After Life (38 page)

Then another one. This time a group of children, staring up at the sky in wonderment as a flock of geese honked overhead.

Then Moira, older, on a Ferris wheel, gasping with pleasure, someone’s arm around her.

There were a few others—a dog running through a hayfield, a baby swaddled in blankets, a table with pizza boxes on it—and by the time I finished, Moira was crying again, silently.

And she would have all these things. Perhaps not exactly as I saw them, but similar things, good, happy things that I would never have. She was beautiful, after all, and her life was not yet ruined. My heart ached with envy.

“You will be successful,” I told her. She glanced up at me, her eyes teary. I wanted to make it up to her, to give her everything I had. “You’ll—you’ll never want for money or friends. You will live a long and comfortable life. You will be happy.”

12
hands that melt like snow

I walked Moira back to her car. It had begun to snow as we emerged from the woods; by the time we got to the library it was coming down in giant wet flakes. It was like walking through curtains, long sheer curtains that parted in front of us and closed behind us, layers and layers of them. I could barely make out the shapes of the trees that lined the road or the houses behind them. Moira said nothing to me on the walk, and I couldn’t even guess what she was thinking. I waited on the library steps as she got into her car, started it up, and drove slowly down the road and out of Train Line.

After that, it was quiet.

Things stayed quiet for a couple of days. The police didn’t show up again and Moira didn’t call. One afternoon I sat on my bed and slid the ribbon off the Christmas box that held Peter’s things. Outside, an inch or two of new snow was melting already, dripping off the eaves, though the sky was heavy as a wool blanket. I left my window open a crack so I could hear the outdoors: the dripping, the squirrels chattering in the trees, the rare car that crunched by.

The box was covered with dust and fuzz, so I wiped it clean with the corner of my bedspread before I opened it. I took the lid off and set it beside me. Each object was as familiar to me as if I’d looked at it every day; I’d inventoried these things in my mind so many times since the day he died. The gray wool socks smelled of the inside of the box—cardboard and dust. His glasses rested high on my nose, the earpiece digging into my ears. I took them off. The tube of foot cream was still soft and smelled medicinal. I rubbed a little into my hands. I touched the cards in his wallet and counted the money. The wristwatch fit my wrist, so I guessed at the time, set the hands, and wound it.

What I was doing, I realized, was trying to decide what to bring with me when I left.

I didn’t really know I was thinking of leaving, until then. But after that I could think of nothing else. Of course I was leaving. What else? My bedroom suddenly looked different. It was no longer
my
bedroom; it was just a place I rented, and when I was gone someone else would live in it. I imagined that—my clothes gone from the closet, the pictures off the walls, no more books on the floor. I imagined days and nights when the room would stand empty, no one turning on a lamp or even opening the door. Until one day when someone would move in, and obliterate me.

The money, of course, and the watch. I wouldn’t need to pack the watch because I could wear it. I could wear the socks, too, but I wasn’t sure yet where I was going, and it might not be the kind of place I’d want to wear wool. And of all the objects, the watch had the most of Peter in it, except, perhaps, for the glasses. I remembered how it looked on Peter’s wrist. He had lightly hairy arms and hair on the back of his hands, black silky stuff I liked to smooth with my fingers. His skin was a shade or two darker than mine, his hands were beautiful: long and square and delicate and strong.

I took the watch off and examined the back of it. Someone’s initials were etched there—
JCM
—and a date,
12-25-35.
Peter’s grandfather, I supposed. In the fine crevices made by the etching was a tiny amount of dark dirt. I scraped a bit out with my fingernail and put it on my tongue. It had no taste at all.

In the end I brought everything: the watch, the money, the foot cream, even the terrible jar of pennies, which had rolled under the bed that day but somehow didn’t break. I couldn’t bear to part with any of it.

My mother invited me to dinner. She left a message on the machine; I played it in the empty living room. Ron was out, Jenny upstairs. My mother’s voice sounded unusually formal, as if she and I were only acquaintances, but friendly ones. On the way over I stopped at the Groc-n-Stop and bought a jelly roll for dessert. Ferd did not look me in the eye when he handed me my change, and I thought,
This is the last time in my entire life that I will shop
here.

She had set the table with candles and a vase of dried flowers. I was struck with the sudden conviction that she had meant to call someone else, Troy probably, and had called my number by mistake. “Why…candles?” I asked her, standing in the kitchen with my jelly roll. She wore a loose green dress made out of something like furniture upholstery, and her face was unhappy.

“Oh,” she said, looking at the table. “I wanted it to be nice for you.”

She’d made fried chicken, my favorite thing, and there were the peas in cream sauce you can get frozen, another of my favorites, and red wine in tall tumblers. I put my jelly roll on the counter and hung my coat in the closet. When I put my hands to my head to feel my hair, I found it was hanging in thick tangles that I could not rectify with my fingers. I patted it down as well as I could.

“One light, one dark?” she asked as I sat down, with her tongs in the colander of chicken parts.

I nodded. We ate.

I’d never eaten fried chicken by candlelight before, nor washed it down with so much wine, and I was amazed that the food found its way down my throat, past the constriction that had formed there. The meal was so beautiful and good that I kept eating long after my mother had stopped. She watched me. When I finally looked up at her, she covered her mouth with her hands.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said, but put her hands down, and then went on. “I was just thinking about when you were a baby. It was so hard, you know. I used to wake up in the night with horrible thoughts. There was one—it obsessed me for months—I thought, what if someone broke in and murdered all of us except you? We’d be lying there dead and you’d be alone in your crib for God knows how long, because no one would bother to come check on us…for a week or two, possibly.”

“It never happened, Mama.”

“Yes. But what if it
had
? I remember hoping that if a murderer did come in, he’d kill you, too, so you wouldn’t be alone all that time, waiting for us to come and get you. I’d picture you holding on to the crib bars and crying, then giving up on crying and just lying there, and how quiet the house would be. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I couldn’t stand it.” Her face had collapsed, as if what had held it together had at long last given way. “Love like that is horrifying.”

I put my fork down. “Mama…”

“I still love you that way. That’s what I’m saying. I—I never minded the thought of dying until I had you. Now I’m terrified…”

Why does anyone have children? Mothers and daughters are put on Earth to tear each other’s hearts out.

“Mama. Why are you telling me this?”

Her poor exhausted face. “I wanted to tell you that I read those journals.”

I knocked my plate to the floor. It bounced on the linoleum and chicken bones scattered in all directions. The cats came running.

“Don’t,” said my mother. “Don’t. Please. It’s all right.”

“I asked you not to read them.”

“I know. I’m sorry—I know. I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t stand not knowing, Naomi. And I still don’t. But—”

“But what, Mama?”

“But I heard—someone told me the police are getting a search warrant. Your house or mine, both. I don’t know.”

“Mama, what did you do with them? Where are they?”

“Don’t worry about them. I got rid of them. I—I burned them.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“Naomi, I just want this to be
over
…”

“You gave them to Officer Peterson, didn’t you?”

“They said they’d get a search warrant—that if I had anything, I should just give it to them up front. Naomi—I want them to think we’re cooperating with them—”

“You just want everyone to like you! You don’t care about anything else. You just want your stupid radio show back.”

“That’s not what I want! That’s not—I just can’t stand it. I want it to stop.”

“You think I did it,” I said. I picked up my knife and jabbed it hard into the table.

“Did what?” she cried. “What did you do, Naomi?”

I couldn’t answer her. I wanted to come up with a lie, a perfect lie, but she would know.

She put her hands on her head, weaving her fingers into her hair, as if she was keeping her skull from flying apart. She groaned.

“Mama,” I said, unable to look her in the eye. Instead I looked at my hands, my fat, chapped, nail-bitten hands. “Would you hate me if you knew I did it?”

“Tell me how it happened,” she said.

So I told her, truthfully. Before I was finished she was sobbing.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said, but then she began to shriek.

I led her upstairs. I put my arm around her and led her to her bedroom, to her bed, and helped her down and took off her shoes. She lay there, crying brokenly, and I lay down beside her. I took her fingers and kissed them. “Shh,” I said. “Shh, shh.” She put her arm around me and pulled me close. “Oh, Naomi,” she whispered. “Oh, my love. Please, let’s go back home.” I kissed her wet face. She put my fingers in her mouth.

Eventually she fell asleep, and after a longer time I did, too. I had strange, brief dreams of large things bearing down on me. When I woke up I didn’t know what time it was and I was freezing cold. I got up in the dark and found a blanket in the closet, then lay down again, wrapping it around us.

“Mmm, Franklin,” murmured my mother, snuggling close. Franklin was my father’s name.

It was barely light when I got up. My mother was asleep, snoring lightly, her hairdo crushed into her pillow. I pulled the blanket up over her shoulder and went downstairs. The kitchen table, I noticed, was still covered with our dinner dishes, the candles had burned themselves down to nothing, and my jelly roll waited, uncut, on the counter. Maybe she’d eat some for breakfast, I thought. I hoped she would.

Train Line was cold and silent, like an abandoned space station. I’d been here twenty years and hadn’t made a mark—hadn’t planted a tree, painted a house, built a gazebo. Train Line would not miss me. Hundreds, thousands of people had come through Train Line and gone again, some had even lived out their entire lives here, and Train Line mourned none of them. Any affection I’d felt for this town was misplaced. A town is a heartless thing, unfaithful and forgetful. It will never love you back.