After Life (41 page)

“May I sit with you?” he asked.

I nodded.

It was Peter.

He didn’t look any different. His hair was shiny and black, his sleeves were rolled up, his lashes were long behind his glasses. But at the same time he did not look twenty-two. He looked older, he looked my age, but he looked the same. This is the only thing that was odd.

He bit into his doughnut and continued smiling while he chewed. It was filled with lemon creme. Yellow stuff oozed onto the plate and powdered sugar clung to his lips.

I didn’t know what to say. I sipped my coffee and took quick glances at him.

“I missed you, Naomi,” said Peter.

My heart crumpled. I did not know what to think: whether I’d lost my mind, whether I was dreaming, or whether this was as real as anything could be. I wanted it to be real. I longed for it.

“Peter…”

He put his finger over his mouth. “Shh. You don’t have to say anything.”

So I watched him eat. He seemed to enjoy his doughnut a great deal. He chewed it slowly, licked his lips, and put it down between bites to drink his coffee. Peter would sometimes look like this, I remembered, when things had worked out better than we had planned, when circumstances had come together in a certain, perfect way. One Sunday morning the summer we met, we went on a picnic and found the perfect spot for it under a tree, and the weather was just warm enough, and he had the Sunday paper to read. I remembered there was a breeze and the ripples in the lake flashed silver. That time he’d smiled just like this: half to himself, half to let me know how happy he was.

But when he finished his doughnut, his smile faded. In the fluorescent light his skin was sallow and pale.

“Why did you do it, Naomi?”

I couldn’t answer at first. When I tried to speak, my voice felt choked.

“I didn’t…”

“I know,” he said bitterly. “You didn’t mean it. Why should I care about that?”

He wasn’t wearing his watch. I was. I noticed the pale ring of flesh around his wrist and tried to push my sleeve down to cover the watch, but he saw it anyway and shrugged. Then he rubbed his hands down over his ribs, his stomach. His eyes filled with tears.

“I wanted to grow old,” he said. “I wanted to grow old and fat!”

I cried out and reached for him. I grabbed his wrist and shoulder and pulled myself over the table toward him. He was as solid as anything, his skin was warm, and when I pushed my face into the place between his throat and his shirt collar I could feel the rough, shaved skin of his neck and I smelled him. He smelled like he always did, but I had forgotten that smell. It was sweet and peppery and like ironed clothes. With my fingers I felt the buttons on his shirt, opened one and slipped my hand inside. There was hair on his chest. It was his chest. I remembered the pattern of hair and how silky it was around his nipples. My hand came to life, feeling it. I wanted him, I wanted his body.

Abruptly he pushed me back into my seat. Tears pooled behind his glasses and ran down his face. “I
can’t,
” he said. He stood up and carried his empty doughnut plate and coffee cup to the front counter.

“Thank you,” he told the woman, who nodded.

He headed for the men’s room, wiping his face with the back of his hand. I got up and followed. When the door swung shut behind him I tried to open it and go in, but it only moved a few inches. Peter was standing on the other side, holding it shut. I tried throwing myself against the door, shoulder first, and I tried bracing my feet on the hard tile floor and pushing steadily. Nothing worked.

“Peter!” I whispered through the door. “Please, what’s it like? Are you lonely? Is your family there? Please—tell me—”

I shoved and struggled with the door for what seemed like forever, but Peter was stronger.

Finally I gave up. I went back to my seat and finished my doughnut. Crumbs were scattered across Peter’s side of the table. My coffee was cool. I drank it anyway.

When I went back to check the men’s room, it was empty. There was a dirty urinal with a pink cake of something like soap in the bowl and one stall. Peter wasn’t in it.

Back out in the parking lot, a wind had picked up. It was the kind of wind that blows just before dawn, a warm wind that smelled of car exhaust and fields and water. I took deep breaths of it and shook my hair out, walking back to my car.

If he had lived, I would have stopped loving him. I was so sorry.

13
after life

In the Train Line Spiritualist Museum there was a collection of photographs that each showed a medium materializing a spirit. I spent part of one summer cataloging them and filing the ones not chosen for display. They were some of the strangest and most grotesque pictures I’d ever seen. In one, a woman in a Victorian dress lay back in her chair, arms slack at her sides, while a lumpy white substance poured from the side of her mouth. Another showed a woman with something stringy and gray spouting from her ear. Sometimes the ectoplasm took the shape of wads of fabric that draped itself around the medium’s body. This substance—which was usually wet or sticky or gelatinous, but sometimes hard and dry—was gradually supposed to resolve itself into a more human shape, and the result would be a perfectly formed spirit, solid enough to slap your face. In a few of the photographs, you could even see the beginnings of a foot or face or hand floating in midair. The theory was that a spirit merely borrowed some living material from the medium for a short time; mediums claimed that the process of materialization was much like that of giving birth. In fact, the semiconscious medium would sometimes shout and groan, as if experiencing labor pains. Materializing séances were a big fad for a while, though modern mediums consider them a bit over the top. Still, as I hurtled down the highway that night, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had materialized Peter.

I didn’t know how I could have. According to everything I’d read, ectoplasm is incompatible with light, and the kind of fluorescent glare that illuminated the doughnut shop would surely have caused the stuff to snap like a rubber band back into my body. But who knew anymore? The world was inexplicable, full of strange machinery. Perhaps I had done it! And perhaps I could do it again. Hope clutched at me with her wet and desperate hands.

Before I got to New Orleans, I passed through miles of Mississippi and Louisiana pine woods. The interstate was bounded on either side by trees as thick and even as hedges, and the land rolled gently up and down. Above, in the lightening sky, the stars winked out.

Then trees gave way to swamp, and the highway, supported high above the water by concrete pillars, smoothed out. From the car I could see the tops of dead trees, large birds flying, and once in a while, someone’s house. A cold, skunky swamp smell blew in the car window when I opened it. The air was heavier here, and wetter. By the time I reached the city it was morning for real—rush hour—but it looked like dusk. Taillights glowed in the murky light that hung over the river. Now that I was here, I didn’t know what to do. It was too early to show up at Uncle Geoffrey’s, and anyway, once I got
there
what would I do?

So I drove around. Cars honked at me for going too slowly, and I found myself getting shunted into the same one-way streets over and over. It wasn’t the city I remembered, but then, I didn’t expect that city. My memories were made of sidewalks and backyards and trips to the grocery store. Certain vistas were as familiar to me as if I’d seen them every day of my life—looking up Saint Charles toward the middle of town, or down Canal Street toward the river—but there were big glassy buildings where I didn’t think they belonged at all, and T-shirt shops on every corner. Some of them were already opened for the day. Maybe, I thought, they never closed. The air had a smoky, garlicky odor, like restaurants. It made me think of falling asleep in the backseat of the car when I was a little girl, coming home from somewhere, and waking up in the dark when the car stopped.

Eventually, unnerved by traffic, I made my way toward the Garden District, where Uncle Geoffrey and his family lived. I found the house without much trouble—three stories, surrounded by trees and banana plants—but I didn’t stop. Instead I went to a park a few blocks away, got out of my car, and sat on a bench, eating the last of the food I’d packed myself so long ago. The sun came out and burned off the mist.

I was sitting there, squinting in the light and chewing the stale end of a peanut butter sandwich, when a person dressed all in green shambled up to me. I thought at first he was going to ask me for directions—that was the only reason a stranger would ever approach you at home. He had a big stick in his hand and a wadded-up bunch of tarpaulin on his back. His face was dark with dirt.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said, giving me a crooked bow. He didn’t sound like he was from New Orleans. He didn’t sound Southern at all—then again, neither did my mother. “But I was wondering if by chance you had some change you could spare for a hot meal.”

“Actually, I don’t,” I said. That was true; I’d left my money in the car, which suddenly seemed like a bad place for it. “Sorry.”

“Not even just a
little
handful of change for a hungry man, a lovely young lady such as yourself?”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. I took the last sandwich out of its plastic sack. “But you can have this, if you want.”

He snatched it out of my hand and stormed off. I watched as, several yards away, he opened the sandwich up, sniffed at the contents, and then tossed the pieces of bread into a bush, grumbling.

When he was out of sight I went over to the bush and rescued my sandwich. I pressed it back together again and stuffed it into the sack. I wasn’t going to eat it, after that. But I couldn’t stand to leave it there.

Before I went to Uncle Geoffrey’s, I walked around the neighborhood.
I’m home,
I whispered to myself. I wanted to believe it. And certain things swelled my heart: passing a small house shaped like the First Bank of Wallamee but painted pink and yellow, I smelled a sweet olive tree. The scent was like peaches, but better; it was a golden color exploding in my head. My knees wobbled and I thought I’d cry. What did it remind me of? I didn’t know. Something. I put my hand on a wooden fence post to steady myself.

But so much else was strange. The cars parked along the curb were small and expensive and clean; none were coated with the sticky dirt that covered cars in Train Line from October to May. The people I passed were tanned and dressed lightly. There was no one as pale as I must have been. I turned my face to the hazy sun, feeling my skin drink it in. No one said hello, either, or made eye contact. A woman in heels clicked by, walking a cat on a leash.

By the time I got to my uncle’s house, dragging my duffel bag, I was ready to go home. Probably I was just tired. Everything I’d seen in the last few days weighed on me. I thought of my mother, carless and lonely in her little cottage, and ached to see her. The front door of my uncle’s house loomed like a wall. On the other side would be more unfamiliarity: people I didn’t know wanting things from me, odd food.

Uncle Geoffrey opened the door before I’d gotten up the nerve to ring the bell. He must have seen me coming up the front walk. He was short, with very little hair and my mother’s beaklike nose. He wore corduroy pants and a pair of furry slippers.

“Naomi!” he said, taking me into his arms.

I stiffened automatically, then put my free arm around him. He was fat and soft, like a little man made of bread dough, and slightly sweaty.

“So good to see you again, Naomi,” he said over my shoulder. He sounded like he meant it. Then he pulled away, smiled, and took my duffel bag. “What a drive! Let me show you your room. Maybe you’ll want to take a shower? Then I’ll make you breakfast.” He trotted on ahead, turning and grinning at me.

I followed him.

The house was beautiful. The rooms were sparsely furnished, big and plain and full of light. What furniture there was looked ancient and dark, like monuments. My room had violet walls and a bare wood floor. There was jar of fresh hyacinths on the windowsill.

“This was Imogen’s room, until she got married. That was a while ago. She lives in Denver now. You remember her, don’t you?”

I did but only vaguely. She was a tall girl with straight black hair, a few years older than me. My one memory involved a family picnic, in honor of my grandfather’s birthday, I think. Imogen sat by a fence, tugging moodily at weeds, and she wouldn’t give me the time of day. But I nodded for Uncle Geoffrey and managed a small smile.

“It’s a nice room,” I said.

“That girl loved purple. Her mother and I made her settle for lavender, but she’d have had it the most gaudy Mardi Gras shade of purple you’d ever seen.” He took my hand in his and patted it. “Now, look. I’m semiretired now, and only go into my office a couple days a week. You’ll see me at home a lot. But you think of this as your house as much as mine, all right?” He looked me in the eyes intently.

“What about Aunt…?” For the life of me I couldn’t remember her name.

“Francie. Oh. Well. We’ve been divorced since Isabel was out of high school.”