“You can’t have the same password for everything!”
“I don’t have the same password for everything. I also have kiss my ass 74 for some lesser sites.”
“Oh my God.” Aaron sounded like the most tortured son of all the sons in history. “Do you not realize what a walking security risk you are?”
He’d probably keel over if he knew she’d had the same bank pin number for forty years. “Wait. Why do you need the bank password?” she’d asked, ignoring her security risk evaluation and tuning into his initial request.
“To get a complete picture of the finances we’re working with. I already have the login to your investment accounts, but with your banking information I’ll figure what kind of senior living you can afford. I know your finances took a hit when Dad gotsick. I can help, but I’ve got to be careful with the girls’ college coming up.”
That was the precise moment Frances knew she was not moving to Omaha. If she did, she would never know her password again. Or how much money she had. Aaron would take care of everything so all she’d have to do was exist and die. “Aaron, honey, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want to move to Omaha.”
“I know, Mom. But at some point, you’re going to need help.”
“I understand. But I don’t need it this minute.”
“I’m not saying pack up and move. But it’s not that far in the future. I would feel much better with you nearby rather than a two-hours-plus flight away. Just think about it, and in the meantime, I’ll run some numbers.”
It surprised her that he hadn’t done so while they’d been on the phone. She’d raised a far too efficient and confident son. But that night, because her head was beginning to pound, and she wanted a drink, she wanted to end the conversation. “Tell you what—I’ll come for Thanksgiving, and we’ll discuss it. Until then, I will think about it seriously. Fair enough?”
“That’s months away.” Aaron sighed with resignation. “But okay, Mom.”
To her credit, since that call, she’d thought about it seriously. In fact, it was all she’d thought about since seeing Dr. Jackson, and now she was damn sure she wasn’t going to spend the time she had left in Omaha.
Currently, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by papers and pictures she’d dumped out of two boxes, a tumbler of margarita at her fingertips. She was trying to make sense of all that would have to be done before she kicked the bucket. Cashed in her chips. Bought the farm. Bit the dust. Gave up the ghost. She was still debating which euphemism she was going with. When you’d had a few drinks, they all soundedamusing. She supposed it helped to have a sense of humor at a time like this, and nothing could bring out her sense of humor like a good, stout margarita. Or two or three.
When she wasn’t a little buzzy with booze, she was oddly insouciant about the whole dying thing. It was quite the shock to be sure, and she hadn’t been prepared for her body to utterly betray her as it had. But she’d always known something was going to get her in the end. Very few people were lucky enough to simply drift away in their sleep. She’d thought maybe COPD, given all the pot and Virginia Slims she’d smoked in the seventies. Or a drunk driver, because people were crazy behind the wheel. And, of course, cancer, since her mother had died of it when Frances was twelve and everyone who lived long enough seemed to get some form of it. She wasn’t scared of death or what lay beyond. She was annoyed. She didn’t need this right now. She’d assumed there’d be loads more time.
She was, however, scared of sickness and pain. And thecostof dying. They’d almost had to sell everything to pay for Nick’s ongoing ALS treatment and care. She had Aaron to thank for not going under—he’d made some wise investments for them during those years. She doubted cancer was any more affordable than ALS had been. She didn’t want everything she had to be wasted on her treatment. She wanted to leave something to her son and his family. And she would not allow herself to become a financial burden to him.
So the question is, Frances, what do you want?
Good question, Frances.
She had another slug of margarita, then picked up a picture of Aaron taken at his sixth birthday party. Nick was in the background looking handsome and wearing a silly hat. She was holding a cake, looking young and fit. Dammit, when had she gotten so bloody old? Another photo of Aaron’s college graduation. And one taken in Hawaii, of her, Nick, Aaron and his friend Jake. What a moron that kid had turned out to be.
She picked up another photo of her and Nick on New Year’s Eve. She had a party blower, he had on glasses that said1990. It felt like that picture was taken only yesterday. Life picked up speed as you got older, and these last years had been spent on a bullet train. She missed that man so much. Time had flown by with him, and now she was running out of it.
She sorted through more pictures and ran across one of her when she was a young girl, with both parents. The photo was black and white—she couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old. She stood in the middle of them, her dress a light color, ankle socks and Mary Janes, gloves and a hat. Easter, perhaps? Her mother was in a silky dress and her hair, which Frances remembered looked and felt like corn silk, was arranged in an artful twist on her head. Her father, strong and handsome, stood with a cigar in his mouth. She didn’t remember the occasion, but she remembered the setting—the expansive stone terrace at their Southampton home overlooking the ocean. They spent their spring and summer there, Dad going into the city as necessary.
She put that photo aside and picked up one of her and their longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Becker. Frances was wearing black, sitting on the arm of a couch, her arms folded across her middle, unsmiling. Her long brown hair covered most of her face. The home in the photo was a modest one, and Frances recalled that it had belonged to Mrs. Becker’s daughter. The photo was taken the day of her mother’s funeral. Frances was twelve. No wonder she looked like an angry skeleton.
From that point on the pictures of her childhood almost ceased to exist. As the only child of William Delafield, who had been, as best as Frances could recall, a banking mogul (something that afforded them an apartment in Manhattan and the house in Southampton), she’d been left in Mrs. Becker’s care more often than not.
There were a few more pictures of Frances at various events, such as her father’s wedding to his second wife. Someone hadcurled Frances’s hair and dressed her in a pinafore at the age of thirteen. Frances couldn’t remember wife number two’s name now. She was younger and blonder than Frances’s mother and, most notably, at least to Frances at that age, her boobs were huge. But she hadn’t lasted long. When Frances asked her father why they’d split, he’d said, “Because I’ve already got one kid and I don’t need another one.”
Frances had not been offended. She’d agreed with him.
The third Mrs. Delafield lost her position when she spent too much of her father’s money at Bergdorf Goodman. “I was nothing but a bank to her. Won’t anyone ever love me for me?” he’d asked plaintively.
“I love you, Dad,” Frances had said.
“You know what I mean,” he’d said.
By the time the fourth and final Mrs. Delafield came along, her father was tired. He met Freya Karlsson in Paris when Frances was seventeen and brought her home to meet his daughter and Mrs. Becker. Freya was Swedish and pretty. She had a twenty-something son, Nils, tall and Nordic, who had also come. Frances had taken an immediate dislike to Nils. He was disparaging of Americans, implied she was a rube, and was condescending to her father. The trio didn’t stay long as she recalled, departing for Gothenburg. Frances was left behind with Mrs. Becker.
At the beginning of the summer, she was summoned to her father’s wedding and then promptly returned to Southampton when it was over. Her father stayed in Sweden.
Frances had the run of the place to herself after that, with only Mrs. Becker standing between her and complete debauchery. She laughed out loud now, thinking of her teenaged self. She’d thrown so many parties, had sampled so many drugs. It was the seventies after all, and she’d had unlimited resources.
