The Obituary Writer (16 page)

“I’ll get it and come right back,” Claire said.

But Peter didn’t answer. He already appeared involved in a news article.

She put on her coat and still-damp gloves.

“I’ll need the keys,” she said.

“They’re in my pocket,” he said, indicating his jacket hanging behind the door.

“Well then,” she said after she’d collected them and picked up her purse.

“Drive slow,” he said. “It’s icy.”

Of course it was icy. Hadn’t they just had a huge blizzard?

But she told him she would be extra careful.

“By the way,” Peter said. “I found a TV, up in what they call the solarium. We can watch the inauguration.”

“Oh, good,” Claire said.

“Hurry back,” Peter said as she moved toward the door.

As soon as she emerged from the car, Claire heard Kathy crying. Moving as fast as she could up the narrow path Jimmy had shoveled, she climbed the steps, finding the front door unlocked. That smell of oil heat and yesterday’s supper hit her as soon as she walked into the small foyer, and Claire swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat.

The steps that led up to her mother-in-law’s apartment stretched invitingly in front of her. The thought of climbing back into bed appealed to Claire much more than dealing with Connie and Jimmy and all of their children. But Kathy’s crying did not seem to be letting up. Claire took a few deep breaths, then pushed the door to the downstairs apartment open. Cartoons blared from the television, and a trail of toy soldiers and crushed Frosted Flakes led to the kitchen. Claire hardly noticed the little boy in the big wet diaper chewing on one of the soldiers.

“Darling,” she said, lifting Kathy from the high chair where she sat, red-faced from screaming.

“Who the hell is Mimi?” Connie said. She was sitting on a stool at the breakfast counter, still in her nightgown, smoking a cigarette.

“Her stuffed animal,” Claire said, smoothing Kathy’s tangled hair. “I forgot it,” she admitted softly.

To Kathy she murmured, “Mimi’s waiting for you at home.”

This only made Kathy scream louder.

Connie, unfazed, got up and poured herself more coffee, holding the percolator up as if it were asking Claire if she wanted some.

“Yes, thank you,” Claire said.

She patted Kathy’s back, taking in the chaos of the kitchen. In a second high chair, Cindy—a girl with lots of dark curls and her father’s green bulging eyes—played in milk that had spilled from her cereal onto the tray, humming as she splashed. The baby slept splayed in a playpen in the middle of the floor. Dirty dishes crowded the counter and the sink and that Shirelles song blasted from the radio.

“God, I hate that song,” Claire muttered.

Kathy’s sobs had turned to hiccups, and Claire sunk onto one of the stools, still patting her daughter’s back.

“Sugar? Milk?” Connie asked, holding the bottle of milk over the cup.

“Black,” Claire said.

Connie slid the cup to Claire, somehow finding a path amid the mail and kids’ drawings and crumbs that littered the counter.

“How’s Birdy?”

“You’re not going to believe this but she opened her eyes and spoke to me,” Claire said.

“Right before they die, they do that,” Connie said knowingly.

Claire decided that Connie reminded her of Gloria Delray. She had that same confidence in everything she said.

“It’s true,” Connie continued. “My
nonna
did it. At death’s door, then all of a sudden she asked us to sing ‘Oh, My Papa.’ She loved that song. You know it?” Without waiting for an answer, Connie said, “She sang right along too. And I asked her how to make gnocchi, why mine always came out like lead, and she told me the secret.”

Kathy had quieted and was sucking her thumb, her eyes on the cartoons.

“Don’t overknead the dough,” Connie said.

“Hmm,” Claire murmured politely. “Well, I better get back. I’m just going to get my knitting.”

“You knit? I crochet. Mostly just afghans.”

“The women in my neighborhood have a little knitting circle,” Claire said. “It’s something to do. You know.”

“These the ones with the contest?”

Claire frowned.

“The Jackie thing,” Connie said. “What color will she wear today.”

“Oh, yes,” Claire said. “The same ones.”

“Teresa down the street, she crochets these cute little men that you put your extra toilet paper rolls inside. They have long legs and funny hats. Cute. She said she’s going to teach me.”

“That’s nice,” Claire said. She’d noticed a toilet paper roll dressed in one of these crocheted outfits in Connie’s bathroom earlier when she’d changed Kathy’s diaper. It looked hideous with its long crocheted legs dangling over the bowl.

“I’ll send you the pattern,” Connie said.

Claire smiled and nodded politely, then carried Kathy into the living room where Little Jimmy, the oldest, had managed to chew the heads off an army of Redcoats. He grinned up at Claire, his mouth circled in red. Claire hesitated, then scooped up all of the soldiers—Roman gladiators and Civil War Confederates and doughboys and Redcoats. Most of them were headless, she realized as she dropped them onto the top of the television.

“Thanks for watching her,” Claire called as she left, relieved to be out of the apartment’s old food and dirty diaper smell.

Upstairs she grabbed her knitting quickly and then got back into the car, feeling guilty that Kathy would no doubt spend the morning in front of that television set, ignored.

Still, as she drove back to the hospital, a peace settled over her. She liked being alone, away from Peter and his dying mother. Away from Connie’s dirty apartment and her mother-in-law’s empty one. She fiddled with the radio until she heard Elvis Presley singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Singing along softly, she let herself miss her lover. She imagined driving to Dot’s instead of to the hospital, showing up at the party. His wife wouldn’t be there after all, and somehow seeing each other again would solve everything.

Even as she thought it, she reprimanded herself for being so foolish.

Elvis sang, “Does your memory stray . . .”

Tears sprang to Claire’s eyes. She changed the station, twirling the knob without caring where it landed.

The hospital appeared in front of her, gray and hulking. It looked like a place people went to die, Claire thought. The parking lot was full, and she had to drive around and around to find a space. For a moment, she considered leaving again. But to go where? Back to that house? She imagined picking up Kathy, combing her hair and washing her face and the two of them boldly driving away. They could stop at Rose’s in New London, Connecticut, make a getaway plan. They could drive all the way to Washington, D.C., and get a glimpse of JFK and Jackie, on their way to an inaugural party.

Across the parking lot, an elderly couple made their slow way to their car. Claire sighed, and drove in their direction. As she waited—eternally, she thought—for the man to unlock the door and then open it for his wife and then help her inside—it hit Claire that she might never have what those old people had: a marriage that lasted for all those years, a man who, bent and frail himself, would still pause to tenderly take her elbow, to look at her with love.

And then an even stranger thought came to her. Maybe she didn’t need someone to take her elbow, to lead her around.

Claire shook her head, as if shaking the thought away.

The man’s shiny green Valiant finally backed out of the parking space and she turned the car into it. Last night, Peter had liked her pretending, playing the good wife again, a role she knew too well.
Agree with your husband’s opinion, even if you think he’s a horse’s ass for believing that,
her mother had told her. She could bite her tongue when she disagreed. She could try to learn to parallel-park, touch her hair less, stop apologizing. Didn’t all of the women she knew do this? Didn’t Dot learn how to play golf because her husband wanted her to? Didn’t Trudy take every vacation on the Outer Banks because her husband liked to go fishing there? She spent her time in Duck cleaning the rented cottage, cooking three meals a day, and watching her three kids.
Someday,
Trudy always said when she came back, her nose peeling and her chest freckled from the sun,
I might actually go on a real vacation.
Hadn’t Roberta voted for Nixon because her husband was a Republican?

What you want,
her mother had told her,
is someone who can take care of you. A man who can provide for you and your children. Someone steady. Someone predictable.
That described Peter. It did. His pants were always perfectly creased, his tie tied in a Windsor knot, his shoes polished. He gave her a big budget, let her buy what she wanted for herself, let her redecorate when she got bored with the wallpaper or the carpeting. At the Pentagon, he got his promotions right on schedule. He did the right thing.

Her lover came crashing into her mind, asking her what she wanted.
From you?
she’d asked Miles, confused.
From life,
he’d said. No one had ever asked her that and Claire had not known how to answer. He always wanted to know what she thought, and why. What she felt, and why. These questions made her feel off-kilter, like the world had tilted and she wasn’t certain how to regain her balance. How could she ever explain to anyone that although the sex was important—necessary, even—that it was the talking between them that mattered. It had never occurred to Claire until she met him that a man and a woman could be so similar, that a man might want to know her so well.

Miles had made her buoyant. Without him, she had deflated. She would find herself walking around the house, drinking glass after glass of water, needing to be filled up. She started to talk to herself, sharing her thoughts and feelings with the empty rooms. One day, frustrated, she’d pulled all of the fluffy bath towels from the linen closet and thrown them out in a frenzy, screaming as the mauve and aqua terrycloth fluttered around her. She wanted to go to the china cupboard and smash her wedding china, take the heavy crystal glasses and fling them at the walls. Break mirrors and tables and the French doors that led to the patio. All of these simple domestic things, so benign for so long, had become parts of a cage to Claire. They trapped her in that house, in that marriage.

Now that a man had listened to her, had seen her for who she was, Claire refused to be submerged again. But she had to. To walk away from Peter was to risk losing her home, her daughter—and thinking of her life without Kathy in it every day made Claire shake. If her mother-in-law hadn’t begun to die, Claire would have stuck with her plan and decided what to do. But now she just had to walk carefully across the large icy expanse of asphalt. She just had to go into that hospital and be Peter’s wife. At Dot’s, her lover and his wife were arriving. He was taking off his hat and handing it to Dot at the door. He had his hand on the small of his wife’s back.

If you want to feel ginger ale bubbles, Claire, drink a glass of ginger ale,
her mother had told her.

Claire entered the revolving door and stepped into the hotel lobby. The air buzzed with excitement. Nurses and doctors, orderlies and candy stripers, visitors and staff, all moving toward the solarium to watch the inauguration. John F. Kennedy would step up to the podium. He would raise his hand and take the oath of office, with Jackie watching. With the world watching. And, Claire realized as she pressed the up button for the elevator, they were watching with hope. For the first time in a long time, people were allowing themselves to be hopeful again.

The elevator came. Claire stepped inside with a large group of people.

“This is our country’s finest hour,” a man with a buzz cut and square glasses said. He looked like he’d been crying.

“I wonder what Jackie will wear?” one of the nurses said.

Claire smiled at her. “I think pink,” she said. “She looks beautiful in pink.”

“She looks beautiful in everything,” an older woman with her hair in curlers said.

The elevator arrived at Claire’s floor, and she squeezed out.

Her mother had told her that it was hope that had let her believe in her future. Maybe this sense of hope surging through the country today would give Claire that same ability.

The nurses’ station was empty. The hallway too felt deserted. At the door to her mother-in-law’s room, Claire held up her knitting bag for Peter to see.

He got to his feet. “Just in time,” he said. “Everyone’s gone to the solarium already.”

It seemed wrong to leave all the patients, Claire thought. She glanced over at her mother-in-law. What if what Connie and the doctor had said was true? What if she died alone while they were upstairs watching the inauguration?

“Do you think it’s all right to leave her?” Claire asked Peter softly.

He was slipping his shoes back on, tying the laces.

“I do,” he said. “It’s not going to change anything one way or the other.”

Claire, who had been lingering in the doorway, came into the room. She took her mother-in-law’s hand in hers.

“We’re going to watch John Kennedy get inaugurated,” she said. “The entire country will be watching,” she added. That felt wrong, so she said, “I’ll tell you all about it when we get back.”

Behind her, Peter chuckled. “I bet she can’t wait.”

Claire let go of the old woman’s hand and turned to her husband. “Stop,” she said. “Don’t be that way.”

He frowned slightly. “That’s the way I am, Clairezy. You should know that by now.”

Peter took her arm and nudged her along.

They were almost out the door when it happened. A rustling of the bedclothes. The bed creaking. They stopped and looked back.

Peter’s mother was struggling to sit up, staring wildly at something neither of them could see.

“Mom?” Peter said, his face so full of surprise that he looked to Claire like a little boy.

The old woman turned toward his voice, that wild look still in her eyes.

“Mom,” Peter said.

His mother’s face relaxed. She almost smiled. She reached her arms out as if to hug him, her fingers reaching toward him and Peter hurrying to meet them.