Gravedigger's Cottage

by Chris Lynch

  So, you see. Those are the things I think. There are more, of course, but you get the picture, and I don’t want to try and give any more of that picture. The point just being, I would miss my mom if I knew all that about her firsthand, from memory. I would miss her, and all the things about her—the inside, outside, everything of her. I would miss them every day, forever.

  Maybe it hurts less then, if you are done the small favor of losing somebody too soon. Before you get to know too much. Maybe. Maybe it hurts less then. Maybe. Maybe that’s why I don’t miss my mom too specifically.

  Generally, though, there’s a different story. That mom space with nothing in it? That hurts probably as much as a hundred real moms could ever hurt you. But, like I said, that’s another story, and that’s not the story I was meaning to tell.

  The story I was meaning to tell was the story of one of the last things that happened at the old house before we moved to the Gravedigger’s Cottage. And, yes, of course it is about a dying, like most stories eventually are, and a burying in the crowded patch of land around that sorry old place.

  Loose Lucy got hit by a car. We buried her in the northeast corner of the yard in the shade of a triangle of hedge but underneath a bright streetlight that shines right down on her once the sun sets. Walter joked that she can’t tell day from night now because of that, and Dad said she was only barely able to tell day from night before, which was partly how she wound up in the ground after all.

  She was a love. But he is right. She was far more heart than head. Loose—as in, her bolts were never really tightened up all the way.

  It seems to me like everybody in the world has one of those stories, one of those hit-by-car stories about their dogs, or former dogs or cats or whatever. I didn’t used to think about it. I think about it all the time now, because I see it now, like I didn’t before, and I feel it now. Everybody was always so okay when they told these stories: Rusty got run over, Sheeba got run over, Alf got run over. They were so awfully okay about it when they said it. Right—they were all sad enough, all a little embarrassed and guilty and all. But they were intact. They were not wrecked. They got on with things and told the tale, as if having a flu shot or having a tooth pulled was pretty much the same hurt as watching two tons of truck flatten thirty pounds of best friend.

  It is not the same feeling. It feels horrible. I mean, horrible. How can people talk about it like it’s anything else?

  Because if you’ve seen it and heard it—god, if you’ve heard it—it would get you forever.

  The tires screeched. Exactly the same pitch as Loose Lucy screeched once she caught on to what was happening to her. It was as if she were matching a pitch pipe, starting out with a bark-yelp-yowl-howl, all of it swooshing together until she got both lungs into it and screamed. Screamed. Like a person, she screamed like a person, finally, when they are dying, and they just then learn to tell you what is inside them, and then they are gone. Ah, Lucy. My Lucy.

  The truck was jamming its brakes; the driver was shifting through the gears, down, trying to slow it and stop it and reverse it. I was wishing, like the driver was certainly wishing, that he could reverse this whole thing. Loose Lucy surely would have been wishing we could reverse, if she could imagine reverse. If she could imagine wishing.

  But Loose Lucy, poor simple Lucy, couldn’t imagine something as complicated as wishing, and none of us could imagine reversing time and awfulness. And so she was dead. Good and dead.

  Why do people say that? Good and dead. That’s just stupid.

  Bad and dead.

  She got all bent up, poor Lucy. Her back legs twisted up one way while the front were aiming another, as if this were two different parts of different dogs just passing each other on their way to two whole different places.

  “Sorry, sorry, Lucy,” I kept saying, because it was my fault. She was never supposed to be out off the leash for just this reason. I only wanted to let her run, just for a minute, just for then. I did it before, just for a minute, and it worked out all right. And if you ever saw her, saw how excited she was, running, you would see why I would want to do that for her. You would want to do that for her, I know you would.

  “Sorry, sorry, I am so sorry, Luce,” I said, as I held her head and she stared off past my right shoulder, as if I were up there, my head up there high above my right shoulder rather than tightly attached to my neck where I usually keep it.

  There was a little blood puddled up in the middle of Lucy’s tongue, in the middle of her strange white gums. It wasn’t a lot of blood. There was a little more from a three-inch slash on her leg, but that wasn’t much either. Should have been more, but it was almost as if someone had run the tap of Loose Lucy’s blood and then snapped it shut again just as quick. Her belly was swelling.

  She tried to get up. Half of her tried. The front half tried, but it was a weak try. I guided her head back down to the ground where she lay, and she didn’t fight me. She looked grateful to be there, lying down on the ground again, as if she never would have thought of that if I hadn’t pointed it out. That was very Lucy of her, I thought, and I was grateful that she was being very Lucy for me.

  And then she did it—went and died. She closed her little eyes, and she stopped the short whispery pant she was doing; she let her tongue just flop there, touching the pavement with the very tip, like you would do if you were testing something out, soup or something, if you were afraid it was going to be too hot yet.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said, as soon as he was sure Lucy had left. We were the only two people there yet, me and the truck driver. There would be lots others soon enough, but for this, it was just us. “I am very sorry,” he said again, and he didn’t try to explain anything away even though it was not his fault. “I am so sorry,” he said again, shaking his head, looking at Lucy, shaking his head. I felt so sorry for him, seeing his face, seeing this big guy, this big nine-foot-tall truck driver guy, seeing him go all crackly faced, and it just got worse when he leaned over past me and put his plaid shirt down over Lucy, as if we could still keep her warm, keep her wrapped, keep any more of her from seeping out and away.

  “I’m sorry, mister,” I said, looking up at him, but staying crouched low to stroke Lucy. “I’m not supposed to let her off the leash, ever…I’m sorry…”

  That was when I started to cry. And then that was when the truck driver started doing not so well himself, and I got a whole lot worse when I saw him, not crying exactly, but coming I guess as close as one of these big nine-foot men probably comes.

  I turned away from the bright glassy eyes on that man, bright glassy shiny eyes where I could swear for a flash I was sure I saw us reflected. The picture of me and Lucy on the ground, her helpless, me useless. I turned from him and buried myself, laid my whole face right down into the neck part of my Lucy, just below her folded velvet ear, where she used to let you nuzzle for hours, and I nuzzled her for maybe hours, at least until I felt my dad’s hands squeezing my shoulders, warming me and comforting me and making me start to wail harder than ever.

  She was already all stiff when we put her down in the corner of the yard a few hours later. I couldn’t believe it. Already. Already going and gone and taken away. Rigid, like she was already not our Lucy who would fetch oranges across this same yard, but a stuffed museum version of our Lucy. Her closed eyes were kind of pulling in, like she was squinting them, holding them tight against seeing what was going on and maybe then keeping it from going on.

  Nice try, Luce. Hold ’em closed tight and maybe see something better.

  Dad scooted up next to me at the foot of Loose Lucy’s grave. He had an arm draped over my shoulder. His fingernails were packed with the rich clay dirt of the digging, and his shirt was moist with sweat. The smell of him made me feel comfortable and right in a very sad way. This was the smell, to me, of saying good-bye.

  I would know that smell, wouldn’t I? I was doing this all the time, killing things. Unless it was them doing it to me, dying. All the same, in t
he end, they ended up there, under there, under us, with the earth upturned and the scent penetrating all the way into me and staying there.

  Walter had stood by the grave now for as long as he was able to do any one thing. He had been okay through this, resisting his natural urge to upset me and to pretend he didn’t feel hurt. Without speaking, he went into the house.

  He didn’t see me see him, but I saw him raise his eyes and tell her good-bye.

  “What are you thinking, Sylvie?” Dad asked.

  Two things. One, for starters, he didn’t ever call me Sylvie, like I said. He was trying to play. He was trying to help. I loved it when he tried.

  The other thing was, he knew better than to ask that. We had been through this many times before, with him asking me what was I thinking.

  I never answered that. Because I said what I was thinking when I wanted to talk about what I was thinking. I had no trouble saying, when I wanted to be saying, but when I didn’t want to be saying, you could tell, because I stood there, not saying. Because I think that’s important. I think your thoughts are more like a place, where you can stay, comfortably alone if need be.

  But he asked, and I told him. I told him all that, or at least I used to tell him all that, all those first few thousand times he asked me what I was thinking, but now I had shortened the whole thing to a special one-word digest: “Dad,” which was pronounced with two distinct syllables, “Da-ad,” and he remembered right away and then we were okay again. Then, usually a little while later when I was quiet again, he would ask me again what I was thinking and I would patiently tell him again. And then he’d remember again. And then we were okay again.

  “Well, you want to know what I’m thinking, then?” he said as he gently steered me away from our goodbye to Loose Lucy as darkness began to really finally close us in.

  “Yah, Dad, I do.”

  “I’m thinking I’m really looking forward to the new house, to a new start. I’m thinking we were here long enough. I’m thinking it’s time.”

  He squeezed me extra hard, and as we approached the back door we saw the backlit figure of Walter standing in the doorway, arms folded, as if we had been out all night and kept him up worrying.

  “Yah, Dad,” I said, leaning into him, “I’m thinking you’re right.”

  This was the first I had heard of this thought. But it must have been true because I said it.

  Same went for this one.

  “And I’m thinking I don’t want any more pets, once we get to the new house. I’m thinking I couldn’t bear to bury anything else under us, at the new place.”

  He let this go without remark. He gave my shoulder a silent squeeze. Much went without remark with Dad, but sometimes the silent squeeze wasn’t what I wanted. Sometimes it was, but I had a right to a choice, didn’t I?

  “Doesn’t it hurt, Dad? Doesn’t it keep hurting, even when it’s past? And doesn’t it want to come out sometimes?”

  He did it. He had the nerve to squeeze my shoulder again. When I kept staring up at him, heating up the side of his face with my glare, he was forced to consider again.

  “It’ll be okay, sweetheart,” was what he decided, was what he always decided. “We won’t dwell on that now,” was what he said next, as he always liked to say next.

  “Right.” I sighed as we stepped inside. As we did, Dad grabbed Walter in a one-arm bear hug, while still holding me with the other. When we were squished way up close together, I leaned over and kissed Walter on his big round forehead.

  “Hey!” Walter shouted.

  He didn’t really mind though. It beat what he was doing, in the house, alone with his red-rimmed eyes.

  Welcome

  AMONG THE MANY KINKS of the Gravedigger’s Cottage was the doorbell, which made a clang sound as if someone were hitting one of the radiators with a great big hammer.

  The first time I heard it, it threw me a little, but then it was nothing compared to what I found outside the door when I answered.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I’ll be your boyfriend,” he said.

  We had never met. We had lived in the house for about a week. It was August, school hadn’t started yet, Dad hadn’t gone back to work. We spent our time, the three of us, nicing up the house some, visiting the rocky, fairly private beach, and puttering about the general vicinity without really meeting people in any meaningful way. And then came Carmine.

  “Um, you will not be my boyfriend, no.”

  “Wow, you’re mean,” he said.

  “I am not mean. Who are you?”

  “I’m Carmine.”

  “Hi, Carmine. Thanks but—”

  I was forced to interrupt myself here because of what Carmine was doing while I talked. While I talked, he wrapped himself up in a hug as if he were worrying or cold, which in eighty-two-degree heat was unlikely.

  “Why are you doing that?” I asked.

  “What?” He kept doing it.

  “Stop that,” I said, pointing at his huggy arms. There was a daffy excited smile that went along with the hug.

  Walter heard and came to the door.

  “Hey, Carmine,” Walter said.

  Carmine stopped the hugging and turned sort of normal looking. “Hi, Walter.”

  “How do you know him?” I asked Walter.

  “Ah-o-o.”

  Walter answered me the way he had answered almost every direct question since he’d turned ten, with a stretched-out single syllable sluurb that contained all the elements of the words I don’t know without actually articulating any of them. Ah-o-o. Sometimes he managed it without even opening his mouth, and it still sounded the same.

  Fortunately or unfortunately, I spoke the language.

  “How can you not know? How can you meet somebody, how can you know somebody, and not know how?”

  Bet you could guess what his answer was.

  “So who have we got here?” Dad said, completing the whole happy family in the doorway.

  “I’m her boyfriend,” Carmine said. Then he hugged himself.

  “You are what?” Dad said in such a different voice from the friendly greeting of a few seconds earlier, I had to turn and check that it was still him.

  “He is not,” I said to Dad. “You are not,” I said to Carmine.

  Walter was beginning to gather how upsetting I was finding this, and acted accordingly. “Don’t be mean, Sylvia,” he said. “Loosen up.”

  “Yes,” Carmine said, “loosen up.”

  “Do not loosen up,” Dad said.

  “I used to have a friend who lived in this house,” Carmine said.

  “Really?” I said. “Well, you don’t now.”

  “Yes, he does—me,” said Walter.

  “How did the two of you meet?” asked Dad.

  “Ah-o-o,” they both said; they both shrugged.

  It went on this way for a while before Carmine was invited into the house. It was by no means a unanimous decision, with Walter wanting him in, me wanting him gone, and Dad ultimately I think just wanting him off our front step.

  “Wow,” Carmine said as he stepped into the front hallway and past the fifteen-pane glass foyer door. “What a cool house.”

  “I thought you had friends here before?” I said.

  “Yah,” he said, looking around as if he were in a museum, “but they moved away a few years ago. And they never let me inside.”

  I whipped around and laid a see stare on Walter.

  Walter made his other universal response noise. “Huh?”

  He was our first house tour. I was thinking about it even as we were doing it, traipsing like a tiny indoor parade through the odd-size doorways, into the odd-shaped rooms, how weird the idea was. Why should anybody else care what your house looks like? Why should anybody think that it was a good and pleasant and entertaining idea to be dragged around and shown somebody else’s bedroom and pantry and toilet? I had never conducted one of those tours before, had never been taken on one, and, frankly, never missed it.
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  Carmine couldn’t have agreed less.

  “What an amazing door,” he said as we slipped from the foyer into the living room. It was a nice enough door—tall and rectangular; bare, scratchy, cocoa-colored wood that had once been painted lilac but was now stripped clean except for some artfully overlooked patches. Nice enough but amazing? You had to be pretty excitable.

  And that was Carmine.

  “Look at the bite marks!” he squealed. There was evidence all over the house that the previous occupants kept cats or badgers or macaques that were allowed total freedom. It was kind of cool in spots, kind of gross in others. Carmine took advantage of the situation to make a grab for my hand, to comfort one or the other of us. Bless him.

  “Want to see a lot more bite marks?” I said.

  The hand troubled me no more.

  It was almost like we were seeing the house new again, as if we were the ones being shown around. Because this was different from when the real estate woman had shown the place to us. Even though it was only a very short time ago, it was very different.

  Because it was ours now. It was, already, us.

  And it was so very, very much a cottage. We were living in a cottage.

  I had always connected the word cottage with a kind of sweetness, a quaint, temporary, novelty type of structure. I never thought of a cottage as being a place where people—human people, serious, full-size, nonfictional people—would ever live, full-time, all the time.

  Neither did the previous owners, apparently.

  There was a lot of homemade about the place. The doors to both my bedroom and Walter’s were a lot closer to picnic tabletops than real doors. They didn’t even have knobs but instead had those little kind of garden gate latches that you opened with a flick up of a finger. The natural wood floor of the living room was a darkish molasses color, except for four or five wide boards, positioned randomly here and there. These were a dramatically different blond wood, apparently used to replace old bad boards.