“You can always ask, babe. If I can, I can. If I can't, I can't.”

No, if you won't, you won't, not can't, Sarah thought.

It was a debate she had had with him for years, and was not about to tackle with him tonight. It was why the relationship worked for her sometimes and at other times it didn't. She always felt that Phil should make adjustments for special circumstances, like Stanley's death for instance. Phil was rarely if ever swayed from his path, and only when it suited him, not others. He didn't like being asked for special favors, and she knew it. But they liked each other, and were familiar with each other's quirks and styles. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was hard. He said he never wanted to get married again, and had always been straightforward with her about it. She had told him just as honestly that marriage wasn't a priority for her, or even of interest to her, and Phil liked that about her a lot. She didn't think she wanted kids. She had told him that right in the beginning. She said she wasn't about to give anyone a childhood as lousy as hers, with an alcoholic father, although Phil wasn't an alcoholic. He liked a drink now and then, but was never excessive. And he already had kids, and didn't want more. So it had been a good fit in the beginning. In fact for the first three years, it had suited them both to perfection. The shoe had only begun to pinch slightly for the last year, when Sarah mentioned that she'd like to see more of him, like maybe one weekday evening. Phil was outraged the first time she said it, and felt her request was intrusive. He said he needed weekday evenings to himself, except those he spent with his kids. After three years Sarah felt it was time to take a small step forward into more time together. Phil was adamant about it, Sarah had gotten nowhere on the subject for the past year, and they argued about it often now. It was a sore subject for her.

He didn't want to spend more time with her, and said the beauty of their relationship had always been mutual freedom, weekdays to themselves, companionship on weekends to the degree they wanted, and not having to make a serious commitment, since neither of them wanted to get married. All he wanted was what they had. A great time in the sack on weekends, a body to cuddle up with two nights a week. He wasn't willing to give her more than that, and probably never would. They had been stuck on the same argument for the past year, and gotten nowhere with it, which had begun to seriously annoy her. How hard was it to see her one extra night a week for dinner? Phil acted like he'd rather have root canal than do it, which Sarah said was insulting. It was slowly becoming a bitter battle whenever the subject came up.

But by now, she had four years invested in the relationship, and she didn't have the time or energy to go out and audition anyone else. She knew what she had with Phil and was afraid she might find someone worse, or no one at all. She was nearly forty years old, and the men she knew liked younger women. She wasn't twenty-two or -four or -five years old anymore. Her body was pretty damn good, but it didn't look the way it had when she was in college. She worked a fifty-or sixty-hour week at least, in a high-stress job, so when was she going to be dating to find someone else who might want more than just weekends? It was easier to stay with Phil, and live with his gaps and lapses. He was the devil she knew, and for now that was good enough. Maybe not great. But the sex was better than she'd ever had. It was the wrong reason to stay in a relationship, she knew, but it had kept her involved with him for four years.

“I hope you feel better,” he said, as he pulled into his garage six blocks away. She could hear the garage door close, and he had probably driven by her house, while telling her he couldn't stop by to give her a hug. She tried to ignore the knot in her stomach that his doing that had caused. Was it so unreasonable to ask him for a hug? Midweek it was, from his perspective. He didn't want to fill her emotional cup, or even deal with it, on weekdays. He had his own problems, and better things to do with his time.

“I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow,” Sarah said numbly. It didn't matter if she did or not, she felt lousy then, and as usual he had stuck to his narcissistic guns. Phil was smart, charming when he wanted to be, sexy, and good-looking, but he was all about himself, and no one else. He had never claimed otherwise, but after four years she expected him to mellow a little and be more flexible. He wasn't. Phil took care of his own needs first. She knew that about him, and didn't always like it.

At first he had told her how devoted he was to his kids, that he coached Little League and went to all their games. She had realized eventually that he was just a sports fanatic, and gave up coaching because it ate up too much of his time. And he didn't see his kids on weekends, because he wanted the time to himself. He saw them for dinner twice a week, but never let them spend the night, because they drove him insane. They were thirteen, fifteen, and eighteen. He had one in college now, the other two were still at home with their mother, but as far as he was concerned, they were his ex-wife's problem. The two younger kids were girls, and he figured dealing with them was ample punishment for his ex-wife having left him for someone else.

More than once, Sarah had felt he was transferring his anger at his ex-wife onto her, for crimes Sarah had never committed. But someone had to be punished, not only for his ex-wife's sins, but worse yet, for those of his mother, who had had the audacity to die and thus abandon him when he was three. He had a lot of scores to settle, and what he couldn't accuse Sarah of, he blamed on his ex-wife or kids. Phil had “issues” up the gazoo. But then there were all the rest of the things that she liked about him, well enough to stick around. She had considered it a stopgap relationship at first and it was hard to believe that it had lasted for four years. Much as she hated to admit it to herself, or to her mother, God forbid, Phil defined dead-end relationship. Once in a while, Sarah hoped that eventually there would be more substance to it, not marriage, but just more time. By now, she expected him to be closer to her, but he wasn't. He kept distance between them by only seeing her twice a week and maintaining separate lives.

“I'll call you tomorrow, on my way home from the gym. And I'll see you Friday night. …I love you, babe. Gotta go in now. It's freezing in the garage.” She wanted to say “good,” but she didn't. He made her so mad sometimes, and hurt her feelings when he disappointed her, which he often did, and she disappointed herself by putting up with it.

“I love you, too,” she said, wondering what that meant to him. What does love mean to a man whose mother died and abandoned him, whose ex-wife left him for another man, and whose kids wanted more from him than he had to give? I love you. What did that mean exactly? I love you, but don't ask me to give up the gym, or see you on a weekday night … or come by for a hug on a night we're not supposed to see each other, just because you're sad. There was a limited amount to what he had to give. He just didn't have it in his emotional piggy bank, no matter how hard she shook.

She lay and stared mindlessly at the TV for another hour, trying not to think of anything, and then she fell asleep on the couch. It was six in the morning when she woke up, and thought about Stanley again, and then knew what she wanted to do. She wasn't going to let them put him away in the mausoleum with no one to be there for him. Maybe it was unprofessional, as Phil said, but she wanted to be there for her friend.

She stood in the shower for nearly an hour after that, crying for Stanley, her father, and Phil.





Chapter 3


Sarah drove to the cemetery in Colma, past the long line of car dealerships, and reached Cypress Lawn just before nine. She let the secretary in the office know why she had come, and she was waiting in the mausoleum for the cemetery people to arrive with Stanley's ashes at nine o'clock. They placed the urn inside a small vault, and it took another half hour to seal it up with the small marble slab, while Sarah watched. It unnerved her to see that the slab was blank, and they assured her that the one with his name and dates on it would replace it in a month.

Forty minutes later it was over, and she stood outside in the sunlight, looking dazed, wearing a black dress and coat. She felt momentarily disoriented, looked up at the sky, and said, “Good-bye, Stanley.” And then she got in her car, and drove to the office.

Maybe Phil was right, and she was being unprofessional. But whatever this was, it felt awful. She had work to do for him now, the work they had completed so carefully in the three years they had worked together, meticulously preparing his estate, and discussing tax laws. She had to wait to hear from his heirs. She had no idea how long it would take, or if she would have to proactively pursue some of them. Sooner or later, she knew she'd round them up. She had a lot of good news for them, from a great-uncle they didn't even know.

She tried not to think of Phil, or even of Stanley, on the drive back. She went over a mental list of things she had to do today. Stanley had been buried, as simply and unpretentiously as he had wanted. She had put the wheels in motion to probate the estate. She had to call a realtor to discuss putting the house on the market, and have it appraised. Neither she nor Stanley had had a precise idea of what it was worth. It hadn't been appraised in a long time, and the real estate market had gone up drastically since the last time it was. But the house also hadn't been touched, remodeled, or even freshened up in more than sixty years. There was a huge amount of work to do. Someone was going to have to restore the house from basement to attic. More than likely it would cost a fortune. She was going to have to ask the heirs, when they surfaced, how much work they wanted to do, if any, before they put it on the market. Maybe they would just want to sell it as it was, and let the new owners worry about it. It was their decision. But she wanted to at least get a current appraisal for the heirs before they turned up for the reading of the will.