A Curious Affair

by Melanie Jackson

  Standing next to Tyler, so alive and so focused on the present, made me feel shame for my weakness and inclination to cling to the past. “Let’s go have some tea,” I said. If we went in through the garage he’d never see the living room, and the pills and booze all over the coffee table.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A cat’s got her own opinion of human beings. She don’t say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.

  —Jerome K. Jerome

  We grieve as we love; deep love, deep grief. How long should a person grieve a death? The healthy consensus—arrived at by people who have obviously never faced devastating loss themselves—is two years. But I think they’re wrong. You never really stop. You eventually move on; you have to. But the filter of Cal’s death will always color the way I see life, and it’s that way for many others too. We know who we are. We are members of a club who ever after suffer from a kind of pleasure-deficit disorder. We know that bad things really do happen, and that being good or having great insurance won’t protect you.

  Cal’s death colors my dreams. I’m not going to take out my collection of nocturnal nightmares and heartbreaks and detail them for you; if you’ve been there then you already know what I dream about. And if you haven’t…well, you don’t really want to know—unless you’ve been trained for it and you’re getting paid one hundred and twenty-five bucks an hour. I don’t have the really bad dreams so much anymore. But that night after finding Irv’s body I was worried enough about death dreams coming to call that I left the bathroom light on so I wouldn’t wake in darkness.

  I did dream of Cal, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected—Thank you, dear Morpheus—and I was ready to face another day.

  The poets have long insisted men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. I disagree. I certainly wanted to die when Cal did—and probably would have, except the shame of what Calvin would say at my cowardice kept me going. And eventually my capacity to heal exceeded my heart’s low expectations. The sharpest pain finally blurred and my heart returned to pumping blood instead of slivers of icy fury. I regained much of my lost weight and I got on with a life that looked a great deal like my old one. No one on the outside, nor even I, ever suspected how not alright I really was. We all thought I was doing fine, considering that the glue that held my life together had come unstuck and I no longer had any purpose.

  Until October and the lightning, of course. But I’m the only one who knows about the cats, so I have to excuse my few close friends for not guessing my true mental state.

  Cal’s old mantel clock struck eight A.M. in tones of dignified but gentle gravity, a melodious voice wishing me a good morning. It was comforting to think that it was still standing watch in the midnight hours while I slept alone, and that it was there to greet me.

  I slowly opened my eyes. Thick syrupy light filled the bedroom. I stared at the ceiling, bemused by the soft glow, at first not recognizing the sun. I actually turned my head to look out the window, something I didn’t normally do because it would banish Cal’s phantom presence, which sometimes slept beside me and stayed in the instants while I passed from sleep to wakefulness. I treasured those bittersweet moments with a power that was probably unhealthy. It was in those moments that I could whisper to Cal the truth about how frightened and lonely I was, and say all the things I hadn’t dared to while he was ill.

  Sunday is easy to identify because of the many church bells that regale the town, though my favorite of the gongs and rings come from the steam engines at Railtown. They run antique trains on weekends and holidays, weather permitting, from the old train station to an abandoned rock quarry on Red Table Mountain. That was the sound I was hearing on the edge of my fading dreams. Old ’97 was riding the rails.

  For the first time in many long months, I didn’t roll over to check that Cal’s picture was keeping guard over me on the nightstand. My first thought that morning was not of him.

  My old bathroom mirror has a flaw, a ten-inch band of distortion that makes things look bigger than they are. On me, it hits chest high. On Cal, it had been the stomach. Cal wasn’t vain, so we kept the thing around. That morning I actually looked into the mirror and really saw myself for the first time in weeks. Though it was all optical illusion, when I stared at my preposterously enlarged chest I found myself smiling like I used to.

  Once dressed, I went downstairs and dutifully fixed breakfast. Lumpy oatmeal chased tasteless frozen blueberries around the bowl until they were both weary of the exercise of avoiding my spoon, but I finally admitted that I just didn’t feel like being healthy that morning and I dumped the congealing muck in the trash and headed for town. I hoped the bakery was open. I needed a pain au chocolat from Le Bon Ton and some coffee strong enough to bolster me against both the rich pastry and the inclement weather bound to return that afternoon.

  I didn’t realize it at that moment, but this small intended rebellion against the healthy living we instituted at the onset of Cal’s illness was the second sign that I was becoming myself again. As portents go, it was a small one, but I should have noticed.

  Once started, my defiance of healthy living continued, and I hadn’t rinsed my dirty oatmeal dish or put it in the dishwasher. My mother, who was a product of the 1950s when all you needed for happiness—society said—was the ability to make floors shine while keeping your dress clean and your hair tidy, and to make a creditable meat loaf (assuming you had sensibly married a man who brought home a regular paycheck), would have been appalled at my slovenliness. She had done her level best to raise me right, but had only half succeeded. I could cook and was tidy with my clothing, and had married a respectable man, but even on my best days I cared very little about my floors’ glossiness. And I felt better when the regular (okay, semiregular and often meager) paycheck was my own instead of my husband’s. A dirty dish in the sink wasn’t even on my radar. I hadn’t misspent my youth as my contemporaries had, but I suddenly felt hope for my adulthood. I was alive, wasn’t I? That meant that there was still time for a spot of rebellion and occasional high-cholesterol food.

  As a rule, I don’t listen to the radio at home. The only way to get decent reception is to stand on the ottoman next to the stereo and hold a large pewter bowl over my head, acting as a satellite dish. And since the programming was completely predictable—I think the local station was playing the same taped show they had recorded last May—I didn’t usually feel it worth the bother. But the morning after Irv’s murder I decided to perch on the footstool, bowl aloft, and listen to the morning news.

  I could have spared my arms and the ottoman’s sagging upholstery the effort. There wasn’t a word mentioned about the crime, not even that Irv had died. When they got around to the high school basketball scores, the pewter bowl went back on the table and I grabbed a heavy sweater off the rack by the door. Experience had taught me that winter sun didn’t mean warmth.

  A large-tailed squirrel was waiting on the doorstep with Irv’s cats when I opened the front door, and I blinked at the unexpected spectacle of this feline cast of Noah’s Ark on my deck. The fresh smell of winter morning spilled through the door and rushed past me, chasing out the odor of claustrophobic unhappiness that had been trapped inside by new weather stripping and my unwillingness to face the gray days. I can’t speak squirrel, but the emboldened freeloader who steals meals from the now empty birdfeeder made known his indignation at the long wait for grub. The cats were more polite but just as insistent. They were hungry, Irv was gone, and what was I going to do about it?

  I closed the door behind me and stepped carefully through the agitated animals, looking for Atherton but not finding him.

  “Stop! I’m sorry. I don’t have any food. But I am going to get some today,” I promised. For once the cats stopping yowling and seemed to mull this promise over, and I threaded my way through them. I moved slowly, both out of consideration for their tails and because I was a little afraid. To be honest, I don’t have a full-blown
cat phobia, but I have never been entirely comfortable around felines.

  “Look, you can’t wait here,” I said. “The neighbors will see you and call…” I stopped. I didn’t want to make Animal Control sound bad by using them as bogeymen. “Just meet me in the side yard in a couple hours, okay? I’ll be back soon—with food. And tell the squirrel to relax. He can have some too if he wants. I hear the kibble is delicious.”

  I was proud of myself. I was demonstrating commitment and doing different things, and I left without even turning on the computer to see if I had an e-mail from my editor. It wasn’t because I forgot to, either. It was because I knew it was probably there and I didn’t trust my reckless mood of happy exploration to survive the lure of an actual paying assignment.

  I walked slowly, thinking hard but keeping it on the logical surface where there was less emotion. Have you ever noticed that our pasts come after us, sometimes limping or even crawling, but they always come? The choice is: kill or make peace with what ever ails you. Or keep running—but that only works short-term. I’d been trying the running thing since Cal died, but stuck in a hamster wheel of negative emotion, weariness, low-grade anxiety and above all, boredom—the trifecta of old grief that embodies habitual mild depression—I wasn’t getting anywhere. I had been stranded in some horrible status quo. I suppose that I had been fighting for mental health in my own feeble way. I’d even seen a shrink—before the cat thing—and he’d convinced me I needed to give myself credit for actually writing every day. I didn’t produce a lot, but I showed up at my desk every morning and wrote something. I’d even had the guts to scrap some stories that were just too sick to save, thus sparing myself the embarrassment of having my editor pronounce them DOA—I’d submitted far too many “stop drinking/smoking/eating junk food or you’ll get cancer and die” pieces. So, I was semi-okay.

  At least professionally. For a while. But I wasn’t certain how long the permission slip for screwing off granted by Calvin’s death would allow me to stagnate, though. Even if my editor forgave me, my self-esteem was suffering. I couldn’t go on living off royalties forever, though I regularly thanked a whole pantheon of publishing gods for the biannual checks from my six-times-reprinted cookbook, Green Tea & Sympathy: Desserts for the Diabetic.

  My life is hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t have Writer’s Disease. You are probably wondering why I don’t just go out and get another job. It’s not that simple. I fell hopelessly in love with the idea of being a writer when I was seven and had a poem published in the school newsletter. The pages were creamy yellow, the ink a dark green—my words had never looked so beautiful. I was infected then with something akin to malaria. I had to write, had to see my words in print. There were periods of time when the need would disappear and I would go about acting like a normal person, but sooner or later the intense desire returned. And it didn’t matter that the pay was lousy and I was always distracted from what others consider real life.

  Cal was likewise a young passion, and I was equally enthused about the idea of being his wife. Fortunately the two things had gone well together, and I knew I’d be great at both. I think it’s probably good to conceive your passions young before you know the odds against success. I was both lucky and unlucky that neither passion had faded. Writing isn’t what I do, it’s what I am. And so was being Cal’s wife. It became trickier, of course, with him being dead. Like it or not, unhealthy or not, I still saw myself as Cal’s wife.

  But I was neither wife nor writer that morning. I had other, more interesting and urgent things to do. Like finding Irv’s killer. I was making my debut as an amateur sleuth.

  In a big city, this kind of crime might be dismissed as impersonal, random. So much of crime is these days, especially drug-related, which this might prove to be. But things weren’t like that in Irish Camp. Like our politics, all crime here was local and personal. If you were killed by someone, it was someone you knew—probably really well. Would the new sheriff, coming from Los Angeles, realize this, though? How much would I, or someone else, have to explain about how our town worked? I didn’t think that our short visit over a mug of tea the night before had adequately put him in the picture.

  Irish Camp has a lot of hybrid businesses and business people. Some even make sense, since certain jobs are seasonal. Ed’s is where you go to hire a canoe and fishing guide in summer, and who you call when you need a snowplow in winter. Others are more curious. We have Rod’s Bait & Tackle and Notary Public. There is Mels’s Accounting, Storage Lockers & Towing. And my personal favorite, Paula’s Taxidermy and Taxes. I’ve avoided most of these places, but do frequent one: Two In Hand. It is a combination card store and porn shop. I go for the cards, I swear—though I did buy some gummy penises for a party I had for some writer friends a few years back. That ended up being a bit embarrassing. A friend of Calvin’s stopped by one afternoon and decided to help himself to the candy dish while he was waiting. Anyone but Lorenzo would have laughed, but he’s an old-school shrink and thought my offering guests gummy penises was an act of hostility. He just doesn’t understand the publishing business. Or writers. It’s probably why he couldn’t help me after Cal died. We never really clicked.

  Anyhow, one of the town’s more famous Jill-of-all-trades lived up the hill from me. She had known Irv well and would—I told myself—want to know about his passing. If she hadn’t already heard. It would be amazing if she had not. Crystal knows everything about Irish Camp. She wasn’t exactly a hardcore gossip, but rather a central exchange for information for the different social groups that inhabit our town. Many people couldn’t get past the surface phenomenon of her beauty, but she was also very smart and had an elephantine memory. If only she could develop a sense of discretion, I’d tell her about the cats.

  Cal hadn’t liked the way she gossiped, but I forgave her this flaw. Isn’t everyone just a little bit nosy sometimes? A bit of a voyeur? I am, my mother’s training notwithstanding. It’s a lot of why I write. I get to ask and then find answers to lots of unusual questions. And like all writers, I have my favorite resources when I need to do research. Understand, I’m no slouch at the answer game and can chase documents with the best of them, but when I want to know something about Irish Camp, I save myself a lot of effort and just go to Crystal Holmes. She’s a fourth-generation Gold Country inhabitant and knows where all the bodies—literal and otherwise—are buried.

  Crystal lives at the top of Viper’s Hill, where the rocky coil ends in a sort of mesa. I asked her once how Viper’s Hill got its name and she told me a story about an old tradition called a rattlesnake roundup. Since I hadn’t known her very long, I was inclined to dismiss this tale as a colorful legend invented for the tourists, but I later discovered that the nearby town of Columbia holds an annual poison oak festival, so the lunacy might be true.

  Soft chanting led me up the hill: “Om-Hrum-Adityaya-Namah. Om-Hraim-Savitre-Namah.”

  I found Crystal in her yard doing her version of sun salutations, which were about half successful, given that she could not lie prone because of the thick mud. What bits of the sky we could see through the forlorn oaks was clear, but the day remained bitterly cold. Crystal waved as I walked up, but kept folding and breathing. Yoga was her most recent enthusiasm. An exasperated friend had once said that Crystal had been baptized in so many faiths that her skin was starting to prune from the holy water. I liked that she was so open to strange things and had almost—almost—told her about the cats back in October. But Crystal also liked to chitchat about the strange and wonderful, and I couldn’t risk even a garbled version of this story getting around. I didn’t need to get labeled as the village kook.

  “Oh-Hram-Bhaskaraya-Namah—Hey, Jillian!” She ended her salutation for creativity and balance. Today she was wearing a bipolar outfit known well to mountain folks in the spring. The manic part was gauze harem pants in hot citrus colors and a lace shirt of lime green. The depressive part featured winter boots and a large wool sweater-coat she had belted at her
waist. Her smile was wide. Clearly she was dizzy with the rapture of the sun.

  “Hey, yourself,” I answered with a smile. Crystal was crowding fifty and not beautiful in any classical sense, but people always described her as lovely and gorgeous. I think what made her so attractive—to anyone grown beyond the hormone-driven fascination with teenage pop stars and supermodels—was the joy she radiated. It suggested a lack of suffering, or a transcendence of the earthly sorrow that wears most of us down eventually. Such bliss hints at the divine, and others want to bask in that reflected happiness while they tell their tales of woe. And to drink her homegrown calendula-mint tea, which was delicious and soothing.

  “I’m afraid that I have some unhappy news,” I said.

  “Then I’d better put on the kettle,” she replied, predictably. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm.”

  It turns out that this was a red-letter day for me. Crystal hadn’t heard about Irv, which told me that the sheriff either wasn’t pursuing his death as a murder, or else was being very, very cautious about whom he questioned. Either way, I understood. It was annoying when I wanted answers, but reasonable given that he worked in Irish Camp, where everybody minded everybody else’s business and nothing would get done if the town council or the mayor got in the way of an investigation.

  Disappointed that my usual source hadn’t already called everyone in town and figured out who the murderer was, I decided that I would take a trip down to the coffee shop myself. Not to do anything, really, just to hear what people had to say. And for the coffee and chocolate-orange scones, of course. Calendula-mint tea wasn’t enough.