Robin Vigfusson

Robin Vigfusson’s stories have appeared in Constellations, The blue nib, fresh.ink, Garfield Lake Review, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, Windmill, Lou Lit, Jewish Fiction.net, Coe Review, Old 67, Feminine Collective, The Valley Review, The Tower Journal and other literary magazines.

A House By the Beach

My Nana and I were strolling along the Upper East Side when this witch came flying out of the sky and knocks Nana off her walker. She had just jumped fifteen stories from her penthouse apartment.

First, I thought she was a manikin and I’m screaming like hell, clinging to my Nana who later died that day from shock.

There was nothing about Nana in the New York papers, just about this socialite hag who was famous for throwing parties fifty years ago and how she was depressed because all her celebrity friends were dead. Did I mention this woman was eighty-five? Rather than OD on her meds, she has to throw herself out the window in a last scream for attention like a kid having a tantrum.

Nana was so bashed up, we had a closed casket at the wake. To compensate for no viewing, my sister and I made this huge collage and put it on an easel next to the coffin, showing Nana in every phase of life from her christening to her wedding to hugging one of her great grandsons at his first Holy Communion. I’m not religious, but Nana would have loved it and the prayer card we chose read: Grieve not nor speak of me with tears... but laugh and talk of me as though I were beside you. Twas heaven here with you.

After the funeral, my cousin, Gerard, asked me to come to his office on Monday and my mother was leery but I went anyway.

Gerard is a lawyer and his office is a room in his house. Gerard was kicked out of a law firm after a failed attempt at Rehab. It’s now pretty much a given he’ll never recover since most of his clients are drug dealers who regularly give him dope as “thank you” presents. When I sat down with him, he immediately lit a joint, saying how it’s his way of going on vacation whenever he feels stressed.

Aside from weed, the whole house smelled like burnt toast because he needs to clean his oven. It was totally dark in there. A lot of stoners keep their places dark as if they feel safer that way or maybe they’re just hiding the fact that they never clean. He had the radio on to some freeform station which featured the kind of Metal they’re either playing in outer space or Hell.

“How’re you doing, Nicole?” I could tell he knew he was being sympathetic and he should tone it down, but I didn’t say anything.

“OK. Considering.”

“And how’s Sebastian?” Sebastian is my four-year-old.

“He’s great.” I was tempted to ask if we could just cut to the chase, but I didn’t want to be rude.

“You wanted to talk to me, Gerard?”

“Yeah,” he shook his head and took a long, philosophical sigh. “What I wanted to talk to you about is suing this woman’s estate. The one who killed Nana.”

“Are there cases like that?” I asked.

“It doesn’t happen very often. In all honesty, I can’t find another one like it, but it qualifies as a wrongful death suit. It’s the same as vehicular homicide. If she was going to kill herself she didn’t have to be so reckless.”

“That’s what I think,” I agreed and an ice-cold rage reared up in me like a cobra.

“This woman was worth forty million dollars.”

“Are you serious?”

This made things even more intense. It’s not like rich people don’t have the right to kill themselves, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to feel sorry for them when they do. All the suicides I ever knew were broke which was why they did it in the first place. And at eighty-five? Why bother? Nana was eighty-four, had breast cancer and was living on social security, so no, I had no pity, whatsoever. We were only in that neighborhood because Nana was going for a consult at Columbia-Presbyterian. She’d developed a rash from the radiation treatment like that was all she needed on top of everything.

“You can bet her daughter’s going to sue this woman’s shrink for malpractice,” Gerard said.

“Why the fuck was she worth forty million dollars? Who was she, anyway?”

“She was an heiress. Her father owned a movie studio. Google her name and we’ll talk more.”

When I went home, I googled her name and The Times headline read: Chronicler of Wealth, Fame and Influence Jumps to Death. In other words, she was an elevated fangirl. Even in her will, she couldn’t stop name dropping; it was like an affliction. "I give my fairy tale moon cookie jar that belonged to Andy Warhol to Glenn Close, if she should survive me."

More and more, it was pissing me off that this sappy crone took my Nana’s life like a random mugging that turned fatal. She didn’t give a shit where she landed or who she landed on like all the people below had nothing to live for anyway.

When I read her obituary, there wasn’t a word about her personally, just descriptions of her parties which sounded very lame. Celebrities getting into fights and leaving bloodstains on her carpet and guests bragging that they’d been there and seen it.

There were some names of her guests I vaguely recognized, but they were dim echoes like Blackjack gum or Lustre Crème shampoo, obsolete brands I might have heard my mother mention. It was clear this biddy killed herself because she felt outdated, and if that was the case she should have done it sooner and in private.

After my research, I went downstairs. My son, Sebastian, was staying with his father for a long weekend. His father and I never married and we’re not together, anymore. I hadn’t told my son Nana was dead yet, because they were very close. She and my mother took care of him when I worked during the day. I told him Nana was still in the hospital, but couldn’t see visitors.

My mother was in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher. To supplement her pension, she rents out a bedroom in our house through Airbnb. We live five minutes away from where Tony Soprano got whacked. We’re near a lot of landmarks like Pizzaland and Bada Bing which is actually a gentlemen’s club called Satin Dolls, and you’d be surprised by all the guests we get from overseas who just want to visit Tony’s stomping grounds. One of them was even from Iceland.

Professionally, I’m a beautician at Supercuts, but I also go to people’s homes. Some housewives get groups of their friends together and I’ll cut their hair at twenty-five bucks a head and they don’t have to tip me. You could say my mother and I are part of what they call the “sharing economy.” Nana pitched in with her social security, but now we don’t even have that and whatever money she saved went on her funeral.

“What did Gerard want to see you about?” my mother asked, scraping leftover eggs into the garbage.

“Mom, why don’t you let me frost your hair?” She stopped coloring it after my father died. Her hair is shapeless and ghostly, making her already look like she’s doing time in Purgatory.

“You’re not going to have anything to do with Gerard, are you?” she asked.

Gerard is the local villain since his clients have sold drugs to some of our neighbors’ kids.

“He wants me to sue the estate of that bitch who killed Nana.”

My mother shook her head. “He must be smoking crack, now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because these people have the kind of lawyers who could eat him for breakfast. They might even file a counter-claim.” She talked like these lawyers were wizards who could come up with much better spells.

“Gerard saved us from getting ripped off,” I reminded her.

A while ago, we were getting calls from the IRS, saying we owed them money and my mother was panicked, ready to fork over whatever they wanted until I spoke to Gerard and he said it was a scam. A month later, these dicks get arrested in India for bilking millions out of senior citizens. They don’t even live here so how did they get the handle on that poor soul mentality? Is it maybe universal, people like my mother who believe we were just put on earth to get fucked over?

I'll never get over her pitiful reaction when Nana died: “Maybe it’s for the best. She was suffering.” She almost talked like this crone did Nana a favor.

“I’m calling Gerard and telling him to sue them,” I said.

I love her to death, but what a sad case.

Three months later, Gerard called and said he had great news.

“Did you get a court date?” I asked him.

“We’re not going to trial. I settled.”

He acted like that was a victory, but I felt disappointed. I was looking forward to a trial especially since Gerard said I’d make a great witness, being slim, attractive and tall in heels. Some of my senior clients have told me I look like an old time movie star named Jennifer Jones, except for my weave and tattoos.

“How much?” I asked.

“Let’s meet at Joe’s Crab Shack. It’s on me.”

Joe’s Crab Shack is not cheap so that was, at least, a sign we had something to celebrate. Otherwise, he would have had me come straight to his house. It was raining like hell out which didn’t seem fortunate.

He was waiting in a booth near the bar when I got there. This restaurant is like being at the shore without the beach. They even sell souvenirs, tee shirts that say ‘Got Crabs?’ and the décor includes surfboards.

Gerard was glowing so the news had to be good unless he’d just taken a hit of something. He ordered us both lobster and martinis which is not my cocktail of choice, but I didn’t say anything.

“How much?” I asked him.

“More than half a mil. Six hundred thousand.”

I kind of blanched because that is a lot of money though truth be told, I think I was expecting even more. He looked miffed because I didn’t seem impressed.

“This is an amazing deal, Nicole. A big factor they take into consideration is the decedent’s earning power. Nana was eighty-four and had cancer, for Christ’s sake. She was living off her dead husband’s social security.”

“What’s a decedent?”

“The deceased person.”

“I thought people sue based on how much the defendant’s worth.”

“Well, that certainly helped. Her daughter wanted a quick end to this. As long as there’s a lawsuit, the assets are frozen.”

When he said that, I got this image of her daughter scrounging around her mother’s penthouse, sizing up the valuables there.

“Her daughter never even said she was sorry,” I told him. “She never reached out or anything.”

“She kept insisting it was an accident, that her mother fell off the terrace. She didn’t want it sealed off as a crime scene. There was information in there related to the estate.”

I’ve heard how junkies cease to be people and just become junkies. I wondered when this woman ceased to be a person and just became her “estate?” When all her friends died and her youth was over?

“Nicole, for Chrissake,” Gerard seemed very irked that I wasn’t more excited. “Six hundred thousand dollars! That’s a house on the beach!”

When he said that, lightning outside made the sky shiver so that the moment itself seemed to blink. Nana had a house near the beach when my mother was a kid in the nineteen-sixties. It washed away in a storm and they could never afford to rebuild. They talked like it was Paradise Lost and maybe that’s when my mother’s sadness really began.

Nana talked like the beach was as close to heaven as you could get and maybe she’d prayed for this even though she didn’t live to see it. Like I said, she was very religious. And here was that woman who could afford ten beach houses and jumped fifteen stories. It was like when a man dies, and even though they’re divorced, his ex-wife dies a week later as though there was a karmic bond between them, after all.

My mother would say I was reading into things too much and it was just a coincidence, but if it makes me feel better, then what’s the harm? It was a comfort to think my Nana made this deal with God that worked out. Better to think that way than like that woman who put all her faith in the here and now until it shrank to the size of a vice around her head. No wonder she jumped to get out.