The Obituary Writer (12 page)

“Have you ever seen so much snow?” Claire asked Peter.

Now that he’d come out of the car she wasn’t sure where to go. They stood on the sidewalk, Peter shifting his feet to keep warm.

“That was some blizzard,” he said. In the early morning light, his features softened and made him look younger.

Claire smiled at him, then she held her arms out at her sides and dropped into the snow.

“Claire!” Peter said. “Now you’ll be all wet. You’ll catch cold.”

She lay there for a moment, pushing her body deeper into the snow, making an impression there. The sky above her was a dark blue.

“Claire, really. Get up.”

She lifted her arms, and swept them up and down. She had not made a snow angel since she was a child. They were glorious, snow angels. And this one, she thought as she moved her arms through the snow, would have two giant wings, wings that would appear ready to take flight.

“Claire,” Peter said again.

Satisfied, she reached her hands toward him. “Help me up.”

Peter pulled her to her feet.

“What were you thinking?” he said.

But Claire was studying the place where she’d lain, the snow angel she’d made. It looked like nothing, not at all like the beautiful angel she’d thought she’d created. Not like something that might lift from the ground and soar. Ridiculously, hot tears sprang to her eyes. She could feel the cold wet snow seeping through her wool coat now, making her shiver.

“See?” Peter said.

When their eyes met, he looked baffled rather than angry.

Claire got into the car, holding her hands in the wet gloves up to the vents blasting hot stale air.

“You’ll catch a cold,” Peter said again, turning the heat on higher.

“You don’t get a cold from
being
cold,” she said softly.

“Really?” Peter said, putting the car into drive. “Where did you hear that?”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she stared out the window, watching the sad triple-deckers go by. The streets were empty this early in the morning. Claire let herself think about how busy Washington, D.C., must be preparing for the inaugural parade. She wondered what Dot would make for the party. If Claire were going she would bring her Hilo hot dogs, franks cooked in a glaze she made out of soy sauce and apricot preserves, cut into bite-sized bits, and speared with toothpicks topped in colorful cellophane spirals. Roberta was supposed to make a cake decorated like an American flag, and Trudy was making her mustard and ham dip that everyone loved so much she had to bring it to every party, even though it was just cream cheese and canned deviled ham with some mustard added to it.

The early morning sun shining on the snow made a strong glare and Claire closed her eyes against it. Peter had turned on the radio and the Shirelles were singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” Sometimes it seemed like that was the only song they played these days, and Claire had grown to hate it. She tried to think about Dot’s party again, but instead she found herself wondering what her lover was doing right now. Was he even awake this early? She imagined him shoveling snow in his driveway, a driveway she could picture too well. Right before Christmas she had driven past his house, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. She had looked up his address in the White Pages and driven to Silver Spring, Maryland, where she asked for directions at a gas station. The house was stunning, white with gabled roofs and turrets, like a house out of a fairy tale. Compared to her own center-hall Colonial, it looked like a house in a magazine, special. The driveway, the one he might be shoveling snow from at this very moment, was long and curved, climbing uphill.

There had been a lot of snow that day too. No lights on that she could see. No cars in sight. Claire parked across the street and studied each detail. The biggest front windows had lace panels instead of draperies. Like everyone in her neighborhood, Claire had hung heavy damask ones. Hers were in a color called Goldenrod. The corner window seemed to have no window treatments at all, and Claire could see dark red walls. The dining room? she wondered. Red walls? The trim around the house and roof had an ornate design. Claire squinted at it, trying to make out the shapes. Animals, she realized. Squirrels and rabbits and chipmunks. The shutters around the windows had the same motif. She decided she hated it, hated the entire house with its woodland animals and lace panels and ugly red walls.

A car turned down the street and panic shot through her. She sunk as far as she could behind the steering wheel, holding her breath until the car passed. Safe, she sat up, glancing once more at the house. Now she saw the shrubs were covered in Christmas lights. Triple strands of them. More Christmas lights than she’d ever seen. How vulgar, she thought. She tried to picture her lover hanging all those lights, wrapping each strand around the hedges. Did his wife stand beside him, guiding him? The thought made Claire sick to her stomach. Quickly, she lurched the car forward, catching a glance of something hanging on the front door. Not a wreath, but something blue and white and complicated-looking. Vulgar, she thought again.

“Here we are,” Peter said.

Claire opened her eyes, the large gray hospital looming in front of her.

“I’ll park,” he said. “Go on inside. Room 401.”

The pavement at the front door was slick with ice and Claire walked carefully across it, taking baby steps. Through the revolving door and into the lobby where the hospital smell made her gag, to the bank of elevators. She rode up to the fourth floor, trying not to throw up.

At the nurses’ station, Claire stopped and asked for a ginger ale.

“You okay?” the nurse there asked her. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

Before Claire could answer, the nurse grinned. “Oh, just in the family way, huh?” She came around the desk and pointed Claire to a row of green chairs. “I’ll be right back,” she told her.

The nurse looked so young, Claire thought as she sunk onto the scratchy chair. Her white uniform showed off her slender waist and long legs. Her stiff white cap looked almost jaunty above her dark hair. What had she called it? The family way. Claire had never heard that one before. Another wave of nausea spread over her.
Face pale, raise the tail,
she told herself. She pulled a small square table stacked with
Good Housekeeping
magazines in front of her and stretched her legs out on it.

“You going to faint?” the nurse said, appearing in front of her with a small plastic cup of ginger ale.

Claire shook her head.

“Maybe you need a basin?” the nurse asked. Without waiting for an answer, she walked away again, returning with a pea green kidney-shaped dish.

Claire sipped the ginger ale.

“Boys make you throw up,” the nurse said matter-of-factly. “Girls give you a nice complexion.”

“I think it’s passing,” Claire said.

“You’re carrying like it’s a boy,” the nurse continued. “All in front.”

“I’m not,” Claire said. “I’ve gained so much weight, I’m huge everywhere.”

This baby could not be a boy. A boy with another man’s eyes? With a nose that turned up slightly at the tip instead of straight and Roman like Peter’s?

“I’m never wrong,” the nurse said.

She reached behind her neck and unclasped the thin gold chain she wore with a small gold cross dangling from it.

“Hold your hand out,” she said.

“Really, I—”

“It’s fun,” the nurse said. “Hold your hand out.”

Reluctantly Claire removed one damp glove and held her hand out in front of her.

The nurse gently tapped the side of Claire’s hand three times with the necklace. Then she turned it palm side up.

“Now hold still,” she said.

“A necklace is going to predict if I’m having a boy or a girl?” Claire said.

The nurse held the necklace steadily a few inches above Claire’s palm. It began to swing back and forth in a straight line. She grinned.

“See? A boy. If it’s a girl, it moves in circles.”

From behind them the elevator doors groaned open and the heavy sound of a man’s footsteps moved across the green and black linoleum.

“Everything all right?” Peter asked, his face creased with worry.

“She thought she might be sick,” the nurse told him.

“I’m all right now,” Claire said.

“What’s this all about?” Peter asked, indicating the necklace that still hung over Claire’s hand.

“Foolishness,” Claire said, hoping the nurse would let it go at that.

“You her husband?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” Peter said.

“You’re going to have a son,” the nurse said proudly, as if she’d just delivered the baby herself.

The smile left Peter’s face.

“Interesting,” he said, his eyes meeting Claire’s.

This was what lay between them, the thing neither had dared to bring up. With each day, as Claire grew more pregnant, the question weighed on them even more. Perhaps, Claire sometimes thought, Peter didn’t want to know the answer. Perhaps he believed he was the father. He didn’t know when the affair had started, couldn’t know about that summer night in the parking lot. The night when Claire, who had done the math of it so many times she could recite it by heart, knew she got pregnant.

“Isn’t it interesting, Clairezy?” Peter said.

Claire pushed the table away with her feet. “Well,” she said, standing, “I think it’s a girl. We have a daughter already and this feels exactly the same,” she added, lying. It felt completely different, every minute of this pregnancy felt completely different than Kathy.

“My name’s Bridget,” the nurse said, reclasping her necklace. “When you have that baby boy, you let me know. You call 4 East, ask for Bridget, and say, ‘Bridget, you were right.’”

“We’ll be sure to do that, Bridget,” Peter said. He put his hand on Claire’s back, urging her forward.

Claire let him lead her down the corridor, past rooms with sick people and the gurgling sounds of machines.
Claire?
Miles had said.
Is that you?
Why hadn’t she said
Yes, it’s me
? She could make this right somehow, couldn’t she? Couldn’t she?

The first time Claire met Peter’s mother was five years earlier when they drove to Providence to tell her they were engaged. The night before, Peter had taken Claire to Frankie & Johnnie’s, where they’d gone on their first date. When he ordered champagne, something deep inside Claire fluttered. He had spoken of marriage in vague terms over the year they’d dated. He wanted four children, a wife who was a good homemaker and pleasant to be around. “I want my life to be easy. My wife to make everything around me smooth.”
I can do that,
Claire had thought.
I want to do that for you.
But as she sat across from him in Frankie & Johnnie’s, watching the waiter approach with a bottle of Moet & Chandon and two champagne flutes, Claire found herself wondering if that flutter she felt was cautionary rather than excited. Did she want four children? Did she want to spend her life keeping house and making her husband’s life smooth?

The champagne cork popped and in an instant Peter was on one knee. He was opening a small blue box and a square-cut diamond glistened up at her. So handsome, he looked in that moment. His eyes shone brightly, his hand taking the ring from its velvet perch trembled.

Although she didn’t hear the actual words, she found herself saying yes, ignoring that strange feeling of doubt. Hadn’t Rose agreed that Peter was quite a catch? He had just taken a new job at the Pentagon. His future—
their
future—could only be wonderful. Peter slid the ring onto her finger and pressed her close to him. The other diners broke into applause, and Claire, blushing, smiled out at them.

The next morning they drove to Providence. The entire way there, Peter laid out his plans for them. Claire found herself looking out the window as Connecticut passed by, half listening. As he talked about mutual funds, public schools versus private schools, the benefits of trading in a car every three years, Claire realized that in her life with Peter she wouldn’t have to make any decisions.

He patted her knee. “You can choose the names for the girls, and I’ll name the boys,” he said, grinning.

“Wonderful,” she said, her throat suddenly dry.

By the time they got out of the car, the front door of the house had opened and Peter’s mother had come onto the porch. She was an older woman—Peter had told Claire that she’d married late in life and thought she was too old to have babies—but beautiful with her high cheekbones and her silver hair pulled back in a French twist, held in place with an antique comb.

Her face lit up when she saw Peter, and she readily opened her arms to him. Claire watched as she closed her eyes in the hug. Peter pulled free first, motioning for Claire to come. As soon as she reached his side, Peter held her hand up for his mother to see.

“Engaged,” his mother said. “My, my.”

That visit, and all the ones that followed, had a certain rhythm. His mother offered them tea and after she made it in an elaborate ritual of boiling water and choosing tea leaves and then letting it seep for just the right amount of time, she knit as they sat together in the living room. Peter did most of the talking, laying out his plans to her just as he had for Claire. Birdy—right away she had told Claire to call her that, everyone did; and right away Claire had thought it was the worst nickname for the woman in front of her—nodded periodically, or said
My, my
. Sometimes she quoted a poem, as if to make a point.

“Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls,” she said after Peter described why Claire would be such a good wife.

“The Prophet,”
Peter explained to Claire, rolling his eyes. “One of her favorites.”

“Published in 1923,” his mother said without looking up from her knitting, “and it has never gone out of print. That tells you something, doesn’t it?”

Later, there would be dinner at the dining room table. Birdy used good china and silverware, crystal goblets and linen napkins. Dinner was lobster salad with Russian dressing on a bed of shredded lettuce. “It’s impossible to get crab here,” she’d explained.