“One of Salem’s bright lights—”
“And her looks—I mean, before she lost them, she was—”
“I am not saying I believe in ghosts,” Sadie erupts, “I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m just saying, there’s a way of doing things, you know, you put someone to rest.”
At that moment, she catches sight of them, tilts herself to inspect the little faces huddled under the table. A clump of black eye paint has smeared over the puggish upturn of her nose. She is looking at Viola like she would like to devour her.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
There cannot be any doubt that Sadie is a contaminated person. Viola can see it in the purple stains crusting on the dry parts of her lips and smell it in the sour belly-breath escaping toward her. Sadie reaches out her fat, desperate hands. Viola looks to her brother, pleading for him to render her invisible, breathing short, panicked breaths.
Don’t make me.
Sebastian rolls his eyes and allows her to scuttle behind him.
“Viola!” Sadie despairs. Sebastian, unafraid of his aunt, crawls to her outstretched arms, and Sadie wraps him in a deep embrace. “That’s a good boy,” she says. “Your mommy loved you so much. Do you know that?”
He beams at her as she takes another long slug of wine, places the empty glass on the windowsill. Her hand flaps at the room, everyone in it. “This is too sad.”
In an awkward galumphing motion, Sadie is on her feet, Sebastian tucked under her arm like a football, giggling. She groans, strains to hold him; he is unwieldy now at seven. His head hangs under the table like a bat.
“Come on, you.”
He waves to Viola as he bobs away, out of the room. And she is alone.
“Sorry we can’t stay,” Dan Dunning says, leaving behind a Tupperware of something produced by his thoughtful, accomplished, very alive wife. He pats Al on the shoulder. “The sitter will be waiting.”
“Thanks for coming.”
“Let’s do lunch sometime. At the club. I’ve got a China trip coming up, but we’ll work around it.” Dan is always going to China. And nowhe waves goodbye in the way he has always waved goodbye, pressing his lips tight together as if there is something more he wants to say. He closes the door, taking with him the linger of Al’s school days, pressed collared shirts and sharp graphite, the safety of a time before.
Al squeezes the Tupperware into the refrigerator with the others. The house is full of strangers now. So many people who saw his wife from other angles, transformed her into different things. Friends from Salem, from Burbank. Bohemian like her, dramatic. Their intimacies frighten him, the way they look at each other with such feeling, and erupt in sobs and warbling anecdotes, as if it is all too much to be contained. As he is closing the refrigerator door, one of them places her hand on his arm and just looks at him, sincere and intense, as though she can communicate with her eyes alone. He doesn’t know her. Who is she to have all this sadness roaring just beneath the skin? Someone his wife brushed up against for a moment? He nods and looks away, willing her to leave, hostage to her feeling. His own pain is certain and deep. Susan’s absence is already a horrible fact of himself, a motionless mark.
“You just hope it isn’t hereditary, don’t you,” one of them is saying.
“Poor sweetheart.”
Why do they have to drag his daughter into it? Isn’t it enough to mourn one person today? It occurs to him that he hasn’t seen his children in at least an hour. Is that an instinct he should have, to check on them?How am I going to do it?
It’s not like he hasn’t been alone with them. Susan was often gone for long stretches when she was filmingLife and Times, the second most popular soap in the country. Merrily, Sadie reminded him of the fact just a few hours ago, arriving at the beach with a large box of home recordings. No official videos were available, and she’d offered him her collection like a box of rare gemstones.I’ll need them back, she said.But watch them, it’ll be good for you.As if he could bear to play back all the hours she spent pretending to be someone else. Choosing a different life.
No, Al is no stranger to early weekday wake-ups, packing lunches, getting them showered and dressed and onto a bus. But he alwayshad one eye on Friday night, when she would arrive home heroic and exhausted and scoop them up into her arms. She was a natural parent.
If he had known, then, how little time there was, he’d like to think he would have handled it differently. Convinced her, earlier and more forcefully, to spend every one of her precious hours with them. The idea of the family moving out there, though discussed, had been inconceivable. His work, his everything was here.Don’t feel guilty, not now.She would have grown out of it, with time, settled into the gentle currents of motherhood. He’s convinced of that, isn’t he? Now she’d never prove him wrong.
She would have hated that.
He has been staring at the microwave for an indeterminate period of time when a hand connects with the area between his shoulder blades and a man is asking him a question.
“What?”
“I said, have you got a lighter, pal?”
“No. I mean, I have matches.”
“No. No, it’s fine, actually, I’m trying to quit. I’ve already quit actually. If anyone asks, this conversation never happened.”
The man is familiar but unplaceable, and Al watches him cast around the kitchen like he’s lost something.
