Edith

SYNOPSIS: EDITH by Jo BarneyEdith, sixty-seven, wakes on Christmas morning to find her husband Art lying next to her, dead. Their shotgun wedding, forty-some years before, has not led to a happy-ever-after scenario. Edith is pretty sure she doesn't like Art, perhaps never has, and she is sure he has felt the same way, but their senses of responsibility have kept them together. Edith has focused on raising her son Brian, who has become successful in all parts of his life: job, marriage, fatherhood, and he is the joy of her life, just about the only one.Art is cremated and buried, but a mystery uncovered by an autopsy (required because of his sudden, unexpected demise) involves a high alcohol blood content, barbiturates, and Valium. Art, to Edith's knowledge, did not take sedatives or other psychotropic drugs, drank, yes, but not to excess. The insurance company questions the possibility of suicide and the resulting lower payout. Edith, so angry at her husband for guilt-punishing her and their son in this way, goes through the dead man's pockets, discovers a secret life involving bars, restaurants, a hotel, and as she follows up on the clues to this life--matchbooks, receipts, a pink Kleenex--she discovers Art's connection to an l8-year-old girl, dark-skinned, curly wig, and beautiful.She also meets the girl's social worker and Seth, a good-looking older black man who says she is handsome. Edith, trying to begin life over, is glad she's had her hair colored and a make-over.In the meantime, Brian's wife Kathleen reveals that Brian is coming home at night smelling like another woman, sometimes like citrus. He's taken large sums out of their savings account. Brian, the perfect son, apparently isn't so perfect. Edith hasn't liked Kathleen much, but their husbands' secret transgressions bring the two women closer, and they separately and together attempt to find out what is going on. The men, one dead, the other saying, "It's going to be all right," aren't talking.Their clues lead them to a bar, to a rib joint, to a high-class restaurant, and to the Hilton; Edith agrees to meet Latisha, who calls herself Art's friend, and who is about to go to college. Kathleen discovers more money missing and that Brian has a code in his datebook that indicates secret meetings. She goes to a lawyer, discusses divorce.Edith decides that Latisha, the black-haired teenager, may be either Art's lover or his daughter. Either way, she's had it with Art's secrets, but somewhere in her sleepless nights she also realizes that if he committed suicide, it could have been her fault, her un-love of him. A phone call from a kind policemen lessens her guilt about his death, but not about what Art might have been up to the nights he left the house late at night, coming home smelling like alcohol and one night, oranges. Seth and the social worker who has worked with Latisha are brother and sister. They know more than anyone what has gone on, what is happening at this point, including who Latisha's mother is. But not everything. They don't know who is paying for Latisha'scollege tuition and that both Art and Brian have been involved with Patsy, Latisha's mother. Brian isn't the perfect son Edith believed he was, and the mysteries settle into truths, as he confesses to his mother. Edith discovers that Art's pockets have revealed his secrets and have brought her a new life.