I couldn’t do more than mouth the responses to the prayers for the repose of Anna’s soul. I didn’t know if she had one, or if she was now in a better place; I could not begin to guess or even to care. Inside the elaborate white coffin Alfie had chosen for her did not look like a better place to me.
Just so long as she didn’t come back to haunt the village. I overheard in the coffee shop someone was claiming to have seen her floating in the river, or running through the forest in a long white dress. If she’d been seen wearing the jogging outfit I’d found her in I’d have been more inclined to believe that one. Or does heaven require a change of costume into something more dignified, more spectral?
The air in the church was heavy with the scent of garish flowers, and the priest droned on and on, extolling the virtues of a woman he clearly had not known well. “Devoted wife?” I think not.
The Anglican service involved a lot of books and a lot of mad switching back and forth of pages, and of trying to find the right spot in the hymnal and whatnot. I finally gave up when they’d reached the end of “Immortal, invisible, God only wise” and I was still nowhere near finding it in the hymnal. I noticed Will next to me was not employing the lovely deep baritone voice I knew he had: he used to warble at full volume in the shower.
I stole a look at him and saw his face was flushed a deep red, and a tear had escaped from behind his glasses to roll down his cheek. Pull yourself together, Will, I wanted to say. There were sure to be police in the congregation. That’s how they always worked these things.
Afterward there was a “Celebration of the Life of Anna Monroe” and although I felt I’d celebrated quite enough there was no way to pretend a more pressing engagement. I could tell Will felt the same, but we sloped along to the circa 1930s village hall with everyone else. Huge black clouds squatted on the distant hills as the coastal towns took a beating that day. The internment of the body was to take place later, in private, and outside the village, as there was no more room in St. Chrysostom’s wee graveyard. I’d heard Alfie had wanted to cremate her but the authorities wouldn’t allow it under the circumstances.
As I passed by that graveyard nearly every day, I was glad she’d be elsewhere.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The village hall is one of those institutions difficult to explain to anyone outside the UK. It bore no relation to the ugly community centers to be found across the US, built of surplus concrete blocks or whatever junk an enterprising contractor had been able to foist off on gullible or corrupt town fathers. The Weycombe Village Hall was, for one thing, the center of life for the local Women’s Institute, another of those thoroughly British inventions that for whatever reason had not gained a foothold in the States. Which was a shame, as in addition to demonstrations of corn-dolly making and canning, the women managed to do a lot of good, raising funds to feed the homeless and save the planet. Despite recruiting efforts aimed at revamping the WI’s image of stodgy domesticity, the Weycombe branch remained stubbornly in the vein of the inbred women of Harvest Home, and I would resist joining with my last breath.
Will had once asked me why I didn’t go to their meetings just for the networking opportunities, a theme that became more woven into the rich tapestry of our lives the longer I remained unemployed. He could not understand my aversion to hanging out with so many women like Heather, who went through life, while living just minutes from every convenience money could buy, as if she were homesteading on a Kansas prairie during tornado season. I was very afraid that if I got sunk into that world there would be no escape. I would end my days poring over knitting patterns and worrying that my cakes wouldn’t rise, and my book or books would stay unwritten.
“ … she won’t take pictures and she won’t be me!”
At the celebration of Anna’s heartless existence, I felt I knew most everyone apart from people connected with her job. That had always been a bit of a closed door to me, anyway, what estate agents did. If the movie American Beauty was anything to go by, they obsessed over feng shui-ing houses to ready them for sale. Despite her agnosticism, Anna had probably lit candles and, for all I know, performed animal sacrifice in the hearths of homes on the market for more than ninety days.
Anna’s mother and father were at the celebration, looking pretty much wrecked. Alfie had told me once they “dressed funny,” a statement I didn’t bother to question at the time. But their fashion sense might best be described as Reformed Scottish.
Anna had seldom talked about her background. If asked, she would say she was from Bristol and change the subject. Half the population of Weycombe seemed to be from Bristol but to me it was like saying they were from Dunkirk or Glasgow. I had very few preconceived notions about the things that seemed to exercise the British the most, like class. I think, if I’m honest, it was my saving grace. Americans can be snobbish, in our vast country, about people from the Deep South, and sometimes about people from Texas, but even then, we are not particularly all about keeping them in their places based on their accents. Their race and sex, sure. Otherwise, we thrive on the rose-from-poverty stories, all that Horace Greeley stuff, and we love to have people who came from nothing regale us on talk shows, telling us how we can do it too, if we just start a vision board and kick all that negativity to the curb.
Sometimes, we raise people up just so we can tear them down again, it is true.
Anyway, Anna’s parents were dressed in plaid, both of them. She in a skirt, he in a matching jacket, both in white shirts with ruffles down the front. Maybe they were going to be in a parade after the wake. It was a dark blue plaid, shot through with black. I had no idea if it was a mourning tartan or even if there were such a thing.
Her mother had been pretty once and had taken good care of her rose-petal skin; her father was a homely man, stunningly so, with an enormous putty nose stuck to his face, riddled with veins and broken capillaries. His eyes were bloodshot to match. I remembered he was technically the stepfather, which explained the gap between him and Anna, who had been so exquisitely assembled.
I offered them both my condolences, explaining that I had been Anna’s friend and neighbor. I threw in the “friend” so they might let down their guard, but grief had barricaded them behind a drawbridge. Anna had been an only child. They thanked me with a stiff courtesy and went off to refresh themselves some more at the drinks table.
There was a woman there I learned later was Jason’s mother, Alfie’s ex. A peroxide blonde wearing a black bandage dress, she seemed to be delighted by Anna’s disappearance from the scene and was not good at hiding it. Surely, please—surely she wasn’t thinking Alfie would give her a second chance with Anna out of the picture?
Looking across the room, I saw Will in deep conversation with Frannie Pope, the woman who owned Serendipity, where she sold scarves and statement jewelry—gigantic necklaces and pins with slogans like “Just do it” or “Dance like no one’s watching” picked out in rhinestones. Boiled wool hats in mimsy shades of lavender and, for the summer, straw hats rimmed with fabric flowers. Drapey, menopausal garb in taupe and tan with odd seams and hems that fell at odd angles, most of it appliqued with cats and butterflies—stuff like that.
I thought most of her merchandise appalling but she had been in business a long time, so what did I know. Something must get into women on holiday that would make them want to wear affirming slogans over their hearts and don night shirts decorated with cats. Who knows what their husbands thought but if I had to guess, Frannie’s target market consisted largely of widows and divorcees.
At the celebration, Arty Frannie wore some crepe number in shades of mud-brown that fell in folds to her Mary Jane-style orthopedic shoes. She had piled her hair in a topknot for the occasion, gray tendrils spiraling about her face. There was something in Will’s stance and hers that held my attention as they stood to one side, away from the crush by the buffet, talking practically nose to nose in hushed voices. I s
tepped behind one of the pillars in the room to study them from over the top of my wine glass. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t sexual, God knew. I mean, the woman had thirty years on Will—definitely old enough to be his snippy mother—and she was a very odd duck, besides.
Will drank at the gathering in a way that told me getting blind drunk had been his plan from the first. It was not a matter of loosening up or of drowning sorrows: he drank with the determination of a man knowing there was hemlock in that glass and he was going to drink it to the dregs, anyway. He looked forlorn, bereft as a kid whose dog has just been run over. At least he wasn’t crying anymore but I did hope no one else noticed his reaction to Anna’s death was a bit out of line for someone who was, you know, married to me.
I had put away a few drinks myself on an empty stomach and I started silently to cry as I walked home from the Anna celebration, alone in the dark and well over the walking limit. A strong, manly arm to lean on—any arm—would have been welcome. There was no one to see the tears as they coursed down my cheeks, and I didn’t care if they did. I wasn’t crying for Anna, of course, but for myself; funerals bring up all the stuff you don’t ever want to think about in the course of a normal week. Or lifetime.
So I was indulging in a rare, gooey sentimentality. I wished fleetingly there really was an afterlife so I could see my mother again. To explain to her the why of my choices.
In days past I might have shared these sentiments, however sophomoric, with Will. Of course, he was now the last person who would tolerate listening to all that. The fact was, he’d never seen me break down. Well, maybe the once. I’d been angry, lots—there was plenty to be angry about, Rossalind just for a start—but weeping and carrying on? Never.
It still raises the hair on the back of my neck to remember this: As I felt my way home from the celebration, blinkered by the darkness, I thought I saw Anna drive by in her white convertible. She was dressed as I’d seen her a thousand times, in a too-tight navy blue suit and white blouse and with big chunky jewelry at the neck—the uniform of her profession. But she was a corpse, dead at the wheel. She turned her head and stared in my direction out of those dead eyes. “Made my flesh creep” is an exact description. So is “my stomach churned.” Mercifully, the car sped off and only then could I see it was not Anna. It was some dark-haired, hollow-eyed woman, perhaps the woman who lived over the linens shop a few streets over. I had to get a grip.
Investigating this case … Rashima was right. I needed to leave it alone, for my sanity’s sake.
I went inside and poured a tumbler of scotch from Will’s stash of single malt.
I told myself it was fatigue, it was fear, it was knowing this thing with Will was hanging over my head and I would have to get through it somehow. We were coming apart—fine. Okay. But we would part on my terms. And that required a certain shoring up of defenses.
It was the not knowing what came next, the not being able to control for everything, that was freaking me out. But by halfway through the second glass, I’d calmed myself down. And I kept a tighter rein from then on.
The next day I asked Will what was up with him, waiting until he looked slightly sobered up. He said he didn’t know why the whole thing had hit him so hard. He’d slept in his office again, emerging just long enough to pour some emergency coffee. I could almost have felt sorry for him. That dangerous pity again.
“It’s just … ” he tried. “It’s just that I just saw her, I just had seen her, and she was so alive. Not just talking and walking around but living, the way few people are, smiling, happy—full of it. Brimming over. You know how she was.” Yes, I knew. “I guess,” he continued, “I had a ‘there but for the grace of God’ moment.”
“Understandable,” I said. “Me too.”
“Let’s not talk about it. I really don’t think I can bring myself to talk or even think about it anymore.”
True to his word, he seemed to let all thought of Anna go. Three days later, it was as if she had never existed. Sociopaths can do that. I’m not sure about the rest of us.
There had been plainclothes cops at both the funeral and the celebration, I was sure of that. Too young and bright-eyed; too alert, too not grief-stricken to be mourners.
A lot had been going on, for sure. I had also seen a look pass between Alfie and Heather, and I’d seen her start to ask him something, then think better of it. I asked Will if he’d noticed it, too.
“No,” he said firmly. “I saw nothing whatsoever. You have too vivid an imagination.”
While he didn’t mean it to be, I found that rather flattering. A vivid imagination was way better than the “reliable” label my teachers had attached to me. I read that as dull and plodding, when what I wanted was to be wild and free and—above all, once I reached my teens—sexy. Reliable was for bus drivers.
Of course, then Will had to ruin it with a snipe about how I had too much time on my hands and that’s what was leading to all this wild speculation. I refused to be drawn. I had many potential suspects to write up, to get down on paper. Everything and everyone by that point was material. I was itching for Will to go away so I could get to work.
Anna’s stepson had been at the celebration, but just barely, and he was worth many pages as a suspect. Jason—gangly, almost feral in appearance, looking nothing like his father. He was the sort of aggressively artistic kid you’d find working in a movie theater that specialized in indie films, with a scraggly beard and Celtic tattoos and jewelry stuck all over him.
He had slipped away early, barely acknowledging anyone who approached him with condolences. His father seemed too out of it to notice. I suspect both of them were on something to dull the pain. The scotch looked like a bad idea on top of that but it was not my place.
I’d decided the police could learn all about Jason with no help from me. The usual sense of entitlement disguised as “a struggle to find himself.” For Jason, finding his own ass was a struggle and would be until he made some different friends and put away the drug paraphernalia for good. Briefly, I wondered how Anna’s death would affect him. Financially, I mean. Emotionally, I’m not sure it even registered.
He had inherited a small amount of money from a great-grandmother when he turned eighteen, but he’d blown through that quickly. Snorted through it, traveled a bit. “Learned how to abuse me in three languages,” as Anna had told me. He’d lived out in Oregon for a time, starring in his own version of Portlandia and routinely predicting the end of the world. All by way of dodging the question of when he was going to get a steady job. Why bother with jobs when the world was coming to an end?
Actually, it turned out he had had a steady job all along, and once they legalized marijuana it cut into his profits so much he had to return home. He paused only long enough to top up his allowance on the way to South Africa, Alfie being ever a guilty soft touch for his son.
Six months later, Jason was calling from Cape Town, astonished to learn his credit card no longer worked since Alfie and Anna, after fair warning, had stopped paying the bill for him. He’d come home for a brief, raucous visit that ended with another flare-up of his father’s illness. Jason had flounced off and hadn’t much been seen in the neighborhood since.
I knew him mainly from Anna’s rare outbursts of frustration with him and from his boyhood photos scattered about her house. From these photos I’d gained an impression of a gangly four-year-old with a toothy grin who had survived a fraught adolescence of facial hair experiments to become a surly young adult male of the kind often described in police bulletins. He seemed to have got into some dicey business arrangements, either to fund his drug use or because his judgment was so impaired by them. As a teen he frequented Riverside Park, a common scene of drug busts. You’d think they’d learn but anyone who would take drugs in the first place is probably incapable of setting new memories.
Anna had told me all this late one night, finishing off a bottle of win
e after the others in the book club had left. I had a feeling she was confiding too much and might come to regret it, not that I was going to tell anyone. Even after she died, I never told Milo everything I knew.
Anna had clearly been at her wit’s end or she would not have confided in me. We were, as I say, not exactly close.
20
The day after the Anna service I paid a visit to Arty Frannie’s kaleidoscopic shop. I could think of no way to ask what she and Will had been so cozy about, but that question was not my top priority. What had happened to Anna was, and what Frannie might really have seen that day.
Everyone called her Frannie, never Frances or Fran. Over her drapey dresses she was given to wearing capes and shawls, dramatic, curtain-like things she could swish about her shoulders to knock knickknacks off of tables. She often wore her hair in an intricate braid and she had the kohl-lined eyes of a mystic, a look which she used to good effect in her shop, selling in addition to her unique line of fashion all sorts of candles and incense and New Agey gimcrack.
Physically she was all bust and belly like a fertility goddess; mentally she was an alumnus of the Shirley MacLaine School of Karma. She was also a bit of a busybody, if likable enough. When I saw her with Will at the village hall, I remembered thinking his own mother had never looked at him with such real concern.
I had never set foot inside her house in Weycombe Court, which I imagined was furnished a lot like a sultan’s harem, smelling of incense, all beads and candles and embroidered tassels.
The dogs stayed with her in the shop all day, occasionally nipping at the heels of customers they didn’t like. They observed me closely for between-meal-snack potential as I entered. Like many dogs in Weycombe, Buzz and Armstrong had been to the Weycombe Academy for Dogs (WAD) and were spoiled rotten. In winter Frannie dressed them in little sweaters, different ones each day, another outlet for her uncertain fashion sense. She came into her own at Halloween, when she sewed their costumes. They often won the annual Dog Days of Autumn competition; the year before, she’d dressed Buzz as Princess Leia and Armstrong as Darth Vader.
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