“Clea, you're the most wonderful woman in the world. You always have been. You always will be,” Claude said, tired of saying this sort of thing, but rallying for one more try.
She nodded. She must be satisfied with the sentiment.
Lucy had left a few hours before, with a malevolent glance in the direction of Clea's room. “She's alive. What a miracle. How we should thank God.” The words held a cold affect of which he did not approve. He wondered if Lucy would regret her attitude tomorrow.
“You've had it hard, Claude,” Clea now said. “You've never liked involving yourself in the running of a household, have you? I guess you were raised that way.”
Oh, why did she have to get into this now, too late? Why not spend these final hours in calm realms beyond the irritating day-to-day? “No,” he said firmly. “Everything about us is right.” He approved of the statement, so simple, so encapsulating.
“Sure it is,” she said.
In the study, post-dinner, she offered him a brandy, insisting on getting the bottle and pouring it herself, refusing his offer of help. She poured two glasses, and took one. “You used to love brandy,” she said. “Remember how we danced the tango, and how drunk you were, and how I fell to the floor when you let go?”
He laughed obligingly, hating the reminder of himself at another time in another state of mind. He drank the brandy, mindful of these final statements. Would he spend the rest of his life going over this evening? He thought not, but you never knew.
“Tell me this, Claude,” she said, fixing steady eyes on him.
Her insatiable needs hurtled toward him once again, too fast, and he felt suddenly shot with fear. He would be glad never to see those beady eyes open on him again. “What is it, darling?”
“Have you ever sorted one load of laundry in your life?”
He had to laugh.
What an ending to their six years of love and trial. He had expected more of her, he really had.
The funeral home had wanted to know, did she want a graveside ceremony or something more traditional? Did he wish to be remembered some other way?
She instructed them, and went all the way down to the city cemetery to pick a discreet granite gravestone, paying with a check from her own account.
On this day, the day Claude would be buried, she arrived early, wanting it all to go without a hitch. His family, the French and the American sides, wailed like people in a melodrama when they saw the casket hovering above the hole. His friends and acquaintances, mostly lovely customers, were even less restrained in their mourning.
While a priest who had never known Claude eulogized him, book in hand, Dr. Bartholomew drooped a weighty arm upon her shoulder.
“So especially sad,” he whispered, “considering the circumstances.”
Clea heaved an appropriate sigh, thinking about how hard it had been, crushing so many pills, mixing them in the brandy.
“I'll always feel just a little at fault,” the doctor went on. “Please forgive me for asking, but I understand he left a note. Why would a man like him, in his prime, take his own life?”
She examined the doctor's face for suspicion, but saw only a disturbed sadness in it. “Apparently,” she paused to choke the words with emotions she did not feel, “he felt terrible about some rather serious business losses. He had hidden so much from everyone for a long time.” Handy, her acting ability. Handy, her signing all those letters for all those years. His signature on the suicide note, and his motives had not been questioned. If the police even once suspected her condition had anything to do with her husband's unfortunate death, they had generously kept it to themselves.
“I've been calling,” the doctor said, looking strangely relieved, as if he, too, found the contents of the note reassuring. He put a hand to his beard and pulled. “Why didn't you call back?”
“What does it matter now?”
“Because I don't get many patients like you. Patients who survive a fall like that.” He cleared his throat. “I imagined you might be our spokesperson. Yours is such a success story. That kind of injury to the back, well, there's not usually such a stunning outcome.”
The priest had stopped talking. People threw flowers on the casket. Clea, admiring the pretty colors and the largesse of the splashy bouquets, barely registered his comments.
“I mean, usually patients like you die or otherwise screw up. It's not easy to adjust to such massive injury when you're so young.”
“I feel myself going downhill,” Clea said, sure of herself. “Do I have long to live? Am I dying?”
The doctor started. “What?” he said. “Not at all.”
“Doctor, there's no room in my life for pretending anymore. I'm getting worse. There's such pain, more every day. My emotional problems are affecting me physically. Although I've been pretending to myself that I am a strong person because I've needed that to go on, in reality, I feel less physically able every day.”
“You don't know?” he said, shaking his head. “You really don't know? I hoped maybe you suspected. I thought you refused my phone calls because you needed time to adjust to the thought.”
Clea squelched her irritation with the man. No wonder she had avoided his calls.
“I tried calling to tell you the results of our last tests. Remember? You complained of phantom pain in your paralyzed legs.”
“Yes.”
“Well, although some pain is normal, yours seemed exceptional, and the fact that you described it as growing… I had my suspicions, which I didn't share, but I needed to do some more sophisticated analyses. You remember the most recent round of tests? I believe you found them rather grueling. I'm sorry about that. I guess you suffered. But the results were so astonishing… I wish I could have told you earlier. I regret your husband never knew…”
“Astonishing?”
“You're in full recovery,” the doctor said flatly. “You're a textbook case of spontaneous recovery. The pain you feel in your limbs? Part of the healing process. Your limbs aren't permanently paralyzed. You were laid up for such a long time, there was some debasement in your functioning that will take a lot of physical therapy to overcome.”
“But… my legs don't do what I want them to do! I can't even move them!” Clea cried.
“Now that you know you can, it will be easier, I promise. I expect great progress from here on out. I didn't want to confirm with you until I was sure. I guess it wouldn't have changed what has happened. Life's so unfair. I'm so sorry about your loss.”
The doctor stepped back as two men took hold of the ropes that kept the coffin aboveground and lowered it until it hovered just above the neat dirt hole. Clea concentrated, watching as Claude descended, feeling regret, not for his death, but for the months they had both wasted. Someday, she would reminisce about the good times, she hoped, but in the meanwhile, she had to admit it: her husband's absence left her lighter. Her heart beat steady and strong, her breath came in long, refreshing draughts.
She smelled earth. Expecting something rancid at the scene of a burial, she was pleasantly surprised by a scent like one in their garden, a piquant freshness.
As the men paused, everyone stepped forward for a last good-bye before the coffin would be lowered below the surface. She tossed a silver rose at Claude, inhaling the clean, grass-perfumed air. She needed to move on, and something about the day, the clear air, its sweetness, suggested just the scent to enthrall the Asian ladies Claude had said would be coming back, her favorite, Entracte. Cheeky and green, like today, and so perfect because, although only today could she fully appreciate this, her life with Claude had been an interlude, hadn't it? Only that. She would call the shopgirl with advice as soon as she got home.