Chapter Eight
That Friday, four days after discovering Tom’s letter, Diana is readying her house to host Family Dinner when she remembers the landline.
Abandoning her plans to clean the bathroom, she instead kneels in front of the office bookshelf and pushes aside printer toner, watercolor paints, and a cast-off piggy bank shaped like a snail to unearth the phone and answering machine.
Both had been Tom’s in college. “They still work,” he said when he set them up their first day in the house. “Why not use them?”
Both the answering machine and phone are filthy.
“I really should clean more,” Diana says, wiping away the grime.
She’s surprised by the Full Memory error message blinking across the answering machine’s display screen.
She sits on the floor with the machine in her lap, its wires twisted around her knees, and listens to the fifty messages that follow, all hang-ups.
It’s slow going to wait for the click of each hang-up, then delete the message, but she finds the process oddly soothing.
After the display finally arrives at zero, she plays the greeting, and Tom’s voice fills the office.
Hello! You’ve reached the Morgans. We’re not available.
Please leave a message. Her stomach twists, hearing his voice for the first time in months, but she plays the greeting again and again, letting his words wash over her.
When her front door opens and she hears her name, Diana realizes she’s lost track of the time. She hasn’t set the table, finished tidying the house, or vacuumed. Her mother will notice.
“Be right there,” Diana says, shoving the answering machine back onto the shelf.
She needs more information before she tells her family about Tom’s letter, so tonight, she’ll keep this news to herself. She hopes Duncan can do the same.
In the front hall, her father stands with his toolbox and a broad smile.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he says, enveloping her in a hug.
Diana fits her head under his chin and rests against his coat, chilly from outside.
With her ear against his steady heartbeat, she remembers how her father’s hugs always fixed everything when she was a child.
She wishes they had that power once again.
Francis breaks away when Diana’s mother steps across the threshold, toting an overstuffed grocery bag.
“What’s all this?” Diana lifts the bag from her mother’s grasp. Inside she finds peanut butter, bread, and frozen broccoli. “Another shopping trip for me and the kids? Mom, it’s too much.”
“I thought you needed a few things,” Vivian says, removing her perfectly tailored wool coat and hanging it in the front closet. “There’s more in the car.”
Vivian’s voice is full of warmth, yet Diana hears the unspoken reprimand. Eager to greet Diana, Francis bounded into the house without bringing in any of his wife’s many packages. The General is not pleased, Diana thinks, as her father heads outside again.
“Diana,” Vivian says, peering closely at her as they walk into the kitchen. “Why do you look so tired?”
If Diana explains her recent turn toward insomnia, her mother will launch into a lecture about proper sleep hygiene and follow up tomorrow with an email linking to articles written by someone she says is a famous somnologist. The General may even recommend a visit to a sleep clinic.
Diana has no time for any of those well-meaning, yet unhelpful, suggestions. “I woke up early. Must be that.”
“I’ll pick up some melatonin for you tomorrow.” Vivian turns on the oven and looks around the room. “Where are my grandchildren?”
“Duncan’s in his room. Phoebe’s playing with Mira. I’ll text Lakshmi to send her home.” Diana picks up her phone from the counter. Please send P home. Grandparents are here.
Lakshmi’s text arrives within seconds: Already on her way. Shall I call her back to tuck a bottle of vodka in her backpack? You might need some help to get through dinner.
Diana stifles a laugh. I’ll call if I get desperate. She pockets her phone as her father returns with a gallon of milk and a large dish with a glass lid.
Diana reaches for the milk, but her mother swats her away. “I’ll get everything organized and dinner underway. Your father will help. Go take care of yourself. Your sister and her crew will be here any minute.”
The back door swings open, and Phoebe runs in. She heads straight for her grandmother. Vivian bends down to hug her only granddaughter, her silvery-gray head pressed against Phoebe’s brown locks. They look like the same person, meeting herself at different ages.
Diana slips upstairs. After showering and running a brush through her hair, she changes into a red button-down her mother gave her for her last birthday and a pair of too-snug, dark jeans.
I have to cut back on the wine, Diana thinks, applying cover-up to the seemingly permanent dark circles under her eyes.
She hears her sister and her family arrive as she swipes mascara on her ever-thinning lashes.
On the stairs, she passes her five-year-old nephew, Noah, running up to fetch Duncan to set the table. She tousles his hair, but Noah doesn’t stop for hello, yelling Duncan’s name instead.
“There you are,” Andrea says when Diana turns the corner toward the kitchen. “Let’s get out of here before Mom asks us to help.” She holds up a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Drink?”
Even though she’s younger than Diana by three years, Andrea often acts like the older sibling.
Her work as a psychiatrist for at-risk youth has trained her to evaluate and diagnose every situation, including Diana’s life.
Andrea likes to tell Diana what to do, and for years, this caused tension between them.
Once Tom was diagnosed, Diana let her sister’s natural authority lead the way. It’s easier, she’s learned.
“Did you watch the debate last night?” Andrea asks as they settle on the living room sofa. She doesn’t wait for a response, immediately launching into an analysis of the presidential candidates.
On the other side of the room, Francis and Evan, still in his coat with condensation blurring his glasses, crouch in front of a silent radiator, engrossed in conversation.
While the other radiators in the house hiss and clank, this one mysteriously stopped working a few days ago.
Diana casually mentioned it to her father, and he brought his toolbox to fix the problem.
Francis has recruited Evan, an emergency room physician, to help, assuming her brother-in-law’s ability to patch a bullet hole and diagnose a myocardial infarction makes him qualified to fix machinery, too.
“Diana, you’re registered to vote, right?” Andrea asks, still focused on her election monologue. “If not, I can sort that for you. Or maybe you want to vote by mail so you can get it done early?”
Phoebe skips across the room, stopping in front of Diana and Andrea to offer an elaborate curtsy. Dressed in a striped apron that brushes the floor, the girl wields a wooden spoon like a conductor in front of an orchestra. “Dinner is almost ready.”
“Are you our ma?tre d’?” Andrea asks. Andrea and Phoebe are both carbon copies of Vivian, with heart-shaped faces, dimples, and elegant fingers.
Diana, on the other hand, resembles Francis, solid and Earth bound.
She inherited his temperamental hair that frizzes in an ounce of humidity, his thick eyebrows, and his crooked smile.
“Your what?” Phoebe replies, cozying up to her aunt on the sofa.
“Our ma?tre d’, the person who’s in charge of dinner and decides where everyone sits.”
Phoebe jumps up on her toes and claps her hands. “Yes, follow me!”
Andrea and Diana trail after Phoebe as she twirls across the house, through the kitchen, and into the dining room, where The General supervises as Duncan lights the candles in the center of the table.
Diana notices her best blue tablecloth and long-unused china. Yellow roses in a crystal vase and gleaming stemware complete the table setting. “Mom, this is really nice. Why so fancy, though?”
Vivian places a cast iron trivet next to the candles as Francis and Evan enter. “Family Dinner is an important occasion.”
Tom would have agreed. When it was their turn to host Family Dinner, he served as chef, the only meal he cooked outside of the occasional Saturday-morning pancakes.
He made each dish more elaborate than the last. Coq au vin.
Moussaka. Hand-rolled sushi. He was specific about how the table was to be set, which wine should be served, and when they could begin eating.
Diana found his extravagant efforts endearing, believing he threw himself into the dinners because he missed his own family.
Thoughts of how Family Dinner used to be—how much Tom had loved hosting—make his death feel fresh and new.
“It’s good you stepped in,” Diana says, hoping to prevent the enveloping snare of grief from taking hold. “If dinner had been left to me, I would have forgotten entirely to cook or we’d be scarfing down lukewarm take-out pizza on paper plates.”
A brief frown appears on Vivian’s face, but it’s gone so fast only Francis and Diana catch it. “Children, please help me bring in the food,” she says, returning to the kitchen.
“Your mother only wants to make tonight special, sweetheart,” Francis says gently, taking her hand in his. “You don’t need to make jokes or speak negatively about yourself. We know things are hard for you.”
Diana’s cheeks redden. Family Dinner stopped when Tom entered hospice. These gatherings are intended to be joyful, and there wasn’t much joy for any of them then. Now, her mother is only trying to help. She is grieving, too. Sometimes Diana forgets Tom’s death isn’t hers alone.