None Shall Sleep (Damnatio Memoriae Book 1)

by Laura Giebfried

  “My hair doesn’t smell like cranberries. Cranberries don’t even have a smell!”

  “Is that the only defense for your masculinity that you have?”

  I shrugged. Jack cackled.

  “I can’t help it that I’m neat, anyway,” I said as we made our way downstairs. “It runs in the family. My grandfather had it, Karl has it, and I have it. It’s a genetic predisposition.”

  “A genetic defect, more like.”

  As we reached the first floor where the office was and the building secretary caught sight of us, my amusement dissolved: I hadn’t thought up anything to say to Karl to prevent him from lecturing me for hours, and I hated the idea of having Brody overhear another uncomfortable conversation between us. Before I could manage an excuse not to take the call, though, Brody had picked up the phone and said, “Here he is, Mr. Lund.”

  I took the phone and put it to my ear reluctantly. Jack mimed hanging himself across from me.

  “Listen, Karl,” I began, “I’m sorry about the flu thing. I really couldn’t help it, and –”

  “Enim …”

  “—and I haven’t really fallen behind on my work, because I got extensions for most of it, so there’s really no need to be concerned –”

  “Enim …”

  “And about the broken nose, that wasn’t a fight, I swear. I just slipped –”

  “Enim, just – just wait. I’m not calling about anything like that.”

  I pressed the phone closer to my ear. Karl’s voice was very quiet and still; I couldn’t even hear him breathing. He seemed to be holding his breath to prevent any emotion from escaping into his tone.

  I glanced up at Jack. He had leaned against the doorframe with crossed arms.

  “All right. What’s the reason, then?”

  “Enim, I … I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  Something fragmented in his voice came through that I had never heard in his tone before. Though I had the urge to slam the phone down before he could speak, I licked my lips instead.

  “Just tell me,” I said.

  “I …”

  I shut my eyes and stared at the ground. Snow from my shoes that sat in sad little chunks around my feet had begun to melt, and they pooled at my feet like tears.

  “It’s your mother.”

  I swallowed. I knew what he was going to say and yet I didn’t believe it. His voice had begun to shake, coming over the line in short, static gulps that betrayed the admission before it came, but when I spoke my own was calm.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s …” Karl seemed to choke on the other line. In the background, I could hear something falling. He might have knocked the receiver off of the desk. “She’s – she’s dead, Enim.”

  I felt myself nod but couldn’t say anything. The room had gone very quiet and still around me.

  “Enim? Are you …?”

  “I’m still here.”

  I was surprised to hear that my voice was quick and unmoved. With the way it sounded, Karl might have just told me that I got a standard bank statement in the mail that morning.

  “I … The wake is Thursday, and the funeral will be on Friday. I’ve … I’ve made arrangements. Someone will be up to collect you.”

  “All right,” I said, my tone still formal and detached.

  “All right,” Karl concluded quietly. He couldn’t have said more: our emotions were too diametric to hold any sort of conversation.

  I hung up the phone and handed it back to Brody. Jack was watching me with the type of empathy that he always gave when I got a reprimand from Karl.

  “What was it this time? He didn’t find out about the foot, did he? Jesus, he really is having you watched. Maybe he and Porter are in this together –”

  “He doesn’t know about the foot,” I said quietly.

  “No? So it was the flu, then?” Jack shook his head. “Honestly, he can’t get mad at you for that. I mean, you’re allowed to get sick, aren’t you? Or is that against the rules, too?”

  I looked at Jack blankly. For the slightest of moments, I considered not telling him – or anyone. It was as though if I didn’t speak the words aloud, then they wouldn’t be made true. We could go on just the way we had been moments before, careless and jubilant as we talked about everything and nothing at all.

  “He doesn’t care about that, either,” I said.

  “No? Then …” Jack straightened and peered at my face with an anxiousness that seldom crossed it. “Nim, what is it? What’d he say?”

  I was unsure of how to voice it, and I found myself giving him a slight shrug.

  “My mother. She’s dead.”

  Jack’s arms dropped to his side.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  I nodded in response. There seemed to be nothing more to say.

  Ch. 17

  I made the walk to the port alone. It was far too early for the ferry, but I stood very stilly on the shore and waited out the time until it arrived even so. The view from the dock looked unfamiliar in the morning light: the water was still the deepest shade of blue, but the sky had faded to white, and though the sunlight was touching every surface, all around it was still just as cold.

  Karl’s colleague had made the drive to pick me up. It was only after I had seated myself in his car that I connected his voice and name with the ones I had overheard in the conversation during the holidays. Before he could express any condolences, I leaned my head against the window and shut my eyes to feign sleep. I didn’t dare to open them until the sound of the waves crashing on the shore died down and the smell of salt faded from the air, and by then the silence was too thick to break. I shut my eyes as I listened to its nothingness, all too aware that that was all there was left for her to hear.

  And though the trees running alongside the highway were the same as ever – just a blur as the car whizzed by on its way down to Connecticut – they looked emptier in the cold air. The snow had begun to melt as we traveled further south, and the landscape was just a barren stretch of patchwork green-and-white out the window. I wished that I could fling open the door and run alongside the car rather than stay within it – to have the cold air on my face instead of the heat from the vent pressing against me – but my hands laid like stones beside me. She was dead, and yet I was the one who seemed to have left the earth.

  “Enim? We’re here.”

  I hadn’t realized that the car had stopped moving: my head was swaying as though I was still on the ferry being tossed back and forth by the waves. I fumbled with the handle on the car before getting out. From where the car had been parked on the other side of the street, my grandmother’s old house looked emptier and more forsaken than ever.

  The wake had already begun. When I entered the house, the swarm of people chattering in low voices hounded my ears and made my head heavier than it already was. They filled the normally barren house, spilling out of the rooms into the hallway and stuffed into every crevice and corner, like a flood of black over the carpet and hardwood floors. It seemed odd that there should be so many of them given that no one had visited the house when she was alive. Their company would do nothing for her now.

  As I watched them, it occurred to me how out of place I was in my light-blue sweater and khakis. The feeling wrapped itself around me until a thick barrier pressed between me and the rest of the world. I took the stairs three at a time to escape it, but the hallway was littered with people, as well. My foot throbbed as I paused on the topmost step and took in the sight of them standing in my bedroom and near the room at the end of the hall. When they turned towards me questioningly, I recognized Mrs. Quincy among them. I tried to turn away, but she spotted me and stepped forward.

  “Enim.” She pulled me into an embrace before I could step away. Over her shoulder, I had a clear view of the guestroom door; it seemed impossible that there was no one lying out of sight behind it anymore. As the old woman continued to pat my back, I had the urge to push her away. “She went
peacefully.”

  “Right.”

  I nodded as she withdrew to look at me, but the confirmation that I had heard her was not enough for her to look away. As she stared at me with her old, pale eyes, I thought that she was looking past my own and into my head. I opened my mouth to make an excuse to get away, but was saved from doing so by a voice at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Enim, you’re here.”

  Karl was dressed as neatly as ever in dark pants and a navy tie, but the lines around his eyes had deepened into cracks on his skin.

  I descended the stairs to stand in front of him. As his eyes moved over me disapprovingly, I was more aware than ever that my face was severely bruised and my hair needed to be trimmed, though for once he didn’t voice the criticism aloud.

  “Your father’s in the living room. The – the casket’s there, too.”

  I nodded and turned away with the pretense of going there, but once the crowd separated us I continued down the hall to find an empty room. The only one was the laundry room, and I ducked inside it quickly. As I shut the door on the voices outside, I was aware of how small and cramped it was. I leaned against the washer and tugged at my collar as my throat constricted. I couldn’t go into the living room with both my father and mother there – not after not seeing either of them for so long.

  I wedged myself down into the space between the washer and dryer. It was warm there pressed between the metal, and I could only hear the faintest of voices from the surrounding rooms. I shut my eyes and tried to block out the image of my mother standing on the beach in her light sundress and bare feet: the diagnosis that Beringer had admitted to was hanging above her head, ready to crush her. Regardless of the hordes of people filling the house, I had never felt quite so alone.

  I knew better than to be crammed there between the two appliances hiding when Karl and my father were expecting me to join them, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t have the strength to feign politeness or maintain stoicism, and I couldn’t speak to them when I hadn’t even been able to speak to her when she was trapped in that empty room with the horrible whirring and beeping of machines. I bit down in regret until the teeth dug holes into my tongue. I never wanted to speak again.

  And as I stared at the clock miserably, I realized that I would have had a meeting with Beringer in a few hours’ time if I had been at Bickerby. I wished that I could have been there with him instead of in the house with Karl, who I had not been able to hold a proper conversation with in years, or my father, who hadn’t even bothered to try. It was as though something foreign had crept into my veins to replace any genetic material that we might have shared, and I was something far too different from either of them to claim resemblance ever again.

  The door opened and I hurriedly pulled my legs back to avoid being seen. My heart hammered with the fear that I would be found and only lessened when the person stepped over to the window instead of approaching me. I stared at the well-polished shoes for a long moment before recognizing them as my father’s.

  “Daniel –”

  The door opened and shut again as Karl stepped into the room after him. He was a bit breathless as though he had been running, but quickly smoothed his hair back and composed himself.

  My father didn’t turn from the window.

  “This isn’t the time for this, Karl, and it certainly isn’t the place.”

  “It’s never a good time or place.”

  “Then let’s not talk about it at all. It’s done – she’s gone. Let it die with her.”

  Karl’s arms crossed, but I was too low on the ground to see either of their expressions. My father’s voice was as firm as ever, and Karl’s was the same tired but exasperated tone that he always took with me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve said it a thousand times, but I’ll say it again: I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t do anything now, Karl.”

  “It could. You just won’t let it.”

  My father’s oxfords squeaked on the floor as he turned in his spot.

  “Stop victimizing yourself. I’m not saying that you caused all of this – Evelyn was unwell regardless of what happened between you two – but you certainly played a part.”

  “I didn’t know that she was sick.”

  “But you knew better.” He moved to straighten his tie even though it was hardly out of place and smoothed the front of his dress shirt down out of habit. “What did you think when she acted the way she did? Why did you think she wanted to look at the ocean for hours on end, and listen to that damn song over and over again?”

  “It wasn’t as bad at that point.”

  “No, you got her at the best point in her life; and when she entered the worst, she was my wife again.”

  “That’s not fair, Daniel.”

  “No? How do you think it was for me, then? Or Evelyn, when you left her?”

  “You told me to stay away.”

  “I told you to stay away the day you laid eyes on her – you didn’t listen then.”

  He broke off by turning back to the window. Even when he leaned his hands against the frame and hunched over, he was still just as intimidating in stance.

  “Where’s Enim? I thought you said he’d arrived.”

  “He did – didn’t he come see you?”

  “Obviously not.”

  Karl sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  “What?” my father asked.

  “Nothing. I mean, I’m sure he’s not far.”

  “Not far? Jesus, Karl – have you lost him?”

  Karl loosened his collar as he looked towards the door.

  “No, well – I don’t know. He might’ve taken a walk.”

  “A walk?”

  “Only ... sometimes he ... sometimes he goes to the bridge.”

  Even if I couldn’t see my father’s expression, I knew what it read. As he turned to look at his younger brother and his arms dropped to his sides like deadweights, Karl took a long step back from him.

  “The bridge? The bridge where she jumped from?” His tone was so loud that the voices outside the door hushed a bit to hear it, and I pulled my legs back tighter to my chest as my heart hammered harder than ever. “Jesus Christ, Karl – you let him go there?”

  “It’s not like I drive him there – he just takes off!”

  “Don’t you watch him?”

  “Of course I do! But I’m not here every second of every day, Daniel, and –”

  “And nothing! He shouldn’t even think that he’s allowed out of the house without permission – what kind of guardian are you?”

  Karl’s hands tightened.

  “Oh, that’s rich, Daniel – seeing as you haven’t seen or spoken to him in a year.”

  “Don’t tell me my faults as a father – I know them already!”

  “Apparently not, or else you’d realize that your son doesn’t eat or sleep or talk to anyone –”

  “That’s why I got him a psychiatrist!”

  “Beringer’s doing nothing for him! It’s been months, and he’s no better than he was before!”

  “He’s fine. His grades are up, his schoolwork is good –”

  “He’s not! He gets into fights, he talks back to his teachers –”

  “Don’t act as though you know my son better than I do, Karl!”

  “Everyone knows your son better than you do, Daniel.”

  The silence that followed was shattered as a mound of snow fell from the roof and crashed onto the ground. Both my father and Karl had gone very still, but the latter’s hands were shaking behind his back. I sucked in a breath for fear that if I let it out they would hear me, though the room seemed to have drained of air and made it impossible to breathe anyhow. Finally, when the silence pressed so hard against me that my back seemed to break against the wall, my father spoke again.

  “You’re out of line, Karl.”

  He left the room without another word. After a moment, Karl straightened his collar and did the same. I waited a
moment for both of them to return to separate parts of the house before making a break from the room. Shooting past the line of mourners, I hurried up the stairs and down the hall to the bathroom and locked myself inside.

  My reflection was even less forgiving under the fluorescent lights, but I splashed hot water over my face to return some color to it. I combed my hair back from my eyes with my fingers, though it didn’t hide the fact that it had become dull and brittle. Even my eyes had lost their color: the blue was nothing more than a glassy shade of gray. I blinked at the mirror as I tried to recognize myself, but the person standing hunched over the sink was unfamiliar.

  Outside the door, the voices changed from mismatched chattering to low, humble tones that murmured their respects. My father must have come up the stairs. I pressed my ear to the door as his footsteps paused in the hallway and heard his deep voice as he thanked one of them for coming. When I opened the door, he halted midway through the conversation to stare at me.

  “Enim.”

  He crossed over to me and pulled me aside into Karl’s bedroom, shutting the door behind him. As I stood in front of him, he took my head in his hands and turned my face up to look at me properly. The lighting in the room was poor, and he had to squint to see the bruises running beneath my eyes and across my nose.

  “What happened?”

  “I fell on the ice,” I said as he released me, careful to turn my head away with the lie.

  “I’ve heard it’s been a harsh winter here.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded upon realizing that he had nothing more to say, and we stood in silence for a long moment. I stared at Karl’s neatly made bed without needing to look at him. He was the same as ever with his dark brown eyes and iron-gray hair; even the frown lines on his forehead were the same. It was only me who had changed.

  “Well, I ... Your mother was ...” He fumbled over his words as he tried to salvage the nonexistent exchange. “It’s for the best, really.”

  “Right.”

  “The caregiver said she went peacefully. At any rate, she wasn’t alone.”