Storm Tide (46 page)

There would be a memorial in the spring, but as she told people, Gordon’s goodbye had been the dinner. Nonetheless, Ben and his family came and, of course, Natasha. She made the calls, she made the arrangements, she went through with the cremation and brought the ashes home, half dead herself. She put food on the table and prepared to sit shiva. Natasha took Ben and his family to the plane the next day and remained with her for the next three days.

It was not until she woke on the fifth day after the funeral, alone in the house, that she began to weep uncontrollably. She wept on and off all day. She had canceled her appointments, of course, pulled the phone from the wall. Now she wandered the house, lost, without will or hope. It was a large house and a huge compound around her. Never had it felt so big and so desolate, like an abandoned village. She was out to sea, isolated amidst the wind and the rising surf, alone and desperately lonely. If it had not been for the animals in her care, she would have fled anyplace, into Boston, to New York. Portnoy was miserable and mourned with her, looking for Gordon and then asking to go out, then lying with his head on his paws, eyes half closed, not sleeping and not moving. He seemed her grief clad in gray fur.

She thought that in Gordon’s long dying, she had practiced at missing him. She had grown used to being celibate over the last few months. She had grown used to not bothering him with problems and details. She had taken over fixing things he had always done, ordering wood and stacking it or getting help with what she could not manage alone. She had thought she was almost prepared for widowhood, but she had been wrong. His presence, however diminished, was nothing like his total absence.

She did not think she could endure it, but there was nothing to do but endure it. It would not go away; she could not go away. She continued. The following Monday she returned to work. She had Mattie reschedule appointments she had canceled and began working a ten-hour day. She could not sleep. She ate little. But she could work. She could write briefs, she could make deals on the phone, she could probe, she could litigate. While she was engaged in the law, her pain was distant: never gone but no longer overwhelming. However, like a visitor hanging around outside the door waiting to catch her alone, the moment she put down her work or turned aside, pain was back with her. At night she could not escape it. She fell asleep after midnight and woke at three. She was always exhausted, her nerves abraded raw, her eyes sore.

The second Friday in October, Natasha came home for the weekend. She drove straight through from Cornell, arriving just after midnight.
They had omelets and the last garden tomatoes. They drank Beaujolais, and Natasha told her stories of her fellow students, her professors and the animals they were learning to treat. That night, Judith slept. She slept and slept. When she woke, it was nine-fifteen—she, who always was up by six. She felt groggy but well. If only she could keep a piece of Natasha with her. They picked grasses and sea lavender in the marsh to make arrangements with chrysanthemums, golden and bronze and musky pink, from her garden. They dug the potatoes she had forgotten.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” She tried to tell Natasha how she felt, but words were feeble. “I’ve been lost, except for work.”

“Maybe you need a roommate.”

“Oh, Natasha, I’m too bossy. Who could I stand to live with?”

They walked by the bay past closed-up houses, some boarded against winter storms. The tide was receding and bits of seaweed, scallop and slipper shells washed up at their feet, rocks and pebbles vivid in color because they were still wet: gold, greenish, slate-gray, pink, shiny black. They saw footprints of a man and a dog, but no people except far, far in the distance two figures like themselves walked. Across the curve of the bay, a distant town glittered in the afternoon sun like a mirage of paradise. Terns were diving into the gentle ebbing waves. An emerging sandbar was studded with gulls resting.

“So, did anyone give you trouble about that woman drowning?”

“Mattie tells me there was talk in town that she committed suicide. Or that David or I plotted her death. It just seems so long ago. Everything before Gordon’s death feels that way.”

“But why did she have her kid with her? That’s so tragic.”

“What was she supposed to do with him at nine-thirty at night? Leave him home alone? That’s neglect. When she decided to drive out to the island and confront David, she had to bring the boy. It’s too bad she didn’t get through. She would have found thirty-two people cleaning up a big meal and singing off key. Hardly cause for a jealous rage. I didn’t exchange twenty words with David all night. It was desperation pure and simple, the desperation that drives so many women. That’s one reason I bailed out.”

“David had already moved out on her, right? And you weren’t seeing him. So how can anybody blame you?”

“People can always blame a woman who’s seen as strong. No matter how weak as a rag I feel. Anyhow, it was a two-week wonder. Then they had Gordon’s death to talk about. Now there’s a new scandal. Michelle, Crystal’s friend, is accusing Tommy Shalhoub of molesting her daughter. Tommy has been calling me, so I have to decide if I’m willing to take on his case.”

“It might keep you busy.”

“I’m busy already, Natasha. It doesn’t seem to help much. I’m alone, and I’m not used to it. The worst thing about a good marriage is after it ends.” She sighed.

“I miss him terribly. I keep thinking of things I want to tell him, stories he’d enjoy.” Natasha threw up her hands in a gesture of scattering. “Then I realize I can’t tell him. I’ll never be able to share anything with him again. He’s gone, and I can never, never talk to him.”

“I think that’s what I miss most too. Talking with him. Our life was so examined, Natasha, examined together. It feels incomplete now. Nothing seems important to me. I don’t really care about the gossip and it’s hard to make myself care about town at all. I feel too sorry for myself. I’m no role model these days.”

“Oh, you think you were my role model? Nonsense, Judith. Dr. Doolittle was. The man who talked to the animals.”

“Well, you better get busy talking to them. They’re like me, they’re all lonely and a little crazy.”

D
AVID

    Abel Smalley didn’t have to say where, just when. Noon always meant the Binnacle. As I approached his table, I noticed his hand drop over a thin manila envelope. “You sure you want to see this?”

“It’s more a question of need, to tell you the truth.”

He sighed, “It was a terrible accident. There was marsh grass on the bridge. The surface was slippery, the visibility poor—”

“I was there.”

“Suit yourself.” He pushed the envelope across the table.

He wasn’t required by law to provide me with an autopsy report. I could have made a written request of the medical examiner. But since I’d been elected, Abel had offered me any number of courtesies I’d never dreamed of receiving from the police. A license to carry firearms; a permit to park anywhere in town. If I wanted the autopsy of some dead girl I’d been screwing, his practical smile said, Sure. No problem. You sick fuck.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner
Autopsy Report

C
AUSE OF
D
EATH:
Drowning

M
ANNER OF
D
EATH:
___ Natural Causes

 x 
Accident

___ Suicide

___ Homicide

___ Undetermined

H
ISTORY OF
T
ERMINAL
E
VENT:

The history as known at the time was provided by the Medical Examiner
.

Crystal Lee Sinclair was a thirty-two-year-old white female, living in Saltash, Massachusetts. On the evening of September 22 the car in which she was the driver veered off the Squeer Island bridge, overturned, and sank below the surface of the water. The driver’s side window smashed on impact. It is presumed Ms. Sinclair climbed out of the window and in a disoriented state wandered in search of help. On Sept. 23 her body was found by State Police helicopter and recovered from the inner breakwater of Squeer Island
Cove. Body was removed and taken to the Josiah Squeer landing in Saltash where it was viewed by this M.E. at 7:10 A.M. She was pronounced dead at 7:13 A.M. on Sept. 23
.

A
UTOPSY:

The autopsy was performed in the Medical Examiner’s Office between the hours of 10:00 A.M. and 1:00 P.M
.

Present at Autopsy:
Medical Examiner and Office Technician
.

Clothing:
The clothing is wet and consists of a denim jacket, brown western boots, brown belt, blue jeans, a white blouse, black socks, black bra, black underpants
.

E
XTERNAL
E
XAMINATION:

The nude body is that of a white female who is five feet six inches and weighs approximately 140 pounds. Scalp shows silver-blond hair about nine inches in length. In the center of the scalp in the parietal region there is a red contusion measuring up to one inch in greatest dimension. The eyes are blue-hazel. The pupils are equal. The conjunctivae are injected. The teeth of both upper and lower jaws are in excellent repair
.

I suddenly found myself smiling. “The daughter of a dentist,” I said. Abel, stirring his coffee, looked up and shrugged.

The lips reveal no injury. Facial abrasions and signs of feeding activity of crustaceans and marine life are consistent with superficial trauma from waves and contact with ocean bottom and force of breakwater on body. The right and left earlobes show signs of cosmetic piercing
.

Chest:
The abdomen is slightly protuberant with a nine-inch curved linear scar in the right lower quadrant. There is an absence of hair in the pubic area. Right and left nipples show scar tissue consistent with cosmetic piercing (rings were found in each nipple)
.

Again, I glanced at Abel, embarrassed. At some point the waitress had delivered his meat loaf with mashed potatoes, a side of overboiled green peas in a little dish next to the salad. He hummed as he ate and never looked up from his newspaper.

Arms:
The arms are muscular. The hands reveal evidence of injury on the right palm consistent with slashes due to beach grass. There is a one-inch abrasion beneath the right armpit consistent with the feeding activity of an eel
.

Ever since I’d been a boy, I’d heard of bodies washed up in Saltash harbor, crabs that colonized the skull as comfortably as curling into a
paper cup; eels that ate their way through human intestines. For the first time in years, I thought of Corkie Pugh and his morbid stories.

Upper arms reveal striated abrasions and evidence of injury due to automobile window glass. One shard of glass, approximately one centimeter in diameter, found in upper arm
.

Legs:
There is scar tissue on the right inner thigh, approximately 4.5 centimeters in diameter, consistent with the surgical removal of a tattoo
.

“It was a butterfly,” Crystal told me. A biker boyfriend liked to brag that he didn’t eat his women because it was boring, so she got herself tattooed. “As a joke,” she insisted. “To give him something to watch. Like TV.” I didn’t laugh.

“I was drunk,” she had said and looked away, ashamed.

I
NTERNAL
E
XAMINATION:

Heart:
The heart weighs 450 grams. The cardiac valves are normal
.

Stomach:
The stomach contains approximately one ounce of opaque gray liquid. The small bowel contains semiliquid to semisolid fecal material, and in the rectum there are areas of purple-red streaking and dilated internal hemorrhoids, but no primary nor metatastic tumor is identified
.