“I’m afraid. Isn’t that ridiculous? I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“You had a bad dream and then you either saw something or thought you did, and maybe it amounts to the same thing. Would you like me to check him?”
“Would you?”
She sat up in bed and waited for what seemed like a very long time. He returned with a comforting smile on his face. “He’s fine,” he said.
“You’re sure he’s all right?”
“He’s sleeping like a baby. Do you want to see for yourself?”
“No.” She took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m crazy tonight, I really am.”
“You had a rough time there.”
“Thanks for going. And thanks for making me work it out.”
“You’re all right now?”
“I think so.” She looked at him, drawing from him a sense of strength he hadn’t given her in years. His body was growing softer with the years. A sedentary life had changed his body shape, and the droop in his shoulders mirrored the quiet desperation of so many nights spent in his study with his pipes and his brandy. He was bare to the waist, his chest hair matted with perspiration, and as she looked at him now she felt an unfamiliar surge of desire.
“Well,” he said. “We’d both better get to sleep.”
“Could you—”
“What?”
“Could you come into my bed for a little while?”
He slipped out of his pajama bottoms and joined her under the covers. She really only wanted to be held, but when he began making love to her she was surprised by his passion and at least as surprised by her own. Afterward she held onto him but he deliberately extricated himself from her embrace and returned to his own bed.
She felt herself drifting off to sleep. She was on the edge of it when he spoke.
“When you screamed,” he said. “Do you remember what you said?”
“I just... screamed. And then you were holding me.”
“You don’t remember what you said.”
“No. What did I say?”
She didn’t think at first that he was going to answer. Then he said, “I don’t know. I was asleep. Maybe you just cried out. I thought you might remember.”
“Maybe I called your name.”
There was a pause. “Sure,” he said at length. “That must have been it.”
She heard his alarm clock when it rang. But she stayed in bed until he had showered and dressed and gone down for his breakfast. Then, reluctantly, she dragged herself out of bed. There was an emptiness within her, a hollow void, and she didn’t know what it meant.
She went to Caleb’s room. He was lying on his back in his crib. His eyes were wide open, rolled back in his head, and his face had a blue tinge to it. She made herself extend a hand to touch him. His skin was cool beneath her fingers.
Then she must have turned from him, because the next thing she knew she was in the doorway of his room, her back to the crib. Ariel was just emerging from the bathroom. Roberta stood still, feeling her breasts rise and fall with her breathing, as the child approached.
Ariel said, “Is something wrong? Is something the matter with Caleb?”
Roberta couldn’t answer.
“That’s what it is, isn’t it? What’s the matter with Caleb? Is he dead? Is Caleb dead?”
Roberta threw her head back and howled like a dog.
Two
Early on the morning of Caleb’s funeral, Roberta slipped out of the house and went for a walk by herself. She had no conscious destination in mind but wandered around as she had often done on her walks with Caleb, heading up one street and down the next. She was not surprised, though, to find herself at the Battery. Her feet had often led there in the past, and she realized now that she had been on her way to the Battery from the moment she left the house, realized in fact that she was looking for the little old black woman with whom she’d talked of ghosts on the last day of Caleb’s life.
She didn’t find the old woman. There were two men and a woman fishing, a handful of people sitting with newspapers, and one bum stretched full length on a bench, his overcoat serving him as a blanket, his shoes tucked under his head for a pillow. Over to her left, in the shade of an equestrian statue, two young mothers were engaged in conversation. One moved her carriage gently back and forth as she talked. The other had a child in a stroller. Roberta took in the scene at a glance and at once averted her eyes. She was careful not to look in their direction again.
She stayed in the park long enough to smoke a cigarette.
Then with an effort she got to her feet and began walking slowly back to the house.
The funeral service was held that afternoon at the Whittecombe Mortuary, a rambling one-story building of white stucco located on Edgeworth Road a mile north of the city line. The split-level house where the Jardells had lived for over ten years was within walking distance of the funeral parlor. Roberta had attended a number of funerals at Whittecombe’s over the years, and when her mother had died seven years previously Whittecombe’s had been the logical choice. Now, although it was no longer particularly convenient, it was the first place David had thought of.
At the time she had not objected. If there had to be a funeral it hardly mattered to her where it was held. Now, sitting in the first row, with David on her left and Ariel on her right, Roberta regretted the choice. Ever since they’d moved downtown she’d disliked even driving through their old neighborhood, and now, returning to it for this particular occasion, she felt as though Caleb’s death was some bizarre punishment for their having moved in the first place.
Roberta sat stiffly, her spine perpendicular, her hands in her lap. People drifted up to offer words of sympathy. She would look at each person in turn but her eyes refused to focus on the faces in front of her, even as her ears were unable to make sense of the words they took in. So sorry for your troubles crib death is such a mystery even in this day and age have our sympathy want to say how much certainly do hope tragedy good die young such a shame—
Once she turned, thinking she’d spotted the old black woman out of the corner of her eye. But she’d only seen one of Horace Whittecombe’s bloodless little assistants scurrying around.
She managed now and then to nod to the people who offered their sympathy, managed to return a bit of pressure to the hands that pressed her hand. From time to time she would force herself to look beyond the faces to the tiny bronze casket. Miniaturization, she realized, transformed an ordinary casket into something curiously obscene.
At least it was closed. But it had been open earlier and she had looked inside it. Before the others had begun to arrive, when there were just she and David and Ariel, Horace Whittecombe himself had slithered across the room to ask if they would care to view the remains.
What a word—
David had not wanted her to go for that final look. As if it would be too much for her. As if she were not strong enough to bear it.
As if she could bear not to look.
And so they had all viewed the body, all three of them. David had held her and supported her while she stared down at Caleb’s waxen face. She thought of other corpses she had viewed. Her father, who’d died in a car crash when Roberta was not much more than Ariel’s age; the steering wheel had crushed his chest but the accident had left his face unmarked. Her mother, gaunt and ravaged by disease before death took her. David’s father. Aunts, uncles, grandparents. A handful of others.
For all the pride morticians took in their cosmetic skills, she had never seen a corpse that had looked remotely alive. At best the dead looked dead; more often, they looked as though they had never been alive in the first place. They might have been window dummies.