, scavenged through a trash can in front of the window display for a men’s clothing store selling $2,000 sweaters.
“I’m looking up flights.”
Victoria drew her gaze away from the window. “Ace—seriously, don’t. You won’t even make it in time. I’m leaving for Fresno in an hour. The funeral is tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow? What are they, Jews?”
“Jimmy said my mother didn’t like the idea of him lying around in a morgue because my father didn’t like being cold.”
“Even though…”
“Correct.”
“Jews also avoid cemeteries and funerals when they’re pregnant,” Ace said, his voice taking on a different cadence.
“The spiritual and emotional state of a mother directly impacts her unborn child. The mother’s emotions and surroundings are imprinted on her developing embryo.
Attending a funeral or entering a cemetery is an emotionally charged event best avoided to protect the mother and fetus. ”
“Are you reading from the internet?” Victoria asked.
“Only so I could explain it properly.”
“I respect the Jewish traditions and that makes a lot of sense, but I’m not a Jew. I have to go to my father’s funeral despite…everything.”
Victoria couldn’t put a finger on why the need was so strong, but she also knew that if she didn’t go to Fresno and pay her respects and remind everyone that she was part of this family, the last tenuous string connecting her to her origins would snap.
Maybe Victoria should have been ready to let go, but she wasn’t.
“I understand,” Ace said. “I’ll come with you.”
“I don’t want you turning around and spending another twelve hours on a plane. You could get a blood clot. I love you and I’ll call you when I get there and I’ll tell you if I need you, I promise.”
“I can’t allow my pregnant wife to drive almost five hours by herself into the belly of the beast.”
“My friend Liz did offer to come with me…”
Victoria’s GPS directed her up Thrasher, and then she saw Liz standing in front of an attractive mid-century modern house, an overnight bag resting at her feet. Liz waved. Victoria pulled over and stepped out of the car.
“Are you sure about this?”
“I’m coming.”
“What about work? And Preston? He’s never even laid eyes on me and he’s fine with a random woman absconding with his girlfriend?”
“You’re not random, you’re my friend. I’ve told him all about you.
And I think he missed the funeral part and thought it was some kind of fun girls’ trip because he kept telling me to have a blast and send him pics from the road.
” Liz made a conspiratorial, hapless gesture—men, what can you do?
Victoria smiled for the first time that day.
“Your evil boss really okayed the time off?”
“About that…” Liz said, picking up her overnight bag. “I kinda quit.”
“What do you mean ‘kinda’?”
“Not kinda. I quit. I completely quit.”
“Liz, that’s great. Good for you!”
“Well…there’s a little more to it. I might go viral.” Victoria shot her a quizzical look. Liz pulled out her phone, scrolled, and handed it to Victoria. She read Liz’s diatribe, her eyes widening and her face modifying itself every few seconds with a medley of emotions in quick succession.
“Liz! This is incredible.”
“So you see, I’m free to go to Fresno for as long as you want.” Liz marched over to Victoria’s car, opened the trunk, and put her bag in. “I’m probably going to need a few pit stops, though. The baby’s tap-dancing on my bladder.”
Victoria walked over to the car, her mind still playing catch-up with all that had occurred in the last twenty-four hours. “You’re an angel for coming with me and you’re a hero for writing that email and you can have as many bathroom breaks and road trip snacks as your heart desires.”
“TIA,” Liz said, and they shared a smile.
Victoria input the destination into her GPS even though she could navigate from the 5 to the long stretch on CA-99 that would deliver them to Fresno without its guidance.
Any sort of assistance, however, felt like a salve.
Victoria had not made this trip, or seen her family, in five years.
As if sensing her thoughts, Liz asked, “When’s the last time you were there? ”
“Five years ago.” Victoria started the car. “My brother Jimmy was being named teacher of the year at the local middle school. I had just done my TED Talk—”
“Wait! What? I didn’t know you had a TED Talk! On what? I need to see it!”
Victoria smiled, flattered by Liz’s effusiveness.
“It was about how women can take control of their financial futures despite it being such a male-dominated world, which could lead to advances in gender equality on a global level. Unfortunately, people in town had gotten wind of it, and when I went back for my brother’s big day, they were laying it on thick and asking if I was on a first-name basis with Bill Gates or had my own plane. ”
“Yikes. So your brother felt like you stole his shine?”