“It’s a lot of responsibility,” Jenny says while sipping on a glass of prosecco in the Initiative’s stunning boardroom. “But it’s important.”
The Compensation Committee is celebrating surpassing another fund-raising goal, and the room is thick with men in Brionis and women in Louboutins. Jenny, incredibly thin and wearing a spangled dress, is younger than most of those involved, but she’s one of those who’s been hardest hit by the tragedy, though she doesn’t agree with that label.
“I think that honor goes to Franny. You must’ve heard of Franny? Her story is ah-mazing.”
I haven’t, and she gladly fills me in. Ten minutes later, my head is spinning—Franny’s story is amazing, unique. Adopted twenty-four years ago, she’d recently met her birth mother, only to lose her soon after when the building fell. Initially reluctant to get involved, she’s turned into a tireless advocate for the cause and is now the cochair of the Compensation Committee.
“You must talk to Franny,” Jenny says, looking around the room. “I thought she’d be here by now.”
Jenny promises to bring her to me but returns with a fresh glass, a canapé, and no Franny.
“I’m sure she’ll show up soon. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”
That proves more difficult than I could’ve imagined.
19
POSTER WHAT?
CECILY
Kaitlyn’s funeral was a hard day for me. Joshua was a mess, and her daughters were inconsolable. I know, sometimes, Kaitlyn felt like the kids were closer to Joshua than to her, that they remembered the time when she was postpartum after they were born or the echoes she felt after that, and had never bonded with her properly, but it wasn’t true. I often told Kaitlyn that she had a kind of dysmorphic disorder about motherhood. She saw herself in a completely different light than her children did, or anyone else who was watching. Those girls doted on her, emulated her, looked to her first when they said or did something they were unsure of. Joshua was a good father, patient and kind, but it was Kaitlyn who was the star of their everyday life.
Sitting on the hard church pew that was starting to feel too familiar, we clung to one another, Henry and Cassie and the girls and Joshua, as the service went on and on. We rode together in the limousine to the house, Kaitlyn’s daughters shuddering on either side of me, Cassie and Henry still brittle from Tom’s funeral two days before. A car full of broken people; how were we ever going to be made whole again?
Joshua’s cousins had stayed behind to get the catering ready, to make sure the canapés were hot and the crudités were cold, that there was enough booze to go around. I heard someone remark, as I went in the front door, that she’d been subsisting on cheap wine and spanakopita for a week, that she’d lost two pounds already. Then they saw me, and one of them turned red and the other said, “Sorry,” and I just shook my head because what did I care? They were right. If I hadn’t lost Tom and Kaitlyn, I might be one of those women, annoyed that I had to wear black for weeks on end, tired of the sadness, the endless parade of receptions and sermons, and happy that my clothes were fitting looser than they had in years.
Hell, I was one of those women. I would’ve given anything to avoid it all, to throw out every black thing I owned and never wear anything but bright colors again. But I couldn’t forget that if things had been different by a couple of inches, in the grand scheme of things, then I would’ve been on the other side of it and might not be there at all.
The cousins had forgotten to open the windows, so it was stuffy in the house. I settled the younger children in the basement with a video, then went to the kitchen to do just that. As I pried open the window over the sink, I noticed a group of women standing in the backyard, smoking cigarettes. It had been a while since I’d seen that. It felt illicit even watching them, like my first hidden puffs taken in a clearing with my girlfriends up behind our high school, worried a teacher would find us.
Only these women weren’t furtive; they weren’t hiding their sins; they were shaking their heads as if they couldn’t believe the story they were hearing. One of them kept glancing over her shoulder at the house. Something was off. People were acting strangely. Not just sad but upset.
No, that’s not the right word. Disturbed.
I walked around the first floor. The furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and there must’ve been more than a hundred people in the house, pushed up against one another because the house wasn’t that big. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but when I saw her, I approached with a sense of foreboding. She was at least fifteen years younger than the other women, early twenties, overweight, with dark-brown hair that had suffered a bad perm a few months earlier (did people still get perms?). I searched the brain tape, but I’d never seen her, though there was something familiar about her. She was wearing a black dress that didn’t fit her very well, falling to an awkward place below her knee that made it difficult for her to walk.
She was the only person standing alone, and despite the lack of space, there was a clearing around her, as if it was dangerous to stand too close to her.
“Hi, I’m Cecily.”
She held out her hand limply. We shook. Her hand was clammy, like a damp fish. It didn’t feel as if it had the
