The man interrupted her, harshly and deliberately. "You see why I didn't let you go before the grand jury? You get all worked up like this and you sound as if you could have killed somebody. Take it easy. You do that in court and you'll make the D.A.'s case for him. At least let's make him work a little."
"You still believe I might have killed Michael." There was a soft and plaintive dignity to the woman's voice that Laura admired, although she knew perfectly well that it was artificial. Women make better innocent victims than men, she thought. They see the drama in the role. Men see only the injustice happening to them, and they howl.
"I think you could have done it," the man said. "I'm pretty sure you didn't. But I'm never really sure of anything."
"That must be sad."
"It's kept me from being married, killed, and disbarred. It's only sad if you think there's one thing sure in the world and you have to keep looking for it. Otherwise it holds up pretty well. Keeps you from spending much time in places like this."
"Michael was my husband," the woman murmured. There was a sleepy, smug look about her eyes, the look one often sees in the eyes of women who have just given birth. "I had to come. I wouldn't have felt right if I hadn't come here today."
"Why? If you're trying to impress the D.A.'s tails, forget it. They're waiting outside. And if you're trying to convince me that you loved your husband, I'll take you home whenever you're ready."
"I loved him as much as I could." The woman stared down at the grave. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm able to give love. I don't think I am. Michael wouldn't have committed suicide if I was."
"That's getting to be a pretty fashionable position," the man said. "Used to be people wrote books about women who slept with the iceman because they were overflowing with love for humanity and they had to start somewhere. Now it's the other way around. Everybody's sorry for the woman who can't love anybody. Now she sleeps with the iceman because she's trying to destroy herself. Doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference to the iceman. Anyway, I wouldn't feel too bad about not loving your husband. He didn't love you."
The woman turned on him so fast that she kicked one of the roses. "That's not so. Michael loved me. If he loved anything in the world, he loved me. He told me so a dozen times a day. It used to frighten me because I knew I didn't deserve that kind of love. I used to warn him not to love me so much." The soft voice had gotten higher, and the narrow face was quite pale. "Don't you ever say Michael didn't love me. There's a lot you don't know about Michael, or about me."
"Ain't it the truth," the stocky man said amiably. "You ready to go now?"
"Not yet," the woman said. She had regained control of herself as quickly as she had thrown it away, but her hands were still clenched and pressed against her sides. "I just want to stand here quietly for a moment. Don't say anything. I shouldn't have let you come with me. Be quiet."
"But first, ladies and gentlemen," the man muttered, "our national anthem." The woman gave him a look of calm disgust and turned away to stare at Michael's grave. Her head was bowed and her hands, open now, seemed conscious of their futility. A breeze ruffled a loose lock of her blond hair, and she did not raise a hand to pat it back into place. All sexuality was gone from her in that moment. She might have been a nun at evening. Even the heavy-shouldered man seemed on the verge of being impressed.
Laura saw the woman's lips move to shape Michael's name, and she thought, Michael's Sandra, you're a hypocrite and you may be a murderess just as naturally. I hope you are. Forgive me that, and forgive my envy of the golden planes of your face, but I hope, and, because I hope, believe, that you killed your husband. Please understand me. I have nothing against you as a person except that you had to warn a man not to love you so much. This seems a waste of natural resources to me, whose hair was straight and dull and who danced like the Washington Monument. My attitude may seem unfair and incomprehensible, but you would understand if you had known me when I was alive. If I were on your jury I would fight to see you set free, but I know you're guilty. That's the way my mind works, or at least that's the way I remember its working. I have to find you guilty because I'm not dishonest enough to find you ugly, and I have to dislike you to keep myself from wanting to be like you. If you knew me you'd understand.
Is that all? she wondered. Is there anything else to say? I have a feeling there is, the same feeling of something left out I've had ever since I came to this place. You try so hard to be honest with yourself and you wind up by making lies a little less pleasant to the taste.
"We can go now," the woman said.
You're forgetting the rose you kicked, Laura told her. Put it back the way it was. It just has to be straightened out a little. I'd do it myself and save you the trouble, but I can't. Would you, please? Thank you.
As if she had heard, the woman knelt gracefully and put the rose back into line with the other flowers. Her long fingers had a slight tint of lemon to them, but her nails were the same shade as the roses. A little darker, perhaps; roses after rain.
Thank you Sandra, Laura said. Good-by. She wondered where Michael was.
"How much time do we have?" the woman asked. She and the man began to walk away from Michael's grave.
"The trial's down for August eighth," the man answered. "Gives us almost a month."
"That's not much time." The soft voice sounded a little worried.
"Time enough. If there's anything for me to find, I'll have it in a month. If I can't turn up anything—" He shrugged heavily. "We can always appeal."
The woman stopped with her hand on the man's arm. "I didn't kill Michael. I won't suffer for something I didn't do."
The man's high chuckle was like sand rattling into a tin pail. He started walking again, and the woman followed him. "Why not? Why should you be different from the rest of us?"
"That isn't funny, damn you," the woman said.
They passed out of Laura's sight, although she could still hear their voices. The man's answer was amused and easy. "That's called gallows humor, lady. It'll get funnier as time passes." From that point on, the voices became blurred, partly because Laura was not listening very hard.
I suppose I could follow them, she thought. I was going to visit my own grave, after all, not Michael's. The trouble is, I don't really want to follow them. I don't want to see them. What do I want with the living? I'm not going to depend on them. If I do that I'll never forget life, never get to sleep. And I've got to stop letting myself be distracted. If I can't be alive, I want to be dead. Dead, as in dead. I don't like this in-between state. It's too much like life and not enough like it. I have to stop looking at live things and being interested in them. Even the scurrying of an ant is treachery, even a dandelion is deceitful and seductive. And that reminds me, I wish I could blow on one of those fat white dandelions. If you make a wish and blow all the fluff off in one breath, the wish comes true. I know. I was never able to do it all in one breath, and my wishes never came true.
The dead have nothing to do with dandelions, and the dead don't make wishes. I'll go to my own grave and lie down again.
Then she heard whistling, and she turned to see Michael coming down the road she had walked. The whistling of a ghost is like no other sound in a fistful of universes, because it is woven of all the whistles the ghost has ever heard, and so it usually includes train moans, lunch whistles, fire alarms, and the affronted-virgin screaming of tea kettles. To all of these components Michael had added an extra memory: the agonized yowl of a car stopping very suddenly in a very short space. It all made for a tuneless and unmelodic sort of sound, but ghosts have no interest in melody. The production of sound is all that interests them. Michael seemed quite pleased with his whistling.