“Being alone in this house.” She shook off a chill. “And the quiet. And the nighttime.” She had a tendency to tick off on her fingers points she wasn’t listing by number, an endearing break from the usual precision of her demeanor.
“It’ll get easier,” he said gently. “You’ll get used to it.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Don’t want to what?”
“Get used to living without you. And…” She wedged her legs beneath her. “Maybe I don’t want to get used to Ginny being gone. A part of me wants to carry that…that pain all the time, because it keeps her with me at least. And if it fades, then what do I have? Last night I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t remember what color her school shoes were. Those stupid Keds she wanted so bad. So I was up at four in the morning, digging through her closet, her things.” She pursed her lips. “Red. They were red. Someday I won’t remember that anymore. Then I won’t remember what her favorite cartoon is, or what size pants she wore, and then I won’t be able to remember what her eyes looked like when she smiled, and then I won’t have anything left of her.”
“There’s got to be a middle ground. Between comfort and disregard.”
“But where is it?”
“I think we each have to find that for ourselves.”
Across the five-foot stretch of carpet, they studied each other.
The doorbell rang. After the second ring, Dray broke off her gaze and answered the door. Bear gathered her up in an immense hug. She tapped his ribs. “How’s the side?”
“It’s nothing. But you two…” Bear thunked into Tim with a hug. Tim braced himself for the double back pat, which came like a tank cannon firing. Bear shoved him away. “Where the hell have you been? I left you two messages yesterday.”
“We’ve…we’ve been having some problems.”
Bear’s body seemed to settle like an old piece of machinery shuddering off. “Oh, no.”
He trudged over to the love seat, which left Dray nowhere to sit but beside Tim on the couch. Tim and Dray took each other’s hand, nervously, then released it. Bear watched these proceedings with dread.
“We’re…uh, separating, Bear. For a while.”
Bear blanched. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He slapped the side of his leg, then crossed his arms, fixing them with a ponderous stare. He seemed to take note of Tim’s black eye, but he didn’t comment. “I leave you two alone for a few days and this is what you get yourselves into. Separating. That’s great. That’s just great.” He stood, agitated, then sat back down again. “Is there anything to drink in this house?”
“No,” Dray said. “We’re…we’re out.”
“Fine. Fine.” His big hands rose, then clapped to his knees. “So maybe you can explain this to me. What does ‘separated’ mean? I’ve never understood it. You’re either married, or you’re divorced. What is ‘separated’?”
“Well,” Dray said. “I-”
“How do you get out of ‘separated’? It’s not like ‘separated’ people suddenly find themselves together again. Do they? It seems like ‘separated’ is chicken-shit terminology for ‘divorced.’ Is that what this is?” Red blotches were starting to bloom beneath his stubble-dense face and throat.
“Listen, Bear, when you lose a child-”
“Don’t you throw statistics at me, Dray. I don’t give a shit about statistics. You’re Dray and you’re Tim and you’re my friends and you get along as good as any husband and wife I’ve ever seen.” He was breathing hard, pointing hard. “If you think you don’t need each other now more than ever, you’re crazy.”
“Bear,” Tim said. “Calm down.”
“I’m not going to-”
“Calm. Down.”
Bear took a few deep breaths, then tilted his head and flared his hands as if to evince a newfound tranquillity. “All right,” he said. “All right. Who am I to tell you what to do? I guess you guys would know if you need…whatever. I guess you would know.”
Tim took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. “A thing like this, with Ginny, it comes in, and it changes the fabric of things. And you feel like there’s a tear or a crack and you try and smooth it over but you can’t. And the more you work on it, the more it unravels or fissures and you can’t keep working on it because it’s just ruining what you had before.” He moistened his lips, then snuck a quick look at Dray. “What you had before, it’s this beautiful thing that you don’t want to see defiled, and so maybe you’d rather walk away while there’s still some of it intact because you can’t stand to see it…”
Dray had her fist pushed up against her mouth, holding something in. Bear, stuffed into the too-small love seat, looked utterly crestfallen.
Tim rose and rested a hand on Dray’s soft blond hair, let it drift until he touched the edge of her cheek.
As Tim headed back down the walk to his car, shoulders aching as if some great weight had been lowered or lifted, Tad Hartley paused from trimming his shrubs to offer another wave.
•Sitting at his flimsy, window-facing desk with little to do beside wait for his eight o’clock meeting, Tim studied the foreign street scene below, losing himself further in grief’s endless folds and wrinkles.
A C-section delivery with a complicated post-op course had left Dray horizontal for the first three weeks of Ginny’s life. Tim had been the one up in the night, rocking Ginny back to sleep or preparing her bottle when she cried. He’d explained away the tree monster outside her window when she was three. He’d negotiated with a kindergarten bully, crouched on one knee beside his trembling daughter.
He’d made the world a safe place for Ginny. He’d taught her to trust it.
And she shouldn’t have.
Every time he thought he’d familiarized himself with its contours, grief surprised him; it was ever bountiful, ever yielding. He released himself to it, letting it spread through him, noxious and painful and-finally-deadening.
After forty-five minutes he condemned himself as self-indulgent and useless, so he hauled himself out for a jog. Unaccustomed to the smog and exhaust, he wound up on a street corner, bent at the waist, hacking like a coal miner with a three-pack habit. It was with immense relief that he showered and headed over to Rayner’s. The Commission, he realized with equal parts happiness and disquiet, gave him something to look forward to.
It gave him purpose.
Rayner was back to his usual socially lubricated self when he met Tim at the door. No hint of resentment about Tim’s intrusion last night. After receiving Tim warmly, he led him into the conference room where the others waited. Ananberg spun in her chair to face him, legs crossed beneath a short but professional navy blue skirt.
Wearing another tropical shirt, this one a blend of greens and blues, the Stork rose to greet Tim. His hand was puffy and moist, his grip limp, and his pate and nose were peeling, despite the fact that it hadn’t been sunburn weather for months. “I’d like to welcome you to the Commission, Mr. Rackley.” Up close he looked even more odd, with his tiny chin, soft features, and twisted upper lip.
Mitchell was leaning back in the big leather chair, his Nikes resting on the edge of the table’s marble surface. Robert mirrored him on the other side.
Dumone walked over and regarded Tim with a surprising expression of pride. For a moment Tim thought he might embrace him and was relieved when he offered his hand. He gripped Tim’s right arm at the elbow when they shook. “I knew I could count on you, Tim.”
Two garbage-can paper shredders stood at either side of the door like footmen. The confetti visible through their clear basins displayed that the machine cross-cut vertically and horizontally. No square of paper was bigger than a thumbnail.
Two pitchers of water and a set of glasses waited on the sidebar.
Tim’s eyes went to the table, where framed pictures had been set in front of seven of the chairs. An old black-and-white of a woman with a seventies-style haircut was propped in front of the seat in which Dumone had been sitting. The same photo sat before Mitchell and Robert, that of a stunning blonde in her late teens on horseback. Tim walked around until he arrived at what he assumed was his own chair. Ginny looked out from within the thin silver frame with a goofy, slightly uncomfortable grin. Her second-grade photo, the one the L.A. Times had run. Seeing it in this new and unrelated setting was jarring. Tim picked it up, regarding it as if he’d never seen it before.