If You Lived Here

At forty-two, Shelley Marino desperately wants a child. Though she and her older husband, Martin, have tried during the course of their marriage, their only hope now is adoption. Martin, who has seen his share of heartbreak, can't reconcile what Shelley wants with what he knows about the world, and as the father of two grown children from a previous marriage, he is not sure he can bear the emotional challenge of fatherhood again. To love is to risk loss and Martin suddenly decides that is a gamble he can't afford to take. The pain of great loss is something that Mai, a woman who emigrated from Vietnam more than twenty years ago, knows all too well. Though Mai has attained all of the accoutrements of the American dream-a healthy business, an SUV, a house of her own-she has not allowed herself to forget the family tragedy that forced her to leave Vietnam. She has distanced herself from her life and from everyone around her-until she meets Shelley. Their budding friendship forces Mai to make a decision that will put her face-to-face with the world she left behind so long ago. And in the course of the journey the two women must make together, Shelley, too, confronts choices that will reverberate for the rest of her life. Lyrical and moving, If You Lived Here takes the reader on a journey as well, from loss to love, and shows how new beginnings can heal old wounds.

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If You Lived Here
A Novel

Chapter One

Shelley

I'd guess that Marinos have been burying Rivenbarks for seventy years. I can't compare funeral customs here in Wilmington, North Carolina, with funeral customs anywhere else, but I can tell you that Rivenbarks usually ask for the minister from First Baptist, flowers from Will Rehder, and an open bar. Sometimes they read Psalm 23 and sometimes they read Psalm 121. It's hard to know what they'll request for a burial like this one, though, because there's nothing routine about the death of a child. This afternoon, on the first really beautiful day of spring, four-year-old Oscar Rivenbark fell from the third branch of the magnolia tree in his backyard. The ambulance managed to get him to the emergency room within about fifteen minutes, but he died before the paramedics could wheel him in.

My husband, Martin, and I run Marino and Sons, the biggest funeral home in the area. Between the two of us, we have over forty years of experience. Still, we struggle when a child dies. Outsiders probably imagine that my world is all catastrophe, but most of our cases come from heart attacks, hospice, and Brightmore, a retirement community a few miles away. It's not like there's a fatal car accident after every prom.

I get the news of the accident from the police blotter, so I'm prepared when the boy's aunt, Gracie Rivenbark, makes the first call to our office at about five. I click open the calendar on my desktop and ask, in a voice that sounds both competent and sympathetic, "When would Tara and Mark like to come in?" I try to get the parents involved as soon as possible. I'm here to help them with their grieving, and grieving starts at the moment of death.

Gracie says, "Hold on." Behind her, I hear the murmur of various voices, a volley of muffled questions, silence, then a few more moments of tortured debate. Sudden death produces a kind of bafflement in people. It confuses and startles them. They forget where they are, their name, the year. And then, five minutes later, they can become extremely lucid. In my dealings with the bereaved, I never rush them.

"Would tomorrow afternoon work?" Gracie asks. "Around two?"

"That's fine," I say. This case demands particular sensitivity, not just because the boy was young, but because his parents are young as well. Even Aunt Gracie seems to be conducting this business for the first time, ever. When you bury old people, you often deal with other old people, and they're likely to have organized a funeral before. As gently as possible, I tell her, "I'll need them to bring in a few things when they come."

Gracie says, "A few things?"

"An outfit. Something he might have worn to church, or even something he loved to play in." Gracie confers again with her relatives. The door to my office squeaks open and I look up to see my husband, Martin, slip inside. He's wet haired and red faced from the gym and he's holding today's mail. He doesn't know what's happened yet. When he looks at me, I squinch my eyes shut, then open them again, signaling, This is a bad one. I scrawl "Rivenbark—4 ys. old" on a notepad. After a lifetime in this business, Martin doesn't respond to news of death in any obvious way. His flinches are microscopic: a twitch at his mouth; an alteration in his breath; the slow, slow blink of his eyes. Cases like this one have always been hard on him, and they seem to have gotten harder lately. I dread the thought of what's ahead for us.

"Why do you need clothes?" Gracie asks.

"Well," I explain, "we'll need something for the burial." Martin sits down in the armchair, starts to go through the mail, then abandons it on his lap. Even the new issue of the Atlantic Monthly fails to interest him. He watches me. Martin's fifty-four this year, twelve years older than I am. His parents and grandparents were all morticians and he started going out on retrievals in his early teens. In comparison, I'm fairly new at it. I got my license a few years after I married him, so that's not even twenty years. I impress Martin, though, because the sadness never really gets me down. It came as a surprise to both of us, actually, that I could marry into this business and adapt so well. How could you know, when you're a kid, that you have the perfect personality to become a mortician?

Gracie Rivenbark says, "I'll go through the closet this evening."

"That'll be fine," I tell her. "And, we'll need a couple of pictures, too, in case the family wants to make a display for the service."

"A display," Gracie murmurs.

"And his Social Security number."

"Okay." Her voice sounds light and wispy. I've got to get the poor thing off the phone.

I make my final point. "And Tara and Mark should feel free to bring their other children to the meeting, too."

Gracie says, "I'll tell them."

And then, in the background, I hear sobbing. It is desperate, rhythmic, utterly bereft. I hold the phone in my hand, listening, staring into my husband's eyes.

At that moment, I forget myself. "Is that Tara?" I whisper.

Gracie says, "Yes."

Martin's head falls back against his chair. I close my eyes. It's been months since we have buried a child and in that time my own life has changed significantly. The sound of an anguished parent affects me more deeply now. I suppose that's because I'm about to become a mother myself.

Martin and I have tried for years to have a baby. At forty-two, it feels as if my chances of giving birth are about as likely as my chances of winning the U.S. Open. There comes a point in your life when your expectations about your future have to shift a little and . . .

Excerpted from If You Lived Here by Dana Sachs
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