The Obituary Writer (19 page)

The door opened and a tall, thin older woman walked in, twisting a white handkerchief in her fist.

“He’s not my Simon,” she said. She looked around the room, surprised. “My Simon, he went to the war. And he vanished. The government can’t find him. No one saw him get injured. Or worse. He just vanished.”

The women all looked down at their laps, ashamed to show their relief, their hope. If the man wasn’t her Simon, he could still be Mark or Reginald or Jonathan.

Or David, Vivien thought as she too avoided the woman’s face. She heard the woman collecting her things and shuffling out of the room.

A woman holding a clipboard entered. She wore a honey-colored tweed jacket with a matching skirt and gold wire-rimmed eyeglasses.

In a loud, crisp voice she announced, “Martha Vale.”

From beneath downcast eyes, everyone peeked as the woman from the train station got up, smoothed her skirt and patted her hair into place, straightened her shoulders and walked out the door toward the man who had forgotten who he was.

It seemed that the entire room held its breath after Martha left. The woman from Philadelphia’s leg jumped restlessly. The woman from Chicago tapped, tapped, tapped on the table. The smells of lavender and violet water and lilies choked Vivien. There seemed to be no air in the room, all of it consumed by the hope and fear of the women. Beside Vivien, a woman had started to knit, and the clacking of her needles added to the other nervous sounds.

“This is torture,” the knitter said in a thick Irish brogue. “My Paddy would want me to find him, to bring him home. That’s the only thing keeping me here.”

Vivien glanced up. The knitter had steel gray hair pulled back in a messy bun and the red hands of someone who had worked with them all her life. She was knitting a sweater with thick oatmeal yarn.

“This will be the ninth sweater I’ve knit for him,” she said to Vivien. “I knit them and put them in his drawer with cedar, to protect them, you know?”

“Of course,” Vivien said.

The woman went back to her knitting.

Just when Vivien thought she might lose her mind, the door opened. Martha stood there, not moving until the woman with the clipboard nudged her forward.

Seeing the tears on Martha’s cheeks, Vivien got up and went to her. But when she touched Martha’s shoulder, the woman shrugged her off.

“What was I thinking?” Martha said as she angrily picked up her valise and her coat. “Everyone saw him go under that day. They saw him disappear in that river. Why would I put myself through this?”

“I’m sorry,” Vivien said softly.

Martha spun around.

“No you’re not. You want this to be your man. You hope everyone in this room gets disappointed so that he just might be yours.”

The vehemence with which she spoke forced Vivien backward, away from her.

Martha leveled her gaze on the rest of the women.

“The same goes for all of you,” she said.

They watched her leave, pushing past the woman with the clipboard as she did.

“She’s right, of course,” the woman from Philadelphia said.

“Vivien Lowe,” the woman with the clipboard announced in her clear, crisp voice.

Vivien wished she’d thought to put some color on her lips, to wear her good silver comb, the one David had bought her one Christmas. She wished she looked younger, more beautiful.

“Vivien Lowe?” the woman said.

“I’m Vivien Lowe,” Vivien said, surprised by how tremulous her voice sounded.

The woman held the door open. And Vivien walked through it.

The woman with the clipboard remained cold and efficient as she led Vivien down a corridor, around a corner, down another corridor where she stopped in front of a room with its door closed. There, she hesitated. Her face softened and she touched Vivien’s arm.

“Over one hundred people have come here,” she said. “All women. All hoping this man is the man they’ve lost. Maybe it’s the war that’s done it, made us all so desperate. Maybe it’s the Spanish influenza. So much loss these past years. We’re all walking around brokenhearted, filled with grief. Lost.”

As she spoke, Vivien thought of the obituaries she’d written. So many of them! Thousands of words, all of them trying to capture grief, to show the world what had been lost.

“Yes,” Vivien said softly. “I understand.”

“How I wish that the man in that room is your husband,” the woman said. “But as weeks pass, it seems less likely that he belongs to anyone.”

The woman shook her head. She looked at her clipboard, taking the pen she kept tucked behind her ear and preparing to write.

“Your husband’s name?” she asked.

“David. David Gardner,” Vivien said.

The woman wrote the name down. “San Francisco, California?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I’ll come in the room with you. I have to,” the woman said. “It’s hospital policy. If I didn’t, you could tell me that he recognized you even if he didn’t and we could release him to the wrong person. We’re not doubting your integrity—”

“You’re just recognizing our desperation,” Vivien interrupted.

“Well,” the woman said.

“May we go inside now?” Vivien asked.

“Of course.”

She put her hand on the doorknob, but hesitated. “We call him John Doe,” she said. “For obvious reasons.”

Vivien nodded and the woman opened the door at last.

The room looked very much like the waiting room where Vivien and the other women had been. Loveseats and chairs lined up against the walls. A hooked rug on the floor and a window looking out at the city.

Sitting on one of those chairs, reading a book, was the man.

When Vivien saw that the book was Jack London’s
The Call of the Wild
, hope fluttered weakly in her chest. David would be reading Jack London.

“John,” the woman said. “Here’s our next guest.”

The man lowered the book and looked wearily at the woman and Vivien.

He had blue eyes, gray hair that needed to be trimmed. A scar on his forehead. Could he be David? Vivien wondered, moving closer to him. It had been thirteen years. A lifetime. Still. Wouldn’t she know him right away?

“I’m Vivien Lowe,” Vivien said, watching for some flicker of recognition on the man’s face and seeing none.

He smiled sadly.

“I wish I could tell you that means something to me,” he said.

His voice reminded Vivien of parchment paper, of something old that hadn’t been used in a long time. Once she had seen someone pull an old letter from her purse and it had turned to dust when she opened it. His voice was like that. David’s had been strong, deep.

“I see you’re reading Jack London,” Vivien said. “I used to see him at a restaurant in San Francisco. Coppa’s,” she added hopefully.

Again she waited for a reaction. Again she got none.

“It was sitting over there,” the man said, motioning to a bookshelf in the far corner of the room. “I just picked it up.”

Vivien read the titles on the shelf: the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Henry David Thoreau’s
Walden
and
The Scarlet Letter
. Did it mean something that of all those books, he had chosen
The Call of the Wild
? Or was it just happenstance, like so many other things in life? She remembered the man who had come to her to write an obituary for his wife who had died suddenly. They had finished dinner and she sat down to her sewing and when he looked over at her she was dead. “The only thing we can count on in life,” he had told Vivien, “is unpredictability.”

“May I sit?” Vivien asked the woman with the clipboard.

When she nodded, Vivien sat across from John Doe so that she could see him better. If David were older and thinner, if he had gone through terrible things for all these years, might he be the man before her now?

“Do you know him?” the man was asking. He held up the book. “Jack London?”

“Oh, no. He just frequented a restaurant where we used to go,” she said. “He died a few years ago,” she added.

“Did you go there, to that restaurant, with the man you’re looking for?” he asked.

Vivien looked into his eyes. They were dull and vacant, as if the life had been knocked out of them.

“You have a hotel key,” she began.

“Mrs. Lowe,” he said, “I don’t remember why I have that key or how I ended up in Denver. Nothing. My mind is completely blank.”

“I see,” she said.

Over all these years she had read so much about amnesia, but nothing had explained what was in an amnesiac’s mind, only what wasn’t there.

The woman with the clipboard stood. “Last week, a Miss Minnie Nash came from Cheyenne and she could not be certain if John Doe was her fiancé or not. She went back to Wyoming to retrieve some documents. Photographs, that sort of thing. If you can’t be certain, you can do the same.”

“David had a scar,” Vivien said. “Under his chin.”

Even as she said this, Vivien knew it was pointless. This man was not David. This was not the face she had stared at as he slept, the mouth she had kissed with such youthful passion.

The woman turned to John Doe.

“I do have a lot of scars,” John Doe said. “Apparently I’m quite accident-prone.”

“This one is a bit ragged, and right here,” Vivien said, touching the spot on her own chin.

The man shook his head, his face registering neither disappointment nor relief.

As if on cue, they all stood. Vivien shook the man’s hand and wished him luck. Then she followed the woman out of the room and down the maze of corridors. Neither of them spoke. The only sound came from their heels tapping against the floor as they walked.

When they returned to the waiting room, the women still there looked up as they entered. Vivien avoided eye contact with any of them. Quickly, she gathered her trunk and coat, her hands trembling. She hurried out of there. From behind her came the woman’s voice, calling the next poor woman: “Dorothea Kane.”

Outside of the hospital at last, Vivien stood on the street. Passersby pushed past her. The Rocky Mountains rose beautifully in the distance. She willed her body to be still. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. The air here was so crisp. She let it fill her lungs and then she opened her eyes.

SIX

If any women are to be present and the interment is to be in the ground, some one should order the grave lined with boughs and green branches—to lessen the impression of bare earth.

—
FROM
Etiquette
,
BY
E
MILY
P
OST, 1922

11

Arabella

CLAIRE, 1961

T
hey left the hospital to rest for a bit. In the car, Claire told Peter someone had guessed taupe. “Can you believe that?” she muttered.

Peter laughed. “I can’t believe that you girls even had a contest about it.” He reached across the seat and touched her hair. “Silly,” he said.

Claire looked out the window at all the snow.

“Maybe we can take Kathy sledding,” she said.

“In your condition?”

“The baby’s not going to fall out or anything,” she teased.

“Still,” he said.

“Do you think there’s a sled somewhere?” Claire asked.

“Maybe. I bet Jimmy and Connie have a couple.”

“I suppose we could take Little Jimmy. Connie’s had Kathy all morning. It would only be fair.”

She could tell that Peter still wasn’t sold on the idea, but she didn’t care. She would take the kids by herself if he didn’t want to come. Claire could practically feel it, how the wind whipped at your cheeks as you went downhill. How your stomach almost hurt from the speed and the bumps, like a roller coaster in a way. Of course she would have to find some warm clothes, for herself and for Kathy. They’d left in such a hurry that Kathy only had her toggle coat and a hat. No snow pants or mittens.

“Maybe they have a snowsuit that Kathy can wear,” she said.

“I thought you were exhausted.”

“I am. But getting some fresh air would be nice.”

“And where exactly is this sledding going to take place?” Peter said.

“You tell me. Where did you go sledding when you were a boy?”

“Roger Williams Park, I guess.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go,” Claire said.

Peter sighed his exasperated sigh.

“We’ll go if you want. But you have to be a spectator. Okay?”

It wasn’t okay, Claire thought. Pregnant women rode horses and swam and did all kinds of things. Why, Dot had gone skiing at twenty-eight weeks and Bill had seemed absolutely proud over it.
She’s a tough one,
he’d said, beaming.

But Claire said, “Whatever you want,” then pressed her forehead against the window.

She wanted to point out how the ice covering the trees and telephone wires glittered, giving everything an almost magical look. She wanted to say how pretty it was. But surely Peter would have something to say about that too, so she just kept staring out the window, watching Providence slide past her.

“Someone called for you,” Connie said as soon as Claire and Peter walked in the house.

It was as if she had been standing in that hall waiting for them, Claire thought.

“For me?” Claire said.

Peter was frowning.

“Who in the world—” Claire began, but Connie was unfolding a piece of lined yellow paper and getting ready to read from it.

“2:20 p.m.,” Connie said.

“You just missed your mystery caller,” Peter said.

“Dot called and said—”

“See?” Claire said to him. “It’s just Dot, that’s all.”

“She apologizes for bothering you, what with Peter’s mother and all, and she says it’s silly but she thought you would want to vote now for what color Jackie is going to wear tonight, to the ball.”

“Jesus,” Peter said under his breath.

“She says,” Connie continued, “winner gets a dinner party in her honor. Couples.”

“How fun!” Claire said.

Connie folded the paper again and handed it to Claire.

“She says she voted midnight blue,” Connie added.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Claire said. “Now I’ll have to come up with a different color.”

“I still say red,” Connie said, lighting a cigarette.

The smell brought a wave of nausea to Claire, and she thought again of finding some sleds and going outside in the cold fresh air.

“I mean, who wears tan? Did you get a load of her today? Tan,” Connie said.

“Well, taupe,” Claire said.

Connie narrowed her eyes.

“Technically she wore taupe,” Claire said.

She hadn’t noticed that Jimmy was standing in the doorway of his apartment, wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt that didn’t cover all of the hair that spread like grass across his chest and arms.

“Taupe?” he mimicked. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s . . .” Claire struggled to describe it. “Sort of beige—”

“Tan,” Connie said, smirking.

“Fine,” Claire said, wanting to get out of there. She was actually having trouble catching her breath.

“You okay?” Jimmy asked. “You’re a little green around the edges.”

“I need some fresh air,” she said. “I was thinking I could take Little Jimmy and Kathy sledding. At the park?”

“Sure,” Connie said. “The sleds are down in the basement.”

Claire had her hand on the door that led outside.

“I’m just going to step out for a minute,” she said.

As she was closing the door behind her, she heard Jimmy saying, “She’s kind of delicate, ain’t she? Connie just pops kids out.”

“Nine months,” Connie said, “and I don’t even burp.”

Claire sat on the cold stoop and leaned her head against the front door.

Think about Jackie,
she told herself. She closed her eyes and took in big mouthfuls of air. So lucky, Jackie was. The first lady. With that handsome husband and those children and the White House and all that Newport money and horses and speaking French. Like someone in a fairy tale.

Claire opened her eyes. White. Jackie would wear white tonight. Not cream or winter white but fairy-tale white. Maybe with sparkling beads. She was certain of it. She could almost see it, Jackie in a glittering white gown, dancing with her husband the president.

Smiling, Claire went back inside and up the stairs to her mother-in-law’s to call Dot.

Claire had forgotten how long it took to get children in their snowsuits and mittens, the squirming as the layers piled up, the forcing of their little feet into boots and their sweaty hands into mittens. By the time they had been zipped and snapped, Claire was exhausted. A few weeks ago, after a big snow, she had wrestled Kathy into her snow gear only to have the girl crying and cold within minutes, ready to go back inside. Today, at least, all of the work getting Little Jimmy and Kathy ready to go sledding would pay off with an hour or two bumping down the snowy hills at the park.

On the way there, the children ate Cheerios in the backseat and looked at
The Poky Little Puppy
together. Claire could almost imagine a future with two children, Kathy and this new baby sitting back there, playing and talking, growing up under her supervision. For these twenty minutes, as they drove past snowdrifts and cars stuck off the roads, Claire could let herself forget.

But then, just as suddenly as a sense of ease had come over her, Claire remembered what Rose had told her.

Claire glanced at the children to be sure they were still occupied before she said in a low voice, “They arrested the man who took Dougie Daniels.”

“They caught him?” Peter said.

“You hadn’t heard?”

He shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”

“What kind of person would do such a thing?” Claire said.

She didn’t expect an answer, but Peter said, “A sick bastard, that’s for sure.”

At the word
bastard
she looked to be sure the children hadn’t heard. Kathy was holding the book and pretending to read it out loud, and Little Jimmy listened, rapt.

“It’s over finally,” Claire said, trying to imagine Gladys Daniels receiving the news. It would never be over for her.

Up ahead the park came into sight. All of the hills were dotted with sledders, bright splashes of red and green and blue against the white snow. The sky had turned from pewter to a clear royal blue. Cloudless, it seemed to stretch forever. Claire smiled to herself, pleased with her idea to do this. She leaned across the seat and kissed Peter lightly on the cheek. Surprised, he put his hand to his cheek, as if she had branded him.

“Thank you,” she said anyway.

“The things I do for you, Clairezy,” he said, his hand still resting on the spot her lips had touched.

Was he trying to erase it? Claire wondered. Or preserve it?

She didn’t linger in the car. Instead, she stepped into the cold air and helped the children out of the car. Gripping one child with each of her hands, she moved across the crowded parking lot. Behind her came the sound of the sleds scraping across the icy asphalt as Peter dragged them along. Connie and Jimmy had a trove of sleds down in that basement, and Claire had selected a small one with a high back and two medium-sized sleds.

But when they finally reached the place where everyone was sledding, Kathy was cranky, already too tired to want to climb the hill at all. No amount of cajoling could change her mind. Little Jimmy, on the other hand, tried desperately to drag one of the bigger sleds up, undeterred by the slipping backward that kept him more or less in place.

“Look at Sisyphus,” Peter said.

“He’s the one who—”

“The boulder,” Peter said.

“Right.”

He loved those Greek myths. Persephone and Hermes and Aphrodite. Claire couldn’t keep them straight. For Christmas he gave Claire an elaborately illustrated book on Greek mythology, written by a Swiss couple. The wife had made the drawings with woodblocks, or some such. It was pretty enough, and she made a big show of how impressive she found it, but really she thought it was a gift for him. At night, he read to Kathy from it, when all the girl wanted was her Little Golden Books,
The Poky Little Puppy
and
The Little Red Hen
, with their simple stories and bright illustrations.

By this time Kathy was having a full-blown tantrum, screaming as loud as she could, demanding Mimi and stomping her feet.

“I’ll take him up,” Peter finally said.

“And leave me with her?” Claire said.

“This was your bright idea,” Peter said, taking the rope from the sled Little Jimmy had been trying to get up the hill. “Come on, buddy.” He took Little Jimmy’s hand.

Claire watched him walk steadily up the hill.

“Kathy, stop that now. Sledding is the most fun you can imagine,” Claire said in her most soothing voice.

But the tantrum had taken over completely, and there was no talking to Kathy.

Claire knew she should pick up her daughter, even though Kathy would make her body go rigid and just scream louder. She could see Peter and Little Jimmy almost at the top now. Jimmy practically ran the rest of the way, jumping up and down as he waited for Peter to reach him there.

“Here comes Daddy and Jimmy,” Claire said, pointing.

Kathy quieted for an instant, but it was just to catch her breath before starting another round of screaming.

“Be quiet,” Claire said through gritted teeth.

All she had wanted was some time outside, the feeling of the fresh air on her cheeks and the wind in her hair. How had she managed to get stuck down here with an unmanageable toddler while Peter—who hadn’t even wanted to come—was flying down the hill, grinning?

The sight of him made her so angry that she sat Kathy down on the baby sled and picked up the rope to the second sled.

“Stay here,” she told her daughter.

“Mama!” Kathy yelled.

Claire didn’t turn around. She walked up the hill, taking big gulps of air. She could feel her heart beating hard against her ribs, feel the baby inside her kicking.

Kathy’s now-distant voice yelled again: “Mama!”

Claire had reached the top. She waited for a group of four or five teenagers crammed onto a shiny toboggan to position themselves at the crest before she sat on her sled. She would have preferred to lie down across it, but her stomach was too large for that, so she sat up, stretching her legs and holding on to the rope to steer. At the bottom of the hill, Kathy was a small faceless dot in a red snowsuit. From here, Claire could not hear her cries. She only heard the whoosh of the wind and the chatter of other sledders. The tobogganers were squealing as they zigzagged downward.

Exhaustion washed over her again. What was she thinking coming here? Peter had been right. She should have stayed inside and taken a nap.

Squinting against the glare of the sun, Claire tried to pick out Kathy in the crowd at the bottom of the hill. She saw green and blue and pink snowsuits, but not the red one Kathy wore. She shielded her eyes with her hand, trying to stay calm. But no. She could not find Kathy there. Claire thought about Dougie Daniels and that man, Smythe. All of these people, she thought, all of these strangers. Any one of them could be a monster like Smythe. If someone saw Kathy alone there, it would be so easy to snatch her without anybody noticing.

“Kathy! Kathy!” Claire called foolishly. The wind ate her words as soon they left her lips.

Awkwardly, she tried to run down the hill, but sleds veered dangerously close to her and, afraid of being knocked down, she could not make her way through them.

Claire frantically scanned the crowd for sight of Kathy. She had to get down, she decided, sitting clumsily on the sled and pushing off with her feet. The sled started to go immediately and with speed. This was a bad idea too, Claire realized immediately. She needed to slow the sled and jump off. Get to the bottom of the hill and to her daughter’s side before anything happened. But when she stuck her foot out to slow down, it forced the sled off its course and sent it in a different direction without slowing at all.

Claire pulled on the rope to steer, but she was moving too fast. The sled had taken on a life of its own. She glanced over her shoulder, and when she looked forward again she saw the sled heading for a giant tree. Digging both of her feet into the snow, Claire stopped the sled finally but not the momentum of her body. She flew off the sled. For a moment, she was airborne, tumbling.

Then she hit the tree. Hard.

When she opened her eyes, Claire was on her back, gazing up at that clear blue sky. Already a crowd had gathered, and a man was bending over her asking something.

Claire blinked. Her hand went instinctively to the back of her head where she felt something warm.