The Possessions

by Sara Flannery Murphy

  It’s later in the day, half past four. I’d been wondering where the baby is, where Mr. Damson is. I’m hungry to meet Henry in the flesh. This colleague of Patrick’s. Someone who must greet him every day, know a more consistent version of him than I do.

  “When we lost Sylvia, I’d just found out I was pregnant,” Viv says. She’s hushed now, a purposefully somber tone. “It was weird. Something so good happening and then, a few weeks later, something so terrible. I was over the moon about the baby.” Viv’s hand flutters to her stomach as if a version of the child remains there permanently. “Then we ran into Sylvia that weekend. You know, she was the first person other than Henry to even know about the baby?”

  “Is that so?”

  “I asked her to be the baby’s godmother,” Viv says. Her eyes gleam, the familiar glazing of tears. All my clients have a different way of managing tears: banishing them, indulging them. Viv is the indulging type. Dewiness builds on her lashes. “I just wanted her to be part of Ben’s life. Sylvia didn’t have kids yet, but I saw the way other people’s kids would gravitate to her.”

  “Being a godmother is an honor,” I say.

  Viv gazes at the ceiling. “God, I’m rambling. You need to tell me what to say.”

  “Could you share more about Sylvia, if it’s not too painful? What she was like, her home life?” Seeing Viv’s expression shift into confusion, I hedge: “It would give me a clearer image of your recovery process to know more about your loved one.”

  “Well, sure,” Viv says. “Patrick and my big brother knew each other growing up. When Patrick and I ended up in the same area, my brother put me in touch. The Braddocks and I started getting together. Just casually. I clicked with Sylvia. And Henry, my husband? He works with Patrick. We met through the Braddocks. So, I really owe everything I have to them.”

  “Have you kept in close touch with Patrick since—?”

  Viv presses her lips together. Her face tightens briefly. “We haven’t seen him lately. Just the shock of everything. And the baby. It’s been hard.”

  I make note of this. “That’s understandable. Sometimes grief can push apart surviving relationships. Would you say Patrick and Sylvia were a happy couple overall?”

  Viv waits for a moment before starting to answer, words caught in the damp hollow of her lips. I lean forward, magnetized by this clue into the Braddocks’ lives. But there’s a sudden noise behind us. The slam of a door, heavy footsteps. The atmosphere shifts to make room for the new presence. Viv’s face brightens as if she’s released from a spell.

  “Henry,” she says, tilting her head to look behind me. “This is Lucy, the woman who said she’d come by? Lucy, this is my husband.”

  For a strange moment, I don’t want to turn my head. I don’t want to meet his eyes. Then I do, putting on a professionally distant smile. Mr. Damson is dark-haired and bearded, bulkier than Patrick. Good-looking in a brusque way.

  “I apologize for barging in on you ladies like this,” he says.

  We shake hands. His grip is firm and energetic.

  “How’s it been going?” He’s addressing his wife, but Henry’s gaze loiters on my mouth. I remember that I blotted my lips with Sylvia’s lipstick. I shouldn’t have worn such a severe color; Viv didn’t seem to notice, but Henry’s questioning look turns me into someone suspicious.

  “She was just asking about Patrick,” Viv supplies.

  “You’ve worked with him for some time, Mr. Damson?” I ask, limply curious.

  “Oh God, must be about four years,” Henry says. “Four years this summer.”

  I imagine him scrawling his signature on a sympathy card passed throughout the office. A terse, inadequate message: So sorry for your loss.

  “I was telling her, honey, that we haven’t been in touch with Patrick lately,” Viv says. She taps her nails on the tabletop. “Should we invite him for dinner?”

  “Braddock? No.” Henry’s dismissal hurts for a second, as if it’s aimed at me. “He wouldn’t come. He keeps to himself these days. Barely talks to the rest of us.”

  Viv darts a sheepish look at me. “Yes, but he needs his friends now more than ever.”

  It feels like a belated show of compassion, mostly for my sake. Henry’s at the fridge, leaning down, the front of his body washed pale blue. “Yeah, well,” he says. “If you think it will help, invite him over. But I’d lay money he won’t show.”

  Viv starts as if she’s received a shock: “I have to deal with that,” she says, and it’s only when she’s hurrying from the room and up the stairs that I hear the ragged cry of the baby.

  Henry saunters back to the dining room table, standing nearby like a sentinel as I slip my notebook back into my bag. His presence turns me jumpy, aware of a slight charge in the air between us. I straighten to meet Henry’s eyes squarely: he’s shorter than Patrick, closer to my height.

  “What did I hear you asking, anyway?” he asks. “When I came in.”

  “Oh.” I trace back. “I believe I was asking whether the Braddocks were happy.”

  His expression shifts, almost too rapid to catch. Like a dark shape beneath the surface of water, gone before I can be sure I even saw its outline. “Strange question,” he says.

  “Understanding these dynamics illuminates the bigger picture of moving on from a loss.”

  His eyes on mine are steady. “So are you going to ask me?”

  I look at him mutely.

  “Ask me if they were happy,” he clarifies.

  I hear Viv and the baby in the upstairs room, Viv’s soothing coos and murmurs. The sunlight streams through the windows to highlight the faint stains on the chairs’ upholstery, a bowl of some gluey substance on the countertop. This monotonous image of ordinary life hurts. A throb of nostalgia that I haven’t felt in years.

  At the door, I turn, intending to thank him for the visit. Henry’s watching me as if he’s trying to place me; it’s the type of intently open gaze that people usually try to hide once they’re caught. But Henry doesn’t falter.

  The question pushes out before I can stop it. “Were they happy, Mr. Damson?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, just before he shuts the door.

  FOURTEEN

  There’s something funny in the air lately, don’t you think?”

  Hazy, I look up at Ms. Mendoza.

  “It’s probably just the way people are after a long winter,” she says. “They don’t know what to do with themselves.”

  She’s pulling on her cardigan; the sleeves stretch between her elbows like awkward bird wings. “I hope you had a pleasant encounter today,” I say.

  Ms. Mendoza hesitates before she answers. “Eurydice, dear, I may not be coming back soon. But I don’t want you to think it’s anything about you.”

  “If you’d like to work with another body—”

  “Oh, no. I would never. It’s just—” She looks away, fussing with the pearly buttons on her cardigan. “Personal matters. Financial.”

  “I know Veronica will miss you.”

  It seemed like a kind thing, but Ms. Mendoza’s eyes brighten with tears. “I’ve tried to cut back in other areas of my life,” she says. “I’ve been making adjustments for years. But I have medical expenses and bills to pay. I’m not getting younger.”

  I watch her go, shoulders hunched. I have an unwelcome flash of her life: a dingy apartment stripped bare of luxuries, counting down the pennies. The minutes.

  “Ms. Mendoza,” I call. She turns. “Do you find that your encounters with Veronica help you?” When she frowns, a polite confusion, I continue: “Do you feel happier after you see her?”

  “Well,” Ms. Mendoza says. “Well, of course I do. Always. That’s why I keep coming back, you know. My sister will always be the best part of my life. But after all, I do have to live.” Ms. Mendoza’s chin lifts with a fragile defiance. “It feels selfish sometimes, but I do have to live.”

  Leaving the Elysian Society, I stop short. She’s waiting for me in the par
king lot, leaning against the side of my car, smiling too coaxingly.

  “Dora.” I move to unlock the car. “You need a ride again?”

  “I missed the bus,” she says. “My client couldn’t stop crying after I woke up. I felt bad leaving her there alone. What was I supposed to do?”

  Sliding into the car, I stretch across to unlock the passenger-side door.

  “Anyway,” Dora says, climbing in. “Remember what you said, about how we could go shopping together? Maybe we could do that now.”

  I’m about to refuse, but I know what waits for me at home. Silence, the heaviness of time pressing down in a slow crush.

  When we’re a few blocks from the Elysian Society, Dora rolls down the window. Fresh air whistles into the car. I take a deep breath, enjoying the coolness. “Where do you want to go?” I ask. “There’s a consignment shop, not far.”

  “Consignment? Like secondhand?” The corners of her mouth twitch downward. “Nah, I’m getting sick of wearing other people’s things.”

  We end up at a strip mall. Dora chooses the store on the corner: fake stone facade, headless mannequins staggered in the window. It’s all wrong for us. The dresses are conspicuously formal. Prom gowns with beaded bodices like armored breastplates, puffy skirts that remind me of jellyfish. I can’t imagine either of us having an occasion in our lives that would require one of these gowns, but I follow Dora inside.

  The interior is bracingly cold, lit with hospital-bright fluorescence. Compared with the jeweled gowns, the surroundings are incongruously harsh. A girl stands in front of a display, yanking a bridal gown over the unresisting limbs of the mannequin. The mannequin’s stiffly extended arm trembles helplessly. The girl turns as we enter, taking us in for a silent moment and then looking away without offering a greeting.

  Dora moves deftly behind a circle of racks, hiding us from the view of the front counter. A red dress hangs in an alcove. The tightly banded panels remind me of blood-soaked bandages. “Do you think we look weird to her?” Dora whispers.

  “I doubt she knows what we do,” I say.

  “Before you worked here, did you know about bodies?”

  “I guess so.” Memories nudge the back of my skull. “I was aware of the possibility.”

  “Did you ever think you’d work as one?” she asks.

  “No.” We’re passing a wedge of mirror, and I catch our reflections from the corner of my eye. Dora, small and vivid, and me trailing after her like the pale blot reflected by a jewel. “Why?” I ask. “Did you?”

  She pulls a lavender gown from the rack. When she holds it against her body, the hemline pools on the floor. “I wanted to do this for a while.”

  “Really?” I don’t hide my surprise.

  Dora replaces the dress. She’s not meeting my eyes now, slowly circling the rack, reaching out to touch a sleeve here, a skirt there. “My mom used to go see this woman who’d channel for you in the back room of her bookstore. She was in another town. My mom had to drive for hours. She’d be gone all day. I knew not to talk about it with my dad. We pretended it wasn’t happening.”

  The music overhead is a keen wail set over discordantly jaunty instruments.

  “My older sister died when I was . . . nine? Ten?” Dora’s tone suggests I might know better than her. “They were always really close, she and my mom. There was no room left for me. When my sister died, I even thought—” She runs her fingertips down a rose-pink bodice: all clear beads, silver sequins. “But. Then my mom found that place, and she was gone all the time.”

  “Dora . . .” I say.

  But she twirls to face me now. Her expression has turned determinedly cheerful, almost flinty. “Hey, you should try something on,” she says. “You never dress up.”

  I accept the gown she pulls loose from the clutter. Dora guides me to the dressing rooms, cramped stalls covered by curtains that scarcely reach far as my knees. The full-length mirrors are inescapable. I’m forced to look at myself from multiple angles as I undress, pulling my Elysian Society uniform over my head.

  When the white fabric falls free of my face, I stop, shocked. The woman in the mirror is wrong. She’s tall, her hair listless. Small, firm breasts, swollen like teardrops; the exaggerated curve of her hips, disproportionate against long and boyish legs. I take her in, this stranger.

  “How does it look?” Dora calls.

  “Wait a moment.” I turn from the mirror, reaching for the green dress. Compared to my Elysian Society uniform, the fabric is densely luxurious. I thread my arms through the straps.

  “That’s why I wanted the job,” Dora says. In the corridor that houses the dressing rooms, the music is muted. It’s easier to hear her voice. I’m quiet; it’s as if she needed to be separated from me by the curtain before she could continue. “I used to imagine what it was like for my mom. Some woman who maybe looked a little like my sister, sitting in a room, and my mom loved her. I wanted a chance to be on the other side of that.”

  I reach for the zipper. “Does your mother know you’re with the Elysian Society?”

  “No.” She laughs, a sad, frayed sound. “We don’t talk much these days.”

  I’m shocked at how well the dress fits, lightly grazing my hips, fitted across the chest. I run my hands over the slippery softness. I imagine standing in front of Patrick. How his eyes would move over my body: the softness of my breasts, the arch of my hips. I’m furious at the image, even as a spike of excitement moves down the length of my body.

  “So you like the dress?” Dora asks. “Are you going to buy it?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “It’s not for me.”

  It’s been nearly two weeks since I saw him.

  After work, I lie on my bed with the Braddocks’ photos. There’s a voluptuous humiliation in being reduced to looking at his image like an outsider. I’ve moved through my days in a perfunctory way. Unlocking my mailbox and collecting the stray bills and flyers, cleaning dishes and folding laundry, turning down my sheets to enter my bed. The rote mechanisms of sustaining day-to-day life. I can’t believe this was a life I didn’t know enough to hate. Worse, a life I was grateful for. It’s the sensation of a fog lifting to reveal that I’ve been standing right on the lip of a plummeting cliff.

  I keep the book and the box of Sylvia’s belongings right near my bed. Tangible proof that what I had was real. The woman on the cover of Villette, with her veiled, cunning face looks sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly. I’ve tried picking up the book and following the dense thread of the plot. But each time, my mind slips off the words.

  Without his presence in my life, I’m reduced to my old tactics. For five years, my access into other people’s lives has been through the unwitting clues they’ve left behind. Their photographs offering an intricate but obscure code into their habits. Into the rhythms of their lives together, the quiet, tugging undercurrent they never noticed.

  Tonight, I stare at Patrick’s hand entwined with Sylvia’s. His skin against hers. I can almost feel the heat of his palm pressed against mine, the small, thoughtless movements of his muscles as he shifts. A tiny flame sparks inside me, but I extinguish it, not wanting the pain of desiring him.

  Moving to the second photo in the stack: Patrick’s arm circles around Sylvia’s waist. In another photo, he buries his fingers in her hair; in the next, she perches on his lap, cupped perfectly against him. Her lips pressed to his cheek, his hand on her shoulder. In nearly every photo of the Braddocks together, Patrick touches Sylvia. She touches him. They’re like a couple in some urban legend, kept alive by physical contact with each other. Remove that touch and they wilt.

  The space between the chairs in Room 12 must be a constant taunt. To be so close, held apart by that clinical distance. Even from the first day I met with him, Patrick was breaching these boundaries. That sensation of his knee against mine: maybe it wasn’t an act of rebellion, but a deep and unthinking instinct, his body drawn automatically to hers.

  I grow calm. The awareness o
f what I have to do comes over me so easily, so completely, that I know this plan has been waiting inside me all along, biding its time.

  FIFTEEN

  I come to the Elysian Society early, before I’m scheduled to meet with a client, and slip directly into Jane’s office. I’ve brought money along, folded tight and moist inside my palm. My pulse is rapid against the knot of bills.

  Jane barely glances up when I enter. “Can I help you?”

  I shut the door behind me. “I’d like to talk in private.”

  Jane’s office is ripe with signs of ordinary life. A birthday card pinned on the corkboard, a cardboard cup of pungent-smelling coffee on the corner of the desk. The framed photo of a graduating teenager, cheeks pebbled with acne.

  “I need lotuses,” I say.

  “Oh?” Jane licks her thumb tip, turns over one page of a thin yellow sheaf.

  “For my own purposes,” I add, unnerved by her lack of interest.

  “The lotuses are strictly controlled,” Jane says. “You of all people should know that.”

  Her voice is neither surprised nor accusatory. She’s like an actress reciting the expected lines, testing me with her coolness.

  “I’m willing to pay,” I say. “Whatever it takes, I’ll pay.”

  Jane keeps her head bent. Her cheeks are too bright with blush, an unnatural layer over her skin, and she smells like laundry detergent, hairspray. I wonder if she wears these markers to remind the bodies that she’s better than us. She goes home to a husband and children and friends, secure that she’s never been mistaken for anything other than exactly what she is.

  “Five years,” she says, at last, addressing her desk. “After five years of being the model employee, you want in on this? Why the change of heart?”

  “I want to open myself up to new opportunities,” I say.

  “You want to open something,” Jane says. “Don’t get poetic about it with me. I’ve been doing this for years too, remember. I’ve heard all the excuses.”