by Lydia Millet
“I made him drive over here, actually,” said Casey. “So you should blame me.”
Susan recognized her own position, hers and Jim the lawyer’s, and at the same time she knew the position of Casey and T. It was the same, she was surprised to realize. She had thought so before, she recalled, but had never known.
She felt relief brimming in her. Relief.
“I called,” said Casey, “but no one picked up.”
She and Susan looked at each other, both of them in their chairs. Susan felt a beam between them, a generous current. Casey was happy, she realized, and this made her lighter in her bones, made her happier, she felt, than she had been for so long. Neither of them had been this happy before, at least not since the accident. Her daughter’s happiness was her own. She had forgotten it for a while.
Even if Casey was hurt by this in the end, she had to think next—and rapidly she was squeezed at the heart, narrowly constricted and wrenched by fear, then just as rapidly loosened—still it was better this way. Open again, after these years.
As she gazed at her girl in the wheelchair a cloud moved and the sun fell on Casey’s pale face, backlit her hair golden. In a trick of thought her daughter seemed young, eternal, all ages of herself that passed in wonder before her mother’s eyes—when she played outside in the sun often, her hair turned lighter blond. Now once again it might look as it used to when she was a little girl, a little girl in a blue swimsuit on the beach with her parents. Susan was almost back there, years ago sitting on a dune, almost sitting on the sand with Hal beside her as Casey ran up to them from the water, stopped and shivered, hands clasped in front of her, grains of sand on her skin. Then she was off again, down to the waves, shivering and running as they watched her go, wet braids on her shoulders. How children shivered—with passion, without reserve. They shivered with their whole bodies.
She loved them for it, the freedom of that shiver.
The scene retreated. She wondered idly if Jim would get up in front of Casey and T. and walk around in his boxers, whether the button fly was undone and gaped open.
“If it’s no trouble,” said T., “Casey can show me around.”
“It’s no trouble,” said Susan, and smiled at him.
She and Jim sat and watched them go around the house to the back, voices fading.
“If you want,” said Jim, and cleared his throat, “I could come over for dinner.”
She was confused for a second. A breeze lifted the branches around them and she thought Hal was here—not gone, then gone, still gone, gone still. Old, dead leaves from last fall were also stirred, moving along the pool’s deck. She felt so grateful: the turbulence of currents—the best of weather, the best of earth, a small whirlwind. Green branches wavered and jumped in the gusts over her shoulders and at her feet their leaf litter swirled and dove like swallows.
The air was warm. She was so lucky to exist.
And Hal, Hal would have done anything to see their baby happy like this again. He had, she thought, he had done anything—was he a saint after all? He had returned to earth. A sacrifice was made, the son came home, and now their daughter was happy.
She rose on a wave of love and grief—he had accomplished it, at the greatest possible cost. He had brought it all here, given it all to Casey.
Nonsense—sentimentality. Nothing but circumstance. Accident, manslaughter, or coincidence.
But for a fleeting second she thought she felt him in the marrow of her bones, the small hairs lifting on the backs of her arms before the tingle and the chill dissolved.
Molecules, molecules and atoms, sweet tiny points of being.
It was Jim across from her, inches beyond the table edge, and yet it could so easily not be.
5
First she thought she’d have the housewarming catered, for ease and novelty. She’d never thrown a catered party and this occasion was ceremonial: an end, a start again. But then she decided to invite Steven and his son, who wanted to contest the will. She didn’t want to see them, of course; it was a purely diplomatic move, a hope that sociability would sway them. To that end she decided a caterer was out of the question: at the sight of such pretension, or at least such disposable income, the cousins might well descend upon her in fury.
So she called a cleaning crew to mop and vacuum and dust the mounts; she placed strategic vases of flowers. She enlisted Casey’s help with the groceries and they bought prepared foods in plastic trays, frozen appetizers in cardboard boxes from Costco. In the unlikely event that Steven and Tommy mistook the hummus and dips for gourmet fare, she planned to leave the empty containers, with price tags showing, piled on the kitchen counter. The slovenliness of the gesture would irritate her, but she was nervous enough for petty schemes. Would it make a difference to them? No doubt it would not: but it made a difference to her. She couldn’t help herself.
She invited a couple of women she liked from the old neighborhood and some teaching friends from way back. Casey invited friends of her own, some of whom were in chairs—the big house was finally equipped with ramps, rails and door retrofits—calculating that their presence might make the gathering more sympathetic. “That asshole Steven,” she said, as she watched Susan take a tray of small crab cakes out of the oven, “if he sees how you’re basically a halfway house for cripples here, how can he sue you then?”
“I think you overestimate Steven.”
“Oh, and you know who else I invited?”
“Who? Oh no. Wait, don’t tell me,” said Susan. “Sal.”
But she was secretly pleased. Sal was her favorite of Casey’s ex-boyfriends because he was a spectacle; Sal could be counted on to misspeak and offend. There was the possibility he should be kept from the cousins, but on the other hand, not unlike them, he was a blunt instrument.
“Who else?”
“Nancy. Plus she’s bringing Addison, but he’s a walker. And then there’s Rosie. You remember her, the one at UCLA? With the MS?”
Susan looked across the island. There were no shadows under her daughter’s eyes anymore, no purple crescents. Her insomnia must be gone, she must be sleeping again … but the guests, she thought: the list was familiar. It was the guest list from Casey’s last dinner party, from the night before Hal flew out of the country. The last night they ever saw him. The last night anyone did, or at least anyone she knew, anyone here. Except T., of course, who had walked with him in the tropics, talked to him, sat with him in a shallow rowboat.
She would ask T. She had to. This flashed across her mind now though it had never flashed before, there had been no previous flash. She had these blind spots, since the death, these failures to inquire. She would ask him how it had been.
He had seen Hal long after she last saw him, had known that other Hal, whom she had only talked to by telephone. That man altered unknowably by his destination, a high arc toward disappearance, long gone from them and frozen in time before dying—somehow committed to that death, alone in the tropics. She saw him looking out to sea. She put him there, on a beach she’d never seen. He stood there eternally, looking to the horizon, one hand raised to shield his eyes from brightness. Sun on his face, wind-scalloped waves.
The white, white, white, white sand.
“And some others,” Casey was saying. “But those are the only gimps. Four of us, in total. What can I say, I had to call in some favors so we could make a strong showing. You know: I don’t have an unlimited supply of wheelchair buddies. There’s no spigot. There’s just the ones from the support group, that’s it.”
“Who else?” asked Susan, but she was distracted and forgot to listen.
Now she had an idea of tropical islands and death. She was in the grip of a memory, the gentle trade winds stirring the palm trees and then the stillness and the wavering heat. The stasis of an island in the middle of the sea. As a child she had gone to a cut-rate Caribbean resort on a family vacation; her parents ate jerked pork and drank frozen drinks, but all she did was snorkel all day long a few fee
t off the beach. She had a sunburn on her back in the shape of an X, her swimsuit straps. It was the island of St. Lucia.
She remembered the sound of thatch rustling on the palapas in the breeze that came off the water, that swept up her legs and arms and made her feel borne aloft. For years her most treasured memory had been of this feathery caress of the trade winds—a wistful memory that tried to capture the longing carried on that breeze. But now, she thought, the question was answered. Those pillowing winds whose touch had been a signal she would only receive long afterward, far in the future when the salt air of the ocean was gone. The smoothness of her skin gone too, the clearness of her eyes, the girlish hopes, who knew what they had been—to be unique, probably, beautiful or loved by masses of humanity. No doubt some kind of yearning; all young girls did was yearn.
That hush, that light stillness were ominous, had the quiet of an expectant pause. One day the tropics would bring her someone else’s death. The lull, the sough, the doldrums—sailors had called them that, those equatorial calms that could be dangerous when stronger winds were needed to push their sailing ships—the trade winds blew like a soft dream of dying. Even the fragrant trees with their long names, their showy red blooms—flamboyant. That was the name of the tree that grew all over the Caribbean, planted on the resorts but native to somewhere else, a distant and vast continent, Australia or India, who could recall, and the locals said it like this, in their Jamaican patois: flom-boy-on … red flowers in the trees.
Possibly it was apprehension, fear of Steven and Tommy and their designs on her windfall, but she was in an unsteady place. From moment to moment her mood could change: a bitter taste rose in her throat and she felt herself falling into remorse. Morbidity shadowed her and she shrank from the knife—felt she was Hal, or imprisoned in Hal’s body, and had a premonition of stabbing, a phantom pain in her side and wide-awake dreams of catching her stomach as it slipped out the slit. She leaned out, hopelessly reaching; beyond her fingertips were her falling intestines, slick and purple as tongues. She felt the knife cut every day—the anticipation of it, the wince. That was the part she’d been left with. Too often she winced at the thought of the knife.
That dinner with those people: she’d been in the dark then, blissful and unaware of her new status. She’d been completely in the dark when it came to that status—her status as a future murderer, a charter member of the Future Murderers of America. And then the next time she saw the dinner guests was at the funeral. The murder had been done.
She didn’t remember talking to them then, though she might have, probably had—she’d been polite at least, she hoped. She recalled almost nothing outside the blur and only knew she had caught sight of them from the podium and been indifferent to their presence. But it was impossible to miss them entirely because they had stood out from the crowd, apart in their chairs at the ends of the pews. The support group had made a good showing—Sal, for instance, had barely known Hal and though clearly lacking in most social skills had come to the funeral to, as he put it, “like be there for Casey.” On his muscled upper arms, often shown off by grubby tank tops, he had many tattoos including weeping roses, shamrocks and daggers; but at the funeral, though still garbed in the camouflage pants and combat boots that were his signature, he had worn long sleeves.
•
T. arrived at the big house early, with his mother in tow. Well-dressed and coiffed at the hands of a live-in maid who hailed from the former Communist bloc, she could pass at first for a businesswoman or socialite—the latter of which she almost was, Susan thought, except that she had no friends.
“Susan, dear,” she said, coming into the kitchen with T. behind her and holding out a frail hand. T. must have prompted her on the name.
“I’m so glad you could come, Angela,” said Susan, and put her near-empty wineglass on the counter to clasp the thin hand in both of hers. The last time she’d seen Angela, Hal had been there too. They’d gone to her townhouse apartment to break the news that T. was gone, T. had been lost in the tropics and was unresponsive. She had served them Earl Grey and told them not to worry, vaguely protested that her son could take care of himself, and Susan had felt sorry for her.
But in the end she had been right in her confidence; Susan had been wrong. Come to think of it, if Susan had believed her—if Susan had not manifested a fussy, hen-like worry for her employer when even his mother remained unconcerned—Hal would never have flown down there. Hal would be alive now.
“I’m so very sorry for your loss,” said Angela. Her soft lower lip trembled.
Susan felt a surge of fondness. The woman was a wounded doe—the straggler on the edge of the herd, the slow-moving one a wolf would select to bring down with sharp teeth. Though not a trophy hunter.
But before she had time to act on the passing fond impulse, Casey was there.
“Come with me,” she commanded, reaching up to touch Angela’s hand. “I’ll show you things,” and Angela smiled briefly at Susan and turned to follow.
The house was far too large for the small party so they had tried to set it up in the first-floor rooms that opened onto the pool—the music room, the dining room with its wolves and foxes, the long hall. At certain junctures, she realized, a tall man would have to bend down to avoid the antlers of moose or elk. The mounts were a hodgepodge in the corridors, hung without regard for the obstacles they might make. She opened the row of French doors between the terrace and the rooms, let their floor-length drapes flutter, and walked around surveying. The old hardwood gleamed, the faded rugs stretched at her feet … she checked the nearest ground-floor bathroom, which had been grimy when she moved in, the floor an ancient and torn-up linoleum in avocado green. Now the old flooring was replaced with tile and the walls had been painted.
The room’s small window was open to the back of an oleander hedge, pink blossoms that could be lethal, someone had warned her when she was pregnant—vomiting, diarrhea, if a kid even touches an oleander he could sink into a coma, the woman had said. And never come out. You didn’t hear that from a man, typically. As an expectant mother, or the mother of a young child, you heard many warnings from females but not so many from males. The females were protective, true, they spread their downy wings over the eggs to keep them safe and warm, but also they relished the gruesome. At least they relished the talk of it—tragedy, poisoning, accident, as long as it didn’t happen to them or theirs, they talked it up as though it was delicious.
On a tall cabinet beneath the window there were candles and a bowl of pinecones and other domestic markings.
She was nervous.
In the dining room she moved bottles onto the counter of the bar—Jim would make drinks, since he was good at that—and set music to play from her cheap stereo.
He came in and touched the back of her neck.
She could get used to him, she thought; but then, no. He was married and he was not a replacement. Through the French doors the sun had sunk and the lower half of the sky was a pale orange.
“We shouldn’t do that while the cousins are here,” she said.
“Oh, you ashamed of me?”
“You know why.”
Her friends would see she needed comfort, and if they didn’t it would only be between her and them anyway. But the judgment of the cousins, so soon after Hal’s death—the cousins would not spare her.
She heard brakes squeaking as a car pulled up and then Casey’s voice as she went out the front door—it was not the cousins yet, only her daughter’s friends. She realized she was far too nervous to hide it. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if they took this place from her. She could hardly bear the tension of not knowing.
She said so. Jim poured her a fresh drink.
By the time her own guests got there—Dewanne and Lacy from the old street in Venice and a couple, Reg and Tony, from the last school she’d taught at—she was half-drunk and giddy. Time flowed faster, space was easier to move in … of course, she hoped she didn’t sabotage herself with
Steven. But he and the son still weren’t there by nine-thirty and the other guests were scattered through the near-empty house, already drinking too much, already leaving empty cups on tables, smears of cheese and chip fragments on the floor. Around her she heard expressions of awe at the décor, at the plentiful zoology, awe sometimes tinged with horror.
She felt gratified anyway. She went to offer fresh drinks to Casey’s friends, sitting in the cat room. Sal had two of them backed into a corner—not an easy feat in a wheelchair, but his chair was parked at an angle and blocked them effectively. It was Nancy and Addison, her nasal-voiced, stooping boyfriend. Susan had never understood what it was that Casey and Nancy had in common, beyond the chairs, she was thinking as she crossed over to them—Nancy had prominent hobbies, the obsessive reading of fantasy novels whose covers featured women with long swirling hair and elaborate chain mail and/or bladed weapons and the copious creation, via knitting, of bright-colored afghans, scarves and baby booties. Neither of which would ever be a pastime of Casey’s.
Sal was thrusting his Walkman at her.
“It’s Bridewarrior, man. Listen. This one song is so awesome. Wait, I gotta rewind it. The album’s called The Maiden Queens of Atlantis.”
Susan remembered now: after Hal fell asleep on the bed in Casey’s guestroom, at the last supper, Sal had orated to her for half an hour on the subject of rap music, rap magazines and the East-West hip-hop rivalry. There were New York rappers and there were rappers from L.A., like two big gangs that wanted to do rapid musical drive-by shootings. They chiefly battled it out by boasting of their prowess, however, and wearing big-bore gold-plated necklaces and rings, only rarely resorting to actual weapons. While Sal was into rap, Casey had said, the women he met were typically bitches and hos. This month he was into Celtic folk metal. Women were earth-mother goddesses and busty virgins wearing fur bikinis. Though in actuality as white as the driven snow, Sal had taken the name Salvador and liked to pretend he was Hispanic and/or black.
