Tethered

by Amy MacKinnon

  I wait for Mike to speak. He surveys the pictures, shuffling them around, moving one on top of another, then settles on a photo of a back view. Finally, he begins. “I think I told you our anonymous caller contacted Reverend Greene again. He hadn’t called in over a year, but he’s all we’ve got. The FBI pretty much left it to us. They’ve got bigger problems, I guess.”

  He pauses again to scan my face, though I continue my silence, looking beyond him to Mr. MacDonnell. I notice a lick of hair on the dead man’s forehead, sprung from its place. My fingers begin to twitch, needing to comb it down, but I dare not move.

  Mike taps the photo. “The caller said there was a birthmark on the back of Precious Doe’s neck, a very distinctive shape. I don’t see anything in the photos, but maybe we missed it.”

  He still hasn’t asked me a question, so I don’t answer.

  “So?” he says.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  I won’t tell him—he can’t understand. He doesn’t know what it is to be invisible, to be discarded and dismissed. Whereas the world saw only Precious Doe’s body, I know what lay beneath the flesh, the layers hidden under the welts and bruises. She felt more than just pain, though. I know. They ignored her in life; they haven’t the right to claim her in death. That’s my job. Too, I won’t remind Mike that Precious Doe was found barely a week before his wife was killed by a chronic drunk driver. That he lost his mind when he lost his Jenny and he couldn’t have heard me anyway. I don’t want to tell him what I know from working with the dead: they can’t come back, they’re gone forever; that there’s no justice in death.

  Mike’s breathing is audible in this echo chamber, heavy as if he were gasping for air instead of grasping at straws. When he speaks, his words are slow to come. “This girl was murdered, probably by her father or her mother’s boyfriend. Some animal who threw away a child. If you’re withholding evidence, I could charge you with obstruction of justice or, or hindering a police investigation. Why won’t you help me?” He waits. “Clara?”

  Mike won’t stop, I know he won’t. So this is it. “It was a stork bite in the shape of a star.”

  He whirls to face Mr. MacDonnell, raising a fist to cover his mouth. His rage presses against me, smothering. In spite of it, I walk past him and retrieve the black comb from my instrument tray. Without gloves, I begin fixing the dead man’s cowlick.

  Mike crosses the room to stand beside me, too close now. My lungs constrict, unable to fill themselves. It sounds as if his teeth are clenched, his full lips thinned and blanched. I can’t look, and wish I couldn’t feel his breath against my ear, smell the bile when he speaks. “Jesus Christ, why didn’t you tell me this three years ago?”

  My hand pauses before pushing back the unruly curl, but it flops aside. Pulling on the drawer that holds my grooming accessories, I reach for the gel. Across the room the mourners’ feet continue to mill outside, and I imagine reaching for the basement window latch, if it would open.

  Instead, my hand squeezes the tube and gel explodes onto the concrete floor. “Let the dead be dead.”

  Mike looks to Mr. MacDonnell before turning his attention to me. “The dead are never dead.”

  He continues staring at me, but I fix on the blob of gel oozing along the angled floor, edging toward the drain. The familiar creep of heat rolls from my chest to my throat, heading toward my cheeks in earnest. I want to press myself against these cinder-block walls and fade. Before I can take a backward step, he gathers his folder and snaps the rubber bands around it. He slams the door behind him, an explosion in this concrete bunker. I try again and Mr. MacDonnell’s hair is finally in place. Walking to the sink, I wash my hands, ignoring the tremble. A damp paper towel pressed to my neck cools the flush; my fingers are desperate to entwine a patch of curls, then tug, sharp and brilliant. I can breathe again. The evidence goes in my pocket. I consider my outstretched hand, pressing it against the wall. Another breath and it melts away; another and I will disappear with it. There is no time for this; I must prepare Mr. MacDonnell’s mourning room. His wife has chosen a two-stage wake for tomorrow, followed by the funeral on Friday.

  I make my way up the stairs, unnoticed by the old woman’s mourners, and then enter the back hallway. There are two wings to this funeral home so Linus has the option of simultaneous wakes, something he reserves only for family members who share the unfortunate experience of dying together.

  As I enter the waking room, I notice Linus has already placed several arrangements of flowers on the end tables and pulled the rack of leather folding chairs from the closet. I don’t turn on the lights, preferring instead the dim glow from the hallway and the lone scented candle—vanilla—as I set several chairs along the wall. Mike’s words fill my head; I drop to the chair, my legs unsteady.

  I’m not afraid of his threats to prosecute me. Though . . . no, it’s not that. Mike seemed so certain, and I suppose for him it’s true: The dead are never dead. His wife’s ghost swirls and shifts about him, palpable even to those nearby. Or maybe what we’re sensing is that he’s dead too. I remind myself that these are Alma’s superstitions, shake myself free of them, and rise to my feet. There’s work to be done.

  When I stand, I notice a small figure gazing out at me from the shadows. There on the far side of the room is Trecie. I reach for the back of my chair, wanting to smile, knowing I can’t.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  She walks over to one of the arrangements, a red, white, and blue VFW wreath, and fingers one of the carnations (fidelity), then moves in front of a large mixed bouquet adjacent to it. “These are pretty.”

  I want to be the sort of person who would go to her, wrap an arm around her frail shoulders, my jacket, too, and take her to my kitchen. Feed her cookies I baked myself, along with hot cocoa and a toasted cheese sandwich. I would hum as she purged her story, consoling her in all the right places. I would very much like to be that person, but no one ever showed me how.

  “Trecie, I’m sorry, but you need to leave right now. There’s a wake going on in the next room.”

  “I know,” she says. “I was there.”

  “I’m going to have to tell Mr. Bartholomew.”

  She turns and gives me the smile I couldn’t muster. I’ve forgotten how lovely she is, and I feel a pang from deep within. Still, I can’t force the simplest gesture. She fingers a yellow rose (jealousy) and then a daisy until they come loose from the florist’s sturdy foam, the rose tumbling to the floor.

  “What are these?” Her voice is high and sweet. Ever so childlike.

  My mind flits about. I can’t seem to steady it. Surely there is no intended meaning with this funeral bouquet—it’s just the sixty-dollar special.

  “The yellow one is a rose and the other is a daisy. Please put them back, they’re for Mr. MacDonnell.”

  She returns the rose, leaving it slightly askew, unanchored amid the arrangement. It will wither in a few hours without access to its moist base. Trecie glides to the other side of the room, twirling the other blossom between her fingers. Her back is to me now, the candlelight catching a naked spot on the crown of her head. How I’d like to cover that space, a mirror image of mine. I hurry to the bouquet and push the rose back into its sponge, nearly restoring symmetry to the design. “Can I have this flower?” she asks.

  I nod, hoping it will quicken her departure.

  Trecie settles herself on the floor in the space where Mr. MacDonnell’s body will soon be. “Who was that man you were talking to?”

  A shudder passes through me as I replay the scene with Mike. Did she simply overhear our conversation, or was she somehow watching us? I wonder if she thinks I’m a monster because of the work I do, the words I exchanged with Mike.

  “He seemed mad. And sad, too.”

  “Trecie—”

  “He’s not your boyfriend, right?”

  That long-buried dread of being introduced to my mother’s
latest lover resurfaces. We are too much alike, Trecie and I. I shake my head, struggling for control.

  “Good, I don’t like boyfriends.”

  My voice, trained by years of living with my grandmother and then the dead, remains steady. “What is it you want?”

  Trecie continues twirling the flower, staring at it as her voice softens. “A story.”

  “I have work to do. Maybe your mother could tell you a story on your walk to the store later.”

  “What about your mother?” She lifts her chin, her teeth small and neat behind her smile. She’s still so young. “Did you ever have any adventures when you were my age?”

  She blinks, waiting for me to begin. She pulls free a petal from her flower and it drifts to the paisley carpet. I want to catch it but can’t move. If I were a storyteller, one clever enough to craft something wondrous out of the mundane, a fairy tale from a nightmare, I would tell her about those first seven years with my mother. How when I was an infant, she carried me in a pack, north along the Appalachian Trail each summer into fall, stopping in Maine as winter drew near. How as I grew older, I toddled behind and later ran ahead of my mother, splashing in streams, discovering turtles and arrowheads (that’s a big one, Baby Doll!). She was a wood nymph with her own loose hair, glossy and smooth, her young body limber and thin. At least that’s how I like to remember her. There are no photographs. We owned only what fit in our backpacks, relying on the generosity of those we happened upon. Only later did I understand what provoked such acts of kindness from all of those men, though at the time I regarded their presence as an intrusion. As the weather grew brisk, we’d leave our tent rolled in its pack and find shelter at one of the campsites; the only one I recall is Poplar Ridge.

  My mother managed a business of sorts, hiring herself out to the more adventurous hikers who started the trail in Maine in the weeks before winter formally made its debut. She drove their cars south, me curled beside her, meeting them in such faraway places as Pennsylvania or Maryland, once in West Virginia. She took her time, knowing the car wouldn’t be needed for weeks more. We’d live in those cars during the coldest months, until it was time to begin the hike north again. But I couldn’t tell Trecie any of this. Not every story has a happy ending.

  “No, no adventures,” I say.

  She nearly laughs, running the flower against her cheek. “You’re lying again.”

  I don’t allow myself to imagine how a girl so young came to be so suspicious. Instead, I think of places nearby where a child could roam, a place a girl could have an adventure. “It’s a beautiful fall day. Don’t you have any friends you could meet at the park?”

  She drops her chin, frowning, as she plucks another petal from the flower. “Aren’t we friends?”

  Patrice—no, Trecie, the hair, the mouth, so familiar from my own childhood—pulls another petal free, and as it pirouettes to the floor, I sense myself floating alongside it, a dizzying descent.

  “You should play with other children. Adults have adult friends.”

  With one smooth gesture, Trecie flicks the head off of the daisy, gathers her hair between her hands, and grimaces as she ties it up with the stem of the flower. A ponytail, just like mine. “But I’m your only friend.”

  “That’s enough.” Linus must deal with her. He’s the one who invited her to stay, so he must be the one to tell her she has to go. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

  I pivot and walk to where the wake is taking place. Linus, his swollen hands laced atop his belly, is speaking with the son of the old woman. I compose myself and then make my way over to him.

  Standing behind Linus, waiting for him to disengage from conversation, I’m unnoticed by the son, his face so like his mother’s with her prominent cheekbones and dimpled chin, the same sharp widow’s peak along his forehead. Linus knows I’m there. He encircles my wrist, rests a thick finger against my hand, taps it there once, a slight brush of the fingertip, and then laces his hands across his stomach again.

  “First Mary Katherine last January, now my mother . . .” the man says, that chin beginning to quiver.

  “Have you tried talking to little Mary?” Linus asks. “I talk to my own boy every day.”

  “You lost a child?”

  “Going on thirteen years now. Alma and me had him late in life, after we’d just about given up hope of having one of our own. It was God’s plan. Course, once you think you know God’s plan, He goes and changes His mind again.”

  The man begins to weep, pulling out a wad of tissues. “Why would He take my little girl, Mr. Bartholomew? And your son?”

  “No sense in that, is there? But something I heard at a service once for an itty-bitty thing seemed about right. The preacher got up there and he said, ‘I don’t know why children have to die, but can you imagine Heaven without them?’ It’s something to hold on to, I guess. We all know the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. As people of faith, we’ve got to believe the Lord will giveth back again.”

  The man presses the fistful of tissues to his eyes and then looks back to Linus. “Does your son ever answer you, Mr. Bartholomew?”

  “In time. All in good time.”

  The man clasps Linus’s shoulder, nods, and then rejoins his family near the old woman’s casket to continue greeting mourners.

  “Ah, Clara.” When he speaks, Linus’s bass is a smooth rumble and the flesh between his eyes becomes deeply grooved. “What is it, then?”

  “It’s that girl, Trecie. She’s in the other set of mourning rooms. And she’s been here, spying on the guests.”

  “I see.”

  “I think you should tell her to leave.” I keep my voice steady.

  “Let’s go talk to the child.”

  He lumbers down the same set of hallways I just traveled. The turn in weather has inflamed his knees, slowed his gait. I follow him until finally we round the corner. There’s a flash of hair, the tremor of footfalls vibrating through the carpet as she darts past us and away.

  “Was that her?” Linus says, pointing down the corridor.

  “Yes.”

  “She was in here?” Linus asks, gesturing into the dimness. His hand seeks the light switch along the wall, catches it, and the room is illuminated. Bouquets remain on the ledge, chairs still waiting to be arranged.

  I wonder how long I’ve been gone; more than a minute? Five? “She might have gone back to spy on the wake.”

  Linus’s hands resume their place across the breadth of his stomach. “What did she want?”

  It’s impossible to mislead someone like Linus, someone whose whole is true.

  “She likes the flowers,” I say, careful to avoid his eyes, “and the companionship.”

  “Clara.” His tone is enough. “I know it’s not your way, to trust, but can you find it in your heart to help this child?”

  I’ve been to the houses of families like Trecie’s, with neglectful mothers and abusive boyfriends. Usually it’s the woman’s body I’m there for; sometimes, though, it’s that of her teenage boy, killed defending his mother. Homes known to children’s services, addresses the police are called to after a long night of arguing and whiskey. Not places I choose to visit. Not again. “I suppose I can call the community center. Or Reverend Greene, see what after-school programs his church is offering this fall—”

  He exhales a million frustrations, appearing to settle himself before he continues. “A little girl like that must be in a world of pain if a funeral home is where she turns to for comfort. She’s not asking for much and I know you don’t have much to give, but you’re obliged to do what you can.”

  Not even my grandmother’s belt could sting as much.

  “She chose you.” That tone again. “We can’t turn our backs to a child. It ain’t right.”

  “I have no experience with children. You do.” I stop there, afraid the implication will pain him.

  “Clara . . .” Linus starts and then interrupts himself, disappointment etched in his jowls. I can’t fa
ce him, ashamed of what he’ll see, or worse, what he won’t. “I remember some time ago a stray found its way to my door. She had a long brown tail and big brown eyes, and an empty gut, a real hollowness to her. She needed taking care of almost as much as I needed to care for her. Alma and me welcomed her into our home and loved her best we could, though it wasn’t always easy, a kicked-around pup like that. But seeing as how we was orphaned parents and she was an orphaned pup, it just felt right. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Linus—”

  “The Lord has sent you this little lost pup and you got to help her. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “There’s a difference between caring for a dog and looking after a child.”

  He shakes his head and lets loose a long rush of exasperation before returning his gaze to me. Over his shoulder is an arrangement for Mr. MacDonnell—the Woodland Greens basket with an adolescent hosta (faithful companion). I search my memory for an appropriate spot in Mrs. MacDonnell’s yard where she could plant it—under the rose of Sharon?—imagining how over the years she would come to regard a perennial from her husband’s funeral arrangements. Would she surround the tree with more hosta or feed the plant one too many aspirin, poisoning it in the process? When Linus shifts his weight from one swollen knee to the other, I’m pulled back. I suppose he’s waiting me out. He’s pushed before when he’s wanted more from me. So far I’ve managed to resist. Not today.

  “Perhaps you should help her,” I say.

  “Clara, now a grown man can’t be spending time alone with a girl who’s no relation.”