Next Life Might Be Kinder

by Howard Norman

Embarrassed, I picked up the paper, folded it so the front page was again on top, stretched over to the next table where the photographer sat. She took the paper and said, “Thank you.” I nodded and held my empty cup up in the air, and the waitress said, “Refill coming right up.” She walked over and filled my cup from the glass pot she carried. She returned to behind the counter, put the pot on the warming coils, then started paging through her own copy of the newspaper.

  The photographer was maybe fifty, give or take a year or two. She hadn’t removed her rain slicker, and mist was still beaded on it. Her tripod camera was laid across two chairs she’d set close together at her table. She wore round, black-rimmed glasses and her gray-flecked black hair was windblown. She had, at first glance, to quote Chekhov, a “distracted beauty.”

  She loudly drummed the newspaper with her fingers, and when I looked up, she said, “Did you read the article on that movie being shot in Halifax?”

  “I glanced at it,” I said.

  “Not that interested?”

  “Not in the gossip.”

  “I’ve seen them filming in my neighborhood,” she said, “just up from Historic Properties.”

  “Did you come out here to get away from that?”

  “No. I often drive out to various landscapes, take my photographs, and generally get back to the city by the dinner hour.”

  “Are you a professional photographer?”

  “I’m a pediatrician, now retired, actually. I photograph for myself.”

  But she changed the subject. “Gossip, sure, of course there’s that. But the man whose life—marriage—the movie’s based on? The article says he’s being a bit difficult, keeping things he knows to himself, not allowing the director to make a movie that might get at the truth. I find something off-tilt in that attitude, personally.”

  “You formed an opinion from the one article?”

  “Well, the director has been quite outspoken for weeks now.”

  I said, “My guess is, the writer signed away the rights to the story, but not the right to his privacy.”

  “Wants to have his cake and eat it too. I’m not so sure.”

  She went back to reading. I’d hoped the conversation had ended. The waitress stepped up to the photographer’s table and said, “Ma’am, do you want to order anything to eat, or is more coffee just the thing?”

  “Wheat toast, please, jam, but no butter.”

  As the waitress stood writing this down on the order pad, the photographer said to her, “Will you go see this movie when it comes out?”

  “Oh, Jesus, yes,” she said. “Yes, I will see it. It sounds so romantic from the little I’ve read. Me and my fiancé will go see it. Joseph—Joe. By the time it comes out, he’ll be my husband.”

  “Congratulations,” the photographer said.

  “June twenty-sixth next, we get hitched.”

  “Oh, how lovely.”

  “Right out there near the water.” The waitress nodded out the window at the cove.

  “Beautiful spot for a wedding,” the photographer said.

  The waitress went back to clip the order to the metal stand. The burly cook, in his spattered apron, reached through the small window and snapped off the sheet and read it.

  “Wheat toast next up.”

  A duet from Madame Butterfly was playing on the radio. What I most wanted was to sit in the kitchen and listen to it. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  “By the way, I’m Ann Stewart,” the photographer said. She waited a few seconds for me to offer my name, and when I didn’t, she scrunched up her face, pursed her lips, and said, “Well, ahem—anyway, me too, I’ll go see this movie soon as it comes to town. Yes, perhaps such stories set up anticipation differently in women than men. I’m probably just spouting nonsense, but anyway. Anyway, as I understand it, the story is about newlyweds madly in love, and then the wife is murdered in a hotel. Did you know it’s based on that murder in the Essex Hotel? Haligonians aren’t used to that sort of thing. Halifax is not New York. As far as murders go.”

  The waitress delivered her toast and said, “Want to know something? Me and my fiancé have—how to say it?—we practiced our honeymoon night at that same hotel. That was about three months after the sadness happened. That’s how I generally refer to such things, the sadness, because if I think too detailed about them, I tend not to leave my house.”

  “Do you see a lot of people coming here to photograph birds?” Ann Stewart asked.

  “Mainly people set up easels and paint,” the waitress said.

  “Well, nice to meet you”—she read the name tag clipped below the left shoulder of the waitress’s button-down sweater—“Sarah. Perhaps I’ll see you at the movies.”

  “You just might. Me and my fiancé go to Halifax once every two months to the movies and dinner.”

  “Yes,” Ann Stewart said, “and to practice your honeymoon night.”

  “My fiancé says I can’t keep a secret, so for me, then, there’s no such thing as one.”

  “I’ll have to think about that,” Ann Stewart said, more or less dismissing Sarah, who picked right up on it and returned to the counter.

  Now addressing me, Ann Stewart said, “What do you suppose is indicated by the title Next Life? Hmmm, I wonder. It can’t refer to some sort of afterlife, God forbid. Let’s hope not at least. That would be too sentimental, in my opinion.”

  “The title is an abbreviation of Next Life Might Be Kinder,” I said. “There’s a photographer, Robert Frank—”

  “Yes, I saw his exhibit in Halifax.”

  “Well, had you looked closely at his photographs—”

  “I did look closely, I beg your pardon.”

  “Had you looked closely, you would’ve seen that he wrote Next Life Might Be Kinder along the bottom of most of the photographs in that exhibit.”

  “For someone who seems not to care about that movie, you know quite a bit. And, sir, you’ve taken a very rude tone.”

  She set down some money on the table, picked up her camera, and left the café.

  When Sarah delivered my bill, she smiled broadly and said, “Yeah, sure. I bet you go see that movie. It’s a movie about true love, it sounds like. You’ll go see it. All gruff on the outside, but inside, a beating heart. You can’t fool me. I’m a student of people.”

  I Didn’t Leave the Apartment for Nearly a Month

  FOR WEEKS AFTER Elizabeth was murdered, I felt, to put it bluntly, I had little to live for. I was all bleakness. One bath in two weeks, the next one not for another week, and so on. Hapless at feeling anything but Lizzy’s absence. I thought about suicide. I definitely considered it. I may as well admit it. I may as well say what really happened. Naturally, as soon as I could reach them after Elizabeth’s death—less than two hours, as it turned out—I spoke to her parents (Mr. Isherwood allowed me to use his private line). There were immediate gasps. After the initial shock, they said they wanted Lizzy to be buried in Wales, and I accompanied her body on a flight to London, then in a hearse to Hay-on-Wye, which Elizabeth’s father had arranged.

  Elizabeth was buried in the family plot not more than half a mile from town. I noticed some grave markers as old as the fourteenth century. There were at least a hundred people in attendance; it was pouring rain and black umbrellas bloomed everywhere. Devon and Mary Church, whom I was meeting for the first time (to meet one’s wife’s parents for the first time under such circumstances is something I would not wish on the devil, as they say in Nova Scotia), were as kind to me as could possibly be imagined. A few days later, a memorial service was held in the dining room of the Swan Hotel, and many people related their memories of Elizabeth as a child—retired constable Elias Teachout himself, quite old now, told of delivering the summons, putting it in bittersweet, humorous relief—right up to when she went to Canada to attend Dalhousie. As part of her remembrance, Mary Church said, “Our love and sorrow and prayers we share with Samuel, with us here. Devon and I always knew that our Elizabeth i
ntended to bring you back here to live.” In fact, on more than one occasion, sitting in Cyrano’s Last Night, Lizzy would say, “I’m homesick. Someday we have to go to Wales to live, okay? We’ll make ends meet somehow.” Then we’d shake hands on the deal.

  After the memorial, the Churches insisted that I stay with them, in the house where Elizabeth was raised, for as long as I wished. I ended up staying for six weeks, unable to do much more than eat and sleep. During that time the Churches scarcely slept, and Lizzy’s father wept openly, her mother in the more private precincts of the house and down near the trout stream.

  I was in Wales during the trial of Alfonse Padgett, a blessing considering that it had been all over the papers and on radio and television. When I returned to Halifax it was still in the papers. And one night, I heard on the radio, “. . . the widower Sam Lattimore has stayed on in the Essex Hotel.” I realized that in a city where violent crimes are not everyday events, a murder can linger a long time in the public consciousness. A long, long time. Personally, I was experiencing sheer stunned bewilderment, not to mention inconsolable sadness, not to mention blinding anger toward Alfonse Padgett. It all contributed to a kind of agoraphobia, and I didn’t leave the apartment for nearly a month. Mr. Isherwood kindly had food sent up from the kitchen; the hotel never billed me for it.

  I’d submitted a statement for the trial, but neither the prosecution nor the defense had required me to appear as a witness. My understanding is that the case was pretty cut-and-dried. Twenty minutes after shooting Elizabeth to death, Alfonse Padgett was found in his room in the hotel. Two policemen, guns drawn, rushed through Padgett’s open door and discovered Derek Budnick beating Padgett about the back and shoulders with a nightstick. The officers hauled the bellman down to the police station, where he immediately admitted committing the crime. The investigating detectives told Padgett to write it all down, and he signed a confession. Still, a defense attorney was assigned to Padgett, and he presented an insanity defense, which, according to Derek, was practically laughed out of court. “The trial date was expedited to address the brutality of the act,” the Chronicle-Herald reported.

  Derek looked in on me regularly, as did Mr. Isherwood, who slid a note under my door: “Dear Sam: We, the entire administration and staff of the Essex Hotel, are all in mourning. Please don’t worry about the rent for six months, it’s the least we can do. All heartfelt wishes to you in your time of sorrow.—Mr. Alfred Isherwood, Manager.”

  Since various radio stations had broadcast my address, upward of ten law firms and a dozen independent attorneys offered to represent me in a civil suit charging the Essex Hotel with negligence. They left business cards and messages at the front desk. One attorney actually telephoned up from the lobby. “Look,” I said, “fuck off. Alfonse Padgett murdered my wife, the hotel didn’t. The other bellmen and Mr. Isherwood, they’re my friends. So fuck off to fuck-off land and leave me alone.”

  “Mr. Lattimore,” this attorney said, “in the eyes of the law, you’re deserving.”

  I hung up.

  Like I said, it was a month before I ventured out of my room, just to sit somewhere besides at my kitchen table. On that first visit to the lobby, the bell captain, Mr. Prater, sat next to me on the window-side sofa. I had not spoken more than a few words to him before, yet his sincere tone did not put me off. “Mr. Lattimore,” he said, “I’ve debated whether or not to say what I’m going to say, but here goes. There’s a very smart man, I call him a head doctor, but I’m unlettered, and educated people would call him a psychiatrist. Years before you and Elizabeth, I’m told, he lived here in the hotel. He put up a shingle on Spring Garden Road. My own son James had six months of seeing Dr. Nissensen—that’s his moniker, Nissensen. And James had every resistance toward this kind of thing. My son was brought up to work out problems on his own, eh? But sometimes, and here’s my platitude, and I’m no clergyman, sometimes life just blindsides a person. Rips his goddamn guts out, to use some language. Then a person needs some help. I’ve put Dr. Nissensen’s card in your mail slot.”

  Mr. Prater got up and walked to the bell captain’s station, where he took a telephone call.

  Ten days after I’d gone down to the lobby, I had my first therapy session. Before that, I had made three appointments and canceled each one. In the end, I conquered my fears and decided to try this Dr. Nissensen.

  “Tell me something about yourself,” Dr. Nissensen said, to begin. “I read the newspapers, so I know about what happened to your wife. I’m very sorry.”

  I took in my surroundings for a moment, then said, “I was writing for radio, for a program. You’re probably old enough to remember the original. I got hired by the CBC to update some episodes of Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.”

  “You are correct in estimating my age, Mr. Lattimore, and indeed I do remember that program. Very popular when I was young. My age might be important to you, but we can address that later. Please continue. You were writing for radio . . .”

  “This was before Elizabeth was murdered. I was writing a scene in which a criminal gets fingerprinted at a police station. A policewoman stands behind him and presses each of his fingers to the ink pad, then to the official arrest record. And while I was typing up this scene, Elizabeth came up behind me and read over my shoulder. ‘Mmmm,’ she said. ‘Sam, I’m getting all hot and bothered.’”

  “I see.”

  “I can close my eyes and it feels like it happened yesterday. I can hear her voice. It’s so real. Like it happened yesterday. Elizabeth took my hand and kissed each of my fingertips. Then she wrote her name with a pen, like a high school lovesick thing. She wrote her name on my fingertips, you know, E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H, which left my right thumb bereft of a letter. And Lizzy didn’t like that, and so she paid some special attention to that thumb, kissing it over and over, like it’d been slammed in a door or something.”

  I suddenly needed some air and bolted from Dr. Nissensen’s office, stood in the waiting room, gasping for breath, my face pressed to the window. Then I hurried out to the street.

  Back at the Essex Hotel, I told bell captain Prater, “Things didn’t work out, but thanks for the suggestion.” Yet I was in Nissensen’s waiting room twenty minutes early the following Tuesday. And after that session, I said to Mr. Prater, “I’m giving it a second chance.”

  All this came back to me while driving in the truck after Dr. Nissensen informed me of the fact that Peter Istvakson had tried to arrange a session. Just before I arrived in Port Medway, I figured out that it had to have been bell captain Prater who’d told Istvakson I was seeing Dr. Nissensen. Istvakson had ears all over town.

  He Must at Least Touch My Hand (Fourth Lindy Lesson)

  I’D STARTED TO get the hang of the intermediate lindy, thanks to Elizabeth’s diligent attention. She had insisted on practicing a minimum of half an hour every night after dinner, even on the rare occasions when we ate in a restaurant. Like everything else she put her mind to, mastering the lindy was a matter of devotion. “Practice, practice, practice,” and it didn’t hurt that trying to get me to somehow be more coordinated provided a lot of laughs. A day or two before the fourth lesson, sitting in the bath together, Elizabeth said, “Sam, there are eight couples still taking the lessons, and I hereby officially rank us as third best. We’ve gotten better by leaps and bounds, but you have got to get your hands held right. Try to stop looking like you’re a bobby directing traffic in London or something, I don’t know. You improve on that and I’ll make bouillabaisse.”

  “I’m pretty confident lately. It might not show, but I am.”

  “How confident?”

  “I put a down payment on the advanced lindy classes.”

  “If you’re lying, I’m sleeping on the chaise longue tonight.”

  “Ten dollars on deposit. A ten-dollar bill set directly into Mr. Moran’s hands.”

  “Wash my back?”

  Padgett may have been banished from the ballroom, but he remained employed by the hot
el. He was still in the lobby, so we could not entirely avoid him. Elizabeth and I made a pact, vowing not to allow each other to mention his name. Still, he managed to creep us out. For instance, one time we had just come in from a matinee, our reward for her finishing three very difficult pages of her dissertation and for my completion of a rewrite of Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons (from “The Case of the Husband Who Didn’t Believe His Wife Was Dead.” Synopsis: “McBride is in New York. The couple meet. Kean not only reunites them, but sees that the stage act of McBride and Lindine will re-form, to the delight of audiences everywhere.”). It was a bitter cold day, snowing, we had on our overcoats over sweaters, and Elizabeth wore mittens. The heat from the radiators in the lobby was a relief, and we were going to go right up to our apartment and make dinner. As we waited for the lift, Padgett walked toward us. Under her breath Elizabeth said, “Mayday, Mayday, creep bellman approaching.” But Padgett stopped a good ten meters away and said, “The chaise longue looks on the mend. That Mr. Kaufner does good work.” That was all he said, but it meant he’d been in our apartment again.

  Elizabeth and I immediately reported this whole thing to Derek Budnick. He listened intently, took a few notes, and said, “Twice now I’ve suggested that Padgett be sacked. But right now—and I don’t care who sees it—he’s going to see the back of my hand. Please excuse me.”

  Anyway, the fourth lindy lesson went very well, according to Elizabeth; the next night she made bouillabaisse. Whenever Elizabeth cooked, she’d announce each stage of the recipe out loud: “Stir ingredients to keep the bottom of the pot from scorching.” “Drizzle in hot sauce at intervals.” “Sauté sausages only until light brown before placing them in the pot.”

  Still life after the fourth lindy lesson:

  Elizabeth asleep with head down on her desk, next to her copy of The Victorian Chaise-Longue, the shortwave radio on, the Amsterdam Philharmonic playing, occasional static intervening. Dark green Cyrano’s Last Night T-shirt on the ironing board, the iron unplugged, cord dangling. A pigeon on the windowsill, looking into the room, or maybe at its own reflection. A camera bought used at Freeman’s All-Purpose on Lower Water Street. A note: Dad’s birthday present will take a month by ship, so send air mail—don’t be cheap! Wooden bread board, half a loaf of bread. Bottle of red wine, one quarter full. Elizabeth murmuring in her sleep. Whimsical expression on her face, something in a dream amusing her. Bottle of aspirin. Carefully, so as not to wake my wife, I place a shawl over her shoulders. Turn the radio volume down. I sit at the table and start to take notes for a new assignment for Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. Suddenly, without waking, Elizabeth says, “He must at least touch my hand,” then something like, “Mouse alarm.” My laughter at “mouse alarm” might have woken her, but didn’t. (Just a few days ago, here in my cottage, reading the novel, I discovered that “He must at least touch my hand” is from The Victorian Chaise-Longue.)