They stood there, she on her porch, he on the grass, staring at each other — as if watching an accident, Libbie thought. Down the block, a garbage truck’s air brakes sighed. She turned and twisted her key in the door. Stale air. She opened a kitchen window.
“Got any wine?” Hugh asked. “A wicked indulgence in the middle of the day?” He grinned. An uncorked bottle of semillon blanc sat in the fridge, next to a soggy cabbage.
The cabbage had been on the edge two days ago. Libbie had figured she’d eat it in time — then life changed. Fury swelled in her now. This is so you, Anna Lia, she thought, forcing me to drop everything and solve your latest ordeal. Goddam you. You’re dead, but it’s my life that’s spoiling.
“Sorry,” Libbie said. She threw the cabbage into a trash bag, then ran hot water over her hands, relishing the thrill of the scald. She held her fingers in the spray, convincing herself she could feel something, anything.
“I’ve told you, honey, not to throw the corks away,” Hugh said, sipping the wine. “Tastes a little flat.”
“I know — ”
“It’s not a criticism. So. How’s Danny holding up?”
“You saw him.”
This was a painful subject for them, so they dropped it. Hugh took her hand and led her upstairs. She didn’t have the will to resist. In the bedroom she opened another window. Hugh set their wine glasses on a night table and began to unbutton her blouse. “I need to wash up,” she said. “It’s been two days since I’ve had a decent bath.”
He kissed her ear. “Don’t take long.”
In the bathroom she ran some more hot water. She slumped on the toilet seat. Who would she be with Hugh? Surely not the woman he’d known.
Wearily, she slid a washcloth under her arms. Her flesh seemed thin. Thirty more years — forty? fifty? — tending this poor, unstable skin? She glimpsed herself in the mirror and startled. Even after three days, she didn’t recognize herself with this haircut.
Hugh was already naked, perched on the foot of the bed. He sipped some wine; his face wrinkled at the bad taste. He set his glass next to hers.
He stood to remove her bra. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered.
Through the window screen she caught a whiff of smoke, the drug lords’ poison. Hugh began a quick rhythm. Absurdly — and just for an instant — she thought of her ex, who also always started fast. Last she’d heard, he’d moved to Memphis with his third wife. What did he look like now? Would he recognize her, with her fragile skin, the gray in her hair?
Now Hugh was bucking violently against her, groaning, a strange, painful-sounding struggle. She flattened her palms against his back. The muscles in her thighs began to ache. She concentrated on the wine glasses. They trembled on the night table. Normally, Hugh was the gentlest man Libbie had ever known, but now he was seized by a frenzy — as if violence were a nervous, restless force in the world, searching for hosts.
He came a second time, turning his body left, then right, tangling his legs in the sheet. He appeared to be in agony. Then his head nestled in the stinging warmth between her thighs. His tongue burrowed deeper, and amazingly, despite her self-consciousness, she began to undulate, open and swell. An eruption of light.
She turned her head so Hugh couldn’t see the contorted stranger she’d become.
He curled up beside her, his mouth on her ear. “I’ve missed you so much.” She rubbed the small of his back. “I’m glad to see you relax,” he said. “I know it’s been a nightmare for you.”
“You should have seen the funeral home.” Her voice was faint. “I swear, the cost — ”
“Try to forget it, okay? Saturday night? I’ve got tickets to a blues show — ”
“Hugh — ”
“I insist, honey. You need to take a break, get out and enjoy the city, all right?”
“Danny’s still not — ”
“Libbie, Danny has other friends. Marie, right? She can take care of Danny for a while. Now. We should call Father Caskin again — ”
“I can’t, Hugh.”
“Honey, he’s expecting us. Anyway, Saturday? What say I get some sandwich stuff at the deli, some roast beef or — ”
“I mean it. Don’t count on me Saturday. I just can’t do it, Hugh. And Father Caskin can wait.”
He turned his back on her.
“I’m sorry. But I can’t concentrate on anything else right now.”
“This isn’t just ‘anything else.’ This is our wedding, Libbie.”
She pulled the covers to her chin.
“Or have you changed your mind about that too?”
She regretted the hurt in his voice. But she was hurting too. “Hugh — ”
He stood, stepped into his undershorts and pants. “When’s the funeral?”
“Probably Monday or Tuesday.”
“So I’ve lost you until then. At least.”
“Please try to understand. I’m having to rethink my whole relationship with Anna Lia, reimagine who I even thought she was. That, on top of all the arrangements, Danny’s pain, the schoolwork I’ve ignored — ”
“I do understand, honey. I know you’re grieving. It’s not the plans we’ve made, so much as … I think you need to step away for a day or two. For your own sake.”
“Thanks for being concerned.” She knew she sounded distant. Why was she punishing Hugh? Because, like Anna Lia, he might hold secrets? Because she feared her own changes?
He buttoned his shirt. “I’ve got the girls Sunday, so …”
She nodded.
“Call me.”
“I will.”
His step was heavy, shaking the floor. She heard him close the front door. Standing naked at her bedroom window, she watched through tears as Hugh pulled away in his car, fiddling with his damned old radio.
The Slumber Room burbled with slushy trumpets — a New Age music tape. Mr. Crespi wore a tight blue coat. “Good afternoon, Ms. Schwinn, lovely to see you again. Ms. Clark looks beautiful. She’s waiting for you. This way.”
Anna Lia’s coffin glowed in the light of six candles, each the size of a brick. The lid was open. The room smelled of roses and of dirty water from a leaking air conditioner.
Mr. Crespi withdrew, leaving Libbie alone with the Memory Picture. Slowly, she approached the coffin. The face was waxy, hard. The dress was unfamiliar, pressed and proper, a tasteful dark brown, nothing Anna Lia would have worn … though maybe it did belong to her. Maybe Libbie had simply never seen it.
Anna Lia’s hands lay crossed on her chest. Two stiff roots. Rouge on her chin and neck failed to hide black bruises. Libbie had a wild impulse to unbutton the dress and touch the wound in the skin above her heart. What would it look like? A butterfly? The rings of a tree? What marks would the autopsy have left — and what did the examination reveal? She assumed Danny had received the report by now, but she didn’t know where Danny was. In the last two days, he’d become as secretive as he had been needy at first.
Libbie shut her eyes. “What did you do?” she whispered. “What the hell did you do?” She felt a draft in the room, opened her eyes to see the candles gutter, the flames like feathers in a light wind, and realized that Anna Lia was still with her, not in the bones and their chilly wrapping, but in the air-conditioned air, the wiring in the walls, her own grieving lungs. This is what she’d tried to tell Hugh — every step she had taken this week, she tripped over Anna Lia. To move ahead, make plans, start a new life, required a removal, a finality, the timing of which felt entirely beyond her control.