Page 109 of Saltwater

“Well, you’re going to find out,” she says. She sounds triumphant, as if she has played the best practical joke, told the funniest story at a dinner party. “Because when we get home, I’m changing the plans for my estate. I think it’s fitting that you only get what he was going to get.Your father.”

With Marcus and my father gone, there is no buffer between Naomi and me. I am Marcus’s daughter, the only part of him she has left, which might be some kind of family. But it’s easy to imagine Naomi seeing too much of my mother in me one day. Deciding she can’t let that reminder live.

After so much collateral damage, I would only be an afterthought.

A tragedy,she would say.

I make the decision quickly. It’s a permanent solution. One that won’t involve lawyers and arrests, the police and Naomi’s estate attorney. Everyone will believe it was suicide. There’s a symmetry to it, after all. Isn’t that what they said about my mother for years?A suicide.An accident.I pick the pills up, making sure that Naomi can’t see me. But of course, it hardly matters. She’s too drunk to notice.

I drop them into her glass, stir. It takes a few minutes, but they begin to dissolve. I pretend to make myself a drink as well.

The living room is dim—lit by only two table lamps. There is some ambient brightness from the moon outside, but it’s dark enough, I think, that she won’t be able to see the dissolved pills, the milky hue they’ve given the clear vodka. I swirl it to distribute them. Thegraininess is visible, like a little cloud at the bottom of her glass. I worry she’ll notice. Of course she’ll notice. But I have to try. I turn to face her, bring her the drink.

She takes it from me.

She looks at it. And in that moment, I thinkshe sees.But then she throws it back in one swallow. She’s already too drunk, too drugged, to notice.

I hope it’s enough.I don’t sit back down.

“Tell me about my mother,” I say.

She looks at me.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“And the only thing you can think to say isTell me about my mother?”

I don’t respond.

“She was brilliant,” she says. “She was beautiful and she was brilliant and she ruined my life and probably ruined yours. What else do you want to know?”

“I want to know what she was like. How she talked. What perfume she wore. Where she liked to work. What inspired her. Her favorite meal. Her favorite book. I want to know what she said that night and every night before. I want to know if, in addition to looking like her, I amlikeher.”

Naomi looks up at me, her eyes unfocused, and it seems impossible that the drugs could work that quickly. But then, I don’t know what else she has already taken. I don’t even know what I just gave her. She begins to talk about my mother. Five minutes tick by, then ten.

“You’re nothing like her,” she finally says. Her voice is thick now. The words take effort. “She had nothing and built everything. You have everything and will be…” She tries to take a deep breath, as if speaking is making her winded. Her chin collapses against her chest, but she manages to get it out as a whisper: “…nothing.”

I stand there, in front of her, listening to her breathing become slower, and slower, until finally, I can’t detect it at all. I wait for what seems like hours, although it can only be ten minutes, maybe less. And while I wait, I look around the living room. At the tasseledcouches and the polished picture frames. At the bookcases filled with moldering early editions, the paintings completed by lesser-known impressionists, the terrazzo floors from the early twentieth century. This villa, whose textures and histories and disappointments are my own.

There is the sound of music coming from somewhere down on the marina. A steady beat. A thrum. A pulse. I place two fingers on Naomi’s neck. I slide them up, under her jaw, to where her artery should be pumping, and I wait.

Nothing.

Helen

Now

The villa is empty. Thecarabinieri have come and gone. Naomi’s body left just as the sun was coming up. An overdose. The police ruled it a suicide without hesitation, then informed me an autopsy would only be completed if I requested one. I did. If only because my family didn’t for my mother. And they were guilty.

Now I am drinking a cappuccino under the green-and-white-striped umbrella that shades the table next to the pool. I am serving myself melon that the housekeeper has set out for me. I am folding the pink pages of theFinancial Timeswhen Bud calls from New York.

“How are you holding up?” he asks.

I appreciate that he doesn’t apologize for my loss. All business is all I can handle.

“I’ll survive,” I say.

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