Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  “They’re setting up some sort of meeting place for the families, at the Hilton Garden in Albany,” Hortense says. “They give phone numbers. One for information. One . . . if you need to talk to someone. A counselor. Do you?”

  Ada shakes her head.

  “Mark’s on his way. Bringing food. You need to eat.”

  “Okay,” Ada says. She does well with orders; they comfort her since it’s what she’s known most of her life. Julian never told her to do anything. He asked. He offered. And she’d sit there with the choice between going to a movie or strolling the downtown, anxiety crashing over her, because she could not pick and wanted Julian to make the decision for her, and he refused.

  She thinks for a second time, I won’t see him again this side of heaven.

  Hortense reads the thought from her face and for a moment her perfect mouth trembles. Ada wants to cry but needs permission to do so; if Hortense begins, so will she. The doorbell rings, then, and Hortense sniffles, stands. “That’s Mark,” she says, voice cracking. She coughs, straightening her shoulders, adjusting her armor. “We’ll eat and then call Sophie.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Her heart hears the hotel telephone ringing before her ears do, so when she wakes completely, her chest is constricted, and Katherine thinks, He’s found me. Next to her, Thomas stirs but doesn’t open his eyes, and she knows from these past five months that he sleeps as soundly as if in a coffin. She exhales until she can no longer force breath from her lungs, which only deepens the pounding behind her rib cage.

  The phone rings again.

  She turns her head toward it, red light flashing with each wail, and notices her cell phone blinking as well. She turns it over. Unplugs the cord from the landline.

  It’s dusk; they’d left the blinds open. She hates this time of day, all the contrast draining from her surroundings, making it difficult for her to see much more than shapes, outlines. No details, and that’s where the devil is, for sure. She lays in the semidark, semisilent room, listening to Thomas snuffle, hearing footsteps in the hallway, stopping at their room. A polite knock on their door. And relief comes. If it had been Will, he’d be pounding and shouting.

  Soft rustling, the sound of paper, something she recognizes, dealing with forms and contracts and sign on the dotted line, please in her day job. She slips from bed and sees the folded page beneath the door, sees her naked body in the full-length mirror on the wall, years of gravity and mothering and ice cream tugging down her parts. She wraps a white towel around her middle and snatches the paper from the floor, opening it to read the handwritten words. Please call your sister Jennifer as soon as possible. Important. Katherine knows it must be. Jennifer wouldn’t bother her otherwise.

  Katherine dials her sister’s cell phone, ignoring all the other notifications.

  “Seriously, Kate. I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.”

  “I had the volume down on my phone,” Katherine says. “What’s going on? Is it one of the boys?”

  “No, they’re fine, but turn on the television.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. The news.”

  “What channel?”

  “Try fifty-two.”

  “I don’t think the hotel numbers are the same.” Katherine clicks through the stations until she finds CNN, bold yellow lettering scrolling across the bottom of the screen declaring BREAKING NEWS and NO SURVIVORS. On the screen, she watches footage of a flaming airplane wreckage submerged in a river. Rescue vehicles buzz around the scene, dozens of angry wasps vainly searching for purpose. “The plane crash?”

  “Yes,” Jennifer says. “Kate, that’s your flight from this morning, out of Cleveland.”

  “Oh, God.” Nausea pounces, and Katherine folds in half, one arm sandwiched against her belly, the other still pressing the phone to her ear. “I could have . . .”

  “Will’s going crazy. He’s called here a dozen times. I told him you were shopping. You need to get in touch with him.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “He’s driving out here.”

  “Now? From New York?”

  “He doesn’t want you to step foot on a plane after all this.”

  Katherine’s eyes find the clock. “When did he leave?”

  “Don’t worry. He won’t be here for another five hours or so. After midnight, at least.”

  She swears softly, her queasiness pushed out by rising annoyance. “I’ll be to your place by eight.”

  She hangs up, checks her other messages. From Will, mostly. A few from the boys and Jennifer. Shaking off the towel, she fumbles into the clothes she tossed onto the chair earlier, knocking Thomas’s to the floor and leaving them there. She flops onto the corner of the bed, on his legs, and he finally wakes as she rolls on her socks.

  “What are you doing?” he asks her, looking surprisingly boyish with his tousled hair and sleep-puffed eyelids.

  “Going back to Jennifer’s house.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Will is coming.”

  Thomas struggles out of the blankets, sits upright now. “Does he—”

  “No. It has nothing to do with us. It’s . . . that.” Katherine flaps her hand toward the television, as if trying to drive the images back into the screen where she can no longer see them.

  “A plane crash?”

  “My plane, Thomas. The one I was supposed to be on this morning.”

  “Oh, my God,” he says. “Thank God, thank God you didn’t get on.”

  He holds her, his arms both altogether familiar and unfamiliar, known for such a short period of time compared to the length of her marriage, but the only ones to come around her lately. His entire body is different than Will’s—longer, hairier, more blond, more freckled. She leans into him, trembling. “I could be dead. My boys could have been left without a mother.”

  “But they weren’t,” he says, stroking her hair. “Don’t let yourself go there.”

  She rests in him, eyes closed, until she feels their bodies sinking toward the mattress and Thomas untucking her blouse, resting his hand on her bare stomach. Katherine jumps up, jams her shirt into her pants. “I have to go. I have to call my family. I can’t do it . . . here.”

  They stare at one another and Katherine breaks first, turning her head as if searching for something—her coat? her purse?—but really wanting to escape Thomas’s gaze. Her outside life is encroaching on this life they’ve created, a place where spouses and children don’t exist, where those things they’ve given up for the sake of family can be imagined again. Here, in this hotel room and others like it, they’re allowed to be the people they’ve left behind, discussing all those things that make Will and Susanna roll their eyes and snort. But now she sees how Thomas asks, with his eyes, Why do you choose to go back to that?

  Katherine belts her coat at the waist, noticing a smudge of something on the white fabric. She goes into the bathroom and dampens the corner of a washcloth, touches it to the bar of citrus soap, and scrubs at the spot. She can’t tell, in the dark, if it comes clean, but won’t turn on the light.

  Her purse, she needs it, still on the desk beside the television. She turns on her realtor stride, her walk-with-purpose, and swings the green leather bag onto her shoulder. She doesn’t look at Thomas.

  “At least let me drive you,” he says, her hand on the door handle.

  She shakes her head. “I’ll grab a cab.”

  “Is this it?”

  She looks back; he stands with his pants on now, the televised crash scenes reflecting on his skin. An hour ago she would have abandoned her family for him, if he’d asked. Now he’s dwarfed by the what ifs echoing back at her from the news.

  “I don’t know.”

  It’s only when Katherine is at the elevator, after she’s pressed the down button and waits, hands in her pockets, that she’s pricked by the corner of the business card the man gave her. The one who wanted to get home for his wife’s birthday. The one for whom she gave her seat
up, plus a three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar airline credit and one more night with Thomas.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mark brings Chinese food. Little white boxes from the gods, Julian had called it, causing her to flinch at the pagan reference. Ada’s first ethnic food experience was only two days into their marriage; Julian bought some variation of nearly every dish on the long paper menu and after trying a taste of this and that, she ate mostly rice and the battered chicken without its red, syrupy sauce. Her virgin pallet couldn’t handle the intensity of such unfamiliar flavors. She watched the chopsticks dance in Julian’s fingers, tried propping the thin bamboo in her own hands but could not get them to obey no matter how she positioned them. Like this, he showed her over and over, until she simply speared a piece of chicken with the tip and bit it off. He laughed, taking the offending sticks from her, taking her to bed, his mouth full of spice and sugar and salt.

  She uses a spoon now, licking off the few grains of white rice sticking to it, going through the motions often enough to appear as if she’s eating more than she is. Mark has chopsticks but his hands are clumsy around them. Not like Julian. Or perhaps that’s the dusty glitter of death coming over her memories already, making everything shinier and more perfect than in actual life.

  Hortense has a fork, handle between her wrists, tines pointed toward her. She dips and scoops, bringing the chow mein neatly to her lips. Then she presses the fork into a boneless sparerib, takes up a steak knife, and leans forward to hold the fork with her chin; Ada has seen her cut things before, sawing the knife back and forth, each bite more work and more reward. Tonight Mark stops her, slicing her meat quickly and then touching her arm. The look they give one another says, We’re still here. Then, as if programmed, they both turn and look at Julian’s empty chair. Beneath the table, Ada slips her hand onto the seat.

  So cold.

  “We only have to get in touch with Sophie tonight,” Hortense says, the first words since the meal began. “She can call the rest of the family. Mark and I will take care of the people we know tomorrow, the ones closest to us. Everyone else will hear about it when names are released.”

  Ada takes this opportunity to push back her plate. She nods, but surely there are other Julian Goetzes in the world. Will the television and newspaper reports show photos of the deceased? List family, age, occupation? She doesn’t know how it all works. Hortense seems confident, though, and Ada has looked ignorant enough in front of her, and Mark, and Julian’s other friends on other occasions. She doesn’t want that tonight.

  “What about clients?” Mark asks.

  “I don’t know. He always has that stuff with him.”

  “I guess we just tell them when they call looking, if they don’t find out sooner.”

  “I guess.” She looks at Ada. “Okay, then. Sophie.”

  Ada shakes her head. “I don’t know how to say.”

  Hortense slumps, the news finally catching up with her. Ada knows she wishes she can be in her own space, grieving, instead of caring for her best friend’s wife, a woman she barely knows and who has the resourcefulness of a day-old kitten—eyes closed still, able only to mew and wriggle and clamp on to its mother’s nipple for milk. Hortense is doing all of this for Julian. Not her.

  “I’ll call,” Hortense says. “Do you have the number?”

  Ada gives her the cell phone and she passes it to Mark. He maneuvers around the touch screen and shows it to Hortense. She dials her own phone and hoists it to her ear. “Hi, Sophie, it’s Hortense Travers . . . It has been awhile, a couple years, I think . . . No, I’m not calling about that, I’m afraid . . . Well, yes. I mean, geez, Soph, have you seen the news about that plane crash today? . . . Yeah . . . Yes . . . No, just him . . . She’s here with me . . . Yeah, okay.” She holds the phone out to Ada; it balances on the end of her arm, screen glowing. Ada hadn’t realized night had come down; no lights are on in the brownstone.

  She takes the call—“Hi, Sophie”—and hears only muffled sobs. She waits. Perhaps the tears of Julian’s sister will dislodge her own. Cry, cry, cry. But nothing comes. Her eyes are open, her limbs move, her mouth creates words, but every other part of her sleeps, as if Julian’s death injected Novocain into her soul.

  You won’t feel a thing, he’d told her. They give you a shot to numb your gums. But you need to go to the dentist. That cavity’s so big your tooth is practically gone. That’s all she’ll have of him for the rest of her life, bits of conversation appearing and disappearing in her memory, like white rabbits. Another first with him, the magic show outside Quincy Market. Every day their marriage brought firsts. He made certain of it.

  Finally Sophie said, “Ada, are you okay?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “No, I suppose not. There’s no other information yet? No, of course there wouldn’t be. Too soon. Still working on finding bodies. Identifying them. That could take days. Weeks. Like with that other crash, TWA—you wouldn’t know anything about that. Don’t listen to me. I’ll go ahead and call family, if that’s good with you?”

  “I don’t have numbers for anyone anyway.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Something to do. Something to do. You need to keep doing, Ada. Don’t let the sadness get you. It will, if you sit there. It grows over you.”

  Ada has no idea what she’s babbling about. It makes her nervous. She passes the phone back to Hortense.

  “Soph, I’m back . . . I promise, I’ll call you with anything we find out . . . I will . . . Yeah . . . Bye.” She shovels the phone onto the sofa. Mutters the Lord’s name beneath her breath.

  Mark and Hortense clear the food, moving like a couple married more than a decade. She and Julian still stumbled around one another, not yet of one being, evenings full of awkward moments—his jokes she didn’t laugh at, her attempts to serve him through cooking and cleaning for which he cared nothing. She would cry and he’d hold her, and she’d say, “I have no way to please you. I can’t do anything but cook and clean and laundry. But you bring home take-away and send your clothes to the Laundromat, and you won’t fire your maid. So what can I give you to make me worth the trouble?”

  You. I have you. Just you.

  She told him that made no sense. He told her she’d learn.

  Seeing Hortense and Mark together continues to confuse her. Her own father would never wash dishes. Her mother would never dare ask him to. Yet Mark scrubs away duck sauce and Hortense leans her body against his back, her face between his shoulder blades, her arms belted at his waist. She makes no move to help. When he finishes, he turns and embraces her, whispers in her ear. Then he says, “Ada, I’ll be back in a few. Need something while I’m out?”

  She shakes her head.

  “He has to walk Lucca,” Hortense says. Their dog. “And he’s bringing our television. We’ll stay the night with you.”

  So they sit, Ada back in her chair—her chair? This is the first time she’s thought of anything in Julian’s home as hers. It’s as if, when he died, his essence evaporated from all the physical things around her, freeing them to belong to others—and Hortense on the sofa. She thought they might stay in silence all night, but should have known better. Hortense doesn’t do quiet. Instead of tears, words spill from her.

  “I framed those for him,” Hortense says, nodding at the five prints on the wall. The one of the boy aflame. One of another boy, a teenager, bald and emaciated, wearing only jeans and spread eagle on a lawn painted with dandelions. A soldier, lighting a cigarette with bandaged hands, leaning against a wall punctured with dozens of bullet holes. A gathering of homeless and less-than during a Sunday morning worship service beneath the Albany overpass, sharing a Communion of donuts and day-old bagels.

  And the fifth, a tree on a hill, shot from a distance, the shadow of a woman clinging to it.

  “He told me you made him hang them there.”

  “Made him? That’s probably too close to true. I would have badgered him until he put them up, for sure. I mean, who h
ides their Pulitzer photos? Except for that one on the end. He changed out the picture I put in there for that one.” Hortense shifts on the sofa, leather squeaking beneath her long, denim-clad legs. “He said that’s you.”

  Ada nods. Hortense wants more, but she has no energy to think about the image, much less tell the story of it.

  When she doesn’t continue, Hortense does. “He was stupid humble. Not in a false modesty sort of way. It didn’t matter to him if he won a thousand awards or not. He knew he had a gift. I told him Mark and I had to get together to even come close to half the talent he had. He just . . . I mean, he was . . .” Her phantom hands float above her knees; Ada can almost see them twisting and tapping, desperate to cling to anything real. And she clearly sees how much Hortense cares for him.

  They had met in college, Julian and Hortense and Mark, all majoring in photography. Somehow they fell in together, though Julian couldn’t remember exactly how it happened. And when Ada wanted to know if any part of Julian had loved her, he said, “I could have. At one point, I wanted to. But I asked God and he told me no. I was meant to be with someone else.”

  Growing up in a community where she had been expected to live in a constant state of cheerful meekness, she became skilled at hiding emotions. But she has no mask of joy to wear now, and grief doesn’t cover nearly as well. Hortense must notice something on Ada’s face because she quickly says, “Mark and I are happy, Ada. It’s been a long time since I thought of Julian as anything other than a friend. Not since junior year. I promise you.”

  “I know.”

  “Good. I couldn’t handle it if you thought . . . you know . . . otherwise.”

  Hortense tells stories of their college shenanigans, of a young, puckish Julian Ada never knew and can’t at all conjure, until Mark comes back and plugs in the television. Hortense finds a sheet and blanket in the upstairs hallway closet, covers the leather sofa, and she and Mark squish together there, even though Ada offers them the spare room. “We’ve slept in smaller spaces,” Mark says, and the couple laughs gently at shared memories. She stays in the chair, arms strapped around her legs, and she dozes in the flickering of the muted news channel. Each time she wakes, both Mark and Hortense are still staring at the screen.