“Yes,” she says.
She was out getting groceries.
It seems clear that that is so often the way. That in some very inconspicuous moment, a person can be overwhelmed.
He thanks the woman for calling. “It can’t be easy to announce a tragedy,” he says, his voice still hoarse from sleep. The alarm clock ticks almost silently. In the other bedroom, Julie is sleeping. He will let her sleep until she wakes up. There is no reason to awaken her with bad news. There is no school. Let her sleep.
He thanks the woman again for letting him know. As he stretches across the bed to replace the phone in its cradle, his hand snags a pair of pink panties under Francine’s pillow — one of the pairs he gave her the night they went ice-skating, which she had worn to bed the night before, lifting her nightgown over her head and wiggling provocatively before climbing into bed. He looks at them as if they were the strangest thing in the world. So little material, for so much money — that’s one way to look at it. They seem more bleak than silly, considered in context with the goings-on of the real world.
His mother used to say: Always wear clean underwear, in case you end up in the emergency room. For a split second, he tries to imagine what sort of panties Mrs. Angawa might have been wearing when she was struck.
He thinks: I am focusing on details because I don’t want to think about the larger picture.
He gets out of bed.
He makes the bed, which he does not usually do. He smooths the duvet. Touching it, he suddenly thinks of the rabbit.
He sits on the newly made bed, his hand over his mouth. What a thought just came into his head: the rabbit will be in the dark closet all day if someone doesn’t think to take the cage out.
But the whole school isn’t closed, he reminds himself. One of the other teachers …
There is no harm in calling. When people are upset, they might not focus on what needs to be done.
He thinks about calling Francine at the hairdresser’s.
He goes downstairs, pulling on his robe, tiptoeing and skipping the third stair, which creaks. He walks to the kitchen, gets the telephone book, and looks up the name of the shop. He dials the number. It rings four times. On the fourth ring, a recorded message comes on, giving the shop’s hours of operation. It will not be open for two more hours. He hangs up.
Sun is streaming into the kitchen. He goes to the stove, shakes the kettle, feels that there is enough water, turns on the burner, and leans against the counter. The room goes slightly out of focus. What would I do if it happened to Francine or Julie? he thinks, as the room shimmers.
He thinks of how precious every scrap of paper Julie ever colored on would become. How precious every doll would become. And Francine: what it would be like to run his fingers along the padded shoulders of the silk blouses, all in a row. How he would feel taking the top off her tube of lipstick, how it would break his heart to pick up her bottle of perfume from the bathroom counter.
In a sweat, he sees clearly that he and Francine have made a mistake. That the way they’re living, with only an occasional moment for time out, is wrong. It comes to him — in the way analysands get good at understanding their dreams — that he imagined the two of them as tiny figures in a painting because he sensed they were not living up to their potential. He conceived of them as bits of human-shaped plastic in a snow dome because they have been immobile, trapped, going nowhere. They’ve wanted to think they were adventurous, but what adventure have they gone on? First he convinced her to marry. To have the child. Then she convinced him to quit his job. To stay home while she worked. They changed roles, but aren’t they still two little people going nowhere? What have they been doing but applauding themselves, and each other, for the slightest effort?
By the time the kettle whistles, he has regained some equilibrium. Certainly a death so close to home would make anyone question the way he has been living. Everyone would have to admit there were flaws in his life. What exactly had he been thinking just a second ago? He had made the image of a snow dome a metaphor for their lives. It was as ridiculous as his epiphanies on acid, years before. He is standing in a two-thousand-square-foot house, not on the two-inch base of a snow dome. It is just a crazy irony that out the window it has begun to snow.
Lifting the kettle from the burner, he begins to talk himself down, to convince himself that they are average. That things are essentially fine. Quick images come to him of their early days together: Francine, curled on her side, crying on the mattress in the apartment on Sixteenth Street. But on top of that image he superimposes the image of the upstairs bed, queen-sized, neatly made. Then he sees Francine pantomiming in acting class, the one time she invited him to sit in and watch. On top of that image he lays a memory of Francine looking into his eyes, the neon sign flashing behind her head, talking animatedly as she drinks champagne. He closes his eyes. The then-and-now game could go on all morning. Forever. It could go on as long as he let himself think about things.
He picks up the phone book again. There is, as he suspected, only one Angawa listed. He looks at the address. Then he flips to McKee. There are seven, but the third McKee lives on the same street as Mr. and Mrs. Angawa.
He dials the number and almost hangs up without saying anything, he is so startled by Mr. McKee’s thick, sleepy voice saying hello, as something topples from a table.
That is how he comes to be the bearer of bad news. Mr. McKee has been asleep. No one has yet called to tell him.
* * *
Francine takes the day off and stays home to comfort Julie. She smells faintly of chemicals. With their red eyes, mother and daughter look very much alike.
A little after five, Stefan goes to the bar where he has arranged to meet Mr. McKee. Mr. McKee’s first name is Tony. He holds out a big rough hand and shakes Stefan’s hand without looking into his eyes. He is wearing a brown plaid jacket. Both elbow patches need to be resewn. Tony McKee has already had a few drinks. The whole school was given a half day, he says. He is not a drinking man, but if ever there was an occasion for drink, it is a day like the day that just passed.
“What can I do for you?” McKee says, as Stefan slides onto the bar stool next to him.
“Forgive me,” Stefan says. “I don’t know exactly why I’m here. The one time I had a real talk with Mrs. Angawa, she mentioned you very fondly. I think I’m here just to let you know she cared about you.”
McKee takes a sip of beer. The bartender stands in front of Stefan and raises an eyebrow. “Same thing,” Stefan says, looking at McKee’s Budweiser. McKee is running his hand over his forehead.
“I know you were neighbors,” Stefan says. “What about Mr. Angawa? How is he doing?”
McKee shrugs. “I don’t see them on a daily basis, you know. I live next door, and she always sought me out. She was a real lady, a very kind person. But Hideo — he was a hard one to figure. In fact, half the time he wasn’t around.”
“He traveled?”
McKee looks at him. He seems to be judging Stefan’s sincerity. “Traveled? No, he didn’t travel. He just took off.”
The bartender puts another bottle in front of McKee and walks away.
After staring at the bottle silently for a long time, McKee turns toward Stefan. “You got a kid in the school, right? Brokenhearted to lose her teacher.”
“Yes. She and her mother are writing a good-bye note. She wanted to write a farewell note to Mrs. Angawa.”
McKee twists off his beer cap. “Tell me again, is there something I can do for you?”