It was daunting, sure, but dinner had been painless and unmemorable, and I felt good about the day just behind us, the fun part of the night about to start. The little one and I faced a long stretch with just the two of us-no sitters, not a lot of help-in the frigid and tourist-packed city. The holiday season was heading into overdrive, most everyone hightailing it out of town. Eleven days after Diana passed-eight days after Lily’s third birthday. “Mommy’s gone? Where’s Mommy? When is she coming back?”ĭecember 19th. For the rest of my days, I’ll be tortured by how, in these moments, those eyes grew, widening, focussing. My daughter’s eyes are unnaturally large, and give her face a particularly moonlike quality. She will always be in your heart, just like you will always be in her heart.” “She was very sick and had to go away.” I kept eye contact. “Your mother is in Heaven,” I began, then paused. Her face glowed her eyes sizzled gray, their green flecks shining. Lily twisted in place, swishing the tulle back and forth, giggling at the little rustling sounds. It was a little too big for her, its hem grazing the floor. She and Diana’s friend Susannah helped Lily into a sleeveless formal dress. The chance to be with Lily-to help her granddaughter-was the only thing keeping her in one piece. Peg, who was Diana’s mother, was still in shock, numb with grief, exhausted by bearing witness to what her only child had been through after she’d been diagnosed with leukemia, two and a half years earlier.

Instead, I concentrated on tasks at hand: making calls to a woman who ran a funeral home out of what seemed to be her Brooklyn apartment (for a reasonable price, she handled the cremation), following up with a Ninth Avenue bakery (confirming the color of the iced letters, as well as the message on the double-chocolate cake). It would have been cruel to ruin the festivities for her. This was going to be her first real birthday party. Daddy’s big girl didn’t come up to my waist, wasn’t close to looking above the bathroom sink and seeing her reflection. Lily was focussed on one thing, the event that Diana had been determined to stay alive for, but had missed by three scant days: party party party.

I accidentally kicked at some colored wooden blocks scattered along the throw rug. Darkness shadowed our overstuffed and unkempt belongings, everything just like when we’d left-the metal walker still next to Diana’s desk, the schedule for the visiting nurse taped to the bedroom door. Even with newly painted walls and smooth floors, our apartment remained tawdry. Instead, a friend helped me repaint, sand down rough surfaces. We’d almost moved to a place in Harlem, but the owners hadn’t wanted dogs, and I couldn’t abandon my aged Shih Tzu. She’d been anxious to find somewhere better, and, though I maintained an unhealthy attachment to my pad-I’d lived here for a decade, it was rent-stabilized, convenient-I agreed to search. Did I need help? I started to answer then broke down, sobbing onto his shoulder.ĭiana had moved into my one-bedroom apartment after we’d married, but she’d been adamant that the place was too small for two adults, let alone with a baby. He was a gay-night-life promoter, coming back from an event. I struggled to unload everything onto the street outside our apartment on Twenty-second. Suitcases and overstuffed trash bags filled the trunk and back seat-Diana’s clothes and underwear, her laptop and pill regimen, her prayer journals, motivational posters, family photos. I vaguely remember getting out of the taxi, the pricks of cold like needles on my face. I’d have to work on funeral arrangements for Diana. Lily was staying with her grandmother Peg, who was in town from Memphis I’d have to talk with Peg in the morning, make sure Lily’s day was occupied, maybe some kind of day trip or museum. Throbbing, from behind my eye sockets, extended into my molars. A dusting of frost coated Fourteenth Street the taxi continued driving away from the hospital, crossing the line dividing downtown from the rest of this dark and morbid city.

Lemon stripes