I’m sure, I said.
Pennsylvania is far, he said.
Must have been very tiring, I said.
And I did it with such admirable quickness, he added sadly.
Then began to visibly age, while regarding me with a withering look of reproach.
As he aged, he shrank, became bent and thin, rotated in space, was soon lying horizontally and, in that position, passed away.
Then manifested as he actually was, now, back in that former realm: a thin layer of dried bonedust in what remained of a rotted coffin in an obscure quarter of a Parisian graveyard.
I will do my best to return, a voice said from within the layer.
Then the coffin vanished, a ripple ran through the now-floating layer of bonedust, which retracted sharply into a single mote, and then even that much of him was gone.
Adieu,I said, perhaps rather small-mindedly.
—
Did this glimpse of his true state, as he was now, back in that former realm, put me in mind of my own true state?
Of course.
But I was not bothered. I knew very well where “I” was:underground, Stanley, Indiana, “Sacred Heart of Mary Cemetery,” beneath a willow, fifteen feet from a stone bench upon which “Slurpee cup” rested and had been resting now for the better part of a year, and what: a desiccated brownish-green figure of medium height (length), cleaved in half at approximately the hip-line, left arm disconnected at the shoulder, a fuzz-beard of mold on what was left of its cheekbones, wearing, still, the outfit Lloyd had picked out for me (beige skirt, pale pink blouse, black pumps, my favorite in life, a fact Lloyd had sweetly remembered even in his grief), all of it marked by a disappointingly economical stone reading:JBlaine, Wife, 1954–1976,the best Lloyd, an assistant deputy, could afford.
But (joy, joy!) that hideous figure was notme,not anymore; nor was I the woman that figure had been when vital, i.e., before her demise, odiously burdened with her stunted diction, her limited view, her nominal ability to comprehend, her constrained love, which she could direct only toward those precious few with whom she had been randomly placed into proximity, i.e., friends, family, husband.
No:this,this now, was me: vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.
The champion of a cause I would never forsake:
To comfort.
To comfort whomever I could, in whatever way I might.
For this was the work our great God in Heaven had given me.
—
Despite the Frenchman’s assertion to the contrary, the mind-sample delivered by my forearm-immersion concerning thelovely girl in Pennsylvania seemed, indeed, to have had some effect on my charge.
He was unhappy and anxious, the fingers on his right hand making rapid infinitesimal typing motions.
Can a fellow get some water around this joint? he said.
Ask, I said.
You again, he said.
Ask aloud, I said. Your wife is just there. You’ll need to be loud enough to wake her.
Water, he said.
But again he did not succeed in actually speaking.
I’ll die of dry, he said. What a sorry pass. For a man of my caliber.
