But the impending publication of the obituary, like so many of the other occasions and observances surrounding his death, had slipped from Miriam’s mind like a dew drop falling from a leaf.
Seeing the notice brought it all back. She had marked appointments on her calendar: a meeting Saturday with Rev. Ackroyd to arrange details of the memorial service. A check to the funeral director at Brookside. Notices to Daddy’s friends and colleagues, of whom only a handful were still living.
He had died Monday night in his sleep. The doctor at Mount Bailiwick said Daddy’s heart had simply stopped, like a weary soldier surrendering the flag. But she had not witnessed the death and still couldn’t encompass the simple fact of his absence.
There would be no more painful, wordless visits to his room. No more of the awful suspicion that his body had been vacant since the stroke—that he had been replaced by some respirating automaton.
But no more Daddy calling her name, either: not even the hope of it ever again. No smell of shaving soap and the razor white of starched collars.
No more his Try to do better today, Miriam, as she trudged out the door to school, woman and child.
Since the stroke, Daddy had been a ghost in a hospital bed. In death, he had evolved. When the man at Mount Bailiwick called to tell her Daddy died, Miriam had been startled by an involuntary memory of places: the house on Cameron Avenue where they had lived so many years, her room in it, her bedspread and her books, the way the lace curtains moved and sighed when she opened the windows on summer nights.
Things she had not thought about for thirty years.
In death, Daddy had entered into the world of all those lost things.
Sorely missed by his daughter Miriam, said the obituary. But that was only half a truth. All the unfulfilled expectations that had dogged her even in his hospital room—all those were gone, too. She had mourned him with tears the night he died… but mourned him also with secret relief and a childish, hidden glee.
She kept these feelings to herself, of course.
But the Eye—of course—could See.
She put the eviscerated newspaper in a pile to be bundled for the garbage. She filed Volume Ten in its place on the shelf.
She made a cup of tea. The sun was well down now. The sky was a transparent inky blue, the Eye already peeking through the big back window.
Miriam pulled the drapes.
She turned on the television and watched the ten o’clock news show, a Portland program on cable. But the anchors, a man and a woman, looked like children to her. Children playing dress-up. Where were the adults? Dead, probably.
She touched her forehead with the back of her hand.
I really am feverish, Miriam thought. At least a little.
She turned out, the lights, checked the lock on the front door, and retired to bed.
She was asleep as soon as she pulled the quilt around her shoulders.
She stirred only once—after midnight, when Joey Commoner’s motorcycle sped past the house, the sound of Beth Porter’s laughter mingling with the roar of the engine.
Miriam turned once restlessly and went back to sleep as the noise faded. But her sleep was not dreamless.
She dreamed of Brookside Cemetery.
At sunset, as Miriam Flett was gazing absently into the many volumes of her Work, Beth Porter stood at the south end of the parking lot of the Ferry Park Mall wiping her nose and waiting for Joey Commoner to show up.
She wondered whether she ought to be here at all. She felt hot and stupid in her leather jacket. She probably should be home lying down. She was sick, after all. Dr. Wheeler had said so.
The parking lot was empty—a lonely vastness in the last blue daylight.
The air was still hot, but the sky had a deep and vacant look, and by midnight there would be a cool wind running in from the sea.
Beth checked her watch. He was late, of course. Joey Commoner! she thought. You asshole! Be here.
But she still didn’t know what to do when he came.
Tell him to fuck off?
Maybe.
Go with him?
Maybe.
To Brookside? In the dark, with a motorcycle and this can of spray paint she had bought for no better reason than because he told her to? Well… well, maybe.
Ten minutes later, she recognized his bike making a noisy exit from the highway.
He zoomed across the parking lot driving gleeful S-curves, leaning with the motorcycle until it looked like his elbows would scrape the blacktop.
He wore a black helmet and a black T-shirt. The shirt was from Larry’s Gifts and Novelties on Marina, downtown. Larry’s had been what used to be called a head shop until they took away all the drug paraphernalia a few years ago. No more waterpipes, no more grow-your-own manuals. Now Larry’s specialized in leather pants, T-shirts illustrated with the gaudy iconography of heavy metal bands, and a few brass belt buckles in the shape of marijuana leaves.
Joey Commoner’s T-shirt showed a neon-blue screaming skull on a bed of blood-red roses. Beth couldn’t remember which band it was supposed to represent. She wasn’t into heavy metal or the Dead. Neither was Joey, really. She was willing to bet he’d chosen this shirt because he liked the picture. It was the kind of picture Joey would like.
He came to a stop a yard away with the engine roaring and bucking. What struck Beth as really bizarre was the combination of that shirt and his helmet. The helmet was gloss black and the visor was mirrored. It made him look utterly insectile. For lack of a face to focus on, your attention strayed to the shirt. To the skull.
Then he pried the helmet off his head and Beth relaxed. Just Joey. His long blond hair was matted by the helmet, but it came free in a gust of wind and trailed around his shoulders. He was nineteen years old, but his face looked younger. He had round cheeks and a lingering case of adolescent acne. Joey would have loved to look dangerous, Beth thought, but nature hadn’t cooperated. Nature had conspired to make Joey’s anger look like petulance and his hostility resemble a pout.
He stood with his bike between his legs and the setting sun behind him, waiting for her to say something.
Beth discovered her heart was beating hard. She felt as if she’d had too much coffee. Light-headed. Nervous.
The silence stretched until Joey took the initiative. “You sounded pissed off on the phone.”
Beth summoned all the blistering accusations she had rehearsed since she left Dr. Wheeler’s office. Eloquence fled. She struck to the heart of the matter. “You gave me the clap, you asshole!”
Incredibly, he smiled. “No shit?”
“Yeah, no shit, you made me sick, no shit!”
He stood there absorbing the information with his lip still curled in that faintly insolent smile. “You know, I wondered…”
“You wondered?”
“Well, it kind of hurts…”
“What hurts?”
He was beginning to sound like a twelve-year-old. “When I pee.”
Beth rolled her eyes. He was hopeless, he was really completely hopeless. It hurts when 1 pee. Well, damn! Was she supposed to feel sorry for him?
“So who have you been screwing, Joey?” He looked faintly hurt. “Nobody!”
“Nobody? You don’t get the clap from nobody.” He thought about it. “Last year,” he said. “My cousin took me to a place. In Tacoma.”
“A place? What, a whorehouse?” I guess.
“A whorehouse in Tacoma?”
“Yeah, I guess. Do we have to talk about this?”