by Lydia Millet
People intended to make you feel better when they said the body was not the person, you or themselves, at least, but those were the ones who believed in the fields of hereafter, those who believed in cherubim. Their words presumed an independent mind, moving, roaming freely. If that were true, who knew how it might be, Hal’s mind floating untethered in this sterile room. Only herself for company. His mind and its murderer, her own. Maybe his mind was touching hers, in those infinite molecules of the air.
She willed her hands to rise, her arms to lift up, as though to feel the last of him going.
The cut was small. The cut was hardly there.
She pulled the shirt down after a while. She stood and looked and looked at him, the line of his nose and forehead, the eyebrows. But he would not say anything, and there was only so much looking she could do.
Though technically it was winter it felt like a mild spring day on the cemetery grounds. The service would be held in a steepled chapel called the Little Church of the Flowers, a name both quaint and faintly reminiscent of pederasty. Susan sat waiting in the first pew with Casey beside her at the end.
The venue had to be expensive, she thought—T. was paying, saying the funeral would be his responsibility—because it was an imitation of a church from Europe, an imitation of an English village church slapped down in the sunny, falsely green lake of Los Angeles County. Hal would have shaken his head at the pretension of it, but herself she found it pleasant enough. She didn’t mind the fake quaintness. She was not a snob when it came to authenticity. Whatever works, was the way she saw it. Whereas Hal had a tendency to mock his fellow Americans. He looked down from a high place on his countrymen, as he called them.
In his way Hal was an idealist. Had been. He had lofty ideas, where she only had pragmatism. She wondered if that made him more European. Also he had believed in taxes. Yes: though he’d grown up right here, though he had visited Europe only once, and even then in a bus full of low-budget tourists who yearned for nothing more than to step out of the bus in Paris and find the nearest McDonald’s, there were European aspects to Hal.
Sunlight filled the place with an excessive whiteness that made her blink when she looked up. Mourners were filing through the doors in surprising number but she didn’t know most of them—her own friends, her friends from college days, were far away and most hadn’t even heard the news. These were probably IRS employees, their equally unknown families in tow. Some were large, she noticed. Hal had never said his office was mostly overweight people, yet so it appeared to be. She’d never made a habit of dropping into his office, nor had she attended many office functions. And when she told Casey she would speak she hadn’t considered these mourners or their expectations. For their benefit she would have liked to be eloquent, but in the end she would not be. Of that much she was certain.
An arm’s length away Casey sat in her chair, head bowed. She did not wish to be spoken to. A few feet past her T. stood by a side door talking to a small man in black, the man who would officiate, Susan suspected—clerical-looking, nodding as T. spoke to him in a low murmur.
He did not say much—either that or Susan forgot to listen—and then Casey had intended to speak but could not, became choked up and had to roll back to her position at the end of the pew. Watching her made Susan wince but she had to get over it, she was up next herself, and she would have noticed her own nervousness if she had not been lost in feeling for Casey and the whine and the buzz. She had heard it from the moment T. told them Hal was dead: her life was full of background noise, a dull and droning clamor behind the voices or a ringing, a dreadful ringing like tinnitus that only diminished when she drank or smoked. Then things quieted and drew into focus.
It was not that she regretted all of it, only that she regretted this specific instance—that Hal had found out, that because of her carelessness he had seen. From that she’d failed to save him. This failure had driven him far away, and from far away came the man with the knife and slit his belly open.
She stood at the lectern with her eyes wide, as though shocked. As though she was stupid. She had an impression of clumps of flowers around her, wreaths and bouquets, white and purple and red, their cloudy colors on the margins, and wondered how she looked as the words flowed out of her, as she gazed down at her paper, which trembled slightly beneath her fingers. She held the paper and read the words, but the words did not say what she meant. She might look aged, widowed, dull, sharp, or blurred by grief. She felt suddenly like a vague being, a form without definition. She smoothed the paper on the lectern and glanced up from it—imprecise words—and out at the crowd, curious for a moment as to whether an ex had come. She hoped none had, of course. Robert, at least, was not here. She had told him it was over and he barely cared, she suspected, though he had seemed slightly annoyed. Inconvenienced, anyway. She cared even less than he did and wondered idly if T. would lay him off. T. had hardly dealt with him, didn’t know him at all.
She could barely discern the faces. She saw their pinkness or brownness and their sympathy, an unsmiling sympathy but sympathy all the same. They sympathized because they had no clue that she herself was the murderer. They did not know Hal had been murdered. Or not, at least, by her. They knew of the stabbing but not the real culprit.
Not one of them had the least idea who she was.
Luckily.
Afterward, in their stiff dress clothes, they drank. She did, and so did Casey and even, she thought, T., though he could apparently hold his liquor better than either of them. There was an open bar. People came up to her and she was conscious of feeling better the more she drank—magnanimous even. She would be intimate, she would confide in them. When if not now? She went out in a radius from Casey, made forays into the passing crowds from a station at Casey’s elbow. T. was drinking whiskey, a lock of his hair fallen over his forehead, his shirt unbuttoned. He was wearing a suit for the first time since he’d come back and had a debonair way about him, Susan thought, like a man from the roaring twenties.
She left them together to join a smokers’ circle outside, near an angel statue. It seemed to be office people. A woman with frizzy hair and outsize earrings spoke to her.
“He was a special person,” she said.
Susan took the cigarette that was offered and let someone light it for her, surprised at how bad it tasted. The first one always did.
“If there’s anything we can do,” said a man.
“This is a good beginning,” she told him, raising the cigarette, and took a drag.
“Hal talked about you all the time,” said another woman. Bookish-looking and gangly.
“He did?” asked Susan.
“He was devoted to you. And Casey.”
“Casey, definitely,” agreed Susan. She had put her plastic wine cup down near the angel’s stone toes; now she reached for it and sipped. “He lived for Casey.”
“He had a way with people,” said the earrings.
“Really? I used to kid him about not having one.”
There was a shocked silence at this.
“One time,” went on the big earrings, as though to politely cover the transgression, “there was a crazy, you know, a hostage taker? Did he tell you that story?”
Beyond the woman the hedges were carefully trimmed into long boxes. If they grew wild, she thought, they would be far more lovely. Did people want to be buried beneath topiary?
“… turned out it wasn’t a real gun. It was a water pistol! But there was real, I mean, fear, you know? People were freaking out. And Hal, you know, he totally defused the whole situation.”
“Mmm, yeah,” said Susan. “The squirt-gun thing.”
She did remember, or almost. The anecdote had a punch line, if she recalled correctly: the squirt gun had been green. Hal liked to tell stories, when he was in the right mood—mostly about his coworkers, their foibles and idiosyncrasies.
“The guy was a legend,” said a young Hispanic man earnestly. He had a pathetic pencil mustache, a concave
chest, and his pants were too long. Or no: they were belted just below the rib cage. “Name’s Arlo, by the way.”
“Oh,” said Susan.
Rodriguez, Hal had called him. The pants were the tip-off.
She shook his hand.
“Pleased to meet you. Again.”
Surely she had met him.
“Yeah, Christmas party, right?”
“Right,” she agreed. One of the few she’d attended.
“I’m serious. He was a legend. Old-school. Last of the Titans, man.”
“Hal Lindley, last of the Titans,” she repeated wistfully.
“Man, you know what? I gotta tell someone this,” said Rodriguez, and bent forward as though pained. “I totally offered to go with him. I woulda had his back. I told him that. He told me he was going down there. I go, Take me with. Seriously! I hadda gone, you know, maybe this wouldna …”
He trailed off. He looked lost.
“You can’t think like that,” said Susan gently. “He didn’t want company. It was his choice, Arlo.”
“Yeah, but.”
“It was his adventure,” she said. As she said it she felt its accuracy: Arlo was comforting her, not the other way round. It was not that she denied her part in it—it was still murder she had done, at least manslaughter. But she remembered Hal’s voice on the phone. A tensile strength, an alertness she had missed for a long time before that. How he had looked in the casket: curiously alive.
Her adventure had been without him, his without her. A last freedom.
The bookish woman was crying; the one with large earrings sidled close and put a fleshy arm around her, pulled her in. Susan rested her eyes on the woman’s blouse, a pattern of wine-red and dark-blue leaves. Flesh was always a consolation—flesh, not beauty. Beauty was social, flesh was private. These days Susan consoled no one. When Casey was a baby and Susan still had weight from the pregnancy, baby Casey had nestled against her. She had kneaded the flesh and buried her face in it. Later when Casey was a toddler and the weight was gone, Casey had not liked the change or trusted it. She even complained. Susan remembered now: the toddler Casey had said her mother’s stomach was no longer beautiful. She bemoaned its absence. To her consolation was beauty; small Casey had not thought of forms or majesty. She wanted body all around.
Susan felt a rush of affection for the earrings woman, as if by putting her arm around the other she had put it around her too. A common mother, a small mothering for all. Susan thought of her own mother. Then how rarely she thought of her. As though her mother had been a mother in another life, a life long past, a faint image or pattern of a mother.
And yet—at least when she was a baby, a small child—her mother must have felt for her, as she herself did for Casey, a deep and wrenching love.
But they hadn’t been close; the love had been squandered. Somehow along the way Susan had squandered it.
A terrible remorse threatened.
She would go inside now to see Casey again.
“Let me get some more drinks,” she said, for an exit. “Drinks? Anyone?”
•
A first cousin was in attendance, the only one she still knew. He was a consultant, something to do with computers. He wore a metallic gray jacket and a violet tie and was balding. She hadn’t seen him for years; they’d never had much in common. They collided at the buffet table, near a vegetable platter.
“So how’ve you been,” she asked, after condolences. She picked up a piece of celery. It seemed like days since she’d eaten.
“Oh, you know,” he said. His hand made a gesture of dismissal.
“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t at all. Tell me.”
“Well, Deb left,” he said.
The wife, must be.
“Oh. I’m really sorry.”
He shrugged.
“Nah, it’s for the best.”
“And how are the kids?” She thought there were two of them. Both boys.
“College.”
“Uh-huh? They liking it?”
“Engineering. That’s Tommy. He’s gonna be an earner. Gil’s doing something useless. Art history.”
Now she remembered. The guy was a tool.
“Hardly useless.”
“Whatever. No money in it.”
“Better than phone sex,” said Casey.
There she was, drunk and flushed. Less pale than usual. She reached for a cherry tomato.
“You remember Casey. Casey, your second cousin. Steven.”
“I remember Gil. And Tommy. We played with a soccer ball in the street. He did that thing where you head-butt it.”
It struck her that Steven might not have seen Casey since the accident. He must have known; it could not be new information. But he looked mildly embarrassed.
“Casey, good to see you.”
No, he had seen her once in the chair, that was right, a birthday thing for his own kid.
“Thanks for coming,” said Casey.
She probably meant it, but there was something in the tone. She’d never liked him, Susan thought. She chewed her tomato and squinted up.
“Kids would have too. But they’re busy.”
“Studying art history.”
“Gil’s back East. Tommy’s at USC.”
“Mmm. Good for him,” said Casey.
“I’m really sorry about your dad,” said Steven.
Casey nodded. There was silence.
“Freak thing,” said Steven. “You get a lot of freak …”
He trailed off, his gaze lingering on her chair.
“Huh,” said Casey, and popped another tomato into her mouth. “Better quit while you’re ahead.”
She spun and wheeled off.
“… accidents in your family,” he finished, lamely.
“Uh, yeah,” said Susan.
“Hoo,” he said after a moment, with awkward jocularity, and shook his head. “Sensitive.”
“Well. Her father was just stabbed to death,” said Susan.
She left him groping a zucchini flower.
She called a real estate agent and put the house up for sale. Casey issued a grudging invitation to stay at her apartment but Susan was afraid of grating on her. Meanwhile T. was forcing her to stay home from work for a while. She was ambivalent about this: the office was somewhere to go, a location in which to exist. But he insisted she take a leave of absence, and she had no strength left to argue.
She established a simple pattern of avoiding the spaces where she and Hal had spent most of their time, moving out of the master bedroom into a smaller room that had once been Casey’s.
But even trying to sleep in that room—a room she’d thought might be safe because it held almost no specific memory of Hal—she was preyed upon as soon as she lay motionless. Apprehension crept over her, a fringe of blackness she could almost see rising slowly from the foot of the bed, covering her feet, her legs, her chest, her shoulders, coming to smother her chin and her mouth like earth. Hal’s death and her own were gathered wretchedly in the shadows, hunched down with teeth showing, sharp teeth and the talons of bony fingers. A heaviness made her heart beat hard with fear—a leaden certainty that her selfishness had killed him. There was no buoyancy at all, no river to drift on.
She shifted onto the living room couch for several nights and during the daytime moved the bedroom’s furniture around, trying to find a configuration that would ease the weight. If it were different enough, she thought, it wouldn’t cause pain like this, so she removed the shades from the windows and hastily painted the walls an eggshell blue. She made forays to housewares stores and returned with items that spoke to her of freshness—blue and white linens, cushions, a screen, a wall hanging, a cloudy glass vase full of pussy willows. She wanted it to feel like a replacement room, a surprise. But the change was so slight, after all that, as to be unnoticeable.
So she considered, every night after twilight, whether to go to a hotel. She thought of lobbies, their carpeting and warm lights and the people
milling. But in the end she did not go to a hotel. In the end she stayed home. She went out for as long as she could, to bars or the promenade or the Santa Monica Pier, sitting and smoking and drinking and idly watching the movement of crowds. But then she came home to sleep, or to lie there trying. Maybe it was apathy or maybe it was penance. She couldn’t decide.
Daytime was better. She went out with first light and walked T.’s dog around the neighborhood; she got coffee in the morning and took her lunches in restaurants or diners. Sometimes she drove around in a daze. Other times she asked friends over, made sure there were people in the house to lift its grimness. When she had to be there by herself she kept to the sunporch and Casey’s room, venturing into the kitchen only when she had to. The two of them had spent years in the kitchen.
His car was still in the shop, having bodywork done after a fender bender, so she asked the man there to sell it for her. He said no at first, but when she told him why he relented and said yes. Then she began looking for a new place to live. It took her out of the house, it distracted her, it pushed her forward … she thought maybe a small one-room condo near the beach. That was the benefit of being alone: she needed little square footage, could buy for location, could afford, possibly, a clear view of the ocean. She tried to picture a new life and when she did so—putting it neatly into a frame as though the future was visible through a porthole—she saw the blue ocean.
She visited Casey as often as she could, sought her out for meals or trips to the grocery store and did not press her about the phonesex job. She would not dream of asking. The job was irrelevant now, its triviality complete. One afternoon they sat for hours at the end of the Santa Monica Pier, where Casey also liked to go, barely speaking. They listened to the screeching gulls and watched the pier’s small population of anglers, a few stubborn old curmudgeons who didn’t mind pollution in their fish.
