Good Mourning (7 page)

“Hi,” I said softly, walking toward her. I gave her a hug. “How are you?”

Mom nodded her head. “I'm fine,” she said. She was always so strong, stronger than she needed to be.

We made a pot of Earl Grey tea and a plate of cookies and sat down in the den. The apartment had a sadness hanging in it—I could actually feel my dad's
not
being
there, like a cloud hanging over the place. I imagined my mom alone in this space, night after night, and felt a pang of guilt.

“Have you been going out with friends at all?” I asked. I hated to think of her here by herself.

Mom shrugged. “Sometimes. They're starting to drop off,” she said.

“Drop off? What do you mean?” I asked.

“All of our friends, your father's and mine, they're all couples. We hung out in couples. Well, I'm not a couple anymore. It throws the whole thing off balance, I guess.”

“Not the Bergers though, right?” I said. The Bergers lived two floors down and had been close friends of my parents for over a decade.

“Oh, don't be mad at them, this is just what happens,” said Mom. “At first, people come over all the time and they call you to get coffee or dinner. But after a month goes by, they just . . . move on. And they feel . . . I don't know, weird, I guess, inviting me now. They don't want me to be the third wheel. Or the fifth. Or the seventh. Odd numbers are far less comfortable than evens.”

“Yeah, but do they have to do everything with their husbands?” I said. I couldn't imagine Gaby and me abandoning each other like that.

“You don't have to worry about me,” said Mom, touching my hand. “I'm worried about you. This funeral thing. Isn't it time to do something else?”

I pulled my hand away, annoyed that she couldn't see that I was helping people . . . and myself. Planning funerals was the one thing that was keeping me sane.

“It's not some hobby,” I said. “This is my
job
. Besides, I like it. I'm helping people.”

Maggie waddled over to the table and sat between my feet, hoping for a stray crumb. Sadly for her, neither Mom nor I had touched the cookies. I thought about Annie and her love for dogs. I felt so much loss for her and the life she didn't get to finish. What might she have done in those lost years, had she not been a body in a bed?

“Elizabeth, are you listening to me?” said Mom, now looking slightly annoyed. “You're staring into space.”

“Sorry,” I said, snapping out of it. “What did you say again?”

Mom sighed. “It's like you choose what you want to hear,” she said. She took a sip of her tea. “I just think it's time you thought about your next move. People are starting to talk . . .”

“Oh, okay, and I should care about what a bunch of stuffy women think, rather than living my own life?” I said.

“Would you just stop?” said Mom. “Why do you always have to do the opposite of everyone else? Look at your brother. He's a lawyer. He has a girlfriend. He's traveling to interesting places. Do you want to spend some of the best years of your life locked in a death home with corpses and crying people? Life isn't long, Elizabeth. It's not. I just hate
seeing you waste your time like this. It's been six months. You've proven your point.
Enough
already.”

“Look at the time,” I said, glancing quickly at Dad's watch, which I'd worn every day since he died. “I have to go, Mom. Maybe you should call your perfect son to come over and have tea with you. Sounds like you'd much prefer hearing about his super-exciting life doing
corporate law
.”

“You're being dramatic,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Well, at least I inherited
one
of your traits.”

I walked back to my apartment feeling defeated. I was exhausted from work, sure, but the conversation with my mom was almost more tiring. At least at Crawford, clients respected me and saw the value in what I was doing. Mom seemed hell-bent on proving that all the blood, sweat, and tears—three things we had in ample supply at Crawford—were for nothing.
Why does everyone in my life need convincing?
I thought, my mind shifting from my mother to Monica, who still hadn't smiled at me once.
When can I just be myself, and do what I love, and have that be enough?

FIVE

Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous

L
ook at this guy,” said Monica, rolling her eyes. She was talking—not to me, of course, but just to the general vicinity—about a man in cargo shorts with a camera around his neck, who was now standing in the Crawford foyer. “Some people have no shame.”

Yes, there was the man, fanny pack and all, avoiding eye contact with us as he casually strolled around as if he were browsing for furniture. He was far from the first tourist I'd seen in my seven months at Crawford—at least one or two a week popped in, usually trying to discreetly take a photo before slinking back outside onto Madison Avenue. At first I found it super rude (just what grieving people need—a guy with a zoom-lens camera) and super
weird
. Call me boring, but when I jet off somewhere, nothing on my vacation itiner
ary involves death. In fact, I like death to be left entirely out of the plans. Zero death.

But after months at Crawford, I finally started to understand why tourists—the kind of strange, stalker-ish ones, ­anyway—were always popping in to check the place out. Crawford was a link to the famous New Yorkers memorialized within its walls—attracting fans of everyone from Judy Garland to Biggie Smalls. Unlike LA, where people can creepily ride around scoping out celebrity homes, New York's elite live high up in the sky in unreachable penthouses protected by doormen and elevator men. Even if you wanted to go all fan girl on Ryan Gosling in his driveway (and come on, wouldn't you feel a little silly?), it's not in the cards. Because there aren't driveways in New York. Just locked-up parking garages where three security guards would spot that fanny pack coming from a mile away.

There has always been an unspoken rule in New York that you don't go up to a celebrity at Per Se or Le Cirque and ask for an autograph or get all weird asking them to take a selfie with you. Maybe it's because some of my friends are famous, or I've spent too many fund-raiser dinners sitting near actual celebrities like Elton John and quasi
-
celebrities like the Kardashians, but I've always loved this about New Yorkers. We can't be bothered to get all caught up in the hype. Most of the time, I didn't even notice when I was hanging out with someone famous. One night at a club, a cute, taller guy pulled me onto the dance floor—it was only
later that I realized it was Vince Vaughn. There was also the time I was sitting next to Pharrell, who was singing along to the song blasting through the speakers. “You have such a great voice,” I said, completely oblivious. “You could be a singer!” He just smiled and said he'd think about it.

My casualness around Hollywood types might also have been the reason Tony had called me into his office a week earlier to talk to me about “what the hell I'm doing here,” as he put it. After almost a year at Crawford, my title was still “receptionist”—at least officially—but on top of answering phones and greeting clients, I made an effort to get involved with every part of funeral planning. The other receptionists were pretty much there to collect a paycheck. I knew I wasn't there for the money. Though the work was fulfilling, my salary was basically a trip to Europe and a handbag, not exactly lifestyle-altering income.

“What would you think about being a little more involved?” Tony asked.

“I thought I already was!” I said.

“Well, yeah, sure. And you're doing great helping clients plan services. The thing is, I can't do much with the pay and title. Union bullshit. It's just what it is. But you seem like you want to take on more. And, you know, I think you've seen enough. You know how this place works.” Tony paused. “You're ready. Do you feel ready?”

I nodded. “Oh, absolutely.”

“I figured as much,” he said. “I know you have experi
ence with these . . . people.” He said the last word very carefully. “I just can't make it, you know, official. It's more an understanding between us. But consider yourself promoted, in my eyes.”

“So . . . kinda like unofficial
party planner?” I said, smiling. “For the dead?”

Tony shook his head and laughed. “What am I getting myself into?” he said. “I want you to keep doing what you're doing, just spend less time at reception and more time with the clients. You know, meet with them, find out what they want—that sort of thing. Then make it happen. As for title, I was thinking more like director of family services. Does that work for you?”

“It does,” I said.

“You're going to need an office,” said Tony, rubbing his temples.

Oh great
, I thought. It wasn't that I didn't want an office—a little privacy would be nice—but the receptionists already hated me. This was going to pretty much seal that coffin.

“You can move your stuff to the office up front,” said Tony. “Just, you know . . . do it quietly. I don't want to deal with any union bullshit.”

Tony had been asking me for weeks to help out with this funeral and that funeral—each time having to get permission from the president of the company, who wasn't exactly thrilled that I was so involved with clients. But Tony recog
nized the fact that I really
did
understand his clients in a way no one else at Crawford could. Just a day earlier, a man had called who said his last name was Ballantine. “Is that spelled like the sweater or the scotch?” I asked, both of which are pretty expensive brands. To my amusement, the guy paused and then said, “Wait,
who am I talking to
?”

I even kept my cool the day I ran into Richard Gere while I was restocking tissues before a service (Monica was
freaking
). He politely asked me where the restroom was—of course politely; he's Richard Gere, for God's sake—and so I told him. An hour or so later, we ran into each other again. He was all, “How do you like working here? What's your job like?” and I was all, “In case I forget to tell you later, I had a really great time tonight.” Of course, that last part was just in my head. What I actually did was smile and explain that the job was fulfilling, and I enjoyed helping people.

If the guy standing in the foyer was a reminder of anything, it was how different—how
cool
—my job was. (When was the last time Richard Gere used your office's bathroom?) But I also felt a little uneasy with Crawford being another destination, like the Empire State Building or Rockefeller Center. This was a place for grieving. In fact, we had an appointment scheduled in ten minutes, and I was getting nervous that Mr. Fanny Pack was going to make them feel uncomfortable. I wondered if the tourist figured that death on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was somehow less painful. It was easy for most of the Crawford staff to judge the diamond-wearing,
mink-coat-covered women and their white-haired husbands who came through Crawford's doors, and to think they weren't totally shattered at the loss of a loved one. But they were, and I knew that the only real difference between the Fifth Avenue widows and anyone else is that people worth millions, even
billions
, are used to the best—and they want the same for funerals. Ornate caskets, stupidly expensive decorations, grand exits (if it's your last good-bye, might as well leave in style)—these were all fair game.

Tony handed me a stack of folders and led me to an office down the hall from his. Monica was
fuming
as Tony explained to her that someone else would have to cover the phones, since I was going to be working on services. I had actually never minded answering phones—it was the first point of contact with clients, and that was important—but I was happy to be in a separate room where I wouldn't hear Monica taking jabs at me.

“So what kind of budget am I working with?” I asked Tony as I flipped through the folders. “I'm not seeing a lot of numbers on here.”

Tony let out a laugh. “For those clients? There is no budget. Go all out.”

Now
this
was the job I was born to do.

TONY WAS
EAGER
to show me the ropes. I'm not sure if it was because he was happy to be able to push some of
his work off on someone else or if he genuinely appreciated having someone on his team who was excited to be there, but either way, he took me under his wing, and we hit the ground running. First, he told me that there were two golden rules when it came to planning a celebrity funeral: never tell the press
anything
, and always put up barricades, because they'll show up anyway. This made sense: If a famous person died in New York City, he or she was probably going to be brought to Crawford. The seasoned reporters and paparazzi knew this, so they camped out and played their odds. It was like a game of who could out-trick the other. When Heath Ledger died, a reporter pretending to be a family member called up in a convincing Australian accent to try to get information about the service. Photographers posing as florists delivering arrangements once crashed the service of a famous dancer. On the flip side, when Jackie Onassis passed away, an embalmer from Crawford discreetly entered her building and prepped her body in her apartment so that the paparazzi would only get shots of her in an elegant casket—not a body bag. Since I had plenty of experience with the paparazzi through my friends, I knew that privacy was essential—especially at a funeral—and appreciated Tony's diligence.

“WE'LL HAVE
our work cut out for us today,” said Tony, a few weeks into my new job. It was the day of a rock legend's funeral, and the press were already lined up outside even
though we hadn't been returning their calls. This was my first funeral where
everyone
was talking about it—even the “Page Six” reporters who were always writing about my famous friends' love lives showed up to report on who was there. I was a nervous wreck; knowing that the press could document any misstep made me want to throw up a little. My family and friends already thought I had gone off the edge taking a job at a funeral home. The last thing I needed was a public fuckup so they could think I was crazy
and
incompetent.

Tony tackled the press fiasco, while my
job was to secure the tour bus. The idea was that people who came to say good-bye could also pay respects to the rocker's drums, which we could keep outside in a massive tour bus. I was pretty proud of this idea—it was the perfect personal touch. But parking it on Madison Avenue was a whole other story, and I wanted to show Tony that I could handle even the craziest of tasks. I woke up at five a.m., slipped on one of my black blazers, and groggily walked over to Crawford hours before the neighbors would even start brewing their coffee. I normally didn't wake up so early for a service, but finding parking for a two-seat sports car is hard enough in Manhattan, never mind a bus the size of many New York City apartments. I was the first one there, and instead of going inside to put down my bag and get a cup of coffee, I went right to the stretch of pavement outside Crawford, held my arms out like an overzealous crossing guard, and waited for the bus to arrive.
Please don't let anyone I know drive by
, I thought,
thinking about the look on my mother's face if she saw me standing in the street in my Aerosoles. I could practically hear her:
Elizabeth, what are you
doing
?! Elizabeth, your father and I did not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on your education so you could be a glorified parking attendant! Elizabeth, why can't you be more like your brother? Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth . . .
I was relieved when, fifteen minutes later, the massive bus rolled up next to the curb.

After the bus was in place, my second big task of the morning was to finalize the guest list with the star's assistant, who had been working with the musician for almost twice as long as I'd been alive. We'd been going back and forth about the list for twenty-four hours straight, which was a lot of work, but Tony said that was typical for a famous person's funeral. I knew from planning events at my friends' clubs and restaurants that it was always important to check in with a celebrity's publicist or manager and make sure that the highest-profile guests were on a VIP list. (In this case, that included Tony Bennett and Slash.) A VIP list for a funeral might sound straight-up crazy, but when people are used to extra consideration, they expect it
all
the time. Even at a ­funeral.