Good Mourning Read Online Free Page B

all-white pantsuit that matched her hair. You’d have thought she was going to a summer party in the Hamptons instead of, oh, I don’t know . . . her son’s funeral .
    Elaine shrugged, and after telling me about all the fabulous people she got to catch up with at Dad’s service, she finally left me alone. The only people I wanted near me were Gaby and my friend Ben, who had grown up in the same building as me. Ben loved my dad and was especially a fan of his blueberry pancakes. Even when we were teenagers, Ben would stop by in the morning before school just to have breakfast with Dad and me. “Mr. Meyer,” he would say, plopping his backpack on one of the dining room chairs and taking a seat without having to be asked, “pass the syrup!”
    When eleven o’clock came around, Gaby pulled me off the couch. “It’s safe, mostly everybody has left,” she said. I hadn’t eaten real food in several days, and I could see Ben was already making a plate for me. A few stragglers—mostly my mom’s friends who were too nervous to leave her side—came over just as I was about to attempt a bite. “Elizabeth! Oh! You did such a wonderful job,” said Mrs. Mullen, a woman my mom had met at Christie’s auction house. “I want you to plan my funeral! But, you know, not for a long time. Ha!” I slapped on a fake smile and nodded. It was the only reaction I had left.
    Finally, the apartment was empty. Max had gone out with a group of friends—his method of grieving was to surround himself with people and talk about anything except the thing. The distraction technique. Mom busied herself with paperwork. She had stacks of hospital bills to deal with, but even more, she had all of Dad’s investments. On her side of the family, stock portfolios looked after by private wealth managers did not exist. “How am I going to figure this out?” I heard her mutter from the other end of the dining table, her head resting on her left hand, and Dad’s heavy, monogrammed silver Montblanc pen in her right. She looked so small sitting there alone at a table that sat sixteen. I should have comforted her, but I didn’t. I’d always had an easy relationship with Dad, but with Mom, things were more complicated. Now she was all I had left, and even though it sounds unfair, part of me resented her for it. She had willingly dedicated her whole life to caring for my father when he needed it the most, but he was dead. It wasn’t rational, but I felt that she had failed. She had let him die. She had promised things would be okay, and they weren’t.
    Finally alone in my bedroom, I kicked off my Jimmy Choos, unzipped my dress and let it fall to the floor, and threw on a massive sweatshirt. It felt good to wipe off the waterproof mascara and unclip my pearl necklace. I didn’t have to put on a face anymore. I crawled into bed and pulled the comforter up to my chest. The room was totally dark, except for the city streetlights glowing through the curtains. There was one thing I had kept on: Dad’s Rolex. I lookeddown at the red face and felt a wave of panic rush from my stomach to my chest and back again.
    â€œDad,” I whispered, practically choking on the hurt. “What am I supposed to do now?” I lay there, numb, for what could have been minutes or hours. My only comfort was knowing I had thrown my father the best send-off I ­possibly could. Mulling that over, I somehow finally, finally drifted off to sleep.
    When I woke up, I had the craziest idea.

TWO
    Getting My Feet Wet
    I s Tony here?” I asked, looking at my watch. It was ten a.m. on a Tuesday—almost a month after Dad’s funeral—­and while I normally would have been just waking up from a night of dancing at Marquee (at the time, the hottest club in the city), I instead found myself standing in the foyer of Crawford, with Maggie tied up outside, finally