Love Is Red

by Sophie Jaff

  Katherine has asked for a private funeral, “out of respect for the family’s wishes.” By “family” she means Lucas; she can only imagine how reporters and flashing lights and cameras might further affect him. The hungry stares of onlookers, the gawking, the comments, the needless attention. And so she begged for privacy, and people listened.

  They listened because this time it was a single mother. They obeyed because they are beaten. They had thought it was over; they had thought you were dead. They ran rejoicing through the rain, dancing and singing, and woke up hungover to the headlines.

  A public defender. A single mother. A four-year-old son.

  Andrea Bowers was thirty-five; she had a child. She didn’t fit the profile. The mayor will have to resign over this one; the police cannot be trusted. There is talk of rioting, of marches. It is advisable to leave town. No one can be trusted. Everyone is alone. Everyone is vulnerable. The rain is over. And the heat is rising again. The humidity is off the charts.

  You have broken the pattern of your hunt and now there is nothing to hold on to, no rules, no guarantees. All the voyeuristic exhilaration, the sick excitement that might have come in the beginning deep in the darkest heart, has turned, because this is not a movie. There will be no happy ending. The city is sick of this sickness. It wants to cut the cancer out. It is weary and defeated and done. It will listen to Katherine’s plea for mercy because it longs for mercy too.

  Today the living wear white ribbons—white, a symbol of peace, a symbol of hope, and the people need hope.

  If only they knew your true purpose, that these women are not victims but martyrs. That each one sacrificed saves millions. They will never know.

  You walk up to where Greg Sotriakis is standing. “Terrible loss” you murmur, echoing the words of his fantasy interview.

  Greg must swallow hard, swallow his disappointment, and agree, “Yes, yes, it is,” because you’re a good-looking man in a dark Armani suit and maybe you’ll still have grandparents or at least one, if not two living parents, and you look like you have money and could afford to spring for the Copper Deluxe.

  If he only knew that you’ve sent him some business already.

  You enter the family-run funeral home. You spend so little time in places of the dead. You are a creature of the living, and of life. Still, you intend to enjoy it, now that you’re here.

  The funeral home’s carpeting is tan and its walls are beige. Low ceilings, low chairs, air freshener. It even smells neutral. In the main waiting room, friends and family sit on couches with slippery cushions. Some check their phones; some stare into space. They stare at vague prints of barns and fields. The tepid watercolors are the opposite of suffering. There is no pain here, no emotion of any kind.

  On a nondescript couch is parked a nondescript woman, solid, squat, and knitting. A little boy in a too-big suit is planted next to her, legs swaying, kicking.

  The living do not often think about the dead. The memories of their loved ones come at unexpected moments: driving, washing vegetables, seeing an advertisement. Oh yes! Oh yes. Now they think about themselves, their own mortality, their own loved ones, their parents.

  Jesus, Mom’s getting old. I’m getting old. When did I get so old?

  I’d rather go fast, maybe a brain aneurysm, than lie about, suffering, shitting myself. The smell of hospitals, nurses being patient, I don’t think I could take it.

  I want to go home and fuck and fuck and fuck. I want to feel alive.

  I wonder how much a funeral director makes?

  Anxiety, sadness, arousal. Their colors blaze up, and you inhale. Delicious.

  “Kat! Kat!” The little boy in the too-big suit is on his feet and calling. The squashed woman next to him drops a stitch in her knitting. She puts out a restraining hand, opens her mouth to admonish, but she is too late.

  He runs toward your darling, your beloved, who has entered the room. She’s dropped to her knees, her arms spread wide, and he rushes into them and for the first time in days and days and days he knows that he is safe.

  She has lost even more weight in this last week and wears a thin black dress, low-heeled shoes. Her eyes though red-rimmed were dry, but now once again the tears are coming. She squeezes her lids tight but the tears come anyway, running into his hair.

  “Oh, Lucas, oh, honey, oh, honey, oh, hon,” she murmurs, crumbling words of comfort into his curls.

  Comfort is a warm brown, the color of a nest, it feels like a faded leather couch, a cool hand on your feverish forehead, it melts like mashed potatoes, it simmers like chicken soup, it sounds like the rain when you are under a tent of blankets and safe, safe, safe indoors.

  They are caught and safe and sound in this moment, sheltered in each other’s arms. The squat woman has risen to come and stand nearby. Now she coughs dryly, indicating that this embrace has gone on long enough. Katherine peers up, blinking, as if coming out of a dream. She fumbles for a smile; the woman returns it briefly.

  Since Lucas is not ready to leave the safety of her arms, Katherine hoists him up. His weight snugly tucked into her hip, as if she’d been doing this for years.

  She’s giving her credentials. “I’m Katherine Emerson, Andrea’s roommate and friend.”

  “Cheryl Kaskow. I’m from social services, and Lucas’s assigned temporary guardian throughout this stage of the process. Nice to meet you,” Mrs. Kaskow adds, although from her expression, it clearly isn’t.

  “The process.” Katherine tries not to wince.

  You know that they cannot find Andrea’s will. It’s unbelievable yet true. Hours online and on the phone and it all comes down to “during our recent move it must have been misplaced.” The state has had to step in to appoint a guardian, a person willing to take on the responsibility of a bewildered four-year-old.

  Katherine, still carrying Lucas, follows Mrs. Kaskow to the slippery noncommittal chairs, the unwelcoming shiny sateen. She sits, with him in her lap. He turns and snuggles up as best he can, presses his face into her neck, her chest. Mrs. Kaskow’s lips tighten but she says nothing.

  As Kat talks he can feel the rumble of her voice coming through her chest. It makes her real and safe.

  You whisper his name without using your voice.

  He twists around, looks up, sees you standing there. Near the other man, by the doorway. This alerts Katherine and Mrs. Kaskow, who look in your direction. They have seen you both, tall, good-looking men, nice suits, standing respectful and quiet. They wait for both of you to approach. Katherine’s jaw clenches; a tiny vein throbs. She smells of apprehension, which clanks of empty ovens and roars like a plane preparing for takeoff. Only you notice.

  “Lucas, do you remember my friends?”

  Lucas, staring, barely nods.

  Mrs. Kaskow has taken note of the word “friends,” and is forming her own opinions about the flighty nature of young women these days.

  You both step forward, a half step really. You murmur something and partially retreat. You do not speak to the other man, nor he to you. There’s nothing left to say.

  Lucas watches you across the room. Or rather, he is looking at the space just behind you. Looking at the specters who surround you like clouds of moths rising up after long-stored clothes have been shaken out. Insubstantial and fluttering, unable to do any harm.

  They are shadows. They will remain here as long as you remain here because you now possess their souls. Once you take a sacred color, she is bound to you. It’s a necessary evil, part of the job, just as a tailor might be covered with the threads and shreds of the fabric he snips and tears and cuts. Not many realize that mortality is a gift.

  They hate you but they have no substance, no weight; they are less irritating than mosquitoes because they cannot draw blood; they have no way to seek revenge. You have grown so used to their presence that you often forget them, just as in time their mortal selves will be forgotten completely.

  But not by Lucas, who watches, who listens. You idly wonder if he can s
ee his mother too. You wonder if she’s here today.

  Her death was really his fault. You knew it the moment you met him in the park. His cryptic little messages and notes and strange behavior were causing concern, and a good mother watches, a good mother listens, a good mother knows. She was smart. She was putting two and two together. What if she had said something to your beloved? Your beloved couldn’t be disturbed just when she’s on the cusp, when she is so close to turning red. It’s a pity that she must lose her friend, but it had to happen. Sometimes to make an omelet . . . Isn’t that how the saying goes?

  You knew that once the mother was gone, the son would go too. You told her as much the day you harvested her rage. And he will be kept away from your darling heart, because material things in this material world have a way of working out in your favor. Documents disappear, names are forgotten, pens run dry, fires spark, electricity dies, lights blow fans still, wires wear thin, lines go dead, calls are dropped, glass breaks, ice thaws, hell freezes over.

  Odd how this always happens when you’re around; then again you find it’s the little things that matter. Like the little boy who stares up at you now. He’s been watching you as you watched him. Watching you and the other man too. Watching as you both stare at Katherine with hunger, but the other man’s hunger is mortal and yours is not. One of these things is not like the other.

  You give Lucas a very special smile, one that only he can see. I can see you too.

  Katherine notices his thumb in his mouth. “Honey, where’s your rabbit’s foot?” He gives no reply.

  She turns and looks at the older woman. “He has a rabbit’s foot key chain. Bright green?” She’s trying to keep her voice calm, trying not to accuse, just making an observation.

  “Oh?” Mrs. Kaskow gives a halfhearted shrug, a cold smile. She hasn’t seen it.

  Mrs. Kaskow is well intentioned, but she lacks imagination. That is a dangerous combination. She has seen kids come and she has seen kids go and they will never be hers and that’s fine because she never wanted her own. It’s best not to get too attached because then you get hurt and she knows how not to get hurt because she’s had a lot of practice over the years.

  Repression is a steel gray, the color of filing cabinets, it smells like an unaired apartment, it smells like souring milk, it creaks like a door opening slowly in the night, it sounds like a key being turned in a lock, it tastes like blood from a bitten lip.

  There, down by her uncle’s pool a million years ago, Mrs. Kaskow lost the taste for imagination or empathy or joy. So she is content to be of use, and be practical and purposeful, and the decor here suits her, right down to the tan carpeted ground underneath her sensible-heeled feet. She goes by the book. She plays by the rules.

  Katherine begins to say something and stops. Not wishing to make trouble, she turns the conversation back to a safer place.

  And now Greg Sotriakis, having assessed with some disgust that “yes, this is it, this is the showing,” asks all the visitors if they would like to follow him to the adjoining room for the service. Everyone gets up quickly, happy to be moving, to be doing something before sitting again. No one wants to be alone with their thoughts for too long.

  Mrs. Kaskow and Lucas and Katherine get up too. He’s off Katherine’s lap but still determinedly holding her hand. The warmth of her hand gives him a small modicum of strength, and as they leave he looks back, and since there’s no one else in the room you show your real self for just a moment, just in case he decides to try and tell Katherine anything else.

  Just so he knows that you’re around.

  It’s the self his mother saw on the day you came to visit her. And then you fold it away, put the mask on once again.

  He turns fast, stumbles, and grips her hand.

  Two nights ago he wakes up and Momma is sitting on the bed, looking at him. Mrs. Kaskow tells him Momma is past, but she is not past, she is here, because she is sitting on his bed, looking at him with so much love in her eyes that he wants to cry out—

  MOMMA!

  —but she shakes her head and puts her finger to her lips, be quiet, so he will not wake Mrs. Kaskow, so he asks in a soft whisper voice if she is hurted and she shakes her head, no, and he asks if she is still dead like the Halloween ladies and she nods her head, yes, and he wants her to hug him—why doesn’t she hug him?

  But she shakes her head and she is pointing and he knows what she wants, what she is pointing to, and he is sad and he doesn’t want to but Momma looks at him and looks at him and he knows it is important, so very slowly he puts it down next to the bed and he lies back and closes his eyes and his cheeks are wet but he isn’t crying, because he is a big boy and big boys don’t cry so he isn’t crying, and then he feels Momma lean over him, he feels her soft lips on his cheek in a kiss like she always kisses him good night, and he feels not so sad and he keeps his eyes closed.

  And when they open it is morning and he looks and his lucky green rabbit foot is gone, but he never tells no one because it is a secret.

  18

  Hours later in the dark, we lie in a sweating, panting heap.

  Then I tell him to get off me.

  “Katherine.”

  “Now.” I give him a shove and maneuver myself, lying as far away from him as I can along the side of the bed. I can sense him lying there, not saying anything. I can hear him breathing. I hate him, almost more than I hate myself.

  It was seeing Lucas go. Walking away with that woman, his small hand engulfed in her shovel-like one. Trying to turn around. His eyes wide, wondering why he was walking in the wrong direction, getting into the wrong car, instead of coming with me.

  And Sael is there, and all it takes is a nod. A nod and we go back to Leigh’s place.

  Once inside, he follows me to my room. The guest room, gray and white and minimal—there’s nothing personal. Which suits me.

  I turn out the light. I don’t want to see him. In the darkness we take off our clothes, not seductively but businesslike, as I do when I’m alone, and then I drag him down onto the bed.

  And briefly Lucas’s eyes are not in my mind.

  Now I tell this man on the side of the bed, breathing, “Please go.”

  “Katherine.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I will,” he says, “but I need to tell you something.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “It’s a final story.”

  “No.”

  “One last story, and then I swear you’ll never have to see me again.”

  I don’t say anything. I close my eyes and wait for him to tell it and be done and get out.

  He takes a huge breath, like he’s about to dive into a swimming pool. “I met Sara in college. It was through David—I mean David was sort of hanging out with this girl Rebecca, and she and Sara were friends. That’s how I met her.”

  So it’s about Sara. I’m disappointed; it’s going to be a “the thing about my wife” kind of story. How clichéd.

  “Anyway, we hooked up at a party, and pretty much started going out soon afterward. It was easy; she was beautiful and smart and we had the same group of friends. I guess the relationship kind of fell into my lap. A no-brainer. Everyone expected us to get married after she graduated.

  He pauses now. “Only thing was that there was this little voice in my head. And it would say: You don’t love her. I would sort of push this voice down but occasionally I’d hear it, at odd moments, sometimes I’d be running or at the computer or just grabbing a cup of coffee and the voice would say: You don’t love her.

  “But time was passing, she graduated, my business was beginning to take off, and the summers became filled with weddings and everyone started looking at us. I know women have it worse. I can’t imagine what they might have said to her.”

  I’ll bet, I think, but I don’t say it. I’m listening now.

  “I remember this one horrible bitch at some drink party at her law firm saying, ‘So when are you getting married?�
�� As if it was any of her damned business. But Sara was pretty feisty. She’d said, ‘I don’t know. When was the last orgasm you had with your husband?’”

  I can hear his grin in the dark. Against my will I start to like her, his feisty dead fiancée.

  “But it got me thinking. So I organized this weekend in San Francisco and at this restaurant overlooking the harbor—you know, one of the ones with Chinese lanterns and waiters who tell you every detail about your meal, that kind of thing. I took out a ring and got down on one knee and Sara started to cry.”

  He falls silent for so long that I think it’s the end of the story. I turn over, and take a breath to say, Thank you, that was lovely, now please get out—

  When he says, low, “She didn’t stop crying. She was crying so hard that she couldn’t even talk. Eventually I had to get up and pay really fast and get her out. The worst thing about it, looking back, is how embarrassed I was. That I cared more about what people thought than why Sara was crying so much. Maybe that should have been a red flag.

  “We got back to the hotel we were staying at and eventually she calmed down enough to talk. I was furious. I was yelling. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ She didn’t answer so I said, ‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’ She turned to me and she said, ‘Yes, but—’”

  My voice startles us both. “‘But it’s not what you want.’”

  Sael sounds rueful. “Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what she said.” Then he sighs. “That would have been the moment to talk about it. Right then and there. That was the moment. But I didn’t. I guess I have to live with knowing that for the rest of my life.”

  I don’t like the sound of this. Not just what he’s saying, but the way his voice is regretful yet just like he’s stating the facts. Somehow it’s worse than if he were being dramatic.

  Sael takes a deep breath and continues. He’s strained but making an effort now. “Of course, I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”