by Peter Straub
“I think I understand. I read the obituary in today’s Ledger. When I saw the words ‘without warning,’ I thought—”
“You thought?”
“I thought Nancy probably killed herself.”
“Is that what you thought? Well, guess what? Big brother rings the bell.”
“Would you prefer it if I didn’t understand?”
“I don’t know what I’d prefer.” Philip’s face twisted, and everything below his nose seemed to collapse like a punctured paper bag. “Nobody asked me for my opinion about anything.” He snatched off his glasses and passed a hand over his eyes. “No, they just go ahead and do whatever they feel like.” He emitted a shaky sigh.
“Do you think she should have asked your permission before she killed herself?”
Philip aimed an index finger at him. “There, that’s a great question, I mean it. A great fucking question.”
Tim swallowed cold ginger ale and forced himself to remain silent.
“Yes,” Philip said. “I do think so. I would have said, You selfish bitch, you can’t kill yourself. You have a husband and a son. Are you crazy?”
“It was selfish—a selfish act.”
“All suicides are selfish.” He considered that proposition. “Unless the person is in tremendous pain, or dying, or whatever.”
“Was she feeling depressed lately?”
“What are you, a shrink? I don’t know. Nancy usually seemed a little depressed, if you ask me.” He shot Tim a wary look. “Are you asking if I noticed that she seemed depressed lately?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Philip.”
“Keep it that way. I’m not to blame for what happened. Nancy and I got along all right. Why she did it is a mystery to me. Maybe she had some kind of secret existence. Maybe I didn’t know what was going on in her life. If she didn’t tell me, how the hell could I?”
“How is Mark handling all this?”
Philip shook his head. “The kid keeps his feelings all wrapped up inside. He’s been hit hard, though. Keeps to himself, except for when he’s with Jimbo, the knucklehead you saw today. We’ll see how he gets through tonight and tomorrow and the next couple of weeks. If he looks like he needs it, I’ll get him some counseling or therapy, or whatever.”
Tim said that sounded like a good idea.
“Sure it does, to you. You live in New York, where everybody sees a shrink. For you people, a shrink is a status symbol. Out here in the real world, it’s different. Plenty of people see it as an admission that something is wrong with you.”
“You wouldn’t have to tell anybody. Neither would Mark.”
“Word gets out,” Philip said. “Vice principal’s wife commits suicide, his son starts seeing a headshrinker. How do you suppose that plays out? What kind of effect do you think it would have on my career? On top of that, those appointments don’t come cheap. Excuse me, elder brother, but I’m a humble educator in the public school system, not a millionaire.”
“Philip, if Mark could benefit from therapy, and you’d have trouble paying for it, I’d be happy to take care of it.”
“Things aren’t quite that dire,” Philip said. “But thanks for the offer.”
“Do you really think your job is going to be affected by what Nancy did?”
“One way or another, yeah. Subtly, in most ways. But what do you think my odds are of moving into a principal’s office anytime soon? I was on track before this. Now, who knows? It could hold me back for years. But you want to know the worst part of this whole deal?”
“Sure,” Tim said.
“Whenever anybody looks at me, they’re going to say to themselves, There’s Underhill. His wife killed herself. And two-thirds, three-fourths of them are going to think I had something to do with it. She did it because of me, they’ll think. Goddamn it, I never thought I’d hate her, but I’m getting there. Fuck her. Fuck her.”
Tim decided to say nothing and let him roll on.
Philip glared at him. “I have a role in this community. I have a certain position. Maybe you don’t know what that means. Maybe you don’t care. But it is of very, very great importance to me. And when I think that stupid woman did her best, out of no reason at all but her own private unhappiness, to tear down everything I’ve worked for all my life—yes, I’m angry, yes I am. She had no right to do this to me.”
At least one thing was clear to Tim Underhill as he watched his brother chewing an ice cube from the bottom of his empty glass: Philip was going to be of no use at all.
“What’s our schedule?” he asked.
“For tonight?”
“For everything.”
“We go to the Trott Brothers Funeral Home from six to seven for the viewing, or the visitation, or whatever it’s called. The funeral is at one tomorrow afternoon, out at Sunnyside.” Sunnyside, a large cemetery on the Far West Side of the city, was still segregated into separate areas for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. There were no African-Americans in Sunnyside. When you drove past it on the expressway, it went on for mile after mile of flat green earth and headstones in long rows.
“Philip,” Tim said, “I don’t even know how Nancy died. If it isn’t too painful for you, could you tell me about it?”
“Oh, boy. I guess you wouldn’t know, would you? It’s not exactly public information, thanks be to God. Well, well. Yes. I can tell you how she did it. You’ve earned it, haven’t you? Coming out here all the way from New York City. All right, you want to know what someone does when she’s going to kill herself and really wants to make sure there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it? If she wants to hit that nail right square on the head? What she does is, she basically kills herself three different ways, all at the same time.”
He tried to grin. The attempt was a hideous failure. “I had this bottle of sleeping pills left over from a couple of years ago. Not long after I left for work that morning, Nancy swallowed most of the pills—twenty of them, more or less. Then she ran a nice hot tub. She put a plastic bag over her head and fastened it around her neck. After that, she got in the tub and picked up a knife and cut open both of her forearms. Lengthwise, not those pussy sideways cuts people make when they’re faking it. She was serious, I’ll say that for her.”
The bass notes booming through the ceiling wavered in the air like butterflies.
Through the windows came the sound of cicadas, but Superior Street had never seen a cicada. Something else, Tim thought—what?
Overhead, a door slammed. Two pairs of footsteps moved toward the top of the staircase.
“Enter the son and heir, accompanied by el sidekick-o faithful-o.”
Tim looked toward the staircase and saw descending the steps a pair of legs in baggy blue jeans, closely followed by its twin. A hand slid lightly down the railing; another hand shadowed it. Loose yellow sleeves, then loose navy sleeves. Then Mark Underhill’s face moved into view, all eyebrows, cheekbones, and decisive mouth; just above it floated Jimbo Monaghan’s round face, struggling for neutrality.
Mark kept his gaze downward until he reached the bottom of the staircase and had walked two steps forward. Then he raised his eyes to meet Tim’s. In those eyes Tim saw a complex mixture of curiousity, anger, and secrecy. The boy was hiding something from his father, and he would continue to hide it; Tim wondered what would happen if he managed to get Mark into a private conversation.
No guile on Jimbo’s part—he stared at Tim from the moment his face became visible.
“Looky here, it’s Uncle Tim,” Philip said. “Tim—you know Mark, and his best buddy-roo, Jimbo Monaghan.”
Reverting to an earlier stage of adolescence, the boys shuffled forward and muttered their greetings. Tim sent his brother a silent curse; now both boys felt insulted or mocked, and it would take Mark that much longer to open up.
He knows more than Philip about his mother’s suicide, Tim thought. The boy glanced at him again, and Tim saw some locked-up knowledge surface in his eyes, then retreat.
; “This guy look familiar to you, Tim?” Philip asked him.
“Yes, he does,” Tim said. “Mark, I saw you from my window at the Pforzheimer early this afternoon. You and your friend here were walking toward the movie setup on Jefferson Street. Did you stay there long?”
A startled, wary glance from Mark; Jimbo opened and closed his mouth.
“Only a little while,” Mark said. “They were doing the same thing over and over. Your room was on that side of the hotel?”
“I saw you, didn’t I?”
Mark’s face jerked into what may have been a smile but was gone too soon to tell. He edged sideways and pulled at Jimbo’s sleeve.
“Aren’t you going to stay?” his father asked.
Mark nodded, swallowing and rocking back on his heels while looking down at his scuffed sneakers. “We’ll be back soon.”
“But where are you going?” Philip asked. “In about an hour, we have to be at the funeral home.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.” Mark’s eyes were sliding from his father to the front door and back again. “We’re just going out.”
He was in a nervous uproar, Tim saw. His engine was racing, and he was doing everything in his power to conceal it. Mark’s body wanted to behave exactly as it had on Jefferson Street: it wanted to wave its arms and leap around. In front of his father these extravagant gestures had to be compressed into the most minimal versions of themselves. The energy of misery was potent as a drug. Tim had seen men uncaringly risk their lives under its influence, as if they had been doing speed. The boy was aching to get through the door; Jimbo would soon have to resist more high-pressure pleading. Tim hoped he could stand up to it; whatever Mark had in mind almost had to be reckless, half crazy.
“I hate this deliberate vagueness,” Philip said. “What’s out? Where is it?”
Mark sighed. “Out is just out, Dad. We got tired of sitting in my room, and now we want to walk around the block or something.”
“Yo, that’s all,” Jimbo said, focusing on a spot in the air above Philip’s head. “Walk around the block.”
“Okay, walk around the block,” Philip said. “But be back here by quarter to seven. Or before. I’m serious, Mark.”
“I’m serious, too!” Mark shouted. “I’m just going outside, I’m not running away!”
His face was a bright pink. Philip backed off, waving his hands before him.
Mark glanced at Tim for a moment, his handsome face clamped into an expression of frustration and contempt. Tim’s heart filled with sorrow for him.
Mark pivoted away, clumped to the door, and was gone, taking Jimbo with him. The screen door slammed shut.
“Good God,” Philip said, looking at the door. “He does blame me, the little ingrate.”
“He has to blame someone,” Tim said.
“I know who it should be,” Philip said. “Killed herself three times, didn’t she?”
Nodding meaninglessly, Tim went toward the big front window. Mark and Jimbo were moving north along the sidewalk much as they had proceeded down Jefferson Street. Mark was leaning toward his friend, speaking rapidly and waving his hands. His face was still a feverish pink.
“You see them?”
“Yep.”
“What are they doing?”
“Philip, I think they’re walking around the block.”
“Didn’t Mark seem awfully tense to you?”
“Kind of, yes.”
“It’s the viewing and the funeral service,” Philip said. “Once they’re history, he can start getting back to normal.”
Tim kept his mouth shut. He doubted that Philip’s concept of “normal” would have any real meaning to his son.
On the grounds that the overall roominess more than made up for the added cost, whenever possible Tim Underhill rented Lincoln Town Cars. At a quarter to seven, the boys having returned from their walk in good time, he volunteered to drive everyone to Highland Avenue. They were standing on the sidewalk in the heat. Philip looked at the long black car with distaste.
“You never got over the need to show off, did you?”
“Philip, in this car I don’t feel like I’ve been squeezed into a tin can.”
“Come on, Dad,” put in Mark, who was looking at the car as if he wanted to caress it.
“Not on your life,” Philip said. “I’d feel like I was pretending to be something I’m not. Tim, you’re welcome to ride along with us in my Volvo if you don’t think you’d feel too confined.”
Philip’s twelve-year-old Volvo station wagon, the color of a rusty leaf, stood ten feet farther up the curb, as humble and patient as a mule.
“After you, Alphonse,” Tim said, and was pleased to hear Mark chuckle.
The Trott Brothers Funeral Home occupied the crest of a hill on Highland Avenue, and to those who looked up at it from the street after they left their vehicles—as did the four men young and old who left the leaf-colored Volvo—it looked as grand and dignified as a great English country house. Quarried stone, mullioned windows, a round turret—a place, you would say, where the loudest sounds would be the whispers of attendants, the rustle of memorial pamphlets, and some quiet weeping. Mark and Jimbo trailed behind as the little group walked toward the imposing building.
A languid man with a drastic combover waved them toward a muted hallway and a door marked TRANQUILLITY PARLOR. On a stand beside the door was a fat white placard.
Mrs. Nancy K. Underhill
Viewing: 6:00–7:00 P.M.
Loving Wife and Mother
There, in the Tranquillity Parlor, lay the mortal remains of Nancy K. Underhill within a gleaming bronze coffin, the top half of its lid opened wide as a taxi door. The soft, buttoned interior of the coffin was a creamy off-white; Nancy K. Underhill’s peaceful, empty face and folded hands had been painted and powdered to an only slightly unrealistic shade of pink. None of the four people who entered the small, dimly lighted chamber approached the coffin. Philip and Tim drifted separately to the back of the room and picked up the laminated cards prepared by the funeral home. On one side was a lurid depiction of a sunset over rippling water and a flawless beach; on the other, the Lord’s Prayer printed beneath Nancy’s name and dates. Philip took another of the cards from the stack and handed it to Mark, who had slipped into a seat next to Jimbo in the last row of chairs.
Mark snatched the card from his father’s hand without a word.
When Jimbo looked around for a card of his own, Tim passed one to him. Both boys were deep in contemplation of the Pacific sunset when a brisk, rotund little woman bustled into the room. Joyce Brophy was the daughter of the last, now-deceased, of the Trott Brothers.
“Well, here we are, Mr. Underhill, isn’t that right? It’s a pleasure to see you, sir, and to welcome you back to our humble establishment, despite the sadness of the circumstances. I think we can all say that what we’re doing is the best we can, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Underhill?”
“Um,” Philip said.
She turned a brisk, meaningless smile upon Tim. “And a heartfelt welcome to you, sir. Are you a member of the family circle?”
“He’s my brother,” Philip said. “From New York.”
“New York, New York? Well, that’s wonderful.” Tim feared that she would take his hand, but she merely patted his arm. “The hubby and I had a lovely weekend in New York City, oh, it was nine—ten years ago now. We saw Les Mis, and the next day we saw Cats. You New Yorkers never run out of things to do and places to go, do you? Must be like living in an anthill, ants ants ants, all running running running.”
Having disposed of Tim, she transferred her hand to Philip’s arm. “Feeling a little bit shy, are we? You’d be surprised how many of our people feel that exact same way, but the minute you go up and commune with your late missus, you’ll understand there’s no need at all for that sort of thing.”
She placed her free hand on his elbow and piloted him down the aisle between the rows of empty chairs. Loyally, Tim came along behind.
> “Now, see, Mr. Underhill? Your little bride looks every bit as peaceful and beautiful as you could ever want to remember her.”
Philip stared down at the effigy in the coffin. So did Tim. Nancy appeared to have been dead since birth.
In a strangled voice, Philip said, “Thank you for all you’ve done.”
“And if you will take the advice of someone who is pretty much an expert in this sort of thing,” Joyce Brophy whispered close to Philip’s ear, “you make sure that handsome boy of yours comes up here and communes with his mama, because believe you me, if he misses this chance he’ll never have another and he’ll regret it all the rest of his life.”
“Excellent advice,” said Philip.
With a neighborly pat of his wrist, she bustled out of the room.
“Mark, this is your last chance to see your mother,” Philip said, speaking in the general direction of his left shoulder.
Mark mumbled something that sounded unpleasant.
“It’s the reason we’re here, son.” He turned all the way around and kept his voice low and reasonable. “Jimbo, you can come up or not, as you wish, but Mark has to say good-bye to his mother.”
Both boys stood up, looking anywhere but at the coffin, then moved awkwardly into the center aisle. Tim drifted away to the side of the room. Halfway to the coffin, Mark looked directly at his mother, instantly glanced away, swallowed, and looked back. Jimbo whispered something to him and settled himself into an aisle chair. When Mark stood before the coffin, frozen-faced, Philip nodded at him with what seemed a schoolmaster’s approval of a cooperative student. For a moment only, father and son remained together at the head of the room; then Philip lightly settled a hand on Mark’s shoulder, removed it, and without another glance turned away and joined Tim at the side of the room. In wordless agreement, the two men returned to their earlier station next to the dark, polished table and the stacks of memorial cards. A few other people had entered the room.
