Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.

“What Did You Do with Daddy?”

In a panic she wakes. Where are the children?

In a clumsy little pack they’d been with her a moment ago lurching and surging about her legs. Small children, chattering excitedly, it must have been many years ago. The mother was herding them across a wide windy cobblestone street, a kind of boulevard in a foreign city (she’d had an impression of singularly ugly equestrian statuary) with traffic streaming by in a blur of exhaust.

The sky was smudged. The air was of the hue of old, faded documents.

This was a time in the mother’s life when she was often anxious. For she was a young mother, and understood that the gravest danger is to lose a child.

At the same time, something was tangled about her (bare) legs. The pillow beneath her head was damp. Her hair was matted, sticky. There was a night-side to the mother’s life, that tormented her.

Where had the children gone, so suddenly? Slipped away from her as she’d tried to grip their little hands and with deft movements of her elbows tried to both herd and shelter them with her arms.

Always the danger is, you will forget one of them.

The horror is, one of them will not be born.

Not so worried about the oldest child—Thom. For he is the only one of the children who has been named.

The youngest children are easily confused with one another. Their faces are soft-wax, pliable and undefined.

Where is the father?—she does not know.

It is important to keep this fact from the children. They must not know that Daddy is missing. They must not know that Mommy has no idea where Daddy is or where their hotel is in this (unnamed) country and that Mommy has lost her handbag containing passports, documents, travelers’ checks, wallet.

Her hope is that the children (who are lost) (temporarily) will be at the hotel when she returns. Her hope is that Daddy is there, with the children. Indeed, she is telling herself that that is obviously where the children are, for otherwise she does not know where they are.

Her heart is lacerated from their small, sharp claws scratching through the thin much-laundered fabric of her nightgown.

The husband would gather the nightgown in his fists, he would inhale deeply the softly clean soap-smell of the nightgown, after a laundering, and the softly clean soap-smell of her hair, and he would weep with happiness, in love of her. She will try to remember this. The small coin of her only happiness.

Ah, a church bell ringing! Church bells.

A cathedral. A cathedral square. Splotched sunlight but still the sky is smudged like newsprint.

Bells, chimes. Stirred by the wind…

Eagerly she thinks But it has not yet happened, then.

Then suddenly, they are in an open, crowded square. They are together at a table that is too small for them. Not Daddy, Daddy is not here, but the children are here, tired and vexed and squabbling together. It is not strange to her (at the time) that the children are approximately the same age except for Thom, the firstborn, whose face she can see distinctly, who is older. But Thom is tormenting his baby brother, which is bad of him, and the oldest girls are pulling the youngest girl’s hair because it is beautiful curly chestnut-brown hair.

Oh, where is the father, to restore order?

Now something terrible has happened, the table has been overturned. The children are hiding from their mother, beneath the table. Their voices are furious, pleading—Mommy what did you do with Daddy! WHERE IS DADDY!

She realizes that the children are doll-sized—too small. The youngest are made of that flimsy paper that lines gift boxes. Still, their cries of accusation are earsplitting.

Her heart is racing with dread. The children are furious with her, they will never forgive her, Daddy is lost and will never return home.

The Strong One

Sure you can do it, darling. Who else?

The kids are devastated, clueless. You must take care of them. Never lost a father before.

In the guise of comforting their mother they came to her one by one, to be comforted.

For she was the strong one. Of course.

For Whitey’s sake. All of her effort, the desperate motions of her heart that lifted her, just barely, from the sweat-sopped sheets of the bed she crawled into, the interminable hours of the day like a great roaring sewer, were for him.

Tight and taut as a drawn bow she felt to them where they feared she would be soft; strong, protective, she felt to them, her arms like great feathered wings shielding them; the beat of her heart consoling and not frantic like the beat of their hearts. Can’t believe Daddy is gone. Can’t believe we won’t see Daddy again.

In her arms, they wept. Holding them, comforting them, she did not allow herself to weep, not much.

They did not understand, she was not (yet) a widow. For Whitey was still very present. Whitey would not abandon her just yet.

Close beside her, observing, judging. Shrewd Whitey-comments no one else could hear.

Fact is, the kids depend upon you, Jess. This is tough on them. Even Thom, don’t let him fool you.

They’d been concerned for their mother imagining she would collapse. Like something made of paper, Beverly had thought. Like cotton candy.

Gossamer. A spiderweb. Beautiful in design but lacking strength. In their ignorance they’d thought they would console her. In their vanity.

How many times she held them, those first days. She did not speak much. She did not utter familiar words. She did not say But we will all be together in Heaven—though almost, in the misery of the moment, they wished she might say such a thing, in comfort; as a child is comforted by familiar words devoid of all meaning.

But she could only murmur to them what sounded like Oh I know, I know. And hold them tighter.

There was no need to think of Whitey, just yet. Whitey remained too close, at her side. He had not abandoned her. As Whitey had been bossy in life (she smiled to think) so Whitey would be bossy in death. Of course! Who could think otherwise, who knew Whitey McClaren? Hardly one to stand by passively while others made decisions that involved him.

Whitey who’d been devastated by his own father’s death, when they’d been married only a few years. Whitey who’d needed to be comforted by his young wife.

And his young wife shocked by the degree of his grieving, the commingling anger and sorrow.

No adult is anything but a kid, when a parent dies.

She’d known then what she had only suspected beforehand: that her husband was not so strong as he appeared to others, not so sure of himself. Like a big tree with shallow roots, in soft soil, susceptible to rough winds, vulnerable.

There was Whitey looming close. That way Whitey had of leaning over her, needing to be physically near.

Sometimes she’d been (just slightly) discomforted by this habit of his, which seemed to be half-conscious.

Nudging against her, now. Of course, he would not abandon his dear wife.

All I know is, I love you. As long as we have each other, I am OK.

JOHN EARLE McCLAREN BORN FEBRUARY 19, 1943. Died October 29, 2010.

Death certificate. Stiff paper, single page, seal of the State of New York.

“You will want to duplicate this many times, Mrs. McClaren.”

It would become a reflex, stiffening at the sight of the name—John Earle McClaren.

Each death-document, each form of the seemingly endless forms she was obliged to fill out and sign.

Jessalyn McClaren, wife.

Blinking tears from her eyes. Quickly, that no one could see.

None of this was very real to her. That was her secret—none of this was very real at all.

For one thing, Whitey was the man she knew not John Earle McClaren.

There was no John Earle McClaren, in fact. His parents and relatives had called him Johnny. He’d been Johnny through much of high school but then, when his hair began to bleach out, to lose color, to become so strangely white, one of the sports coaches started calling him Whitey and his (guy, jock) friends took Whitey up. The name would prevail through decades.

Jessalyn had the idea, Whitey didn’t greatly love the name as an adult. He’d outgrown it the way he’d outgrown his North Hammond High sweatshirts and varsity jacket. Hey Whitey!—an actual term of opprobrium if shouted from a passing car in downtown Hammond.

In a racially tense era, not the most appropriate of nicknames for a white man.

Yet Johnny Earle hadn’t sounded right, either.

Best to call the man darling, dear. Daddy, Dad.

Days after the death she could not—yet—bring herself to speak of him in the past tense. Could not say passed away, still less died, has died. With the logic of a child or of one who has not completely wakened from a confusing dream she had begun to think of him as Whitey-who-is-not-here.

Decoded as Whitey-who-is-somewhere-but-not-(evidently)—here.

Like a toddler’s steps. Halting, hesitant. Grabbing for support—anything.

Still she comforted the children, who’d grown so tall, arms and legs so long, she could not easily embrace them any longer. The kids as Whitey called them.

It was baffling to them, that after the vigil at the hospital, after their father’s struggle, after their rallying-together and the bond of their dread that their dear father would die and their (premature) relief that he was recovering, their dear father had after all died; as a virulent staph infection ravaged the badly weakened man, driving his temperature up, up—causing his blood pressure to plummet—and his heart to seize, in fibrillation.

In the early evening of his twelfth day in the hospital. The evening of the very day they’d made specific plans for Whitey to be transferred to the Rochester clinic.

The change had come over him swiftly. Fever licked at him like flames. You could feel the terrible heat coming off his skin. Sicker and sicker he’d become, Jessalyn had cried for help. Soon he was delirious, unconscious.

Only Jessalyn and Beverly had been with him at the time. Soon, they were barred from the room.

Others were expected that evening but had not yet arrived and by the time they arrived, Whitey would be gone.

She hadn’t been able to hold his hand, at the end. She hadn’t fully comprehended that this would be the end. It had seemed to her that the crisis was an interim and not an end.

It was her hope he’d been in a deep sleep. A coma. As she’d been assured.

Had not known he was alone. No idea where he was, what was happening. Intubated, and his poor straining heart shocked into beating after it had ceased beating, but he hadn’t known she was not there.

So swiftly the staph infection had swept through both his lungs, into his bloodstream, there’d been no time for Friedland to come to the hospital. No Morton Kaplan.

Not even Whitey’s favorite nurses who’d so flattered him he was their handsomest, best patient were there, at the end.

No idea, she was assured. Your husband could have had no idea what happened to him.

Staphylococcus. Flesh-eating bacteria. Swarming into the lungs. No effective antibiotic. No way to stop.

WONDERING NOW where Whitey was. What Whitey had become. If Whitey had disappeared into a pinprick, a tiny point of light somewhere inside his brain, and that tiny point of light now extinguished.

Unless: The tiny light was never extinguished but passed into another state? Invisible to the naked eye?

PASSED AWAY. In his sleep.

A merciful death as deaths go…

But wait: Wasn’t Whitey getting better? Wasn’t Whitey scheduled for therapy in Rochester?

What the hell happened to Whitey McClaren?

SEEMED LIKE, his father had died as soon as he, Thom, had returned home.

Turn around and drive back to Hammond—no other option.

Helping to plan the next step: cremation.

Advising his mother, she should request an autopsy from the hospital before it was too late.

Urging the stricken woman, she must request an autopsy.

Jessalyn shuddered with revulsion, horror. An autopsy—she could not—no.

In his living will, in all his directives, Whitey had requested cremation. No nonsense he’d liked to say.

In fact, Whitey had been reluctant to think about such matters. One of those persons (busy, distracted) who pretends to have no time to draw up a will, has to be talked into it, finally succumbed at quite an advanced age—late fifties.

Whitey would not want an autopsy, Jessalyn was certain.

She wanted to respect his wishes. She said.

Thom understood that his mother was in an acute state of shock. And Thom himself, having driven back to Hammond in a haze of dread, was not thinking clearly.

Yet (Thom believed) Jessalyn should request an autopsy. He felt strongly about this though he did not want (yet) to explain his reasons.

Trying to enlist his older sisters but neither would support him, in appeal to their mother.

Only halfheartedly, despite being a research scientist, Sophia supported the idea. But Sophia would not insist—If it upsets Mom…

Even Virgil seemed distressed by the prospect. As if cremation were not more extreme than an autopsy!

So, Thom persisted. Explaining to their mother that an autopsy would be needed if there were a lawsuit of some kind…

Frantic Jessalyn pressed her hands over her ears. Literally, she would not hear him.

Telling him she could not bear the thought of poor Whitey subjected to an autopsy after all he’d endured.

Her (beautiful) (bloodshot) eyes were showing white above the rim. Her lips were wet with something like spittle. Always so carefully groomed, never without makeup in any public place, his mother was looking disheveled, distraught. How shocked Whitey would be, to see his wife in such a state.

To Thom’s astonishment Jessalyn began to scream at him—No! I said no! You can’t do such a thing to your father.

(WHEN HAD JESSALYN MCCLAREN LAST SCREAMED at anyone? Not within memory. Possibly, she’d never screamed at anyone.)

(Afterward Jessalyn would not recall screaming at Thom. She would not even recall Thom putting pressure on her about the autopsy.)

(Nor would Thom recall Jessalyn screaming at him.)

NOT FOR WEEKS, even months afterward would they be capable of uttering the terrible word died. It was just not possible.

Not Thom, and not Beverly. Not even Lorene, the most practical/least sentimental McClaren, could quite bring herself to utter the blunt flat stark final-sounding word died preferring instead the softer passed away.

In fact, Lorene would further soften the utterance—Passed away in his sleep.

(Was this true? Had Whitey died in his sleep? Strictly speaking this must be so, since he had not been conscious for hours before his death. His immune system had been so ravaged by the infection, he’d sunk into a deep—“unresponsive”—comatose state.)

Sophia had difficulty speaking of the death at all. From friends she received calls to which she barely listened. At the house on Old Farm Road she was silent while her sisters talked endlessly. In the kitchen, preparing meals with their mother, Beverly and Lorene did all the talking as if their grief was not genuine to them if it was not aired aloud, displayed. How could Jessalyn bear them! Sophia’s old dislike of her sisters flared up leaving her trembling.

“Can’t you be quiet about Daddy? Nobody wants to hear you.”

The sisters were stunned by this attack. Sophia could not bring herself to look at their mother.

“For God’s sake, Mom doesn’t want to hear it. You could just stop talking for once.”

Running from the kitchen to take refuge in her old room upstairs.

AT THE TIME OF THE death Virgil had been elsewhere (of course: that was Virgil) but next day he was with his family and seeing how their mother smiled blindly he’d understood—This is not real to Mom. Not yet.

He was fearful of his mother. Fearful for her, and fearful of her.

Beverly had hugged him, fierce and hard. Beverly had wept and wetted his neck. He’d had all he could do not to recoil, feeling his sister’s breasts against his chest, like springy foam rubber, please no.

Lorene at least had not hugged him. Squeezed his arm at the elbow, a gesture of commiseration, brisk, no-nonsense, eyes wet with tears that might’ve been tears of exasperation as well as grief. Oh Christ. Oh shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. God damn.

Lorene, tough and sexless as a turnip. Even Virgil who knew nothing about women’s fashions could see that Lorene’s pants suits were defiantly outdated, in dark berry colors, olive, mud-brown.

Improbably for a woman high school principal her hair was razor-cut short as a Marine’s. Her fierce face was sharp as something carved with a knife but her small mouth glistened bright-blood-red, just to throw you off your stride.

Growing up, Lorene had been Virgil’s friend sometimes, in league against their big swaggering brother. Other times, she’d picked on Virgil as much as Thom did, making him cry.

He’d learned: you can’t trust them. Older brother, sisters. You just can’t.

Since that night in the kitchen Virgil and Thom had avoided each other. After the death Virgil had seen, or imagined he’d seen, in Thom’s face an obscure rage at him.

In the kitchen, drinking Whitey’s whiskey. It gave Virgil a small thrill of insight, his brother was a drinker.

Back in high school Thom had started drinking. With his jock-friends, showing off to one another. At Colgate, in the big-deal fraternity the name of which, cryptic Greek letters, Virgil could never recall out of disdain and disapproval. Sexist pigs Lorene had called them but Thom had bristled Bullshit. You don’t know fuck-all. Dekes are the good guys.

Virgil had long ago ceased wondering why his older brother disliked him. Still it was a puzzle to him, why his father hadn’t seemed to like him except at the end, what was to be the end of his father’s life, in his hospital bed listening to Virgil playing his flute and something like love in his face.

T’ss g’d. L’k t’ss.

Virgil had drawn close to his father to hear better. What did these whispered sounds mean, uttered with such effort?

Jessalyn could usually decipher what Whitey was trying to say. And Sophia. But not Virgil, usually.

At the house, following the death, Virgil had drifted off from the others. He’d felt—oh, what had he felt?—he did not know if he was sick with grief, stunned and baffled with loss, or whether—(but this was unexpected)—he was feeling airy, aerated.

Never would he see his father again. Never again, that pinch at the corner of Dad’s eyes, the tug of Dad’s smile, the (almost palpable) hesitation before Dad greeted him. Virgil. How’s it going.

In Whitey’s home office, in a farther corner of the house. As a child Virgil had not been allowed in this room except if Whitey invited him inside but that had rarely happened, as Virgil recalled. I don’t want you kids messing in here. A shut door means stay out.

The surprise was, Whitey’s big desk and adjoining table were clean. Neatly ordered as if he’d known that he would not be returning.

On the desk was Whitey’s big state-of-the-art console computer with a dark screen. Idly Virgil wondered what Whitey’s password might be.

He could never hack his way into his father’s computer. Virgil hadn’t the computer skills, Sabine was more skilled than he.

Not that he wanted to hack into Whitey’s private life. If his father had secrets, better not to know.

If Virgil had secrets, better that no one knows.

Barely Virgil could hear his family in another part of the house, his sisters’ voices.

They were nowhere near. They would not know…

Swiftly Virgil moved. Stealthily Virgil moved. Twenty years and more he’d craved to do this, unobserved. And now—Whitey will never know.

Opening desk drawers. Just to see.

Nothing of evident interest: documents, folders, envelopes, stamps.

In a lower, deep drawer: bank records, checkbooks. Stock printouts.

If he’d had more time he might have studied these records. But he did not want to know how much money his father had, really. There was something repugnant about such knowing. And so many documents, he’d have had to pore over them, and this would be degrading.

He’d thought, when news came of Whitey’s death—He won’t remember me in his will. Of course.

He was determined not to care. He did not care.

On a corner of Whitey’s large handsome desk was a paperweight. A heavy, triangular rock of about the size of a man’s fist, pink-gleaming, glittering. Quartz? Pink feldspar? Possibly it was a gift to Whitey, with a sentimental meaning; possibly, Whitey had acquired it on his own, and so it surely had a sentimental meaning.

Virgil crammed the rock into a pocket. No one would ever miss it.

“SOMETHING BAD HAS HAPPENED to Grandpa.”

The grandchildren had known that Grandpa Whitey was very sick for they’d been taken to visit him in the hospital. Almost, they had not recognized the ravaged man in the bed who breathed funny, and smelled funny, and when he tried to talk to them, talked funny so that they could not understand him.

“Grandpa has gone away…”

These were weak, faltering words put to the younger grandchildren, who had not a clear idea what “death” was. But the older grandchildren were frightened too. It was alarming to them, to see the faces of adults streaked with tears. They were very still biting their lips waiting for this awkwardness to stop.

“Grandpa has p-passed away… He loved you so much!”

This was making them feel bad. Like bad children. But—it was not clear what they had done that was bad, exactly.

The older grandchildren had known Grandpa Whitey the longest time—all their lives! And so, they knew him much better than the younger grandchildren.

To them, Grandpa Whitey had long been the only “old” person who made you smile and laugh and did not scold, ever. Grandpa Whitey behaved sometimes like a child himself, bossy and unpredictable, sometimes cranky but always funny. Grandpa Whitey was so unlike other grandparents, he was fun.

But now, Grandpa Whitey had passed away. And passed away was not fun but scary. And passed away became boring after only a few minutes.

For there was nothing for the grandchildren to do or say about passed away. There was nothing to look at about passed away.

Passed away was a kind of special language only the adults could speak to one another. The grandchildren could not participate in this speech. Only the very young grandchildren asked silly questions that were unanswerable—“Where did Grandpa go?”

The older grandchildren rolled their eyes, in misery.

It was a sad, subdued time in the grandparents’ house on Old Farm Road following the “cream-ation” (a mysterious event which none of the grandchildren had attended and of which they were told very little). The grandchildren grew restless at having to be so still, and so quiet. They were forbidden to run outside. They were forbidden to run on the stairs. Their skin itched, they’d been made to wear “good” clothes. Their nostrils itched to be picked. But you could not pick your nose at such a time. Gross!

You could not even laugh. For there were adults all over and the adults outnumbered the children.

It was strange to them, all these adults—and no Grandpa Whitey.

That would take a while to absorb—no Grandpa Whitey.

There was plenty to eat for Grandma Jessalyn made the very best food but still, at this sad, subdued time you were warned not to stuff your face like a pig or spill food all over your nice clean clothes.

The older grandchildren drifted together on the farther side of the buffet table. They were making an effort to talk about Grandpa Whitey without the adults present. It was not possible to talk about Grandpa Whitey and how bad they felt that he had passed away with any adult listening for to speak of Grandpa Whitey with any adult listening, especially Grandma Jess, or Beverly who was always blowing her nose and sniffling, was very awkward, and made the words sound wrong.

Oh, what was there to say? It was hard even to cry, none of it seemed real.

Already Grandpa Whitey was on the far side of a ravine. Grandpa Whitey was walking away. Limping away. You could see only his back—the back of his head. They’d been made to visit Grandpa Whitey in the hospital and were frightened by the change in him, and so they did not wish to recall that person, who’d been (almost) a stranger to them, but the other Grandpa Whitey, before the hospital.

They did not ever utter the word stroke. They did not think—stroke. This was an adult term, an old-people’s clinical term, it would never apply to them.

The grandchildren were all cousins! The oldest was seventeen and the youngest was six.

Some of the grandchildren were allies. Some of them were rivals.

Beverly’s older children knew to resent (sort of) their cousins because their cousins’ father (Uncle Thom) was more important to Grandpa Whitey than their mother was; at any rate, this was what their mother believed, and grumbled all the time about. (Brianna’s words.) For Uncle Thom was some sort of partner with Grandpa Whitey, while Beverly had nothing to do with the family business.

(Were Uncle Thom and his family richer than Beverly and her family? Was that it?)

Among the grandchildren/cousins were shifting alliances. The older children preferred one another’s company (even if they did not always “like” one another) for no one is so boring as a younger brother or sister or cousin.

The older grandchildren/cousins went to different schools in different districts of North Hammond except for Brianna (Bender) and Kevin (McClaren) who went to North Hammond High but were in different classes: sophomore (Brianna), senior (Kevin).

Lanky-limbed shock-haired Kevin was saying how for his tenth birthday Grandpa Whitey had taken him to a secondhand bookstore in downtown Hammond where there was an entire wall of comic books in cellophane wrappers; Grandpa Whitey had seemed to know a lot about comic books, and talked with the proprietor for a long time, and bought old copies of Action Comics, Flash Comics, Batman, Superman, Spiderman to give to Kevin. It had been a surprise to Kevin that Grandpa Whitey knew so much about comic books, and cared about them, and really great of Grandpa Whitey to buy these “rare” comics for Kevin though (as Kevin admitted) he didn’t know exactly what he’d done with the comic books, had to be in his room, somewhere; in a drawer or a closet where one day he’d discover them unopened in their cellophane wrappers though yellowed and torn, returning home from college and a pang of loss would sweep through him like a kick in the gut—Oh. Grandpa Whitey. Wiping his eyes with the edge of his hand.

Surreptitiously Brianna checked her cell phone another time. Had the message she’d been waiting for all day come, at last? No.

Shit.

“PUT THAT CELL PHONE AWAY. So rude!”—Aunt Lorene hissed into her bratty niece’s ear.

Quickly, abashedly Brianna shoved the phone into a pocket. How had anyone seen?

“At such a time! Your grandfather has just passed away and you are on that damned phone. For shame.”

Brianna’s eyes welled with tears. Brianna swallowed hard, and shrank away in shame.

Kevin shot her a covert look. Better you than me!

All of the grandchildren disliked and feared their Aunt Lorene who saw through sham good-behavior-in-the-presence-of-adults. Not even the youngest of her nieces and nephews were spared Aunt Lorene’s piercing raptor-eye: she knew children’s secrets and such secrets disgusted her for often they had to do with fibbing, nose-picking, going-to-the-bathroom-in-some-slovenly-way, failing to adequately wash hands, staining underwear, pajamas, sheets.

Staining sheets. Adolescent boys, Aunt Lorene knew so thoroughly, with such disgust, disdain, and yet bemusement, it was (almost) pointless to greet her in a normal voice, to smile and say, trying not to stammer, H-Hi Aunt Lorene… For Lorene knew, knew all, and did not forgive, as she knew, arguably, even more of adolescent girls and their nasty, dirty, sheet-staining habits, their time-of-the-month stains, smells, faux-cramps calculated to get them excused from gym class. Worse yet, girls’ slutty clothes, makeup, and fingernails painted the most lurid colors—dark purple, bright blue.

Lorene spoke darkly, in a lowered voice: “The least you kids could do, at such a time, is pretend to mourn your grandfather—at least.”

Beating them about the heads with a broom, it felt like. Even Kevin who was five feet, ten inches tall flinched.

Laser-eyed Aunt Lorene. She’d look you in the eye and whatever you’d been hoping to pretend, that worked with other adults, Aunt Lorene totally ignored, seeing you.

Brianna dared to stammer: “But we do m-m-miss Grandpa…” Her voice was so low, Aunt Lorene could pretend she hadn’t heard.

It was strange, the older children could remember when their aunt hadn’t been so mean to them. When they’d been little: Beverly’s children, Thom’s children. Little nieces and nephews, she’d seemed actually to like. She’d been an almost-silly doting aunt for years. She’d bought them “educational” toys—lots of books—but then, about the time they started school, she began to grow wary; she’d said it was the time children learn to “dissemble”—they are not born with that facility, but acquire it, at about the age of six. Ironic that she’d liked Kevin and Brianna so much when they were babies but couldn’t seem to stand them now that they were teenagers.

(Did it have to do with sex?—the older grandchildren wondered. Or was it just with kids’ bodies, that Lorene found repulsive?)

And now it was worse. Today. Aunt Lorene seemed anxious, angry. Her short-cut hair lifted from her head like an indignant jaybird’s crest. Her mean mouth quavered. As if Grandpa Whitey passing away was not something the principal of North Hammond High had expected and had no idea how to factor into her no-nonsense life, like discovering filth on her hands in a public place with nowhere to wipe it.

AUNT SOPHIA THEY LIKED. Aunt Sophia was OK.

Though not-young Sophia looked young. Usually Sophia wore jeans, white shirt not tucked-in, no belt. Hair tied back so her long pale earnest face was exposed. Never wore makeup, no color on her mouth. Even at the house on Old Farm Road after their grandfather had passed away Aunt Sophia was unadorned, stark and staring and sincere in her grief. You did not feel, seeing Aunt Sophia, that she would suddenly crouch over, grab you in her arms and start bawling into your terrified face.

The older smarter grandchildren were impressed by an aunt who was a scientist, how smart Sophia was (and not sneering-smart like Lorene) in a way that seemed casual as if everyone should know what “mitosis” is—“natural selection”—“dark matter.” Any school question you had, especially math or science, Sophia would know and explain it so you could understand at least at the time she told you, and she never laughed at you or showed impatience but might murmur Good! Now you have it.

But how did Grandpa Whitey pass away? Hadn’t Grandpa Whitey been recovering?—thirteen-year-old Alice (McClaren) had to ask her aunt Sophia for there was no one else to ask, who would not make her feel terrible for asking; and Sophia started to explain, weakened immune system, influx of deadly bacteria, “staph” infection, but then Sophia went silent and began to choke up as if she could not continue.

Quickly then Sophia turned away. Alice was left to stare after her feeling just terrible.

HOW MANY HUGS FROM GRANDMA JESS, how many whispers—Grandpa loved you! Grandpa will miss you.

IT WAS NOT THE FIRST death in her life of more than six decades. Hardly!

She was tired, yes. She was very tired. Yet: the house was her house and it was a beautiful house fragrant now with the most beautiful flowers and she was determined to be the hostess.

The duty of a hostess is to make all guests feel at ease, and welcome; to make all guests happy to have come to your house, and reluctant to leave.

“Oh, please don’t leave yet. It’s early.”

And: “You know how Whitey loved parties.”

This was not a party, was it? Just family, relatives, very close and very old friends.

They were serving Whitey’s very best liquor. Whitey’s best wine, beer and dark German ale. Some of the visitors were so devastated, it was scarcely possible to keep their glasses filled.

And Whitey’s favorite mixed nuts with a prevalence of cashews, and those awful-tasting peas, Whitey ate by the handfuls—wasabi?

A buffet of Whitey’s favorite dishes—poached salmon with dill, chicken pasta salad Provençal, those little spicy meatballs served with toothpicks. Swedish crackers, cheeses.

The impromptu gathering at the house on Old Farm Road was not a memorial for the deceased (there would be a proper memorial in December to which hundreds of persons would come to recollect, to mourn, and to honor John Earle McClaren) but an occasion for remembrance. For those who’d loved Whitey McClaren and wished to comfort his widow and children.

Not that Jessalyn McClaren was a “widow”—not yet. In the woman’s fine-boned face was the look of someone who has been struck very hard and very decisively on the skull, the skull has shattered, yet has not fallen into pieces, just yet; the watery, just perceptibly bloodshot eyes hold firm, fixed.

“Whitey would be so happy to see you here! Please, let me fill your glass…”

The McClaren children, all grown up. Looking dazed, disoriented. Even the eldest—Thom. And poor Beverly, face swollen with grief. Though none of them could have been totally surprised that their father, nearing seventy, had died of complications following a stroke.

For so the obituaries said—Complications following a stroke.

(One glance at Whitey McClaren, you could guess the man had high blood pressure. Thirty pounds overweight at least, drank too much, ate too much red meat and fried onion rings, smoked.)

(Still, it was a shock. Such a great, generous guy. Nobody quite like Whitey McClaren—an honest politician! Always so alive.)

“Please don’t be upset. You know how Whitey loved you all…”

She was smiling. She was determined to smile. Her lips were parched, finely cracked. But she’d done something desperate—smeared red lipstick on her mouth that, in the waxy pallor of her face, looked bizarre as neon.

Also, her hair that had never seemed to be lusterless and lank and faded had been brushed back flat against her head showing the stark outline of her skull in a way sobering and sad to see.

Poor Jessalyn! How will she live without Whitey to take care of her…

Yet aloud in chiming voices they marveled at how “elegant” she was in black silk, a black lace shawl tight around her shoulders, stone-colored shoes. Pink-toned pearls Whitey had given her for an anniversary, a double strand rising and falling with her quickened breath.

No one knew: she’d lost so much weight in a week, she’d had to use a safety pin at the waist of the black silk skirt that fell to mid-calf, to secure it.

No one knew: since the cremation that morning when she’d come close to fainting she’d been light-headed, nauseated, running to the bathroom every half hour, bowels like scalding-hot suet…

Demeaning facts, Whitey had no need to know.

Much in her life recently, Whitey had no need to know!

However, she was going to be all right. She was determined.

Comforting others: she was good at that.

McClaren relatives. Neighbors on Old Farm Road. Whitey’s high school friends in their late sixties, early seventies looking shaken and sick and scared like divers on a high board with no choice but to follow a disastrous dive—If there’s anything I can do, Jessalyn. Let me know.

Mr. Colwin, the kids had called him. Mr. and Mrs. Colwin who’d lived next door to the McClarens on Old Farm Road until Mrs. Colwin who’d been a nice lady died, and Mr. Colwin was left alone, and Jessalyn and Whitey invited him to dinner, how many family dinners, Thanksgivings, Christmases, included Leo in their parties, poor Leo Colwin, so long retired no one could remember what his profession had been, living now in a retirement village in East Hammond, wearing an old-man zip-up olive-green cardigan riddled with moth holes, old-man moccasins with little tassels, so shaken by the news of Whitey’s death he’d clung to Jessalyn’s hand for so long, Virgil (who scarcely left his mother’s side all evening) was beginning to think he’d have to intervene.

If there’s anything I can do, Jessalyn. Let me know.

Mr. Colwin, arriving hungry. Haunting the buffet, impossible to avoid him.

Just beyond the drinks table the impertinent question was being asked: Would Jessalyn be selling the house now?

Beautiful old Revolutionary War–era house with several acres of land—two-three million at least. Of course it wasn’t an ideal time to talk now—but—if…

Stiffly Thom said no, he doubted that his mother would be selling the house anytime soon.

Stiffly Beverly said, no! Absolutely, her mother would not be selling the house anytime soon. (And when Jessalyn did want to sell the house it would not be put “on the market” but would be sold privately.)

If there’s anything I can do. Please let me know.

A property like this needs to be brokered in just the right way.

Terrible shock!—but Jessalyn had the children who were devoted to her, rallying around her, that was a comfort. Without the children, unimaginable.

The cremation had been that morning, early. You wouldn’t call it a “ceremony” exactly.

Just the family had been there. No young children (of course).

The ashes—(it was not possible to say Whitey’s ashes)—were in an urn that looked like antique masonry but was made of some cheap synthetic material like compressed cardboard, with a very tight lid.

Heavier than you’d expect. But not heavy.

They would take the urn to be buried in the cemetery in North Hammond which was both a churchyard (behind the Presbyterian church) and a municipal burying ground where McClarens had been buried dating back to 1875.

In a single burial plot, you can fit two urns. Easily.

No. No plans for the memorial yet.

Probably in December, before Christmas.

Still, the doorbell kept ringing. Why were people coming so late?

Thom had had enough. Jesus! It was 9:20 P.M. The day had begun for the family at 6:00 A.M. (Half these people hadn’t been invited. Who the hell had invited them? Every time the damned phone rang his mother was inviting someone else to the house. What would Whitey say—Jessalyn! Lock the God damn door and turn out the lights.)

In a room off the living room there was Mr. Colwin in a chair, legs asprawl, looking sickly-white as if he’d had a faint, and one of the neighbor ladies fussing over him. Who the hell invited him?

Upstairs in a guest bathroom smelling so strongly of lavender soap you could hardly breathe there was shock-haired Kevin producing a joint out of a baggie for Brianna, the cousins giggling together and the door locked behind them.

Maybe open the window? Great.

Downstairs they were keeping a sharp eye on Jessalyn.

How many times hearing their mother say in a voice of wonder how surprised Whitey would be, if he could see them all together like this. “He’d say, ‘What’s this? A party in the middle of the week? Why wasn’t I invited?’”

“DO YOU KNOW WHO DIOGENES IS?”

Impulsively Virgil spoke. They were outside at the rear of the house: Virgil’s breath steamed faintly about his mouth.

“Is? Don’t you mean was?”

“Was, then. Who Diogenes was.”

“Some old, ancient Greek philosopher who’s been dead a thousand years.”

Thom spoke carelessly, with an air of contempt. But Virgil persisted:

“More like two thousand. More than two thousand.”

It was late. The air was cold and wet and smelled of rotted leaves.

The last of the guests had departed finally but none of the McClaren children wanted to leave the house on Old Farm Road just yet.

They were wandering in the frost-stubbled grass behind the house that resembled a ship in the dark, looming high above them, only a few lights burning.

They were drunk. Drunken. Even Sophia who never drank had had several glasses of Whitey’s white wine over several hours and had to concede, it was delicious.

Lorene said, lighting a cigarette borrowed from Thom—(rare for Lorene, with a harried, inexpert striking of a match), “Diogenes was a ‘stoic’ about whom lurid tales were told such as he went about naked in just a barrel, or was it a bathtub…” She paused, considering. “Or no, that was the ‘Eureka!’ man, in the bathtub, what’s-his-name…”

“Archimedes.”

“What?”

“Who. ‘Archimedes’—the one in the bathtub, who discovered the law of gravity.”

“No. Wait.” Sophia objected, laughing. How ignorant her siblings were! It endeared them to her, somehow—they seemed so much more American than she, so casual and careless about things that should matter but clearly did not. “You must know that it was Newton who discovered the ‘law of gravity.’”

“So what did Archimedes discover, then?”

“Many things! But you are thinking of the mathematician calculating that the volume of water displaced by an object must be equal to the volume of the object—supposedly, his own body as he stepped into a bathtub.”

“Somehow, that seems obvious.” Beverly, who’d been silent, brooding, spoke suddenly. In the house she’d kicked off her tight-fitting high-heeled shoes after the last guest had left and now she was wearing a pair of Whitey’s old boots. Her breath steamed about her mouth as if she were panting. “I mean—you lower yourself into a bathtub, the water spills over. Why is that a great discovery?”

Lorene said, bemused: “You think you’d have discovered whatever it was Archimedes discovered, Bev? Two thousand years ago?”

Beverly persisted: “It’s like Steve getting water all over the bathroom floor—not from a bathtub but from the shower. How’s he do it? Like, the volume of his actual body, in water. Though there are shower curtains—of course. But with Steve, they’re on the inside of the tub…” Beverly’s slurred voice trailed off, she seemed confused by what she is saying.

“We were talking about inventions, Bev. Discoveries.”

“Well. I couldn’t discover anything invisible. Math, or physics, germs…”

But germs was a blunder. If Beverly were trying, in her clumsy way, to be amusing, entertaining.

For it was germs that had killed their father. Though called by the fancier name bacteria.

Of the McClaren children, only Lorene was considered witty, even when she wasn’t. When Beverly made an effort to be funny, the others frowned, resisting.

Sophia was the earnest schoolgirl, Lorene the sardonic schoolmistress. Thom was the bossy one, whose sarcasm could be construed as funny, if it wasn’t directed at you. Virgil just was.

Were we always like this?—Sophia wondered. Or are these the roles we settle into, when we are together?

In her schoolgirl fashion Sophia was explaining that Archimedes’ discovery allowed for a new way of measuring volume. That was why it was important. But the bathtub story—“Eureka!”—was probably apocryphal.

“‘Apocryphal’—‘apocalyptic’—who gives a damn?”

Lorene laughed coarsely. It was clear that Lorene had had too much to drink.

“I mean, who gives a shit? Seriously.”

It was high school speech, shit. Any sort of brainless profanity, obscenity. Fascinating to Lorene, and repugnant, how sub-literate the high school students were when they spoke to one another, or sent their idiot text messages. Even the smart ones. Since becoming a public school teacher, and then an administrator, Lorene had begun to speak in a patois of a kind, not her own speech, a cruder, crueler speech meant to entertain and alarm. The others detected in their sister, who’d once been relentlessly upbeat and vigorous, like a marcher so close behind you the toes of her boots nudge your heels, a kind of angry despair they did not want to acknowledge.

“Whoa!”—Thom steadied Lorene as she stumbled. On her feet were ankle-high black leather boots.

“Fuck you. Hands off.” Lorene giggled, exhaling smoke in steamy little spurts.

All this while Virgil had been easing away from them. Not in disapproval or repugnance but obliviousness, Virgil’s maddening obliviousness, as if he were alone.

Beginning now to run down the hill in long strides to the stream that bordered the McClaren property, swollen from recent rains, sparkling and glittering in the muted light of a quarter moon.

They looked after him. What was it about Virgil that so annoyed?

“Did you see him tonight? Acting like Hamlet’s ghost.”

“It’s all an act. He doesn’t care about Daddy at all. It’s all just ‘illusion’—‘world of shadows’—Buddhist crap. Things slide off him like—what’s it—oil off a duck’s back.”

“‘Oil off a duck’s back’?—what’s that mean?”

“The duck’s feathers are oily, I think. Water slides off the duck’s feathers like oil.”

“He brought that damned flute with him. He actually intended to play it.”

Why Virgil hadn’t played his flute wasn’t clear. They’d seen Jessalyn speaking with him, no doubt encouraging him, for Virgil was one of those persons who requires being urged to do something he fully intends to do; yet, mysteriously, perhaps perversely, Virgil hadn’t played the damned flute after all.

Sophia said, “Well—it’s kind of nice to hear. There’s a haunting sound to it…”

“Oh, Christ! It isn’t a real flute. It’s some thing with holes in it he carved, and a real flutist—”

“—flautist—”

“—would laugh in his face. Everything Virgil does is amateur.”

This was true. This was irrefutable. And everything Thom did, and everything Lorene did, and everything Sophia did, was professional.

Beverly, who resented Virgil as much as the others, but was stung by their disparagement of amateur, said, in defense of their brother: “The fact is, Dad liked Virgil playing the flute. Or whatever it was. If those were Dad’s last days it was kind of wonderful, not that anyone realized at the time, that he seemed to be enjoying Virgil’s music that he wouldn’t have listened to for five seconds when he’d been well.”

“Poor Whitey didn’t have much choice, he was a captive audience.”

“No. Daddy did enjoy Virgil’s flute. Mom was grateful, she has said so.”

“Bullshit. Mom would say anything, you know that.”

“What do you mean—‘anything’? Mom never lies.”

“Mom never lies—from her perspective. But much of what Mom says, or believes, is just not true.”

“And you know this—how?”

Beverly turned a face of fury on her tall swaggering brother. God, she was fed up with Thom! Ever since Whitey was hospitalized Thom had assumed authority within the family; as head of McClaren, Inc.’s textbook division, Thom had naturally assumed authority over the entire company.

As majority stockholder in the family business. Never forget that!

Next day, Whitey’s will would be read at the law office. Beverly felt a pang of dread. She knew that Whitey had loved her very much, more than he’d loved Lorene, for instance, and more than he’d loved Virgil, obviously; but Thom was the firstborn, and had always been special to his father.

As for Sophia, she seemed too slight, somehow. Though Beverly knew that Whitey was proud of their young sister, she couldn’t think that Sophia mattered to him quite so much as Beverly did, who’d provided him and Jessalyn with beautiful grandchildren.

(At least, Whitey and Jessalyn thought the Bender children were beautiful, or had been so, as babies.)

Overhead, the wan fading moon in an inky-black sky.

Here below, somewhere in safekeeping in the house, their father’s ashes in a faux-stone urn with a tight, tight lid.

Down at the stream where they’d played as children long ago Virgil was squatting, back to them. On the far side of the stream was a dense stand of fir trees and beyond that, a lightless sky.

“Do you think Mom will sell the house? I hope not.”

“Of course, eventually. Whitey couldn’t face selling it but Mom is more practical. She’ll do the sensible thing…”

“Which is? Give the house to you?”

“Nobody is giving the house to anyone! That’s ridiculous”—Beverly was hurt, stung.

“And where would Mom live, if she sold the house?”

“She could buy a smaller house. She could buy a condominium. She has widow-friends, they’ve all downsized. There’s that beautiful ‘retirement’ community, what’s it called—Ten Acres. Mr. Colwin lives there. They can play bridge together! This was coming anyway, selling the house I mean, even if Daddy had—hadn’t—had a s-stroke…”

“Mom could live with us. Brooke would like that, I think.”

“To help with the kids? With the housework? Sure, Brooke would love that.”

“What the hell are you saying, Beverly? I wouldn’t treat my mother like a servant. We have servants.”

We have servants. How smug this sounded! Smirking Beverly had no need to say a word.

Ridiculous anyway: all Thom and Brooke had were maids who came once a week, a nanny to help with the younger children, meals, and cleanup. How was that servants?

Deftly Lorene intervened: “What’s he doing down there? Wading in the water?”

They stared at their brother, a shadowy figure some fifty feet away that might have been, if they hadn’t known it was human, a vulture or a buzzard, very still hunched at the water’s edge.

“Did you see him tonight? Acting like Hamlet’s ghost.”

“You said that before—but did Hamlet have a ghost? I think the ghost was supposed to be Hamlet’s father…”

“He was hanging over Mom every minute. Hardly let anyone near her.”

“Poor Virgil! I think this has hit him hard…”

“It has hit us all hard. Jesus!”

“Yes, why ‘poor Virgil’? He didn’t love Dad. He’ll just move in with Mom.”

“Of course! He’ll move in with Mom. You are one hundred percent correct. He’ll pry all of Dad’s money out of Mom that he can, to give to his ridiculous charities…”

“Oh, no he won’t. He will not.”

“You know Mom, she’s so—”

“—so not at all—”

“—firm. Stern.”

“I’ve said it: enabling. Our brother is a kind of addict, a hippie-bullshit-addict, and our dear mother has enabled him.”

“We can talk to her. We can be stern with her. We can just make it clear to her, what Whitey would wish.”

Sophia stood a little apart, not wanting to listen to the urgent lowered voices of the others. Wanting to protest—But I could move back with Mom, too. Virgil and me both. Why not?

Soon then Virgil came loping back to them like a greyhound, his eyes furtive and shining. In an ecstatic voice he said:

“It’s like I could feel the spirit of our father—almost… The ‘creek,’ he called it. So beautiful, and peaceful…”

Virgil was wearing a long dark-leather jacket buttoned to the throat, badly frayed and cracked, that gave him the look of a priest of another era—Dostoyevsky, Russian Orthodox, impassioned and deluded. Like most of his clothes the leather jacket was both dramatic and silly, like a costume. And like a costume, purchased at a secondhand shop.

With the long buttoned-up jacket Virgil wore brown corduroy trousers of the kind he’d worn in middle school, sandals with dark socks. Beverly perceived with a shiver of repugnance how the nails of both Virgil’s big toes were beginning to poke through the dark socks.

There he stood, before them. Shivering with a kind of excitement, they chose to ignore.

“Should one of us stay with Mom tonight? I can.”

“I can.”

“Mom doesn’t want us to ‘baby’ her, she has said…”

“It’s hardly ‘babying,’ to spend the night in the house. She won’t even know, I think she’s gone to bed by now.”

“Yes, but is Mom able to sleep?”

The question hovered about them like a soft, silent moth. Not one of them had been able to sleep in any normal way since their father’s hospitalization.

“She has sleeping pills. I think she’s been taking them.”

“She really doesn’t want us ‘babying’ her—she has said.”

“D’you think it’s real to her?”

“No.”

Beverly gave a little, choked sob. “Oh, God. What is Mom going to do? They’ve been—they’d been—married forty years…”

Sophia said, uncertainly, “Well—look… People die every day, and their families survive. Somehow.”

Not what she’d meant to say, or what she was feeling.

“I mean—Mom has plenty of widow-friends. They have all survived, somehow.”

Again, this was not right. Sophia persisted, trying to be exact.

“It just happened sooner than we expected, and we’re—we’re surprised. In stress experiments, with lab animals, some are devastated and demoralized by stress and give up right away but others—(it’s genetic, that’s the point of the experiment)—learn to adjust, and can survive—to a degree.” Sophia paused, stricken with horror. What was she saying? Were the others staring at her in disgust and dismay? Blindly she continued:

“We haven’t had time to adjust. Mom didn’t have time. It all came too fast. We were expecting Daddy to recover.”

How reasonable this was! How primly Sophia spoke, for one whose head was swirling, and how hopeful she was, that her impatient sisters and brothers would take her seriously for once, and not dismiss her as the baby.

(And was Sophia a virgin? Beverly and Lorene discussed this possibility, often. Beverly thought yes, Lorene thought no. Each had persuasive arguments that could not persuade the other.)

(Sophia’s brothers had no opinion on the subject of her virginity and would never have discussed it with anyone.)

With a grim sort of satisfaction Lorene said: “Well. Stress kills.”

Furtive-shining-eyed Virgil said: “About Diogenes?”

“What about ‘Diogenes’?”

They’d all been hoping that Virgil would have forgotten whatever he’d meant to tell them. Just—no.

But: unbelievably then, with no mind for how hurtful, how wounding, how crude, how stupid, how offensive and unforgivable his words were to his grieving sisters and brother: “Diogenes had the right idea about death. How over-seriously we take it. How we fuss. The body is just ‘material’—a thing that is sloughed off. Essentially, a human corpse is garbage. Diogenes proclaimed that when he died he wanted his body tossed over the city wall for scavengers to eat.” Virgil paused, smiling. That smile struck them like a draft of cold rank air.

“Virgil. For heaven’s sake…”

“Asshole. Go away.”

The look in Virgil’s face, disingenuous, yet defiant, arrogant, you wanted to slap it off, how inappropriate such remarks were, their father only just passed away.

Their dear father who’d become, in a matter of minutes, a body.

Stubbornly Virgil said, “How is Diogenes not correct? He called himself a ‘cynic’—(cynic is Greek for dog)—but what he says is not at all cynical, it is absolutely true. If you believe in the soul, as Diogenes did, the soul is immortal—the body is trash. The soul does not decay, the body decays.”

“Will you please shut up?”

Thom threatened to grab hold of Virgil. As the sisters tried to intervene, Thom pushed Virgil, hard.

Virgil protested, trying to duck. But Thom was too strong, and, though he’d been drinking, and was very tired, too quick for Virgil whom he grabbed in a headlock, as he’d done when they were boys, when Thom was a big boy, and Virgil was a puny little boy.

Beverly cried, “Thom! Don’t! This is crazy.”

“He’s crazy. He doesn’t care what damn fucking stupid thing comes out of his mouth.”

With a grunt Thom threw Virgil to the ground. Heavily Virgil fell in the frost-stubbled grass, on his side, and for a moment could not move. Adrenaline rushed through Thom’s veins like liquid fire, delicious.

Virgil lay stunned, frightened. His big brother had hurt him. His ears rang. A thin line of something dark and liquid ran from one of his nostrils and tears welled in his widened eyes.

Sophia pleaded, “Thom, come on. Virgil was just talking…”

“Nobody wants to listen to his bullshit.”

“What if Mom hears you? For God’s sake…”

Angrily Thom staved off his sisters’ restraining hands. Virgil had managed to get to his feet and cowered in front of him.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. Christ! Think I’d kill you.”

The fury was spent. As quickly as it had flared up, it subsided.

Like a kicked dog Virgil ran limping toward the house. He would go crying to their mother, Thom supposed. God damn him!

His sisters were fearful of Thom, also. Standing a little apart from him as he stood spread-legged, breathing hard, his heart kicking in his chest like a crazed thing.

Hiding from his sisters’ eyes the hot elation in his face.

IN THE POCKET, the triangular rock.

Even as he fell he was reaching for it. Removing it, with some difficulty.

On the ground, and then on his knees. And on his feet grabbing at his brother who loomed over him flush-faced and brute in drunkenness, rage. And swinging the rock at the bully-brother, striking the astonished man on the side of the head, above the left eye, drawing blood, drawing a cry of pain, and leaping from his brother as he staggered—leaping from the women who were screaming at him—

Virgil, no! Virgil!

IN THEIR BED on her side of the bed.

Thoughts come to her in slow floating monosyllables like broken clouds.

Here is the surprise: she is still alive.

It is the first, the most profound of the many surprises the widow will endure. Still alive.

Wakefulness unending like a Sahara glittering and glaring in a hot blinding sun. So many people plucking at her needing to be consoled.

To escape this terrible wakefulness you would do a desperate thing.

In the bathroom on the sparkling-white counter she has laid out the pills. Some of these are her pills, and some of these are Whitey’s pills. Some of them are reasonably new, some are old. The oldest, dated 1993.

Powerful painkillers following root canal work (Whitey’s). Fifty-milligram pills so large she’d have to cut them in two, possibly in thirds, with a serrated knife, to swallow them down with water.

And so many: the little plastic container is almost full.

Out of the medicine cabinet, out of a cupboard in the bathroom, how many pills? Fifty, eighty, one hundred?

Varied sizes, colors. Fascinating to behold.

Maybe you don’t need them, Jess. Not tonight.

It is true. She is very tired and believes that she can sleep without medication.

She’d had one, two, possibly three glasses of wine this evening. Each glass taken up, set down and forgotten in the excitement of greeting new guests, being embraced, kissed. How much she’d actually drunk could not be calculated.

Just come here, Jess. Settle in right here with me.

As always he wraps his arms around her. Their limbs tangle together. His jaws slightly stubbly, needing shaving.

He is a big man. Even horizontal he seems to loom above her.

Always he will love her. Protect her. He has vowed.

It is not Whitey’s voice exactly but a voice of great calm and consolation assuring her The widow is the intermediary between the dead husband and the living world. Without her, he is lost.

The Last Will & Testament of John Earle McClaren

To my dear wife, and my dear children, my estate to be divided accordingly…

Well, the dear children were stunned. They were incensed. They could not believe what Whitey had done.

He’d left them each equal bequests! He’d left Virgil as much as he’d left each of them.

He’d left Virgil as much as he’d left Thom (who was his right-hand man) and he’d left Beverly (who’d scarcely worked a day in her life and was married to a bank officer) as much as he’d left Lorene and Sophia (who’d had to work all their lives).

How was it fair, Beverly fumed, for Whitey to leave her sisters (who were unmarried, had no children, no one except themselves to provide for) as much as he was leaving her, the mother of children? Didn’t Whitey know, had Whitey forgotten, how expensive children are today?

How was it fair, Lorene fumed, for Whitey to leave Thom (who’d already taken over the McClaren family business, with a sharp increase in salary) the identical bequest he’d left her (who’d toiled for years on a public educator’s salary)? How was it fair to leave fat, frowsy Beverly, who had a husband to support her, anything at all?

Thom was disbelieving: that his father had left Virgil anything at all.

Sophia too was stunned by her father’s bequests, but for different reasons. She would not have thought that he would leave her so much money, as well as shares in McClaren, Inc.—the equivalent of five years’ salary at the Institute (before taxes).

Oh Daddy, I don’t deserve this! She wasn’t getting a Ph.D. at Cornell as her family believed. She wasn’t really a scientist, just a lab assistant following the instructions of her supervisor. She had no integrity. Her poor deceived father had had no idea.

She would have thought that Virgil, with virtually no source of income, should have been left more than any of them. But this was not something she’d have dared to say aloud.

Virgil alone of the McClaren children hadn’t showed up at the lawyer’s office. To Sophia he’d said: “Why should I come, to be humiliated? I know what Dad thought of me.” In the final, post-stroke week of his life Whitey had been receptive to Virgil as he’d never been previously; but Virgil knew that his father’s will had been drawn up years before. Sophia said, “But, Virgil, how can you know?” and Virgil said quietly, “I know.”

Sophia saw the hurt in her brother’s eyes. She would not pursue the issue. But thinking now, in the aftermath of the disclosure of the will, that in Virgil’s Buddhist renunciation of desire as in his resignation to something like perpetual defeat there was something complacent, even smug. And mistaken.

“BUT WHY WOULD DAD DO such a thing? ‘In trust’—why?”

The other surprise of Whitey’s will didn’t involve bequests to his children but the arcane stipulations of a trust he’d established for his widow.

Apart from property jointly owned by Mr. and Mrs. John Earle McClaren, which under state law automatically reverted to his widow upon his death, Whitey seemed to have made elaborate financial arrangements for the bulk of his estate to be held “in trust” for Jessalyn. More surprising still, Artie Barron, Whitey’s lawyer, whom Thom and the others knew only slightly, was the executor of this trust.

“Excuse me, Mr. Barron—why did Dad do this? And why you as executor?”

“And when did Dad do this? We didn’t know anything about it… Mom, did you know?”

Slowly Jessalyn shook her head as if she didn’t know the answer to the question. Or—had she not heard the question?

Since she’d been seated beside him, by Artie Barron, at the polished mahogany table, Jessalyn had been very still, and very quiet. Her children had noted that her eyes were red-rimmed and raw-looking; where usually Jessalyn smiled whenever you caught her eye, now she smiled without looking at you, a twitch of a smile, wan and fleeting.

As the terms of the will were being read by Barron in a clipped, precise voice, as a metronome might speak if a metronome could speak, Jessalyn listened with the polite attentiveness of a deaf person hoping not to be discovered that she isn’t hearing a thing.

Barron asked Jessalyn if she understood the terms of the trust her husband had established for her. Like one addressing a convalescent he leaned forward into Jessalyn’s wavering line of vision.

“I—I think so.” Then, seeing how they were all looking at her with concern and pity, “Yes. Of course.”

Thom said, “Mom? Do you understand what this ‘trust’ is?”

“Not in detail, no. But—overall—I know what a ‘trust’ is…”

“If you like, Jessalyn, I can explain more thoroughly. Either now or at another time that is convenient for you… I could come to your house, if you wish. It wasn’t clear to me that your husband had not informed you, or anyone in the family, that he was establishing a trust…”

“Or that he was choosing you to execute it. No. No one told us.”

“No one told us.”

Beverly spoke sharply, glaring at Artie Barron for whom she felt animosity as if (though this was unfair, it was quite natural) blaming him for the equitable nature of her father’s bequests to his children as well.

Jessalyn was thinking how, last time she’d been in this sumptuously appointed room at Barron, Mills & McGee it had been to sign Whitey’s and her wills several years before. How she’d had to plead with Whitey, to get him to come to the law office; before that, even to consider making a will.

He hadn’t opposed her, that was the problem. Whitey had never said no to Jessalyn in their married life. (Or, almost never.) She smiled recalling his habit of just forgetting what they were talking about. The effort of remembering fell to her.

How many times Whitey had said Oh I know, darling—I know I should. But this week is crazy-busy, I can’t make time. Next week…

In the carpeted room Whitey’s voice was almost audible. Jessalyn half-wondered if anyone else could hear.

…remind me again, will you? Thank you, darling.

But the lawyer—(what was his name: Barron)—continued talking in his dogged wearing-you-out way and would not be interrupted. (His meter is on and ticking: “billable hours”—Whitey would say.) You could see that Barron had had plenty of experience contending with unwelcome surprises and disappointed heirs. Thom had asked how much salary he would be receiving as executor of the trust and Barron was giving a masterly evasive answer.

Jessalyn smiled. What had Whitey said after they’d completed their wills and left this office?—What’s the difference between a school of piranha fish and a school of lawyers? She didn’t remember the comical answer but she remembered laughing; she always laughed at Whitey’s jokes. She did remember Whitey’s grim quip—Joke’s on us. Guess how much those damned wills cost.

He’d taken her hand. They’d walked hand in hand to the parking lot.

Had Whitey’s fingers been cold? Maybe… Or maybe she was misremembering.

Words were flying about her now. Trust. In trust. Executor. Salary. Purpose? She saw how words were dangerous as flung rocks. Laid down in layers like rocks, unwieldy and ill-fitting, no sooner set in place than loose and wobbling.

Tasting something dry in her mouth, like the husk of an old dead thing: beetle, a portion of a shrugged-off snakeskin.

She was close to vomiting, and felt the blood rush from her face.

Shakily she rose from her seat at the polished mahogany table. One of the daughters began to rise with her but Jessalyn signaled for her to stay seated. Please.

She was just going to a restroom, she said. No need to follow her.

But standing so quickly had made her light-headed. In the adjoining room which was a kind of lounge something like an old trolley swung toward her through a doorway, bringing chaos with it. An electric trolley, propelled by overhead rails, a most remarkable clatter and racket, on its rails flying white sparks. But how could such a trolley be indoors? Her eyes widened in panic. She shrank, ducked. The receptionist would claim later that Mrs. McClaren had cowered like a poor shelled creature, a turtle, retracting its head, in terror of annihilation.

“AS I UNDERSTAND IT, Whitey worried that your mother would give money away. He thought that she was ‘soft-hearted’—‘insufficiently skeptical.’ He worried”—here Artie Barron lowered his voice, confidingly, with a glance around the table to make sure that no one was present who should not be present—“that your brother Virgil would appeal to her for money, for ‘hippie’ organizations he belonged to, and that she wouldn’t be able to say no. It wasn’t that Whitey didn’t trust her, but he was concerned for her well-being. The amount of money Jessalyn will receive monthly from the trust is generous, and she can give away some of it if she wants to, but there wouldn’t be the temptation to give too much away, since she will need it to live on. There’s no possibility of your mother giving away, for instance, ninety percent of your father’s investments.”

“Mom isn’t so naive, that she’d give away ‘ninety percent’ of anything. That’s an insult.”

“—it is an insult. Poor Mom!—she’s always had to be urged to buy things for herself…”

The sisters spoke excitedly. Artie Barron maintained a calm level so-reasonable tone, like a man leveling cement with a trowel.

“Well, that’s what your father seemed to be saying. He deliberated over this for weeks when we were drawing up the terms. He told me he’d lost sleep over it. He thought that your mother was just too good-hearted, and that people would take advantage of her as soon as—if—something happened to him.” Barron’s voice faltered, as if politely.

Now Thom recalled an awkward conversation he’d had with his father months before, a vague sort of exchange, baffling at the time. Whitey had professed concern about Jessalyn being “taken advantage of” if something happened to him.

In their exchanges, the possibility of death could only be couched in oblique terms. If something happened to me. If Jessalyn was left alone.

Whitey had said extravagantly that he wasn’t much worried about McClaren, Inc.—Thom was doing more than half the business now, and could “easily” take over; but Whitey did worry about Jessalyn, his dear wife.

Thom had said that Jessalyn would hardly be alone; he and his sisters would take care of her, if any sort of care was needed.

(Whitey hadn’t seemed to notice that Thom had failed to mention Virgil.)

But Whitey hadn’t been assured. Whitey had seemed strangely fixated on the possibility that, if something happened to him, Jessalyn would have to be protected.

“You kids have your own lives. You have your own children. I’ve got to provide for Jessalyn. She wouldn’t have a clue if she was left—alone.”

He’d been fretting. Something on his mind. Maybe he’d gone to a doctor, Thom had thought.

“Is there any advantage to a ‘trust’?”—Sophia had to ask, for no one else was asking.

“Yes! Certainly. A widow is protected against what used to be called ‘fortune-hunters’—and a widow is protected against spurious lawsuits against her estate, instigated by unscrupulous persons who want to take advantage of a woman whose husband has just died. The ‘trust’ is a legal protection against marauders.”

It seemed obvious here that Barron meant well-to-do widow. Whitey had fretted that his dear wife was not temperamentally capable of dealing with a large inheritance.

Beverly said, hotly: “We can protect our mother against marauders. We don’t need a ‘trust.’”

Lorene objected: “Enough of this talk of ‘protecting’ Mom. Jessalyn McClaren isn’t an invalid. She’s been taking care of her husband for all of their married life, frankly—she’s been the strong one, not Dad. We are all amazed—she’s handling Dad’s death very well…”

“Very normally, we think.”

“Very normally.”

“Except—”

“—yes, well—”

“—it’s clear she doesn’t seem to—exactly—grasp that Dad is gone.”

There was a pause. Lorene had surprised herself with her words—Dad is gone. Her plain pale tough-elfin face crinkled and with no warning she burst into tears.

Such an astonishing sight, bossy stiff-backed Lorene bursting into tears in the law office of Barron, Mills & McGee, Beverly could not stop herself from crying as well; and of course, in her tremulous state, Sophia broke down also.

Jesus! Thom and Artie Barron exchanged a look of manly consternation.

A READING OF A WILL IS TURBULENCE: after it is read, small quakes and ripples remain as in any agitation of the air, water, or earth.

Needing a drink, badly! Thom spoke in jest, hoping one or two of the others would say God, yes, on our way home, great idea.

Swollen-eyed Beverly licked her lips. (Thom saw.) But no…

Lorene, no. Sophia, no. And Jessalyn, of course—no.

Fuck he’d have to stop for a drink by himself, then. Maybe better, anyway.

Was he drinking too much? If no one to gauge, what is too much?

In Thom’s car driving Jessalyn back to the house on Old Farm Road they tried to gauge their mother’s feelings.

(But did Jessalyn have feelings? She was so selfless, stoic—you could never tell what she was thinking, let alone feeling.)

Was she upset about the trust? Did she even understand? Had (maybe) Whitey told her of his plans, and she hadn’t (quite) been listening? (For Jessalyn had so little interest in finances, she sometimes pressed her hands over her ears when the subject came up. Any discussion of income taxes made her heart flutter.)

The McClarens had never lived extravagantly, not even showily, as others did, who had not nearly as much money as they had, with the result that they’d saved a good deal of money without being quite aware of it. Whitey’s investments, like his business risks, were conservative, with a low yield, but even a low yield adds up, in time.

Except for the trust Whitey’s will had not been unconventional. Equal bequests to his heirs, a scattering of other, smaller bequests to individuals and to charitable organizations to which he and Jessalyn had been donating for years, nothing out of the ordinary, or so it seemed.

No mysterious names, no unexpected beneficiaries. No bastard child or second family! Nothing to baffle or upset them in the wake of his passing.

This was a relief, at least. (Wasn’t it?)

On the matter of the trust, the widow didn’t seem to have any opinion. Whatever her husband had wished, that was his wish: she’d always deferred to him in financial matters. That she could not easily put her hands on hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, for whatever purpose of her own, didn’t concern Jessalyn; she would no more have thought of it than she’d have thought of running away to—Tasmania, the tip of Argentina, the Galápagos or Antarctica.

She had to laugh, the children seemed so incensed on her part. Yet (she guessed) they would be more incensed if she had inherited a good deal of money, and decided to spend it at once.

“You’re not upset, Mom? That’s good.”

“I’ve told you dear—no.”

Why did they keep asking her! How could they be so unfeeling! Investments, property, insurance, McClaren, Inc.—damned “estate”—“trust”—the remainder of her life—what did these mean to her, now that her husband was gone?

Staring at her hands, that smarted as if she’d been scrubbing them with disinfectant, abrading the tender skin.

AT THE HOUSE they would’ve come inside with her but Jessalyn said with a quick, forced smile that she was very tired, and thought she would lie down for a while.

But—they could stay at the house with her, if she wished. If she wanted company.

If she wanted to discuss the will, later. The “trust.” The future.

No, no!—she insisted, she was fine.

“If you’re sure, Mom…”

“…sure you’re feeling all right…”

All but pleading with her. Coercing her. Were they afraid that she would harm herself, if left alone? Do something stupid like falling down the stairs, breaking her neck? Drinking the rest of Whitey’s whiskey, falling into a stupor?

How powerfully it came over her, she wanted no more of this.

Though widowhood had scarcely begun she was exhausted, and could bear it no longer.

“Just go home. Please. You have your own lives. I can take care of myself. It isn’t lonely here—this is Whitey’s house. Thank you!”

One breath and then another, darling. You will get through it.

Taser

Thom’s father was already on the ground and incapacitated, Azim Murthy was saying.

“They were firing point-blank. Your father wasn’t ‘resisting.’ He didn’t even seem to be conscious, he’d stopped pleading with them…”

It was early November. Out of nowhere and in the very week Thom McClaren decided to file a complaint with the Hammond Police Department Civilian Review Board, Azim Murthy appeared in his life.

He’d learned that Mr. McClaren had died, Dr. Murthy said. He’d seen the obituary in the Hammond paper. “I am the only witness who knows what happened.”

As it turned out Dr. Murthy had actually come to Hammond General Hospital in the late afternoon of October 19 to learn if a man—“late sixties, white-haired, heavyset, Caucasian”—had been brought into the ER following a stun-gun assault by police officers; but his contacts at the hospital hadn’t been able to help him, not definitively. A patient named John Earle McClaren, sixty-seven, had been brought into the ER by ambulance at about that time, a stroke victim who’d been in a car crash and not (evidently) a victim of assault.

Dr. Murthy had taken down the information, however. He’d suspected that the “stroke victim” was in fact the man he’d seen assaulted by police officers at the edge of the Hennicott Expressway.

“I was the reason your father stopped. He was protesting two police officers beating me. He was a very brave man, he saved my life. But the police beat him savagely when he intervened. They knocked him down, and kicked him, and shot him with ‘stun guns.’ Even after he was unconscious they kept on. They were like maniacs. Before that they’d shot me also with the electric charge—for no reason. They’d stopped me on the highway claiming that I was ‘driving recklessly’— ‘changed lanes without signaling’—the reason was they’d thought I was a young black man—(this is what my lawyer has told me)—and they wanted to search the car for drugs or whatever else they could find, that they’d thought a young black man might have in his car. When they saw who I was—that I was not an ‘African-American’—they were furious. They did not pay any attention when I tried to tell them that I am a doctor, and where I worked. They did not even look at my ID or driver’s license. They pretended to be thinking that I was ‘under the influence’—‘driving recklessly.’ When they couldn’t find any drugs in my car they were more angry. They shouted at me to put my hands over my head and to get down on my stomach, on the ground. No matter how I obeyed them they kept shouting like insane men. I was trying to shield my face and head—I was begging them not to hurt me—this was interpreted as ‘resisting arrest.’ They kept shouting at me. For no reason then, except that I was writhing on the ground in pain, they fired their stun guns at me. The electric shock is awful—paralyzing. I thought I would die. I thought my heart would stop. I could not breathe. I have never felt anything so painful. It’s like a convulsion—being shocked to death. You cannot breathe. About this time your father pulled his vehicle off the highway, and shouted at them to leave me alone. So they turned their attentions to him. It saved my life that he came. I couldn’t see all that they did to him but I could see that they threw him down, and were kicking him, and firing their guns at him point-blank. They were shouting—always shouting. The same two or three things—‘get down’—‘get down’—‘fucker get down’—even if you are already down. They handcuffed me and arrested me and took me to the precinct but your father they left behind for an ambulance to pick up—they saw that he’d had a heart attack or a stroke… They seemed scared then, that they might have killed him. I was in so much pain, and terrified of what they might do to me, I didn’t really know what happened to my ‘rescuer’ at the time. I am not proud to recall, I was in such bad shape I could not think of anyone but myself—I was not thinking clearly. I was in fear of my life. I am not born in this country but I am a U.S. citizen. I was in fear that I could be deported for some reason. I had never been arrested for anything before—I’d never been dragged into a police station. I’d never even been stopped in my car by police. I thought that I might be killed—beaten or shocked to death. It wasn’t like movies or TV, I was not allowed a telephone call. But eventually, at about four A.M. for no reason I could comprehend, I was released. I was not in good shape by that time. I was badly beaten and had many aches and bruises and the shock wounds hurt very badly. But I was very happy to be released. There were no charges against me, I was ‘free to go.’ Someone was feeling sorry for me, or worried about me, that I would die in the jail cell. So I was allowed a phone call, and called for help, for someone to come pick me up and take me to the ER at St. Vincent’s Hospital (which is my place of work) where I was examined for face and head injuries and sprained ribs and pictures were taken of my wounds. They said, you have been beaten, we will call the police but I begged them no!—I wanted only to go home. Even now I am not in good shape but I know that I am very fortunate to be alive. I am a resident physician at St. Vincent’s and work very hard. I do not tell my family of my troubles for they would be terrified more than me. Since the attack I have not slept more than a few hours each night and I have many pains and headaches. I have been told that I was ‘profiled’ as a black man—that was the cause of the arrest. It was a nightmare and made all the worse that another, innocent man—your father—was killed by these madmen. I have filed charges against them. I know their names—I will give you all the information my lawyer has found out for me. I will testify against them for assaulting me and for a ‘false arrest.’ I will testify against them for what they did to your father who did not resist them and was unarmed. They are murderers!”

So astonished was Thom by this torrent of words from a young Indian man whom he’d never met before and of whom he’d known nothing, he had to ask Azim Murthy to repeat what he’d said, and to speak more slowly.

Painful to listen to Murthy speak, and to think of poor Whitey so assaulted at the side of a highway, unable to defend himself and alone. Essentially it was what Thom had suspected: his father had not died a natural death, his father had been murdered.

“YOU HAVE GROUNDS FOR BRINGING criminal charges against the police officers, and you have grounds for a multimillion-dollar civil suit.”

Thom was meeting with a Hammond litigator named Bud Hawley, a former associate of Whitey’s. Hawley had made inquiries at the Hammond PD and learned that indeed there’d been an arrest by police officers of “Azim Murthy” on October 18, 2010, on charges of “reckless driving,” “disorderly conduct,” “suspicion,” “disobeying a police officer’s command,” and “resisting arrest.” These charges were subsequently dropped.

There was no record of a second man having been apprehended at about the same time and at the same place on the Hennicott Expressway. There was no record of a second man forcibly restrained, beaten and Tasered into unconsciousness; but there was a Hammond General Hospital record of sixty-seven-year-old John Earle McClaren being brought into the ER by ambulance that afternoon, believed to have suffered a stroke while driving on the Hennicott Expressway, and having sustained injuries when his car slammed into a retaining wall.

The officers’ names were Schultz, Gleeson. Both were patrolmen who’d been with the Hammond PD for years. Questioned by Azim Murthy’s lawyer about the arrest of Murthy on charges the lawyer characterized as “spurious and unfounded”—a consequence of “racial profiling”—the officers had insisted that the young Indian doctor had been driving recklessly, which was why they’d stopped him; they had every reason to suspect that he was driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol; they insisted that he had threatened them; despite warnings he’d advanced upon them and appeared to be reaching for a weapon (in his coat pocket); he’d had to be forcibly restrained for reasons of clear and present danger to officer safety.

When Murthy “continued to resist” they’d had no choice but to fire their stun guns at him a “minimal” number of times.

These statements, seemingly memorized, were sullenly and even defiantly given under the guidance of an attorney for the Hammond PD union who insisted that his clients had not acted in any way in violation of Hammond PD protocol.

“Shooting a man point-blank with a stun gun, not once but several times, after he has been thrown down and handcuffed and is clearly unarmed—that isn’t ‘in violation’ of Hammond PD protocol?”

To which the reply was a reiteration of clear and present danger to officer safety.

The presence of the second man, later identified as John Earle McClaren, was established only after protracted questioning by Murthy’s lawyer. Initially Schultz and Gleeson denied knowledge of McClaren but, confronted with Murthy’s deposition, they acknowledged that a second man had appeared at the scene of the arrest: McClaren had pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway with the intention, it had seemed to them, of interfering with the arrest of Murthy; the officers had believed that McClaren was an accomplice of Murthy, and so had to defend themselves against him.

McClaren, too, had “threatened” police officers, advanced upon them “despite repeated warnings”; made a “threatening” move for his waistband, or his pocket; had to be “forcibly restrained” with a stun gun fired no more than two or three times.

This was an era before police videos. No one had recorded the incident(s). Only twenty-eight-year-old Azim Murthy, himself badly traumatized from having been assaulted, could testify against the police officers.

A preliminary hearing was held at the bequest of Murthy’s lawyer in one of the smaller courtrooms at the Hammond Township courthouse. A township judge presided. Thom was not present: he would be told of the proceedings only afterward. And hearing his lawyer explain the legal situation as he saw it Thom became increasingly agitated. But they killed my father. They precipitated the stroke. He never recovered from the stroke. They are his murderers.

IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE to locate a Hammond PD arrest report on John Earle McClaren for October 18, 2010. If there’d been an arrest there would have been a report; if there’d been an initial report, it must have been destroyed.

Bud Hawley would file for a subpoena to be allowed entry into the Department’s computerized records. But very likely, this record too had been altered following the instruction of someone in the Department.

Thom had evidence, as he saw it, of Taser burns on his father’s face, throat, hands. He’d taken numerous pictures on his cell phone and he’d sent these pictures to Bud Hawley immediately, in case something happened to his phone. He had a copy of the hospital report which noted “burn-like welts” on his father’s face and body which had been initially and inaccurately attributed to lacerations presumably caused by a car crash—(which crash had not in fact occurred).

The police officers had lied about a “car crash.” They’d lied about John Earle McClaren stricken at the wheel of his vehicle, jolting to a stop on the highway shoulder. Their newer account was that McClaren had stopped his vehicle at the side of the road with the “express intention” of intervening in an arrest. They’d had to admit that yes, they’d fired their stun guns at McClaren, felling him, but only for purposes of “officer safety.” They’d fired their guns only before, not after, having handcuffed McClaren.

They would change their stories several times about what had happened to McClaren. In the final version, after they’d had to subdue the fallen man, and handcuff him, he’d seemed to have “some kind of fit”—“like, an eliptetic fit”—so they’d called 911.

Eliptetic?—epileptic?

Or maybe a heart attack, stroke.

Some pre-existing condition he’d had, that wasn’t caused by the arrest.

But why had there been no charges made against John Earle McClaren? Or, if charges had been made, why had charges been dropped? (Nullified by a lieutenant at the ninth precinct, the officers’ immediate superior.) Bud Hawley would claim, on Thom McClaren’s behalf, that the “arrested” man, Thom McClaren’s father, had been left on the shoulder of the highway unconscious, scarcely breathing, having suffered a stroke after being violently assaulted by the officers; he’d been picked up by medical workers and brought to the Hammond General ER where his life had been saved.

Eventually, McClaren’s injuries led to his death. Complications following a stroke precipitated by Hammond police officers in an unprovoked assault of an unarmed, unresisting man of sixty-seven.

FIRST, A COMPLAINT FILED with the Civilian Review Board. Following that, a suit filed against the police officers Schultz and Gleeson and the Hammond PD charging homicide incurred in the commission of reckless endangerment of human life.

Homicide was an extreme charge, Hawley knew. In bargaining, the charge would be lowered to manslaughter (voluntary). There would be ancillary charges of excessive force, police misconduct.

Thom understood: justice was on his side. But Thom also knew: prosecutors, judges, juries were reluctant to find police officers guilty of the most extreme examples of malfeasance.

How humiliated Whitey would be! Worse even than the physical injuries, the blow to his pride. For he’d been proud of his relationship with the Hammond PD which had been very carefully, very diplomatically forged when he’d been mayor two decades before.

Whitey would have wanted the police officers disciplined, fired. Possibly he’d have wanted to press criminal charges and send them to prison. But he wouldn’t have wanted to collect money from the city of Hammond for that meant taxpayers, not the police department. Only if the criminal case was thwarted would Thom consider a civil suit.

While Whitey had been mayor of Hammond a large settlement was made to the family of a young Cambodian man who’d been shot and killed by police officers at the conclusion of a cross-county high-speed chase. Three squad cars, six police officers had given chase at a speed of over eighty miles an hour on country highways. The fleeing “suspect” had ended up in a cornfield in an overturned vehicle. No drugs had been found in the vehicle, no firearms or contraband of any kind, just children’s clothes and toys. The “suspect” had been twenty-seven years old and the father of young children and he’d died in a fusillade of Hammond PD bullets.

It had not been one of the episodes of which Whitey McClaren had been proud in his two-term mayoral career. He’d tried to mediate between the intransigent chief of police on one side and the publicity-seeking attorney for the grieving family on the other.

Finally, after more than a year, and much unfortunate media attention, the city settled with the litigants for an undisclosed sum (one million, five hundred thousand dollars); the officers involved in the high-speed chase and shooting were suspended from the force, and allowed to retire with benefits.

There’d been no question of a criminal trial. There’d been no grand jury. The prosecutor had not pursued the case.

A tragic situation. We cannot risk such a tragedy again.

Whitey had spoken as firmly as possible. He’d given numerous press conferences. He’d chastised the police officers but he had never—quite—criticized the police department as a whole, and he had never directly criticized the chief of police who (he’d wanted to think) was his friend.

He would not have wanted his son to pursue this case. Thom supposed.

And there’d been no autopsy. Thom should have insisted, when Jessalyn demurred. He should have told her why he wanted an autopsy, why an autopsy was necessary, for he meant to bring suit against the Hammond police. But he’d been reluctant to upset his mother further, he’d given in to the emotions of the moment.

“If you’d thought you might be going to sue, you should certainly have insisted on an autopsy, Thom.”

“I couldn’t persuade my mother. I tried.”

“You should have explained to Jessalyn how urgent it was.”

“Jesus! I tried.”

At the time he’d been too tired. His brain had not functioned clearly.

And now, too late. No physical evidence, only an inconclusive medical report which the defense would attempt to undermine, and the testimony of the young Azim Murthy.

STILL, THOM HAD NOT DISCUSSED the situation with his sisters. He had no wish to confront their wild, unpredictable emotions. He had no interest in discussing it with Virgil.

When finally he spoke with Jessalyn, bringing up the subject of a police assault against Whitey as carefully as possible, Thom saw how Jessalyn stiffened, her eyes showed fear. For a wild moment, a moment of sheer pathos, he understood that his mother was thinking that there’d been some mistake, some hospital confusion, Whitey had not died after all.

She does not want to hear. She does not want to know. Why are you tormenting her?

But he saw no alternative. He took pains to explain: Whitey had not had a car accident as they’d been led to believe, he hadn’t been stricken while driving and injured in a “crash.” He’d been injured, probably, by police officers discharging stun guns at him, when he’d stopped on the highway to intervene in their beating of a young Indian-American physician.

This assault had precipitated the stroke. As the stroke, after a week in the hospital, had weakened his immune system, and precipitated an infection that had carried him off.

Carried him off. These words had come to Thom out of the air.

Jessalyn asked Thom to repeat what he’d said.

She seemed to be listening, intently. Her bruised eyelids blinked rapidly as if she were having difficulty seeing Thom’s face.

“Dad’s stroke was caused by the police. It was an unprovoked assault. They attacked him. We have a witness. We are going to bring charges.”

(What did Thom mean, we? He had not yet enlisted any other McClarens in his mission.)

Jessalyn said, in disbelief, stammering: “Oh, but—why would they do such a thing? Your father was—Whitey was—you know, Whitey was so—” Thom supposed she was wanting to say well-liked.

Her eyes filled with tears of shock and pain. Her voice quavered. He hated himself, to be upsetting his mother in this way. Yet he saw no alternative.

“Because they’re ignorant, stupid. Because they’re racists. They’d stopped the Indian doctor because they’d thought he was a young black man. So, when Dad tried to intervene they turned on him.”

Thom paused. He took his mother’s hand, and held it tight. Such cold, slender fingers! He had not wanted to see how Jessalyn had lost weight, these past several weeks.

“They didn’t know who he was, Mom. They didn’t recognize Whitey McClaren. He hasn’t been—hadn’t been—mayor for a long time, Mom.”

“Oh but why, did you say? Why did they hurt him?”

It was like trying to reason with a child. Patiently Thom repeated how Whitey had stopped on the Expressway to intervene. He had seen two cops beating a dark-skinned young man at the side of the road, he’d saved the young man’s life.

“He’s a doctor at St. Vincent’s—‘Azim Murthy.’ He was born in India, in Cochin. He has said he will testify for us. If—when—we bring charges.”

Jessalyn’s hair, that had once been smooth and glossy, a beautiful faded auburn, was now dull and without luster, brushed back flat against her head. Too bluntly, her skull seemed outlined. Her watery eyes were overlarge in her wan face. Her son felt a thrill of something like fear of the woman, even revulsion, fleeting, terrible.

She was pleading, protesting. “But—Whitey wouldn’t want any trouble, Thom. It will look so, so awful in the newspapers—on TV—he will be so shamed. He’d call the police officers ‘hotheaded kids’—he was always making excuses for them. Do you remember? Poor Whitey! He was so sorry he’d been talked into going into politics. He’d said he had been manipulated by people he’d thought were his friends. Everyone said, ‘Whitey, the police have to be disciplined,’ and Whitey said, ‘Our hands are tied. The union is too strong. It brings mayors to their knees. I don’t have a strong enough political base to fight them or believe me, I would.’ He wept in my arms sometimes. Oh—what am I saying? Your father was so brave. He worried so much. People thought he was so strong, and bossy, they had no idea how much he cared, how he feared failing, he’d hated those lawsuits settled with taxpayers’ money while the police department paid nothing, not a cent…”

Wildly Jessalyn spoke as Thom had never heard his mother speak before. Gripping his hand so hard it hurt. He listened but did not hear her say no.

WHEN BUD HAWLEY ASKED THOM if he should pursue the case Thom said, “Yes.” He thought for a moment and said, “Fucking yes.”

The Beneficiary

In a pocket of the oversized khaki jacket grown grimy with time he carried his father’s death.

Many pockets in the khaki jacket (purchased at a church rummage sale for nine dollars) and of these some were zippered and others, larger, snapped shut.

Sometimes he kept his father’s death in the long vertical pocket on his right thigh where you might put tools, a small claw hammer for instance, if you were a carpenter. Sometimes he kept his father’s death in a left-hand pocket at waist level into which he could slip his hand if his hand was cold or was feeling lonely in which case his father’s death was a jolt to him, a reminder—Yes. Here.

Sometimes the death was kept in an inside pocket, against his heart. In which case he was reminded of it too often—Yes. Here. Where else?

He’d have liked to leave his father’s death somewhere not in a pocket of the khaki jacket but (for instance) on a closet shelf, in a drawer in his work bench amid paintbrushes, stained rags. He’d have liked to leave his father’s death at a distance except there was the fear—(he felt this fear as if it were outside him, like a chill pelting rain)—that the death might become misplaced, lost.

Essentially his father’s death was unwieldy, obtrusive. There was no place to keep it that was not in some way wrong.

THE LAST MORNING in Whitey’s hospital room, he hadn’t known would be the last.

The last day. He’d departed mid-afternoon for the farm. Planning to return in the morning with his elderberry flute to play for his father.

Thinking—If Dad recovers will he remember me like this? Or—the way he used to think of me?

There was much unsaid between them. Unspoken, unasked. He had not (yet) the courage to ask his father the crucial questions of his life for he had not (yet) the courage to comprehend what these questions might be.

Why didn’t you love me, if you love me now?

Do you love me now, if you didn’t love me before?

Abruptly then, rude as a page ripped from a book, it had ended. The news had come to him: he would not ever see his father alive again.

He would not ever ask those questions. His father would never grope for the words with which to answer.

IT WAS A COWARDLY GESTURE, to run away. Not a gesture of freedom, independence, “artistic integrity.” But he’d run away.

And when he returned to the cabin behind the farmhouse on Bear Mountain Road one of his friends who lived in the house came down the hill to bring him an armful of mail.

Mail for Virgil McClaren! That hardly seemed possible.

In fact all but two or three of the letters were mass circulars, advertisements. He hadn’t troubled to have his mail held at the post office nor even to make provisions for someone to keep it for him.

It was like Virgil to just disappear. Anyone who knew him, knew this. There was no question of being annoyed or exasperated, still less of being alarmed. The friend had known Virgil for several years now but would not have claimed to be an intimate friend and would not have been greatly surprised if Virgil didn’t quite recall his name.

Abruptly after his father’s death Virgil had departed. After the impromptu gathering at the house on Old Farm Road when he’d seen family, relatives, neighbors and friends beneath his parents’ roof for the first time in memory and (he was sure) for the last time. And later behind the house after the guests had departed he’d seen a look of pure hatred in his brother Thom’s face as Thom seized him in a headlock and threw him onto the ground while their sisters looked on in astonishment.

He’d realized—Now that our father is gone there is nothing to keep him from killing me.

He’d fled. He’d taken just a few changes of clothes, an extra pair of boots. He’d taken the pink feldspar rock he’d found in his father’s desk, whose veins glittered in sunlight; this, he placed on the dashboard of the vehicle where he could see it easily. He’d vowed he would not see Thom again.

The hospital vigil had ended. Whatever had been between them had ended.

For several weeks he’d been away. In a borrowed vehicle he’d driven almost aimlessly. In the Adirondacks and into northern Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. The season’s first snow had fallen in Maine while in Hammond there remained an autumnal warmth to the days, an air of the unreal and precarious. He had not wanted to call home, he had not wanted to hear the voices of his family.

He felt guilty, to have abandoned his mother at such a time. They might have commiserated together. He should certainly have called his mother, and Sophia. To the others he had no idea what he might say.

He was sure as he’d told Sophia that their father would not remember him in his will. Of the McClaren children, Virgil was the least cherished by Whitey for (so far as he could recall) Whitey had never once been proud of any accomplishment of Virgil’s.

Virgil, you are exaggerating! Dad loved you.

He knew, Jessalyn would assure him in this way. Sophia would assure him.

But he did not want to be assured by them. He did not want to be humored, like a child.

No wish to be humiliated in front of the others. Of course he’d kept away from the law office on the day his father’s will would be read, by hundreds of miles.

AMID THE THIRD-CLASS MAIL WAS a single letter in stiff cream-colored stationery. Barron, Mills & McGee LLP.

He’d discovered the envelope at once. But did not rip it open at once.

Telling himself this could have nothing to do with him personally.

And so as he quickly skimmed the letter, squinting at the legal terminology, and then seeing the figure, surprised, and then shocked—his brain seemed to go blank.

“Virgil? Something wrong?”—the friend who’d brought his mail down to the cabin stood watching him.

Something wrong? No words with which to answer.

Virgil was staring at the stiff sheet of business stationery, that shook in his hand. He was sitting on the floor of the cabin near a wood-burning stove into which, less than an hour earlier, he’d inserted firewood, to light a fire, warm up the cabin cold as a refrigerator—he’d sat down abruptly as if his legs had given out beneath him. It didn’t seem that he was altogether certain where he was as his friend’s dog Sheffie wetly nuzzled his face.

“Virgil?—is it bad news?”

Seeing the notification of the sum of money his father had bequested him, how many thousands of dollars, more money than he’d ever had in all of his life—Virgil could not reply.

God! Whatever he’d expected, or not expected, he had certainly not expected this.

“N-No. Not bad news…”

His throat was constricted. He’d expected nothing and he’d wanted nothing. He’d prepared himself for nothing.

Almost he’d felt joyful, giddy. While he was away from Hammond and out of reach of his (grieving) family. The expectation of nothing is such freedom.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nothingness.

In that way (he’d told himself) he needn’t have mourned his father. They had parted ways, that was all. In the last week of Whitey’s life they’d been “close”—that was true. But the diminished father in the hospital bed had not been Virgil’s true father, he knew.

But now the situation wasn’t so clear. Virgil had no idea what to think for the will predated the hospitalization, the stroke, his father’s final illness. The will had to be the true father.

He was thanking his friend for bringing the mail. He was joking that it was the most mail he’d had in years, and most of it would go right into the wood-burning stove.

Except the single, singular letter from Barron, Mills & McGee LLP. That, Virgil would not burn.

Briskly he forced the letter back into the envelope. Could not—quite—bring himself to tell his friend that his father had remembered him in his will, and so generously. There were not the words for this.

His friend (fellow artist, substitute middle-school teacher) offered to stay with Virgil if Virgil was feeling upset about something and Virgil insisted that wasn’t necessary.

His friend’s dog continued to nuzzle wetly against him. How comforting this was! Virgil hugged the big coarse-furred shepherd mix round the neck. He shut his eyes tight against tears as the dog continued to thump his tail against the bare floorboards quivering with joy at being so hugged.

“OF COURSE DAD LOVED YOU! Dad loved us all.”

He’d had to call Sophia. Had to speak with Sophia. On a borrowed phone, had to speak with his sister who would not chide him or scream at him as he deserved.

Sophia’s words were sweetly damning. Astute, irrefutable.

“You confused Dad not approving of your life with Dad not loving you. I tried to explain but you never listened. Oh, Virgil!”

Virgil did not protest. He was feeling a strange pulsing glow.

He was hearing that faint, murmurous buzz. In Maine he’d stayed with a beekeeper, a woman friend with a dozen beehives from which she harvested honey, and the sound of the bees came to him now, mixed with the excited beat of his blood.

Loved you were loved all along loved. You.

“You know, Dad left us all the same amount of money. Exactly the same. And he left most of his estate in trust, to Mom…”

Loved you as much as the others. All along?

Not possible.

Possible?

Not.

“Virgil? Are you there?”

Yes. Still there.

“Have you called Mom yet?”

Not yet.

“She will want to hear from you. Shall I tell her that you’re back?”

No. Yes. Thank you.

“D’you want to come over for supper? Come to Mom’s? I can meet you there?”

No. Not yet.

“Or—just us? I can drive out to your place, I can bring something for supper?”

No. Not yet.

I am not ready to see you. Yet.

“Well. Welcome back, anyway. From wherever you were.”

Sophia spoke carefully. Of course Sophia was much exasperated, very likely she was disgusted with her irresponsible brother, but she would not betray such emotions over the phone.

“Next time you disappear let me know at least where you’re going. Or Mom.”

OK. Will do.

“Want to know what they’re going to do with their inheritances?”

They meant the older brother, sisters. Between Sophia and Virgil, they did not require explanation.

“Thom is going to ‘plough the money’ back into McClaren, Inc. Beverly is going to use the money for home repairs—she says their house is falling down around their ears. Lorene is going to take a ‘much-deserved vacation’ in December. And I—I’m not decided.”

Silence.

“So—what will you do with Dad’s money, Virgil? Give it away?”

Give it away.

OR MAYBE, keep it for himself.

Greedy, selfish. Glutton. The Virgil McClaren no one knew, no one had guessed existed. Certainly not Dad.

Keep the money for himself. No more secondhand rummage-sale crap.

Art supplies, a place of his own. Instead of renting, Virgil’s own studio.

Instead of the ugly bicycle no self-respecting kid would wish to steal, a pickup truck. Instead of borrowing others’ vehicles like a beggar, his own.

(Happened that he knew a Dodge pickup for sale, very reasonably priced. Perfect for hauling scrap-metal sculptures to art fairs.)

(Yearning to travel—where? Southwest. High arid deserts, enormous skies that dwarfed individuals and their guilt. Out of here. When?)

Also: could use the money to repay others he has owed for years.

(Jessalyn? Repay her? Jessalyn wouldn’t accept money from him. Especially the money Dad had left him. How perverse that would be! He would only upset her, if he tried.)

Realizing then: inheritances are taxed.

Of course, he hadn’t thought of this. The actual sum of money he would receive as John Earle McClaren’s beneficiary would be much less than the sum cited in the will.

Hadn’t paid income tax for years. State, federal. And then, when he’d been an adjunct at the college, his income was so low, he’d had to pay less than five hundred dollars.

How out of touch Virgil was with the much-vaunted world of reality.

Then it came to him, out of nowhere, out of the smell of woodsmoke in his nostrils: how exactly his father had died.

He, Virgil, had not always washed his hands thoroughly when he’d come into Whitey’s room. Much of the time he’d simply forgotten—so focused upon Dad, and playing his flute for Dad. With the half-mindedness of a twelve-year-old boy he’d ignored the sanitizer on the wall. He had not even seen it. Such scruples of cleanliness applied to other people but not to him.

Or: he’d believed that his father was tough, resilient, not weak, not easily made sick.

They’d called it a staph infection. Virgil knew of something called E. coli. A common bacterium found in the earth, particularly on farms, near manure. Animal waste. Sewage. The rich farm soil on Virgil’s boots, sandals. Always a faint odor of manure at the farm that quickened and thickened in damp weather though the last cows had been gone for years. You tracked it everywhere. And horseflies, everywhere. E. coli is powerless to infect the healthy but merciless with those whom illness has weakened.

First visit to the Intensive Care Unit Virgil had been shown the hand sanitizer on the wall just inside the door of his father’s room. Like this. Be sure always wash your hands thoroughly.

How grimly, how briskly, how determinedly they’d all been—washing their hands in the strong-smelling disinfectant.

Yet, Virgil had been careless. Not-clean hands, dirt beneath his nails. Grimy khaki jacket. Mud-splotched boots. Entering his father’s hospital room with his flute beneath his arm like a character in a fairy tale privileged and free of commonsensical restrictions.

In this way he’d infected his father.

In this way he’d killed his father.

And, unknowing, his father had rewarded him…

Terrible to realize. The horror of it washed over him like filthy water. You, Virgil. You are the one.

AT DAWN waking to suffocating woodsmoke in the cabin.

“Oh, God!”—had to save himself, worthless murdering-self, throwing off bedclothes, stumbling to the door barefoot and outside into cold rain-splotched wind he might have hoped, if he didn’t know better, would forgive him.

The Widow’s Orgy

“Oh, Mom. What on earth have you done.”

Poured out all that remained of Whitey’s opened bottles of high-quality whiskey, gin, vodka, bourbon into the kitchen sink so that hours later the kitchen still reeks of a most giddy orgy.

(But the pills upstairs in the bathroom cabinet, which will remain her most precious secret, she keeps.)

The Shaking Hand

Hurry! Must not be late.

Where once she was out of bed and eager to drive to the Institute never later than 7:30 A.M. now she can barely force herself to open her eyes for fear she will see the black toad-shaped thing squatting on her chest.

And the taste of something black, dank, toad-like in her mouth.

And a heaviness like lead in all her limbs. That numbness she has injected into laboratory animals, to desensitize them against the pain she would next inject into them with her admirably steady hand.

Yet, she is eager. Badly she needs to return to work in the exacting rigor of the lab after too long away.

Glamor of exactitude. While actual life is soft, flabby, formless, unmeasurable.

She’d intended to return soon after her father’s death. No more than three days. But it had seemed necessary to spend time with her mother at the house on Old Farm Road, to accompany Jessalyn to the law office of Barron, Mills & McGee, to the Hammond Township Probate Court, to other appointments falling under the blunt and punitive-sounding rubric death duties.

Worriedly Beverly had said Keep an eye on Mom. For Beverly had her own family life to which she must return.

And Lorene had said Give me a call right away if something seems wrong. For Lorene had her own professional life to which she must return.

Thom, too, expected Sophia to keep a close eye on their mother. As the new CEO of McClaren, Inc. he was much distracted by work: company headquarters in Hammond, Thom’s home and family in Rochester, a grueling commute.

And Virgil?—vanished for nearly three weeks.

(Finally, Sophia had driven to the farmhouse on Bear Mountain Road to seek out her brother when he’d failed to appear at their mother’s house for several days in succession. She’d known that Virgil had no intention of meeting at the law office of Barron, Mills & McGee for the reading of the will but she hadn’t quite realized that he’d planned to leave Hammond altogether. Friends of his informed her that Virgil had borrowed a car to drive “somewhere upstate” with no clear notion of when he’d return. The shock was, she hadn’t been so very shocked.)

When she’d told Jessalyn that Virgil had driven away somewhere by himself Jessalyn had seemed to understand. Oh, I know! Virgil needs to be alone with his father.

DRIVING TO THE MEMORIAL PARK Research Institute along the familiar route.

Except: death makes of all that is familiar, unfamiliar.

For instance: driving a road which, last time you’d driven it, had seemed very ordinary, not-memorable; but now, the shadow of death upon it, you see the road as irrevocably altered. Never again can you drive this road as it had been, before the death.

Trying to recall the last time she’d driven on Federal Road which would have to have been the day of Alistair Means’s lecture: the day the news had come to her.

Sinking sensation in the heart, seeing so many calls gone to voice mail.

“Oh Daddy! I miss you.”

Inside a car it is permissible to talk to oneself. No one will hear, no one will suspect. No one will care.

How Whitey had loved to talk while driving! Lifting both hands off the wheel at times, to gesture.

To Whitey, talking was gesture.

Sophia smiles, recalling. Hairs at the nape of her neck stir as she hears again Whitey’s voice alternately playful and serious telling one of his long involved tall tales…

Strongly the impulse comes to Sophia: turn the car around, drive back home to Old Farm Road.

A mother is her caring. A mother is her children, her husband.

Did she want to emulate Jessalyn? Did she want to be Jessalyn?

Her parents had an ideal love. An ideal marriage. It will be hardly possible to emulate such a marriage, for their children.

It is a beautiful thing, Sophia thinks. To so live for others. To so live in others. She is fearful of the inclination in herself, to revere her mother.

In all creatures self-survival is the highest instinct. Yet, in the mother, another instinct emerges: the protection of the young.

She wants to have children, someday. As Jessalyn did.

Or—does she?

For the time being, she will be a loving and protective daughter.

Smiling to think how her mother has been planning to sort through Whitey’s clothes, to donate to Goodwill. Also shoes.

Well, she will need help! Whitey was famously reluctant to throw away old shoes claiming he might have use for them one day.

Once you’ve broken in a pair of shoes it’s like old friends, can’t just toss them out into the trash.

And Jessalyn would say You don’t mean you’d want to toss away your old friends, Whitey, do you?—and Whitey would say Hell yes.

What is awful about death: no more laughs.

No more words. No more Whitey. Just—

If Jessalyn tries to do the sorting alone it will never get done.

Sophia will ask Jessalyn if she can take some of Whitey’s neckties for herself. Her favorites of his ties. (Some of the ties, of course Sophia had given her father herself.) She has a vague notion she might—someday—give these ties to a man with whom she has fallen in love.

SOPHIA? IT’S ALISTAIR. Just wondering how you are.

Wanting to call him back but could not. Why, why not, can’t bring herself, out of fear, why?

Give me a call to let me know how you are. Please.

A stranger’s voice, mesmerizing. Again and again she plays it. But she could not call…

Eager to return to the lab and to her true life (as she would call it: not the daughter-life) but as she approaches the Lumex lab building the leaden sensation returns in all her limbs. So heavy!

And inside the building, the surprise of the air. The odor.

Making her way along corridors. Familiar route but she turns a wrong corner into a cul-de-sac with a single ominous door. EXIT EMERGENCY ONLY.

Opening the heavy lab door and a sick-sinking sensation spreads in her like nausea.

“Sophia! Hello.”

“Good to see you, Sophia…”

Smiles to show she’s fine. Bravely smiles.

Avoiding conversation. Not just now. Coworkers’ eyes on her grave, sympathetic. Curious.

To some of these, with whom she works closely, Sophia has sent emails of explanation. Death in family, I am very sorry. Will catch up promise.

(She supposes that they know: her father has died. Possibly they know who her father is. Was.)

(She isn’t sure how much they know of Alistair Means’s interest in her. If they know, they will be scathing, pitiless.)

So long she has been away from her computer. The machine is suspicious of her and rejects her password.

Then, allowed into the program, Sophia clicks onto columns of recorded data. So many columns! So many miniature deaths. Like ether wafting from the screen, suffusing her with nausea.

Another unpleasant surprise: the steady hand is not so steady this morning.

Fumbles to pull on a Latex glove. Sticky inside-out skin, repulsive to the touch.

Not far away from Sophia’s work-area, walls of cages. Animal misery. Near-inaudible chittering of (tumor-ridden, doomed) creatures. No quantity of disinfectant can dispel their odor.

Still, she is determined to work. She will catch up.

Except: away so long from the lab, she seems to have forgotten what it is like. Faces of coworkers, fluorescent lights, chittering of the doomed, their smell.

No avoiding her supervisor, she supposes. As soon as he realizes that Sophia McClaren has returned to the lab at last.

If he says Please accept my condolences, Sophia. I am sorry for your loss.

Cannot bear the words. Not again. No!

It is a fact, no one knows how to speak in the face of death, grief. She has seen even the elderly hesitate, not altogether certain what to say about Whitey.

Preparing the (toxic) solution. So many times she has prepared it but today something seems wrong. Like a pianist suddenly made aware of single notes, thus unable to play. Fumbling with the syringe, the steady hand not so steady.

Frightening to Sophia, to be trembling like this. The smell is overwhelming. She is faint but she cannot give in. Prepping the first of the lab animals to be injected prior to dissection.

Slowly, gradually, like erosion it is the fate of the small lab animals to disappear from their cages as they are converted into data.

And data into graphs, statistics. “Science.”

And “science” into pharmaceutical patents, sales and profits.

Enormous profits for Lumex. Billions.

Damned proud of you, Sophia. That kind of work you are doing—for mankind…

How vivid her father’s voice is! But his eyes, she sees that his eyes are closed.

Her hand shakes. This has not happened before.

Oh God—she drops the syringe with a clatter that must reverberate through the lab. In her tight-clenched left hand the small creature is very still as if such stillness were a proven way of outwitting death.

Should have told Whitey—No. Don’t be proud of me. I am not worthy of your pride. I have deceived you.

The Latex gloves are on. Tight, tight.

Too tight to breathe, ribs squeezed, heart squeezed and pinched but she will prevail, she will not disappoint her admiring elders.

Dr. Means has praised her also. His eyes on her warm, yet calculating at their first meeting, when he’d hired her to assist him with the Lumex experiments.

Suddenly, abruptly as if making a decision after he’d looked through her résumé, asked her a few questions—All right! Good. “Sophia McClaren.” Can you start on Monday?

So happy, she’d wanted to seize the man’s hand and kiss it.

Well—almost.

And now she is thinking—“No.”

Returns the creature to its cage against the wall, squirming now in her fingers, excitedly squeaking with the possibility of life, more life however tumor-ridden, however fleeting, more life! All creatures yearn to persist in their being—Sophia recalls from a philosophy course.

It is Spinoza who speaks. Speaks to her.

Tearing off the Latex gloves, that are so repulsive. Throws them into the trash.

Hurriedly now packing her things. Into a cardboard box. She has been in the lab less than an hour, after so many days of absence and now—leaving? Going home?

If packing her things, not planning to return?

Her supervisor comes to speak with her. Beneath his Scots accent is a voice of faint disbelief, incredulity, the bafflement of a man accustomed to being treated with the utmost civility if not deference, made to deal now with an individual who confounds him.

He wants her to come with him so that they can speak in private. In his office. Sophia demurs, doesn’t want to come with him but wants to leave. Now.

But why—why now?

Because it is impossible to breathe in this place. Impossible to endure.

He insists, she should come with him. He touches her arm.

Not hard. Not forcibly. Not with any particular familiarity or intent—but Sophia feels the touch, and with a flicker of dislike, recoils.

And he sees. (Of course, he sees. Nothing escapes the scrutiny of Alistair Means!)

Sophia isn’t listening closely to him. She is listening to the tiny squeaks, the panicked chattering. Creatures who know: it is their execution day.

In her arms most awkwardly she carries the cardboard box filled with items she has cleared from her cubicle, such banal items, embarrassing that Means should see—coffee mug in need of scouring, flattened box of tissues, near-empty tube of toothpaste, small blue tube of medicated lotion she rubs into her hands that chafe from the Latex gloves.

Goodbye! Can’t breathe in this place, have got to leave.

In the parking lot he catches up with her. He is breathing audibly, his breath steams. His forehead crinkles with disapproval of the headstrong young woman he’d hired to assist him in this crucial set of experiments. Is she actually walking away from him? From what he has provided her? Is that what she is doing?

Alistair Means is now nothing like the fluent and genial lecturer at the podium, engrossed in fascinating material, thoroughly informed, confident. The research scientist who’d expertly fielded questions, graciously accepted applause. Instead he is an incensed middle-aged man staring at Sophia as if, if he dared, he’d reach out to grab her like a recalcitrant daughter, give her a good hard shake.

“You might regret this, Sophia, if you quit. I assume that you’re quitting. You can have more time off, if you need it… You know, I tried to call you.”

He is part-pleading, part-accusing. They have gone too far, Sophia thinks. He will never forgive her.

“Look, what the hell is wrong? You can’t make a decision in your present state. A decision that will affect your career. I think we should talk about this…”

Oh, it has become a comic scene! Sophia has clumsily managed to unlock her car door. She has managed to slide the box into the backseat. She sees that her supervisor is upset on her behalf and perhaps he is also annoyed, angry. For she is behaving emotionally, she has lost control. A science of exactitude is hostile to a loss of control.

“I just don’t want to kill animals anymore. I’ve killed enough for you, I think.”

It is the end. What relief!

No more Lumex experiments. No more miniature deaths at her fingertips. And she’d never known, never made inquiries, ashamed to even consider making inquiries, if Alistair Means is divorced, or still married; if he has a wife, children.

If his interest in her is genuine, and not that of a sexual predator. If her interest in him is genuine, and not that of an ambitious young woman calculating to advance her career.

That night Means calls, and leaves a message Sophia. I’m outside at the curb. I really think we need to talk this over. Your future. The future. Will you let me in?

In this way, it begins between them.

Sleepwalker

She has become a sleepwalker. The sleep is her life, through which she glides numb, unseeing and unfeeling like a species of undersea life so minimal it isn’t clear if it is, in fact, “alive.”

One breath at a time, Jess. You can do it.

THE SLEEPWALKING BEGAN in her husband’s hospital room. When she’d been summoned at last. Mrs. McClaren we are so sorry.

Seeing Whitey, so very still. His eyes not entirely shut (so you might imagine that he was peering out, slyly, the “good” eye at least) and his mouth just slightly open (so you might imagine he was about to speak) though twisted, one side just perceptibly higher than the other, a paralytic tic she didn’t think she’d noticed before, exactly—(though of course she must have noticed. Many times).

The shock was, they’d detached the machines from him. Detached him from the machines. The IV line had been withdrawn. The monitors had been disconnected. Keenly she felt the insult, the wound, why had they given up.

This was the shock: what was different about the scene. What was missing.

“Oh, Whitey…”

The other, this too was a shock. That Whitey appeared to be asleep yet was not (you could tell) asleep—not breathing.

But (her brain scrambling to comprehend as an animal scrambles, claws at a pebbly hillside in terror of falling) the more profound shock, the first glance, stepping into the room and in that instant, this shock was the missing machines, the missing IV line, for they had given up.

She could not comprehend this. After so many days, it had seemed like weeks, months—he’d been in their care, he had been entrusted to them. And now, they had given up.

Kissed him, trying not to break down into helpless sobbing. For he would need her to be strong as always.

Leaning over Whitey. Awkwardly stooping to press her face against his face. The shock of it was, this was the shock, how quickly his skin was cooling.

YET THERE WILL COME, a dozen times a day, the husband’s car in the driveway!

Waiting for him to enter through the kitchen door—Jess! Darling! I’m home.

As if—(she smiles to remember)—she would not know that the husband was home. Or that it was he, Whitey, who was home.

Thirty-seven years! It is like peering over the edge of a great chasm, trying to see to the very bottom of the Grand Canyon, to the beginning of time.

Elation, happiness. Usually, she would hurry to the husband, even if she was far away upstairs she would hurry to him, and they kissed in greeting.

(But what did they say? All lost.)

Instead, she hears her heart thump like—what?—an old, dingy tennis ball being batted about, negligently—in the silence of the house that tastes like ether.

Selfish woman! Think how much happiness you’ve had, did you imagine it would go on forever?

What a fool you are.

Very still the widow stands, transfixed. Not paralyzed exactly—rather more numbed, leaden—like a mannequin that has lost her nether limbs but hasn’t (yet) fallen over.

Hearing this voice which is not Whitey’s voice (of course) but the voice of a stranger speaking calmly, contemptuously.

ONE OF THE NURSES, TELEMETRY. Rhoda?

She’d been so kind to them. So considerate. Bringing a blanket for Jessalyn who’d been shivering, the hospital room was so cold. Whitey is our favorite, your husband is a very special person we can tell.

We love Mr. McClaren! He is a sweetheart.

When Whitey was discharged they’d bring a gift for Rhoda. For the other nurses too (maybe) but something special for Rhoda.

Yet Jessalyn saw how Rhoda detached herself from them: patient, family. Chilling to realize how Rhoda had seen many patients die, had witnessed how much suffering, the dying, the surviving, the wife who clings in desperation at the husband’s unresponsive hand, the (adult) children horrified by the sight of the diminished, dying father, unspeakable, no one can speak of it. This is where words fail, insubstantial and silly as soap bubbles.

When one day Beverly asked Rhoda if her father might be able to drive his car again in a few months the nurse had seemed to hesitate, to restrain herself before saying, with her bright practiced smile, “Oh it’s possible. Oh yes.”

“Dad is a great driver. He loves to drive…”

Inanely Beverly spoke. With such hope, and loud enough so that Whitey a few yards away would have no difficulty overhearing.

“…taught us all to drive, and Mom too… Didn’t he, Mom?”

“Oh, yes! Whitey was a wonderful driving instructor…”

Such inane conversations. Such hope.

Filling the void like those wispy white seeds—cottonwood? Willow. All we have to keep us from being sucked into the void, such exchanges. Clutching at one another’s hands.

Seeing the favorite nurse outside the hospital, briskly walking in a parking lot. Calling out, lifting a hand to wave—Hello! And there came Rhoda’s gaze turned onto her, and Rhoda’s quick smile though (it would seem obvious to Jessalyn afterward) Rhoda’d had no idea who she was—Hi! Hello!

When Whitey died, the favorite nurse had been nowhere near.

When Whitey died, of course they forgot the favorite nurse.

Never gave another thought to bringing gifts for the nurses, all such intentions ended abruptly as if a massive murderous wave had rushed along a beach sweeping aside all in its path.

Now in a patch of winter sunshine in her silent house silent in her sleepwalker-trance Jessalyn recalls with a pang of regret—the nurse who was so nice to them, in Telemetry, what was her name?

OH WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?—many times she’d asked, pleading, gripping his hands, when no one else was near and Whitey himself was asleep and could not hear, still less reply. Oh what?

The vigil, then. They had not understood that the siege was yet to come.

I DON’T THINK SO. NO.

Please no but possibly she hadn’t spoken aloud.

Pleading with them please no please not so soon but it was their way of grief and it was a legitimate way of grief, she understood. Not her way but their way, that must be honored. Busy, busyness, phone calls and emails, text messages, a swirl of plans for the memorial in December like a dust storm in which she dared not breathe for the swirling particles would lodge deep in her lungs and suffocate her.

John Earle McClaren—“Whitey” McClaren—must be mourned publicly as by a marching band. The widow could not bring herself to march in the band but she could not (she knew) protest the band for (she guessed) Whitey himself would have enjoyed it for had not Whitey McClaren many times in his life participated in the memorials of others, fallen friends, comrades, relatives? Very publicly he’d marched. He’d displayed his emotions, grief. Of course Whitey had.

You can be sincere in public. It is not insincerity (the widow chides herself) to grieve in public.

The elder children: Thom, Beverly, Lorene. These would march at the very head of the band.

McClaren relatives scattered through New York State, New England, the Midwest. Old friends of Whitey’s, newer friends, poker buddies, high school and college classmates, business associates and business rivals and directors of charitable organizations to which Whitey had donated—all had exalted statements to make about beloved Whitey McClaren and these statements made publicly from the pulpit of the beautiful old stained-glass St. John’s Episcopal chapel made available to the McClaren family for the solemn occasion.

The widow alone did not speak. Seated at the very front of the chapel where (if she’d wished) she might have turned to survey those many who’d gathered to publicly celebrate her husband crowded into the five hundred seats of the chapel.

On an organ were played a selection of Whitey’s favorite songs—“Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Oh Shenandoah,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Sounds of Silence.”

Like one embalmed the widow endured the ceremony, and the reception that followed, and the dinner hosted by Whitey’s oldest Hammond friends. For one is obliged to eat, even amid sorrow. And no one enjoyed food more than Whitey McClaren. Food and drink.

Once joking if he’d been an ancient Egyptian pharaoh he’d have insisted on a supply of oysters Rockefeller in his “pyramid.”

What a beautiful memorial. The most beautiful memorial. What a beautiful human being.

At last the widow was allowed to depart. Though the dinner had not yet ended.

Poor Jessalyn! Hardly said a word all evening.

Do you think it’s sunk in yet?

Taken home by her daughter and her daughter’s husband who would have come upstairs with her and undressed her and tucked her into bed like an invalid except no, politely she thanked them but no, please good night, thank you and go away. Please.

And upstairs, in the bedroom, feeling her life flowing back into her as if a tourniquet had been released.

Where were you, Jess darling? I’ve been waiting.

THE WIDOW IS THE ONE to whom the worst has happened.

Yet perversely, the widow exhausts herself with waiting.

Waiting for him to come home.

How many times a day. An hour.

Thinking of the husband as he, him. Cannot think of him in the past tense, a being that was.

Waiting for his voice that comes to her (only) when unbidden.

In the night in the dark in the bed in a stupor of exhaustion, sleeping pill(s), the widow is happy at last like one who has skidded down a steep hill treacherous with rocks, still alive if but barely but no longer awake, all consciousness obliterated, what relief what joy sinking into his arms and the warmth of his embrace coursing through her.

Jess, darling! I’ve been missing you.

BEVERLY COMPLAINED that when Jessalyn came for dinner at their house she was distracted most of the time and kept rummaging through her purse to see if she’d lost her keys—car key, house key—or her wallet—So annoying! And she’d only looked happy when it was time for Steve to drive her back home like she’s desperate to get back to that house where something, someone is waiting for her.

“MRS. MCCLAREN?—JUST SIGN HERE.”

“…sign here.”

“Here, please…”

“Sign here, Mrs. McClaren. Thanks!”

“If you would, please—sign here…”

“Also here, and here. Now here…”

“Mrs. McClaren?—just a few more pages…”

“And here… Thanks!”

“…one more, here…”

“…here… Just initials, please!”

Not clear if the widow had actually read the documents. If she’d glanced through the investment house portfolio, seventy-five densely printed pages.

If she had any idea how much Jessalyn and John Earle McClaren owned in investments, property, bank accounts. How much the printing business McClaren Printing, Inc. was worth.

Certainly it seemed clear that the widow had no idea that her husband had savings and “money market” accounts with several banks in his name only, each of about $500,000.

How little she knew of his financial accounts. Their accounts.

“None of it matters much. But thank you.”

Sam Hewett looked at Jessalyn McClaren with surprise. The widow had spoken apologetically, yet with an air of willfulness.

Whitey McClaren’s “team” (as he’d called them) from Merrill Lynch Wealth Management would come to the house several times a year. They would meet in Whitey’s home office and at some point during their negotiations Whitey would call to Jessalyn—Jess? Need you in here for just a few minutes to co-sign, hon.

She might be in the kitchen, or in the garden. Out back on the deck, watering potted geraniums. Upstairs, in one or another room doing whatever it was she was doing, the wife of the house.

Jess? Darling? Please come.

If they’d explained what it was she was signing, Jessalyn did not exactly listen. Never read what she was signing. Fifteen, twenty pages of dense-printed type. She’d laughed, feeling giddy. Whitey might take her hand, indicating where to sign.

“Just sign here, Mrs. McClaren.”

Beneath John Earle McClaren, Jessalyn Hannah McClaren.

Hewett wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. The widow spoke so softly.

“None of—what—doesn’t matter, Mrs. McClaren?”

“Oh, well”—Jessalyn seemed embarrassed to have spoken at all—“everything.”

Trapped inside a drum the widow can hear hammering on the outside of the drum, trapped and struggling to breathe inside the drum but if she can endure it she can’t be hurt by the hammer and eventually (she knows: this is her solace) she will sleep.

In this sleep, the husband awaits her. Jess darling! Come here.

Eyelids began to close even as her hand continued to sign the documents.

“Mrs. McClaren? Jessalyn?”—Sam Hewett was distressed.

He’d been Whitey’s personal accountant for twenty years. Like the wealth management team he’d been coming to the house on Old Farm Road several times a year and at these times he’d met Jessalyn McClaren, if but briefly.

Thinking now, the poor woman probably wasn’t sleeping well at night. After a trauma the brain can become hyperactive. Brain chemicals needed to shut down neuron firing to allow sleep are depleted and so neurons continue to fire, like strobe lights flashing.

Sam Hewett knew something of grief. Though not (yet) what it would be to lose a spouse of nearly forty years.

Touching to Hewett, how Jessalyn McClaren was making an effort to behave as she’d always behaved. Smiling at her visitor in mimicry of her old, lost wife-self, one of those beautiful older women who wear pearls, nice cashmere sweaters, not a hair out of place though in fact (Hewett was surprised to observe) poor Jessalyn wasn’t so well-groomed that afternoon, rumpled woolen slacks and gray cardigan fitting her so loosely you’d think (Hewett did think) the sweater might’ve belonged to Whitey. Hair matted, limp, without body or luster. And no pearls. No makeup, not even lipstick, white thin-looking skin, blue veins at her temples, evasive watery eyes.

Doesn’t want anyone looking at her. Like a raw, awful wound.

Poor woman! Must be over sixty, and her life over.

Eyelids closing, can’t stay awake. Pen slips from her fingers.

Hewett would report: you hear of widows who sicken and die after their husbands die. That’s what happened to my grandmother after my grandfather died. They’d been married like sixty years. Granma just went out like a candle burning and dripping and nobody even noticing until it’s out.

Hope that isn’t happening with Mrs. McClaren.

Fell asleep at the table where we were doing her accounts and tax documents. Signing papers. Signing checks to U.S. Treasury, New York State Division of Taxes. Laid her head down on her arms and shut her eyes and I had a hard time waking her, it was scary. But when I suggested calling one of the daughters to come over she begged me no, please like she was scared of the daughters, or anyone, finding her out.

All that money, that estate, and the house was freezing—must’ve had the thermostat set at 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

Like Granma too, after my grandfather died. Hoping to save money by saving on heat.

LET US HELP YOU, MOM.

She has laughed, I am not helpless, to need help.

Determined to make her way alone, so far as she can. Discovering much she hadn’t known, hadn’t guessed. Aloneness.

One of us could live with you. Help out.

How to explain to them, can’t explain, she is not alone exactly. A widow is never alone.

Waiting for him each day. Each day a steep flight of stairs to climb…

Nearing dusk the waiting intensifies. A crisis is imminent.

Headlights of vehicles on Old Farm Road visible for miles if she positions herself at one of the upstairs windows.

Stares into the distance. Until her eyes begin to ache.

There! Those lights…

A childish excitement suffuses her. For a fleeting moment, she can think—Whitey?

It is only a fleeting moment. But it is a moment.

Buoyed by hope when you know there is no hope. A small cork in befouled water, bobbing amid sewage, unsinkable.

IT WILL BE A WHILE. But you can wait.

I’m waiting. Hey—I love you.

TOLD HILDA WHO CAME to clean the house each Monday morning that she was going away for the rest of the winter, would call when she returned.

(Whitey had insisted on the house being cleaned “top-to-bottom” each week. Insisted he did not want his “dear wife” to pick up after him.)

(Jessalyn had laughed. Of course a wife would pick up after such a husband, profligate in his usage of the house, oblivious of the swath he cut through the household on any ordinary day.)

She pressed into Hilda’s hand a thank-you card, which contained a check for twice the usual payment—“And Mr. McClaren thanks you, too.”

WHY?—SHE’D NEVER FELT COMFORTABLE giving orders to anyone.

She would know the house intimately, now. Just the widow, and the house.

RARELY IS THE WIDOW ALONE. Even outside the safety of her house the widow is not alone. Keenly she feels this, it is making her very self-conscious.

Searching for her (lost) (misplaced) keys. Car key, house key.

It has become an obsession, searching for these keys.

Or, wallet. Cell phone.

Or, when she is out of the house, fearing that she will lose/misplace her handbag containing keys, wallet, cell phone. Any and all of these.

Fearing that she will lose the car. (That is, where she has parked the car.)

Observed in the grocery store. Futility of pushing a cart up and down aisles. A robotic activity, and a smiling face overseeing.

Observed pushing her cart outside and into the parking lot. Observed in pelting icy rain.

It isn’t clear who is observing her. Judging her. Whose voice, that assails her.

Why would you do such a stupid thing. Are you not thinking, why are you not thinking.

Do you hate yourself so? But why?

Hating/hurting yourself will not bring him back.

Bags of groceries she lifts with difficulty from the shopping cart to set into the trunk of the vehicle. She is stubborn, she will continue until the last of several bags has become soaked and ripped, groceries spill out onto the parking lot in a sodden tumble Oh Whitey please, let me die. If you love me but stooping in the icy rain to pick up groceries to set into the trunk, how embarrassing each item, mandarin oranges, three unattached bananas, cartons of yogurt, cartons of cottage cheese, small loaf of multigrain bread, cans of soup, each item a gesture of pathos Must be, someone wants to live. Someone is desperate to continue to live, if she is feeding herself. Pathetic! For of course you continue with the widow’s ridiculous life, a Möbius strip that has no end.

Her face is wet. The widow’s face is often wet. But in the rain the widow’s advantage is that you can’t tell if the widow is crying.

AND IN THE CEMETERY, she has become lost.

A day in early winter slipping to dusk. Impulsively she has decided that it is imperative to visit Whitey’s grave.

Desperate to be there. The first time, when the ashes in the urn were buried, she’d been too distracted to fully comprehend.

Whitey had not instructed them to scatter his ashes in some romantic place like a river, a lake, a canyon. Hadn’t wished to think that far into the future, also wasn’t the type to take himself so seriously.

Self-importance embarrassed him. Worst thing Whitey could say of someone—He’s full of himself. Christ!

Cremation he’d wanted. Not a formal burial. But he had not elaborated. Enough, let’s get it over with.

And here is the problem: the (temporary) marker provided by the crematorium is so small and so resembles other small utilitarian markers in the cemetery, the widow becomes confused in the waning light, and loses her way. She and the children have ordered a beautiful granite gravestone of respectful proportions that will bear the stately carved words

but this stone is still at the stonemason’s. In the meantime the widow seems to have mis-remembered the (temporary) marker as larger than it is, easily two or three times larger, and so keeps missing it. Her feet in impractical shoes sink in the spongy earth. Her nostrils pinch with a sharp smell of sodden-leaf rot and the futility of such acts of desperation. For always the widow is seeking something that is lost, that is not-here.

Trying not to panic. Oh, how can she be lost!

It is not like Jessalyn McClaren, who has always been the person who knows the route, took time to write down the address, has an idea where to park, knows precisely when. Certainly she knows that the grave marker is nearby. She is certain.

Descending a muddy hill. Rain-flattened grasses, slick mud of the hue of offal, and as badly smelling.

Trying to cross a patch of muddy grass, a shortcut to a graveled walkway. Her ankle turns, she falls suddenly, heavily.

In the cold muck, sobbing.

Whitey! Please let me come to you, I am so tired.

A fellow visitor to the cemetery, on his way out, sights her. Possibly (she will think afterward) the man had deliberated whether to acknowledge her, a drunken-seeming woman, a confused woman, a heartbrokenly sobbing woman who has slipped in mud, has fallen in mud, graceless.

But he doesn’t disappear. Gallantly he comes to her, and helps her to her feet. This touch—this sudden physical contact—from a stranger—is overwhelming to Jessalyn, like an unexpected eclipse of the sun.

A relief, he seems to be no one who knows her. No one whom she should know.

“Here. Try these…”

The gallant stranger provides tissues for Jessalyn with which she can wipe at her muddied clothes. Standing at a polite distance he does not assist her.

Through tear-dimmed eyes she sees: he is a man not-young, not-Caucasian, with a swarthy creased face and kindly eyes, a drooping Brillo pad of a mustache. He wears a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows and on his head a dandyish hat like a Stetson. He is tall, angular, wary and alert as if he fears that Jessalyn will collapse again into the mud, and he will be obliged to haul her out.

He asks if she is all right? His manner is oddly formal, wary—he calls her ma’am.

Jessalyn wonders: Is he afraid that the white lady will panic and begin screaming?—is he afraid of her?

Embarrassed, she assures the gentlemanly mustached man that she is not injured—she is just a little muddy. “But, I guess—I’m lost…”

“Lost?”

“I mean—I can’t find the g-grave that I am looking for.”

She tries to laugh, this is such a ridiculous predicament.

With something like pity the man regards Jessalyn. A woman wandering lost in this small cemetery, which can’t cover more than two or three acres?

Politely he asks which grave she is looking for and she tells him—“The grave of ‘John Earle McClaren.’”

There, it has been said: THE GRAVE OF JOHN EARLE MCCLAREN.

The mustached man does not seem to register how profound this utterance is for Jessalyn. He does not seem to register that the muddied woman standing before him may well be the widow of the deceased who has become lost searching for his grave.

Nor does he seem to register that McClaren is a name of some local significance. No?

“Well. Let’s see what we can do for you, dear.”

Dear. The widow feels the jolt of this casual word like a caress that is unexpected, though (perhaps) not unwanted.

Dear. As a kicked dog would feel when it is stroked, and not further kicked.

The mustached man is carrying something like a pack, out of which he takes a flashlight. One of those pencil-thin flashlights with surprisingly strong beams.

“What does it look like? The grave stone.”

“Oh, it doesn’t look like anything, really,” Jessalyn says apologetically, “it’s just one of those little, temporary markers that are all over the cemetery. You know, the funeral homes provide them, or—the crematoriums.” Pausing, stricken. Of course, Jessalyn knows to say crematoria except the word seems pretentious uttered in this place, to the mustached man in the Stetson hat.

Is he touched by her air of apology, her distractedness, so thinly masking the most profound despair? Is he amused by her muddied clothes, expensive tasteful clothes, a black cashmere coat, impractical leather shoes?

Of course, he must have guessed that Jessalyn is the widow. Widow has become her essence.

Shining his narrow laser-beam of light along the lumpy ground he leads Jessalyn past rows of grave stones and grave markers. Some of the grave markers are very old—faint, carved dates as long ago as the 1880s. Some are covered in a scabrous-looking moss. Jessalyn is trying to keep up, following close behind the mustached man. She sees that he is taller than she by several inches—taller than Whitey. Beneath the Stetson hat cocked at a rakish angle his hair is a tangle of gray and silver, as long as Virgil’s hair. She wonders if he knows Virgil: if he and Virgil know each other. (But he had not seemed to know the name McClaren. Though she is the least vain of persons Jessalyn is mildly hurt by this.)

“Sorry, dear—am I going too fast?”

“N-No. I’m fine.”

Dear. No one has called her dear since Whitey.

Not drunk but why is she stumbling, can’t seem to keep her balance on this uneven ground, the harsh fresh wet air is making her light-headed. Since the ordeal of the vigil and the passing-away and its aftermath she has lost her sense of what it requires to be upright—how to walk without swaying and stumbling.

A neurological problem, perhaps. Deficit—that dread word.

How quickly it can happen: stroke, deficit. Each morning the widow wakes astonished and guilt-stricken that it has not (yet) happened to her.

The mustached man offers Jessalyn his arm but she pretends not to notice. She is stricken with shyness, doesn’t want to come too near to him.

“Ma’am? Over here?—did you look here?”

Darting like a snake the laser light moves along the ground. Jessalyn’s eyes follow with a kind of dread.

“There—that’s it…”

How small the grave marker from the funeral home is, how meager, a dull pewter-color—JOHN EARLE MCCLAREN 1943–2010.

Is this—this—all there is, she has been seeking so desperately? As if her life depends upon it?

She feels a moment’s vertigo. How small it’s all.

“You’ll be all right now, ma’am? Don’t stay long, it will be dark soon.”

The mustached man speaks in a kindly voice, with a faint, very faint accent. Is he—Hispanic? Middle Eastern? Jessalyn has not failed to notice how he glances about as if seeking someone else, a companion of Jessalyn’s perhaps, who will be responsible for her. She has the impression—oh, she is embarrassed!—that he is eager to escape her.

“Thank you. You’ve been very kind. But I’m fine now—I won’t get lost again.”

What a foolish thing to say!—won’t get lost again.

Jessalyn tries to laugh but the sound comes out unconvincingly.

No matter, the tall kindly mustached man has turned away, walks away.

At the gravesite, churned earth. Some sort of earth-digging machine must be used in the cemetery though (possibly) Whitey’s grave is shallow, containing only an urn: a strong-armed gravedigger wouldn’t have much trouble using just a shovel.

Here is something jarring: Whitey’s grave abuts another grave with very little space between.

How did this happen? Did someone miscalculate? Whitey’s near-neighbor has a large square-cut slab of ugly stone carved with the name Hiram J. Horseman—about which Whitey would surely make a sardonic remark.

Actually it is Housman not Horseman. Look again, darling.

Jessalyn looks more closely: the name is Housman. Hiram Housman.

Neighbors in the cemetery though strangers in life. So far as Jessalyn knows.

“Oh, Whitey! It is all so—futile. Isn’t it!”

Silly to have come here when Whitey, her Whitey, is likely to be back in the house if he is anywhere. He is not here.

The harsh wet open place inhabited by strangers—grave stones of strangers—is not a friendly place for Whitey, or for her.

Yet Jessalyn lingers at the grave. Nowhere to sit here, nowhere to rest or lean against for she cannot lean against, still sit on, the gravestone of Hiram Housman—that would be disrespectful.

She’d meant to bring flowers. Oh, she’d left flowers in the car…

Her heart thuds with disappointment. A widow is one who forgets, who leaves the flowers in the car.

(Oh God—where are her keys? In her handbag? Blindly, frantically she rummages for her keys amid wads of tissue.)

(Why does she never remember to empty her handbag of used tissues? It is a fact, she cannot remember to do this.)

Now it is becoming dark. Seriously dark. Jessalyn rouses herself to leave the cemetery.

Here is one good thing: it is far easier to make one’s way out of a cemetery than to make one’s way in. Small pathways lead to a single wide graveled walkway at the center of the cemetery, which leads to the parking lot behind the church.

Exiting the cemetery the widow halts, and thinks; begins walking again, and again halts—for what did she lose? What has she left behind?

Searching through her handbag, and through the pockets of her coat…

Near the entrance gate the mustached man in the Stetson hat seems to be waiting. She is embarrassed to see him, she’d thought that he had vanished. He is being helpful—gentlemanly—aiming his beacon of light onto the graveled path, as Jessalyn approaches. Oh, she wishes he’d left her alone!

Feeling just slightly fearful as she approaches him. Telling herself it is not because he is Hispanic, or—Mediterranean?—it is not because of this. But she is alone, and the mustached man though kindly-seeming is a stranger. She has no other way to exit the cemetery unless she wants to abruptly retreat (which she certainly can’t do, he is watching her) and walk a considerable distance back toward Whitey’s grave, and even then, in the gathering darkness—oh God, she would never find her way out.

Why is this man waiting for her? Has he been lingering? Is there no one else in the entire cemetery—no one? Jessalyn feels her heart begin to pound in apprehension.

She has already thanked the man but nervously thanks him again—tells him again that he is very kind. But as she hurries past him to her car he addresses her—“Ma’am?”—and her heart leaps in fear of him. “What—what do you want?”

“Your glove, dear. Is this your glove? Found it on the path.”

It is her glove. Soft black leather, muddied. With abashed thanks she takes it from him.

Driving home she hears the soft, caressing word—dear. Not a word she can trust, she thinks. Not ever again.

“OH, MOM! YOU HAVE LARYNGITIS! Sounds like you have a terrible cold.”

Relief. They’d thought that their mother had simply ceased speaking because words pained her too much.

DEAR. FINGERS GRIPPING HER ARM at the elbow, not hard, but forcibly enough to lift her, steady her.

Ma’am. Are you all right.

She wonders why the tall mustached man had been in the cemetery. Why had she not been more polite to him.

He too had been visiting a grave. Probably.

And at that hour. And alone.

PHONE RINGS! LEO COLWIN.

Leo Colwin is not discouraged if Jessalyn McClaren neglects to return his calls.

Leo has sent flowers For dear Jessalyn, fondly your friend Leo.

Since that terrible day in October courtly Leo Colwin has sent Jessalyn flowers each week, usually roses, but occasionally lilies, gardenias, eventually tulips and daffodils and narcissus whose fragrance makes Jessalyn feel faint, it is so beautiful and might, like all sweet fragrances, be confused with something more abiding and more significant.

For dear Jessalyn, fondly your friend Leo.

Of Leo Colwin, widower, one of the first in the McClarens’ circle to lose a spouse, it is frequently said—What a sweetheart! What a dear, lonely man.

Low-keyed was Whitey’s word if Whitey was intending to be polite. Boring as hell if not.

Leo Colwin is retired from a family-owned local business, something to do with estate management. He is well-to-do but not wealthy. He has adult children, at a distance. Stoop-shouldered, gentlemanly, soft-spoken and always clean-shaven, neatly (if not stylishly) dressed—suit from the English Shoppe, white shirt, handkerchief in lapel pocket, decent shoes. With no wife to scrutinize him Leo must scrutinize himself and sometimes overlooks crucial details.

Jessalyn sees, and bites her lower lip. I will not play the wife-role with Leo Colwin! No.

“Leo? Let me fix this.”

Straightening his polka-dot bow tie. Now he looks less like Red Buttons.

But the thin graying disheveled hair like a crooked cap on his head—no.

And seeing that he has cut himself (blindly?) shaving beneath his chin, a thin-oozing thread of blood—no.

Leo Colwin has arrived to escort Jessalyn to a wedding anniversary party at the home of friends. Jessalyn can’t recall having agreed to accompany Leo and suspects it was her daughters who made the arrangement without her consent figuring it would be too rude of Jessalyn to demur, and Jessalyn McClaren can be counted on never to be rude, and this is true, the widow is trapped in graciousness like an insect in honey, too demoralized to buzz or flutter her wings in protest.

“Jessalyn! It’s so—so—seeing you is so—”

Courtly Leo Colwin, eyes behind bifocals swimming in tears. Impulsively Leo takes Jessalyn’s hand, a cool limp unresisting hand, and lifts it to his lips to kiss.

(Kiss?—Jessalyn is stunned.)

(Kiss?—Whitey just laughs. To him, Leo Colwin is a straight white old-style Republican, decent and trustworthy, fair golfer, un-argumentative. Christ! Boring as white bread.)

“—I am so deeply—so moved—grateful—” Leo stammers and goes silent, what a mercy.

Poor dear Maudie, Leo’s wife. A few years older than Jessalyn and not a close friend but much-admired. Tragic death, one of the unspeakable cancers—cervical, uterine. Driving to the party Leo speaks fondly of Maudie as Jessalyn listens, or half-listens. Enough simply to incline your head at a certain angle, a man like Leo Colwin will be encouraged to think you are listening intently.

She’d liked Maudie, more than she’d liked Leo who’d been hard of hearing even then, years ago.

“This year would be our fifty-second anniversary, if Maude had lived.” Leo pauses, to let the significance of this remark sink in. “I’d never thought of, you know, remarrying…” Leo pauses again, as if now he has said too much.

Stepping into a familiar house, the house of friends—there is that moment when, as you cross the threshold, you have a panicked impulse to glance down, to see if the elevator shaft opens before you, into the bowels of the Earth.

“Oh, Jessalyn! Thank you! Thank you for coming, it can’t be easy…”

Because it is the Bregmans’ fiftieth anniversary? Because Jessalyn and Whitey didn’t make it to their fiftieth anniversary? Is that why it can’t be easy?

(Whitey nudges her—You can do it, sweetheart. Don’t be ridiculous.)

Yet: to see Jessalyn McClaren by Leo Colwin’s side, and Whitey McClaren nowhere near, well—that’s a shock. The widow suggests the absent husband, the husband-who-has-vanished. The widow is beautifully dressed at least—silky black, simply cut, long sleeves to hide her thin arms and wrists, long skirt almost to her ankles, beautiful black shoes and around her neck a single strand of translucent pink-toned pearls.

Oh, look!—Jessalyn’s hair has turned white.

How quickly it has happened, within a few months of Whitey’s death all pigment has faded from Jessalyn’s hair. From behind you would not recognize the poor woman.

Does the widow frighten them? Even the close friends? Especially the close friends? A widow is a sign of what-lies-ahead, the missing husband, their own mortality.

Which husband will follow her husband? Which of you?

Jessalyn feels a sensation of such sorrow, such dismay, such despair she can’t bring herself to greet her friends who seem blithely unaware of what misery awaits them.

It’s a party, a celebration. Of course they are blithely unaware.

Whitey nudges her. Lighten up. Get a drink. Ditch Leo.

Leo hurries off to fetch drinks. It is just slightly easier to breathe, without Leo Colwin looming over her.

In any gathering, in any public place, invariably there are some who have not seen the widow since the husband’s death and who feel a compulsion to hurry to the widow to take her hands in theirs and declare how badly they feel, how sad, what a shock and what a loss.

How (guiltily) sad the widow is made to feel, being the cause of another’s sadness!

How much more merciful for all if the widow wore a mask, or a bag over her head, to spare the emotions of others.

“Of all people! Whitey was so filled with, with—life…”

Soon then Jessalyn McClaren is seen to have disappeared.

The expression on poor Leo’s face! Must be, Leo Colwin is in love with Jessalyn.

You think? So soon?

It’s not soon for Leo. Maude’s been gone how many years—five, six…

Well, it’s soon for Jessalyn.

Oh, Jessalyn. That woman will never remarry.

She was just standing there. At the very end of the hall, in that kind of spare room. There was a mirror but she wasn’t looking into it. She didn’t seem to be looking at anything. Her face was like a mask, what a beautiful woman Jessalyn is, for her age, or any age really, and that white hair is gorgeous, I hope if I ever have to have white hair it will look like Jessalyn McClaren’s. But her skin did look waxy. You could see she wasn’t well. Sometimes after a trauma like losing a husband a woman will become ill—shingles, even cancer. The first signs come a few months after the death. It did seem strange, she didn’t seem to notice me. I didn’t want to frighten her so I spoke softly—“Jess? Are you all right?”—and her eyes moved onto my face like the eyes of someone who is sleepwalking and has no idea where she is.

Then she shivered, and laughed, and said something apologetic like she’d gotten lost looking for a restroom, or maybe she was looking for her coat and didn’t want to interrupt or intrude anywhere. Her voice was hoarse and cracked as if it hurt her to speak, as if she was losing her voice, and I said, “Do you want to go back to the party, or would you like to just stay here and I could stay with you, or I could go away if you’d prefer that,” and Jessalyn was smiling at me without seeming to hear me, it was strange and disturbing and the only thought that came to me was I’d better hurry and find Whitey, Whitey needs to know how strangely Jessalyn is behaving, but then I realized that Whitey wasn’t with us, we would never see Whitey McClaren again; and finally Jessalyn said, with no idea what she was saying but wanting only to be agreeable—“Oh thank you. Yes.”

“SOMETIMES I FORGET, WHITEY—we are all still alive here.”

PROMPTLY NEXT MONDAY MORNING the deliveryman brings a lavish bouquet in crinkly cellophane, two dozen red and cream-colored roses with a note written in Leo’s own hand—

For dear Jessalyn, from your loving friend Leo

(IS IT RUDE OF JESSALYN, she has ceased thanking Leo for the flowers? At first she’d emailed him a terse Thank you! after each bouquet but this only encourages Leo to write back to her, and to send more flowers.)

THE (ELDER) DAUGHTERS ARE INCENSED! Their beloved widowed mother is not behaving as they expect her to behave.

Beverly complains that Jessalyn doesn’t answer the phone when she calls, has to call three, four times—Mom, pick up! Please.

Lorene complains that Jessalyn is behaving foolishly, shortsightedly—she has told Hilda not to come clean the house any longer, as if she, Jessalyn, could keep up that house by herself. Daddy would be chagrined, he didn’t want his wife to be a housemaid. Both sisters are concerned how it will reflect upon them, if people in North Hammond learn that Whitey McClaren’s widow has cut back on the upkeep of her property as if (could it be?) she is worried about money.

Yet more upsetting to the sisters is that their mother is reported to be declining invitations to occasions (dinner parties, receptions, museum openings and concerts, bridge nights) to which sweet lonely widower Leo Colwin might escort her.

What do you think Mom does alone in that house all day?

Maybe Mom isn’t alone. Maybe Daddy is there.

I KNOW YOU MEAN TO be kind but please don’t invite me to dinner.

Not comfortable eating with others (and not just because she’d rather be home with Whitey) but because, and this is embarrassing, and not something Jessalyn has told anyone including her daughters, when she tries to eat an actual meal instead of intermittently through the day spoonfuls of yogurt, pieces of fruit, dry cereal or toast, she is often stricken with stomach cramps like dysentery and her bowels transformed into hot scalding watery feces.

Not very romantic. Not what you’d think a widow’s life is like.

Nothing that Whitey need know, either! Let’s spare poor Whitey.

IT IS A FACT, a widow must keep certain secrets from her (deceased) husband.

A marriage is based upon carefully calibrated revelations and secrets: for each revelation, a secret.

Before they’d married Jessalyn had understood: Whitey must be spared.

Random facts or speculations that might worry him, cause him to fret, to feel distress on Jessalyn’s account, or anger, or dismay—these Jessalyn took care to keep from Whitey.

Complications with pregnancies, she’d kept from him. No need for the husband to know except if the husband needs to know. (Her obstetrician, a woman, agreed.)

The false positive she’d had a few years ago, mammogram.

Unfortunately the radiologist had called the house and left a message which Whitey had heard. Please call for an appointment, diagnostic mammogram.

When Jessalyn walked into the house she saw Whitey’s face clammy-pale, sick. Listened to the voice mail and assured him that a “diagnostic” mammogram was commonplace, at least 30 percent of mammograms required a second mammogram, all women know this, nothing to be alarmed about truly.

(Was this so? Thirty percent? Jessalyn had no idea, she’d made up the statistic.)

But Whitey wasn’t to be so easily consoled. Whitey was frightened for—What if?

She’d had to comfort him. She’d had no time to think of herself and indeed, she was not much worried.

“I have to spare Whitey. Whatever it is.”

She conferred with the elder daughters. She would have a biopsy as soon as possible if the mammogram indicated that one was needed and in this event, they needed to keep the news from Whitey; if the biopsy was negative, Whitey need never know there’d been one—“He would just fret, and be distracted at the office.” If the biopsy was positive and Jessalyn did indeed have cancer they would have to consider how to break the news to Whitey, or how to spare him knowing exactly what was wrong.

“How on earth?”—Beverly was shocked.

“Well—we can do it.”

No need to tell anyone else, either—Thom, Sophia, Virgil. If they needed to know, they could be told but until then, why?

“The less information given to people, the better, on the whole,” Lorene said, practicably; for, as a high school administrator, Lorene did not believe in “open disclosure” and had been inclined, since middle school, to conspiracies and artfully withheld information. She thought it wasn’t a bad idea, keeping Whitey in the dark—“If you’re seriously sick Whitey will have to know, of course. But until then, until there’s actual surgery, radiation or whatever, better for him not to know—no one should utter the word ‘cancer.’ He’ll just make himself and all of us anxious.”

“Well, I’d tell Steve—I’d want my husband to know.” Beverly spoke with a grim sort of complacency, a near-imperceptible emphasis on my meant to signal (Lorene had no doubt) that Lorene could not lay claim to any such my.

“You’d want your husband to be anxious—unhappy.”

“What does that mean?”—Beverly was incensed.

“What I said. You’d want Steve to be anxious—unhappy on your account. But Mom isn’t like that, Mom loves Dad.” Here, emphasis was upon loves.

Quickly Jessalyn intervened: nothing was more distressing to her than the sisters quarreling as they’d done (constantly!) as teenagers.

In fact the diagnostic mammogram had showed something shadowy, small as a pea in Jessalyn’s left breast. There’d been a biopsy that very day and a (non-malignant) cyst was removed. All Whitey was told was that the mammogram had been “negative.”

“There never was any possibility of a malignancy. It was just an error in the X-ray, that happens all the time.”

Whitey’s relief was visible. His stiff-set face had seemed to melt and his eyes brimmed with tears.

Had to walk quickly out of the room, to hide his emotion from her but soon after she’d heard him whistling, and then on the phone talking and laughing with a friend.

How fragile, the man’s world. He’d constructed it with her at its core. She could not betray him. She could not undermine him by a thoughtlessly uttered truth.

Even Whitey’s own medical condition following his stroke, she’d had to misrepresent to him as much as possible.

“How much does your husband want to know?” the neurologist had asked; and Jessalyn had said, “No more than he needs to know, Doctor. But you can tell me.”

HOW SHE HAS GROWN to dread and fear a ringing phone!

No matter who, it isn’t the one.

No matter the voice, will not be the voice.

Too-jingly sound of a cell phone doesn’t upset her as much since Whitey rarely called her cell phone; Whitey had disliked cell phones and electronic “gadgets” with keyboards too small for his broad stubby fingers.

(Jessalyn never knows where her cell phone is. Lost somewhere in the house for days at a time.)

Mom, give a call back please!

Mom, are you all right? Where are you?

Mom, if you don’t call back I’ll have to come over…

Quickly then Jessalyn calls back. She has grown to dread the (adult) children dropping by the house just to “see how you are…”

To anyone who will listen Beverly worries about Jessalyn adjusting to life without Whitey. She herself is having difficulty adjusting to life without Whitey.

Upsetting to Beverly that Jessalyn seems withdrawn, even reclusive. Doesn’t express much enthusiasm about spending time with her younger grandchildren as she’d used to, before.

Lorene says, You just want Mom to babysit for you, for free.

Beverly says, That is not true! Mom loves the kids, she always has.

Lorene says, Hmmm.

Beverly says, Oh what’s that mean?—hmmm?

When Lorene doesn’t reply, adding, vehemently, Of course Mom has babysat for us, for free. You can’t imagine Mom taking money from us for spending time with her grandchildren, can you?

In the maddening way of a younger sister Lorene laughs snidely as she hangs up the phone.

“WHITEY? COME LOOK!”

At the feeder, on fluttering wings, a lovely little bird with a pale red breast. Gray feathers, dun-colored. A modest bird she knew Whitey would like, if he took time to notice.

“I think it’s a house finch…”

If he was home, if he was home and not on the phone, if he was home, not on the phone, and not busy in his home-office Whitey might come when she called him. Oh Whitey, come look!

Though (secretly: she knew) Whitey didn’t care overmuch about birds. He’d humored her for how many years, confusing chickadees with sparrows, grosbeaks with robins, titmice, catbirds, wrens, warblers… He could identify a (red) cardinal, a blue jay, “some kind of blackbird” and those strangely stately, prehistoric-looking waterfowl that dwelt in the marshes beyond the creek—“great blue herons.”

He’d humored her though (probably) he’d thought it was a waste of time, or silly or eccentric. She’d overheard him remarking to a friend how his wife took “lots of things seriously, no one else would give a damn about.”

He’d laughed, fondly. Whatever reply the friend had murmured, Jessalyn moved quickly away not wanting to hear.

At the window she makes a movement that frightens the little birds away from the feeder on the deck. Like the shadow of a predator heron, her uplifted hand.

NOW THERE IS NO ONE to humor her.

Well, there are the (adult) children. Grandchildren.

Seeing in their eyes how they pity her, and fear her. The emptiness in her. How they glance nervously behind her, to the side of her—Someone missing? Gone where?

Friends whom she has known longer than she has known her children. Women friends especially, with whom she has grown up. And several of these widows like herself—“young” widows. Fascinating to Jessalyn, and appalling, how some of these women have learned to refer to their (deceased) husbands as having died—so casually uttered, you would think they are referring to a houseplant having died.

Almost greedily their eyes moving onto her—Now you are one of us.

Hands gripping hers—Yes it’s bad now, Jessalyn. But it will get easier.

And Jessalyn stiffens thinking—But I don’t want it to get easier!

As if Whitey is listening. (Yes, Whitey is easily wounded, thin-skinned.)

Will Jessalyn continue to live in her “beautiful” house?—or will Jessalyn sell the house? Jessalyn parries these questions with the skill of a middling Ping-Pong player.

Object is not to win, just to get the volley over.

In a whisper a friend, a sister-widow, tells her not to pay any attention to what people tell her, keep the house, keep everything exactly the way it is, especially don’t give anything away, you will regret it.

In a whisper another sister-widow tells her to move out of the house, too many memories in the house. Go away, Caribbean for a week in February, Dominican Republic—(“Come with me, my daughter and son-in-law rent a house, a big house on the beach, no one will bother you, just rest, heal in the sun, Whitey would want that”).

It’s true, Whitey would want her to be happy. But—how?

Barely can Jessalyn’s friends wait until she’s out of hearing, excusing herself to use a restroom, before speaking of her in lowered voices.

She used to be so beautiful! Poor Jessalyn.

Her face looks so strained…

Really? I don’t think so—I think she’s looking remarkably good.

But her hair has gone white! Almost overnight…

Such a gorgeous white, she doesn’t have to do a thing with it, I envy her.

She has lost too much weight. That doesn’t suit her. Whitey would be appalled, he didn’t like skinny women—he’d say…

She can’t eat. Did you see?—just pushed food around on her plate.

I was the same way—for a while… I must have lost twenty pounds…

That, I envy. But—

She isn’t drinking. That’s good.

But how tired she’s looking! And her fingernails…

What about her fingernails?

Didn’t you see them?—split and broken.

That’s some kind of malnutrition symptom. I was the same way…

Did you hear—Whitey didn’t leave her much money? Some kind of complicated “trust”—

Oh why would Whitey do such a thing, he adored Jessalyn—

—but she has inherited the house, hasn’t she?—isn’t that state law—

—half of the husband’s estate, usually—

Maybe Whitey had money secreted away somewhere, you know—in foreign banks—

—Whitey was the type! So shrewd…

But he adored Jessalyn, I always thought—didn’t you?

Well—Whitey was a secretive type, essentially.

No! Whitey McClaren?

It isn’t “still waters run deep” but bossy friendly men like Whitey McClaren who really “run deep”—you think they are all on the surface, but they are not.

And you know this—how?

Let’s just say, I knew Whitey McClaren. For something like fifty years.

“MRS. McCLAREN?—THANKS.”

Eagerly she has handed the valet-parking attendant her card. How badly she wants to leave this place, and return to the safety of the house on Old Farm Road!

Left her friends in the restaurant. Never (dared) return from the restroom where she’d narrowly escaped a bout of vomiting, diarrhea.

At a trot the boy disappears into the vast parking garage attached to the Riverside Hammond Hilton that both rises above the surface of the concrete earth and descends beneath it.

In a chill wind she waits. A widow is one who waits for something that has already happened to un-happen.

She is shivering, waiting. In a cloth coat too light for the sub-zero wind off the Chautauqua River.

(Where is her car? Where has the boy in the uniform gone? Has he forgotten her? Has he disappeared, with her car?)

Since Whitey passed away such breaches in civility have become frequent. If the widow shuts her eyes she may open them in another time, minutes later, or hours or days later. Often—once she leaves the safety of her home—she finds herself marooned.

Could not face them, knowing how they spoke of her: the newest widow in their circle.

Dreading their pity of her, like a cold paste. Yet more, their well-intentioned sympathy like something prying beneath her fingernails from which she wanted only to flee.

She knew: the women spoke of her husband casually, familiarly, as if they had a right to him. Knowing Whitey McClaren in ways (inescapably, she supposes: Whitey had grown up in Hammond, as she had not) she did not know him, or Whitey did not allow himself to be known.

Feeling a shaky sort of triumph that she’d succeeded in staving off a humiliating physical attack in the rosy-wallpaper restroom. Refusal to acknowledge the sickly-pale face swimming in the mirror she has no wish to confront away from the safety of home where (should he seek her) Whitey would have a difficult time finding her.

When the parking attendant fails to return with her car the widow seeks the car herself in the vast drafty echoing parking garage that appears to be deserted.

Rows of vehicles, and no human beings.

“Whitey? Help me…”

Ahead then she sees something: not human, not upright and vertical but sub-human, horizontal: a dog of about moderate size, or a large thick-furred cat, a feral creature, moving away from her with a kind of mocking slowness, not scurrying in panic… Oh God: is it a rat?

It disappears beneath a vehicle. Her heart is pounding absurdly, in fear that the creature is a rat.

For a moment she stands paralyzed. It is a measure of her derangement that she feels she should not cry again Whitey? Help me so soon again, Whitey would be dismayed.

Seeing then, some distance away, a figure that might indeed be Whitey: of the same approximate height, breadth, not heavyset so much as thickset, a man of late middle age, in a windbreaker that resembles an old navy blue windbreaker of Whitey’s, headed away from her and (seemingly) oblivious of her. His hair is a mangled-looking grayish-white, not so white as Whitey’s hair had been. But Whitey’s hair was always cut, trimmed.

(Is this the parking attendant, grown older? Not in his uniform?)

(Is this Whitey, in a confused memory she has forgotten, intruding now into consciousness like something carved of wood that, forced beneath the roiling water, cannot be kept from surfacing?)

She follows the man in the navy blue windbreaker. She will not let him out of her sight. In impractical high heels, expensive beautiful silly shoes Whitey had liked her to wear, and bare-headed, shivering, eyes damp with moisture but determined not to lose the figure lurching ahead of her who (she sees now) is glancing back at her over his shoulder, with an inscrutable expression.

Wildly she thinks—Is this Whitey, somehow?

If not Whitey, Whitey’s emissary. For in life Whitey had been unable to operate without assistants, helpers, right-hand men who’d worked for him, very loyal, to whom Whitey was loyal in turn, remembering many of them in his will.

She’d teased him, he’d made of his wife one of his assistants. Whitey hadn’t laughed at first. Often he was easily wounded, his skin was notoriously thin. But then came around to seeing the humor in Jessalyn’s remark, and the truth.

A wife is the assistant a man has married.

The man in the windbreaker has left the parking garage. She sees that he is walking with a limp. She follows him into a vacant lot strewn with rubble, making her way between crumbling walls, broken concrete, her high heels stick in the earth, she is in danger of twisting an ankle and injuring herself…

At last the man turns, crouching inside a part-crumbled wall where the wind isn’t so strong.

“Ma’am? You needin’ help?”

A homeless person. He is older than she’d guessed. His face looks stained, his eyes are jaundiced. His lower jaw is missing teeth. Except that it is caked with filth and missing a zipper his windbreaker resembles Whitey’s longtime windbreaker ordered from L.L.Bean. His filth-stiffened trousers are too long, bunched at the ankles as if he has lost height, he has been unwell.

Seeing him, such sorrow in his face, and his jaws covered in stubbly whiskers, Jessalyn bursts into tears.

IT IS A SIEGE. She is under assault from all sides, she cannot relax her guard, she dares not sleep. Even if Whitey sleeps, gripping her in his strong arms, easing his weight on her like a great warm slab of earth, she dares not sleep.

A HOMELESS PERSON SHE’D BROUGHT HOME!—to their precious childhood house. The McClaren children were astonished and alarmed.

Their mother was apologetic, chastened. She would acknowledge: she’d met the man downtown near the Riverside Hilton where she’d gone to have lunch with friends; she’d brought him home to feed him, to allow him to take a bath for he was “very filthy” and “not looking well” and somehow it happened (she was trying to understand why) that this needy person who’d appeared to be soft-spoken, unaggressive and grateful for her kindness became by degrees aggressive and wild-eyed, and began ranting incoherently about religion, the federal government, “rich people”—by which time Jessalyn realized that he might be dangerous, and locked herself in Whitey’s study to call for help.

It was Beverly and Steve’s number Jessalyn called, reasoning that they lived closest to her; she did not want to call 911, for she did not want the homeless man arrested. By the time Beverly and Steve arrived the man had fled the house taking with him an armful of random items: a pair of Whitey’s winter boots out of a closet, an antiquated BlackBerry found in a kitchen drawer, a handful of loose change from a pewter dish on a kitchen counter where for years Whitey had unloaded his pockets of stray coins.

(These coins Jessalyn would take away as they accumulated. But after Whitey’s death she had not touched the pewter bowl which the homeless man had emptied into a pocket.)

With a flashlight Steve searched the property including the three-car garage attached to the house, and an old fieldstone barn that had once been a stable, and found no one, nothing.

Still, as soon as she’d stepped inside the house Beverly could tell that an intruder had been there, by his smell.

She wanted to call 911 and report the theft—“A dangerous person in the neighborhood.”

Jessalyn insisted that the homeless man had not been dangerous really, he’d just gotten excited, and confused. Inviting him home had been her idea, not his—“I don’t want the poor man to be punished for a mistake of mine. I’m sure he’s far away by now…”

“Mom, how can you say that? You have no idea where this person is. You said he was ‘raving, ranting’—”

“I’ve told you, it was my mistake. If we call the police he might be arrested, or—worse.”

“He should be arrested! If he’s a madman—”

“He’s homeless. That would drive anyone mad, I think.”

“Oh Mom, what are you saying? What would Whitey think about this?”

In the end they didn’t call 911. Steve insisted upon spending the night in his mother-in-law’s house in case the homeless man returned while Beverly drove to their home, indignant and too upset to sleep, as she would complain the next day.

What was most worrisome, Beverly told anyone who would listen, but first of all her sister Lorene and her brother Thom, was that their mother didn’t seem to realize the gravity of the situation, how reckless she’d been. “Mom seemed embarrassed, and kept apologizing to us—as if that was the point, not that she’d brought a madman into the house who could have killed her but that she’d made a mistake, disturbing us when we’d just gone to bed. That was what she felt bad about.”

“Did you see this ‘madman’?”—Lorene wanted to know.

“I smelled him! You’d call it a feral smell.”

It was Lorene’s instinct to disagree with her overwrought older sister but in this case, possibly Beverly was correct.

“Well. We’d better keep a closer check on Mom.”

“We?—I’m the one who calls her two or three times a day—I’m the one who drops by if I don’t hear from her. You’re the one who’s too damned busy to give a damn…”

Beverly spoke heatedly for some seconds before realizing that her infuriating younger sister had broken the connection.

When Thom heard news of the homeless man he drove immediately to Jessalyn’s house to do a thorough search of the property, bringing with him a baseball bat. Jessalyn greeted him apologetically, and accompanied him as he searched the house, the garage, the old fieldstone barn, and every corner of the property where an intruder might be lurking. “Thom, I’m so sorry! It was a mistake of judgment—mine. It was not the poor man’s fault.” Jessalyn was out of breath trying to keep up with her incensed older son who brandished a baseball bat as if he’d have liked to use it. “It will never happen again, I promise.”

At the foot of the McClaren property, in the tall, scruffy grass at the creek, Thom discovered what appeared to be the remnants of a kind of crude camp, where someone might have been sleeping.

“Jesus, Mom! What would Dad be thinking!—you know how anyone trespassing on his property upset him, even Canada geese.”

And next evening Thom returned again to search the property with a flashlight, afterward patrolling Old Farm Road as dusk deepened to night, finding no one suspicious in the vicinity except, at the intersection with Mill Run, a mile away, a lone figure, a disheveled-looking individual walking with a tote bag over his shoulder, who might have fitted Jessalyn’s vague description of the homeless man.

Rare to see anyone on foot in this part of North Hammond, walking on the roadside, who was not obviously a jogger or a young person. This had to be the homeless man.

Thom braked his vehicle to a stop, rolled down his window and told the astonished man that he’d better get the hell out of this neighborhood, and never return, or he’d regret it.

“That way. That way is the city limits. Go on—get going. Back to hell where you came from.”

With the baseball bat Thom pointed. He was breathing heavily, his eyes glared in their sockets. Seeing his face the disheveled man asked no questions, backed away, turned and began to run limping into the night, until Thom could see him no longer.

A (DECEASED) HUSBAND WISHES to return to his (still-living) wife but lacks the proper body, for his body has been cremated. Is it a possibility, if not a probability, that he will use for expediency’s sake another (male) body, that bears some resemblance to his own?

Before the answer is revealed she has been awakened by something slapping her face: tall wet grasses sharp as blades.

WHITEY’S MUCH-BATTERED COPY of Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe, Jessalyn has brought into bed with her into the nest she has made of bedclothes, comforter, quilt. One of the key books of Whitey’s life (to hear him tell it) to which Whitey would frequently allude; he’d liked to quote the opening sentence of the densely printed book—“‘We can add to our knowledge, but we cannot subtract from it.’”

Was this an optimistic perspective, or—not? Jessalyn had never doubted the veracity of the oracular words (of 1959) as Whitey had declaimed them. Now, she isn’t so sure. A single, singular stroke in the brain can subtract virtually all the knowledge of a lifetime, so patiently acquired. And how much more swiftly knowledge is subtracted than acquired.

Jessalyn thinks: it isn’t difficult to imagine that entire societies, civilizations, might suffer strokes of another kind, obliterating history, knowledge, memory as in a cataclysm of the Ice Age. She had never spoken of such matters with Whitey who hadn’t seemed comfortable discussing “serious” issues with her, his dear wife; though she’d often overheard him talking of such matters with his men friends and acquaintances.

Whether Whitey had read the entire five hundred–plus pages of The Sleepwalkers Jessalyn didn’t know. She would never have asked for the question would have been too private, prying.

The bookshelves of Whitey’s study are crammed with reference books: encyclopedias, histories, history of science, philosophy and cultural criticism, such titles as Cosmos, A Brief History of Time, The Perfect Storm, The World’s Wisdom, The Battle for God, The Greatest Generation, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, The Selfish Gene, The Purpose Driven Life, The Art of Happiness, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Chaos: Making a New Science. Each year Whitey spoke of taking off the entire month of August just to lie in the hammock right here at home and read, to hell with the business, to hell with trying to make money… Somehow, he’d never managed to accomplish this. After only a few days away from the office he became restless, bored, and irritable, and had to return to work.

They’d laughed at him, dear Whitey. Now Jessalyn thinks it wasn’t funny but sad.

She’d tried to read Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers at least once before but she’d never gotten beyond the first few chapters (“The Heroic Age”). The effort of that earlier reading, when she’d been a young woman, with young children clambering for her, in a (near-chaotic) household returns to her now, as she lies in the halo of light inside the darkness of the (empty) house trying to read as if reading will save her.

The theme of The Sleepwalkers does seem interesting: great scientific advances are made as if intuitively, more than “rationally”—at least, Jessalyn thinks this is the theme of the densely printed book. It’s a vision of history in which the individual is a conduit of forces far greater than he can comprehend. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing 100 percent of the time (Whitey liked to say) but he knew what had to be done, what was the right thing.

But it is difficult for Jessalyn to concentrate. The euphoria she feels at having survived another interminable day is fading. Insomnia has made her apprehensive of lying in bed, though this bed is the only place in which she feels safe; her brain feels ravaged, hyper-alert as if she were in the presence of actual danger. (Could the walls of this familiar room melt away? Is there an infinite darkness beyond, from which Whitey had shielded her?) Yet, perversely, she is very tired, and finds herself reading and rereading the same sentences without comprehension.

Finally, her eyelids are shut. She has not the strength to open them. The heavy book slips from her hands into a kind of abyss, a beautiful darkness.

Darling. His arms close about her, to shield her.

“I CARE FOR YOU, JESSALYN. Very much.”

Gentlemanly Leo Colwin has a faint tremor in his left hand, which he tries to hide. Jessalyn feels an urge to take his hand and hold it between both her hands, to give solace to the man, to comfort.

“I hope you know… I hope you are not surprised, or—displeased.”

Displeased. What a silly word, Whitey sneers.

Jessalyn has no idea how to reply to Leo Colwin. Her face burns with embarrassment.

Poor sap. Tell him something. Don’t make him wait.

“I—I didn’t know, Leo.” Awkward pause. (Are there pauses, Jessalyn wonders, that are not awkward?) She sees that Leo’s hand is trembling and looks away. (What to say to the man that is neither discouraging nor encouraging!) “Thank you.”

Thank you! Whitey laughs.

But Leo Colwin seems encouraged. Leo Colwin is not one to be discouraged by another’s muted response.

In his sweetly smiling way Leo reminisces of their “first meeting”—“how many years ago”—introduced by mutual friends “who have since passed away…” Jessalyn is only half-listening. She is recalling Maude Colwin with whom she’d been friendly if not exactly friends; Maude, an attractive and accomplished slightly older woman who’d allegedly given up a promising career as an attorney to raise a family in suburban Hammond and who one day unexpectedly confided in Jessalyn—“Please be kind to Leo if something happens to me, he will be utterly helpless without a wife.”

The McClarens had included Leo in so many family dinners, the grandchildren had assumed he was a relative. Please don’t seat me next to Uncle Leo, he always asks the same old dumb questions about school he doesn’t remember he always asks.

Jessalyn has the uneasy idea that her own daughters, Beverly and Lorene, though perhaps not Sophia, are hoping that she and Leo Colwin will become a couple. How practical, how expedient, what a relief for the (adult) children of both, to know that their surviving parents are taken care of and will not be a vexation to them, at least not for a while. Jessalyn is sure that she has overheard Beverly and Lorene whispering together about Leo Colwin—Just the perfect gentleman. Dad would be so relieved.

(But how would Whitey feel, really? Jessalyn wouldn’t want to inquire.)

It’s understood by the young that no one of her or Leo Colwin’s age could possibly have sexual feelings any longer. Very barely, romantic feelings. The (adult) children would shudder at just the thought, as attractive as the proverbial scratching of fingernails on a blackboard.

She herself feels like a lamp that has been unplugged. Just—nothing there, anesthetized and numb.

Sometimes, in sleep or the twilight of near-sleep, taken unaware, she feels a sudden small leap of desire, or of hope, in the pit of her belly—Whitey! I love you…

Fleeting as a match that is struck and almost at once goes out.

“Well, Jessalyn! Did you give any more thought about—”

An upcoming event to which Leo might escort Jessalyn. Has she forgotten?

Leo is not an aggressive person—he is, as all say, a very kind, very considerate person—yet Jessalyn feels oppressed by his earnestness as by a large upright sponge pressing too close. His persistent smile, his myopic gaze, his rounded shoulders and monotone-voice drain the widow’s already diminished energy. Each time they meet he has memorized a joke to tell her as if “cheering up” the widow is a task he takes very seriously.

“‘What do you get when you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac, and an agnostic?’”—(Leo waits for Jessalyn to respond but Jessalyn just smiles to indicate she has not the slightest idea)—“‘Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog.’”

Jessalyn isn’t sure that she has heard the joke correctly, or is it a riddle, the word dyslexic drew her attention, for Whitey’d often said that, as a child, he’d been dyslexic, to a degree, which had made his teachers think that he wasn’t very smart, or wasn’t trying very hard, or was naturally restless, impatient—deficit attention disorder before it became trendy.

Or: is it attention deficit disorder?

Jessalyn is smiling blankly. Leo chuckles, and repeats the answer: “‘Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog.’”

“Oh, I see. ‘Dog.’” Jessalyn doesn’t quite see but laughs obligingly.

“‘Did you hear about the dyslexic KKK chapter?—they go around killing gingers.’”

Jessalyn is startled. Is this funny? Gingers?

Leo thinks the “joke” is funny, baring his teeth in a hoarse, heaving laugh.

It is late: nearly 11:00 P.M. Leo has brought Jessalyn home from a dinner party given by mutual friends—(is there a communal plot, Jessalyn wonders, throwing widow and widower together nearly every weekend?)—and Jessalyn seems to have invited him inside the house out of politeness perhaps for Leo is invariably reluctant to leave her—“Alone in that big house.”

Is he planning to move in? Sap.

But Whitey is amused, not worried. To Whitey who’d been, for most of his life, what you’d call a full-blooded alpha male, a timorous ectomorph like Leo Colwin is no serious rival.

Really it is time (for Leo) to leave. Frequently he has mentioned that he is “usually in bed by nine-thirty P.M.—and up at six A.M.” (Why do people imagine that their sleeping habits are of interest to others?—Jessalyn has wondered.) She is conscious of being rude in not offering her guest a “nightcap”—(silly term! what does it even mean?)—but (should she be obliged to explain to him) in a fugue of panic soon after Whitey passed away she’d poured all of Whitey’s alcoholic beverages out in the sink fearing that in her deranged state she might begin to drink and so succumb to a slovenly pitiable death. (Whitey’s store of good, moderately expensive wines, kept in the basement, Jessalyn has not touched: Whitey would be devastated if she behaved so rashly, and would never forgive her. She wants to think that someday she might give a dinner party, and need wine; she will certainly have family dinners like Thanksgiving and Christmas and in any case it’s too much effort for her to open a bottle of wine, for the purpose of drinking it herself.)

But Leo isn’t showing signs of leaving just yet. He has begun to recount to Jessalyn his history “in politics”—running for class office in high school and college—(“came close to winning class president in my senior year at Colgate, and was elected vice president of our Sigma Nu chapter”); his stint in the U.S. Army (“Intelligence, stateside”); his early work-experiences (“thought I’d try New York before going into our business here, but that didn’t work out so well”). Leo’s marriage, children, grandchildren are elided over, glimpsed like landscape from a speeding train.

Jessalyn wonders if Leo is hoping to establish himself as a worthy rival to Whitey. Or maybe Leo senses Whitey’s presence in the house and is boasting of himself for Whitey’s benefit.

Boring as an old shoe.

In his case, an old moccasin.

(This is cruel: Leo Colwin favors moccasins with tassels. So far as Jessalyn knows he has several pairs, all comfortably worn.)

Jessalyn thinks it is not quite true, as Maude foretold, that Leo is helpless without her. He plays golf at least twice a week, with other, older male friends at the East Hammond Hills Golf Club; he is “always welcome” (he claims) at his children’s homes; he is a “deacon” in his church, the First Episcopal Church of North Hammond; he attends local functions—concerts, exhibits, fund-raisers. Like the McClarens, he is a donor to local arts and charitable organizations: you will see his name, like theirs, listed on programs, in columns of print beneath Sponsors. But since his wife passed away Leo has become a becalmed sailboat. The wind has gone out of his sails, for sure!—a jocular expression Whitey often used.

“Well—I think—”

“Yes, well—”

Time for Leo Colwin to depart! Jessalyn is suffused with happiness.

She sees her guest to the door. (Does she imagine it, or is Leo as relieved to be leaving, as she is that he is leaving?) At the door he hesitates as if he has something more to say, or as if he is about to kiss her. Jessalyn stiffens, for she has forgotten how to “kiss”—even her handshakes have become quick, ineffectual. Don’t touch me, please! Go away.

Yet she is smiling, weakly. Since girlhood Jessalyn has been too cowardly not to smile in such situations.

Good manners must always trump instinctive revulsion: that is the first premise of society.

“Jessalyn, I—I hope you weren’t offended by—what I said earlier…”

No. Yes. Please just go.

“—always there has been this ‘rapport’ between us, I think—since we’d first met—our spouses were so sociable, gregarious—we are more introverted—two of a kind. I’d always thought.”

“Yes.”

“Yes? You’d thought so, too?”

Jessalyn has no idea what the conversation is about. She is so eager for Leo to leave, she will agree to anything.

“Well—good night! Dear Jessalyn.”

At the last moment Leo veers, or Jessalyn veers, so that his lips only brush her forehead.

“Thank you, Leo. Good night!”

HOW HAPPY THE WIDOW IS, to be alone!

Euphoria courses through her. Alone. She is alone.

In this house, in this bedroom that is her sanctuary. In this bed that is her nest. No one to speak to her as if she’s a convalescent. As if, as a widow, she is something other.

No one to gaze at her with doggy adoring eyes. No one to expect her to behave sensibly.

Whitey would say—Tell them all to go to hell.

At her bedside, a small stack of Whitey’s “wisdom” books. Along with The Sleepwalkers are Into Thin Air, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, A Brief History of the Universe.

But Jessalyn isn’t ready for bed just yet. Easing her gentlemanly suitor out of the house, shutting and locking the door behind him, scarcely waiting until he was in his vehicle before switching off all the outside lights—she is feeling too exhilarated.

She crosses the room to Whitey’s closet, which she has not (yet) emptied. Her daughters have volunteered to help her sort through his clothes to give away to Goodwill, which Jessalyn knows is a very good idea, certainly a practical idea, but she has not gotten around to it yet.

Not yet, not yet. Soon.

Not soon. But—sometime.

Presses her face against one of Whitey’s sport coats. An old well-worn camel’s hair coat, worn thin at the elbows.

His clothes are beautiful to her. How can she bear to part with them!

In the bathroom, in the cabinet, the pill containers, lined up. The widow checks them not once not twice but several times a day. Her precious cache! These are her rosary. Her consolation. She would shake out a dozen pills in the palm of her hand this very hour and swallow them down eagerly with mouthfuls of lukewarm water but Whitey would be upset with her.

Not yet, not yet. But—soon.

“Yes, I will. Today.”

(A widow talks to herself not only for companionship but also to give clear instructions. What is clearly articulated is likely to be executed.)

Bravely, Jessalyn has decided to sort through Whitey’s clothes.

Not with her daughters but alone. For the widow is happiest alone.

Yes I love my daughters but they talk, talk. Never cease talking because they are terrified of silence.

Whitey’s closet dense with clothes. So many!

Since his passing-away Jessalyn has not been able to examine her husband’s things. Thom had located for her the relevant legal papers in Whitey’s files including IRS tax documents and other financial records, numbering in the hundreds of pages, but Jessalyn has not wanted to search Whitey’s desk drawers, shelves, boxes in his study and in the basement—it is not something a wife of Whitey McClaren would have done while he was on the premises and so she does not feel comfortable about doing it now.

His privacy. His life. Must not violate. No.

(Also: Jessalyn is [perhaps] afraid of finding something that will upset her. Amid the accumulation of nearly four decades, there must be something.)

Beverly and Lorene are eager to undertake the task, with her. Sophia would join them too. But no.

Too much emotion. Turn the faucet on, can’t turn it off.

Please understand, I am not ready.

Soon after Whitey’s passing-away she’d looked through photo albums in a trance of disbelief: that what had existed so naturally in the world now existed no longer, and was irretrievable. Of course it had always been Jessalyn who’d tended the family albums as she’d tended the bulletin board in the kitchen—others were enthusiastic and helpful, but only temporarily; the wife and mother of the household understands that she alone is the proprietor of memories, no one cherishes them quite as much as she does, and no one understands how perishable they are, quite as much as she does.

In her numbed state she’d brought the albums into bed with her, into the nest of bedclothes, pillows, comforter, where she could lose herself in the contemplation of so many years in which (here was proof!) they’d all been happy… And Whitey had been so handsome, even when clowning for the camera, or scowling, she stared and stared at him and did not ever want to look away.

It is the astonishment of her life, if she surveys her life from the perspective of a small single-prop plane flying overhead: that Whitey McClaren had loved her.

Of all of the world—her.

Randomly inserted into the photo albums were cards she and Whitey had given each other, birthday cards, Valentine’s Day cards, some of them handcrafted by Jessalyn in her young-wife phase, countless cards over the years, happy birthday to my dearest wife, happy birthday to my dearest husband, love to my dearest wife, love to my dearest husband—some of these dating back to a time when Jessalyn’s handwriting so differed from her present handwriting, the cards might have been from another person named Jess.

Love, Your Jess.

Love, Your Wifie Jessie.

She’d forgotten too how Whitey would sign a card with just his initial—W. As if he hadn’t liked his name—“White-y”—(it did sound droll, flippant) but had been trapped inside it. Poor Whitey!

(And was she Jess, or Jessalyn? Jessie? She had liked her name well enough though as an older teenager she’d wondered if, named Hilda, Hulga, Mick or Brett she might’ve felt less of an obligation to be “feminine.”)

She had not told anyone that by chance she’d come across, in a pocket of one of Whitey’s coats, a few days after his death, a birthday card he’d bought for her, but had not yet signed: one of Whitey’s typically large, lavish, expensive cards with shiny rose-colored Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Wife. (At a glance you could see which cards were from Whitey, and which from Jessalyn—these were smaller, less showy and less expensive, made from recycled paper.)

This cheery birthday to a wonderful wife Jessalyn has positioned atop a bureau in the bedroom. Also on the bureau are framed photographs of Whitey: young, not-so-young, middle-aged; smiling cautiously, smiling broadly; alone, with Jessalyn and/or children at various ages. (She has not intended it but she has included not a single photograph of Whitey at the office, Whitey in his professional mode, Whitey McClaren as mayor of Hammond. As if he’d never lived such a life, what he’d have called with a commingling of ruefulness and pride his public life.)

Until this morning Jessalyn has done little more than glance into Whitey’s bedroom closet. It is a large, walk-in closet—larger than her own closet in a farther corner of the room. A mist comes into her eyes as she opens the door and a light switches on like an eye opening.

So often he’d said Jess, have you seen my—? Sincerely bereft, baffled, searching through the closet unable to find a favorite shirt, sweater, only Jessalyn could locate it.

She smiles now, recalling. For not once (she is sure) had she failed to find the elusive article of clothing.

Newer clothes, favored clothes, are within easy reach. Sport coats, shirts, hangers bearing neckties… Whitey was notoriously reluctant to discard anything including even those ridiculous ultra-narrow ties men were wearing decades ago. He’d never wanted to toss out anything that “might come back into fashion, someday”—nor would he concede that he’d grown forever out of the clothes of his earlier, leaner self—tuxedo, moth-eaten three-button pinstripe suit, floral-pattern shirts, hearty Scots wool sweaters he hadn’t been able to squeeze into for years.

D’you think this is too tight, Jessalyn?

Yes, Whitey. I’m afraid so.

Well—is it too tight? What d’you think?

Yes, I think it’s too tight, dear.

But, well— It’s too tight, or too short?

Too small, Whitey.

D’you think it shrank? At the dry cleaner?

Yes. Shrank.

Damn dry cleaner! I should sue.

Jessalyn wipes her eyes, recalling.

Here is Whitey’s most recent suit, which they’d brought home from the hospital: Black Watch plaid, lightweight wool, with a vest. Not Jessalyn’s favorite suit of his but Whitey who was usually reluctant to shop for clothes had been enthusiastic about the purchase, and so Jessalyn had assured him it was very “handsome”—“unusual”—even as she’d exchanged a glance with the salesclerk in the three-way mirror.

“The one thing I do not want,” Whitey said, “is a conventional suit. A ‘traditional’ suit. Three-button pinstripe, or gray flannel.”

“I don’t think that three-button suits are available any longer,” Jessalyn said. “There is no danger.”

Whitey told the salesclerk that he had Scots ancestors and the McClaren tartan wasn’t Black Watch but he wasn’t sentimental or patriotic, he liked any kind of plaid provided it was on the dark side and “dignified.”

Jessalyn and the salesclerk had laughed together quietly. Whitey hadn’t noticed. How she’d loved him, her husband, his innocent vanity and obliviousness.

The suit, badly torn, dirtied, bloodied, damaged, has been hanging in Whitey’s closet in a plastic bag, as Thom had instructed. “Don’t have it dry cleaned, and don’t throw it away,” he’d told Jessalyn. For the damage to the suit wasn’t caused (Thom has said) by an accident in Whitey’s vehicle but by an assault by police officers.

(Jessalyn has not heard from Thom in weeks about the legal action he is planning to take against the Hammond Police Department; she is not sure that she’d ever quite understood what Thom is, or was, planning, with Whitey’s lawyer-friend Bud Hawley. Misconduct? Excessive force? Assault? Manslaughter? It will not be good for them—for any of the McClarens. Her mind shrinks from such upsetting thoughts as her sensitive eyes shrink from too-bright sunshine.)

In any case, Jessalyn wouldn’t give away Whitey’s favorite suit. Proudly Whitey had worn the suit for special occasions though the waist had grown tight and the trousers a little long—“Am I getting shorter, Jess? Jesus! It feels too soon for that.”

“My dear, handsome husband,” she’d said, laughing. On her toes to kiss his cheek. “My Black Watch husband.”

He’d worn it on that day. The last day of his life as Whitey McClaren.

Such vanity! His, and her own.

Weakly she shuts the closet door. She isn’t strong enough after all for the tasks that await her.

FOR MY SAKE you have got to keep living.

If you give up I am lost utterly.

She would not give up. She would not abandon her husband a second time.

(PHONE RINGING: BEVERLY’S PETULANT VOICE Mom? Mom! I know you are home will you PLEASE pick up.)

(Mom, if you don’t answer or call back within ten minutes I am getting into my car and DRIVING OVER THERE.)

(Hurriedly then Jessalyn calls back her daughter with a feeble excuse, she’d been outside and had not heard the phone ring, she’d been vacuuming… Yes I am fine, dear. No need to come over just now.)

EACH WEEK, flowers from Leo Colwin.

Promptly on Monday at about 11:00 A.M. The familiar delivery truck barrels up the long driveway, familiar burly deliveryman, ringing doorbell, Jessalyn remains upstairs observing from behind a curtain until the deliveryman briskly departs having left the bouquet on the front stoop.

She will bring the flowers inside, eventually. Though sometimes she forgets.

“Mom? There’re flowers out here, I’ll bring them inside… What’s the card say?—To My Dearest Jessalyn, Love Leo. This is so sweet!”

Often, flowers from the previous week are still on the kitchen table in an identical glass vase from the florist’s. Over the weeks, now months, the flowers have changed from roses, mums, carnations to amaryllis, daffodils, tulips, daisies, hyacinth, (Easter) lilies.

Such a sweet man, Leo Colwin. So wonderful, the two of them (widow, widower), longtime friends, seeing each other, giving comfort to each other—“Daddy would be happy, I think.”

To this Jessalyn makes no reply. Sees her hands moving in homemaker ways, familiar and comforting (to the daughter if not to the mother), fussing with the previous week’s flowers which are (admittedly) past their bloom, bruised petals beginning to fall on the counter and on the floor, bending the flower stalks in half in order to shove into a trash container with a certain restrained zest; emptying out the old, now smelly water into the sink. Feels her mouth tug in a small triumphant smile. There! Gone.

“I think—Daddy would be happy… About Leo…”

But now Beverly isn’t so sure. Glances about as if (Jessalyn understands, Jessalyn glances about in this way a hundred times a day in this house) Whitey were in the very room glowering at her.

“He always loved—people… Going out, friends, making new friends, even people he didn’t like—Daddy kind of liked. Y’know? Those old feuds of his, going back for years, remember how upset and sad Daddy was when some old enemy”—Beverly hesitates—“passed away…”

Beverly speaks a little too heartily. The silence in the widow’s house is palpable as a sweet-smelling gas.

At such times (unscheduled visits, dropping in to check on Mom like a social worker checking on a suspect client) Beverly is over-cheerful, over-loud, over-inquisitive, over-vigilant taking note of (for instance) the stacks of unread/unopened mail (sympathy cards, letters) in a wicker basket on the kitchen table, untouched for weeks, about which she’d chided Jessalyn before—“We could open them together, Mom. I think it would do you good, to know how people l-loved Daddy…”

Jessalyn blinks at her daughter. Why on earth—her expression seems to ask—why would that do me good?

“…it’s just polite to at least see what your friends have written. Some widows—people—reply to sympathy cards…”

Beverly speaks haltingly like a person with something foreign in her mouth, small sour seeds or nettles. Each clumsy word is a surprise to her yet she cannot seem to stop speaking.

Beverly is hoping that Jessalyn will invite her to stay here for the rest of the day. Or maybe—for the night. Such solace in the house on Old Farm Road, she can find nowhere else in the world.

Her husband has become impatient with her moods. Her children are impatient, embarrassed. Jeez Mom. Get hold of yourself.

She will run away to her old home! Her old, girlhood room still containing a bed, a dresser and a mirror once her closest companion.

It is a fact: no one is so interested in you as that reflection in the mirror.

“Is there anything of Whitey’s left?—I mean, to drink? Did you pour it all out?”

Yes. All out.

“Oh, Mom!”

But I am not the mother, just now. Please understand.

Beverly will retreat from the house on the Old Farm Road wounded, annoyed; disgusted with herself, she’d really wanted a drink!—and disgusted with Jessalyn, or disappointed with Jessalyn, pouring out the remains of Whitey’s expensive whiskeys for what desperate reason Beverly doesn’t want to consider. Five minutes after she leaves the house she pulls over to park at the side of the road, eager to call Lorene and leave a voice mail of martyrish complaint I’ve tried to tell you, our mother is unhinged by grief, she has not been herself in months, she is almost rude to me, Daddy wouldn’t recognize this woman in old clothes, not even clean clothes, her hair is every-which-way, wild-looking, white—Daddy would be shocked she’d let her hair go white, he’d always been so proud that Mom was so young-looking. It was noon, and Mom hadn’t gotten around to putting on makeup, or proper shoes—she was in bedroom slippers. She won’t let me help her with the sympathy cards or with Whitey’s clothes. She didn’t want to come out grocery shopping. She just looked blank when I invited her for Sunday dinner with the kids. It’s beyond normal grief, normal grief is shared. And she scarcely seems to care that poor Leo Colwin is in love with her, such a sweet man, such a gentleman, and Leo has money, he isn’t after her money like some other man might be, her women friends are calling me to say they feel exactly the same, Mom doesn’t have time for them, Mom doesn’t answer the damned phone, Mom is taking Leo Colwin for granted, her behavior is going to drive him away and then what? Mom is turning into some wild-white-haired old eccentric woman! Imagine, Jessalyn McClaren of all people! I think we will have to have an intervention, damn it Lorene this is serious! Don’t you dare not call me back.

SNOWFALL. AND IN THE MORNING, animal tracks close beside the house.

Jessalyn discovers them when she goes outside, onto the rear deck, to put birdseed into the feeders. Not myriad animal tracks but a single, singular creature (of about the size of a dog) that made its way up the steps and across the deck, approaching the house as if to peer inside the plate-glass sliding doors.

And elsewhere, in loose powdery snow at the sides of the house, as if the creature was seeking entry, blindly.

LATELY, the tremor in Leo Colwin’s left hand has been more pronounced. Jessalyn feels sorrier for him, more kindly disposed. She’d expected to be caring for Whitey after his hospital discharge and had prepared herself emotionally for a period of rehabilitation; so now, cheated of this experience, which she has imagined as a romantic adventure, she is likely to find herself gazing after wheelchair-bound or obviously incapacitated older men when she sees them, with an air of yearning. Unfortunately such men are invariably tended by their wives who would not wish (would they?) to give them up.

Just as well, sweetheart. I’d have been an impossible bastard in a wheelchair, you’d have ended up hating my guts.

“Oh, Whitey! No…”

Jessalyn is stricken at the thought. No no no.

She’d acquired pamphlets, books with such no-nonsense utilitarian titles as The Stroke Caregiver’s Handbook, After a Stroke: Support for Patients and Caregivers, Stroke Recovery: Tips for the Caregiver. She’d researched night school courses at the community college nursing school.

And Leo Colwin is indeed a very nice man. Though she has no more feeling for him than (for instance) she’d have had for a mannequin discarded in a trash heap she can see that he is an attractive man for his age, a generous man, often “witty”—as her daughters are always saying, a gentleman. And how touching it is, he likes her.

Often, Leo speaks of his “residences.” A two-bedroom condominium in Hammond’s most prestigious retirement village overlooking the Chautauqua River; a “camping lodge” in the Keene Valley, Adirondacks; an “almost-Gulf-front” condominium in Sarasota, Florida. Leo is one of those local residents who take an interest in Revolutionary War history of the region and so admire the Forrester House—as he calls it; clearly, Leo would like to live in such a house, with its General George Washington connection.

Where others ask the widow out of idle, cruel curiosity if she planned on selling her house Leo Colwin asks with a look of apprehension, pain—“You don’t plan to sell your house, Jessalyn, do you?—I hope not.” Nervously he grips both hands to keep them from trembling.

Jessalyn wonders if Leo had Parkinson’s? Or is his tremor only “benign”—not a symptom of something beyond itself? She is feeling more kindly disposed to him; within a year or two, he might require some sort of wifely care.

Widow, widower. Match made in Hades!

It is touching to Jessalyn, that Leo dresses with such apparent care for their evenings together at dinners in the homes of mutual friends, invariably seated next to each other—“Here, Jessalyn! Here’s your place card, right next to me.” (Peering nearsightedly at the place cards as if there might be some terrible mistake or confusion, as if Jessalyn might be at the farther end of the table, as a wife might have been positioned, out of earshot.) That Leo wears once-elegant, now lightly moth-hole-ridden J. Press flannel jackets, polka-dot bow ties (at which Whitey, who disliked most neckties anyway, would sneer), reasonably sharp-creased trousers that match, or nearly match, his jacket. On his feet, not always but often, tasseled moccasins with black socks. Always he sports a handkerchief tucked into his lapel pocket and in his lapel is a small mysterious pin of intersecting triangles (pyramids?) that identified the wearer as a member of a secret fraternal order to which (so far as Jessalyn knows) John Earle McClaren had not belonged. (Though Whitey, contemptuous of all such “secret” organizations, excepting the Order of the Arrow commemorating his particular Eagle Scout status as a boy of fifteen, might have been inducted into Leo’s organization for purely professional reasons and discarded the pin without even mentioning it to his family.)

Leo’s flat blank-colored hair is thin but meticulously barbered. He smells of a faintly astringent shaving lotion, cologne. He has always been a Republican, Jessalyn knows, though not so flexible a Republican as Whitey (who’d voted for Obama) who’d liked to goad Leo Colwin and others with: “A Republican is an individual who hires someone else to do his dirty work for him—cops, military, lawyers.”

Leo firmly believes the less government, the better. Regulate decent, family-owned businesses?—why? He’d disapproved of the Clintons. He disapproved of “rabble-rousing” by any politician. He “had doubts” about women in high public office or in the judiciary. Once, Whitey described him as “an old-school white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Republican vintage 1950”—Leo laughed glowingly, flattered.

Now Leo is saying to Jessalyn, in the hesitant voice you might use with a convalescent, “Dear Jessalyn, I—I am wondering if you’ve given more thought to… what I’d suggested…”

What has Leo suggested? Jessalyn has no idea.

“…our losses, our lives… so much in common, ‘rapport’ of many years… donated to Whitey’s campaign for mayor… My children admire you so, Jessalyn! They are delighted that we are ‘seeing each other’… they both say, ‘Please tell Mrs. McClaren hello for us!’”

As Leo speaks in a rapid excited voice Jessalyn has a vision of the (adult) Colwin children, whom she scarcely recalls, has not seen in years, gazing at Leo and her with intense interest. Please! Please take over the care and feeding of our dear lonely father.

To dampen her suitor’s interest Jessalyn tells Leo that she did not inherit Whitey’s estate, exactly. That is, Whitey left her money in a “trust” that pays her a fixed sum each quarter; if she applies for more money it would have to be at the discretion of the estate executor, a lawyer-friend of his.

She wouldn’t be able, she warns him, to acquire a million dollars easily, let alone five, ten million—“Whitey has seen to that. One of my daughters says his will is like a ‘foot-binding.’”

The sardonic remark was Lorene’s, and it had been received by all who’d heard with dismay. Jessalyn is surprised to hear herself repeat it now.

Leo draws in his breath. Is he surprised?—shocked? At the lurid image of foot-binding, or at the conditions of Whitey’s will?

Is he disappointed that Jessalyn doesn’t have access to large amounts of money, or is he sympathetic and embarrassed on her account, that her husband so little trusted her good judgment?

“Oh, dear Jessalyn. That is—too bad…”

Leo takes Jessalyn’s hand in his, to comfort her.

Leo is quiet for a while, thinking. Then—“A trust can be broken, Jessalyn. I wouldn’t consider that trust binding, only just temporary, with the proper lawyer.” Leo speaks firmly, almost with exhilaration, as Jessalyn has rarely heard him speak.

He wants Whitey to hear. He is challenging Whitey!

In life the men had not been competitive. Leo had so far trailed behind Whitey, neither man would have considered the other a worthy rival. And so this (belated) challenge is somewhat out of character for Leo.

That night as he is about to leave Jessalyn’s house Leo grips her shoulders and stoops awkwardly to kiss her on the lips—a lukewarm rubbery kiss that makes her want to laugh shrilly like a twelve-year-old.

“Good night, dear Jessalyn!”

“Good night—Leo…”

Quickly then shutting the door, locking it. What has she done? What is happening to her? She hopes that something has not been tacitly decided between her and Leo, of which she is but vaguely aware. Rubbing at her lips, that feel numb. She has a vision of swirling water, foam and froth on its surface, and something borne in its current, a living thing, a body, helpless as it is swept along—where?

That night lying awake waiting for a sardonic and witty remark of Whitey’s to conclude the evening. But nothing.

“WINTER SQUASH.”

“Butternut squash.”

Virgil has brought her a large butternut squash, oblong-shaped, like an Indian club, graceless, with a hard rind, dirty-cream-colored. In her hands it feels heavy as a heart.

“Oh, Virgil! Thank you. It’s beautiful…”

Virgil laughs at her, this is such an untruth. Jessalyn has to laugh as well, at herself.

Famously gracious Jessalyn McClaren. Confronted with a singularly ugly large vegetable as with a singularly ugly baby, Jessalyn can only exclaim Beautiful!

“You don’t have to cook it, Mom. You don’t have to do anything with it. It’s from our farm, I guess you could say it’s ‘ornamental.’”

“I know perfectly well what a butternut squash is, Virgil. I’ve made butternut squash, roasted, with almonds, cinnamon, and brown sugar. You used to love it. Whitey, too.”

By you Jessalyn means the children. The collective you.

“Well. I can’t stay for supper, in any case…”

“Did I invite you?”—Jessalyn gives Virgil a little pinch.

Virgil is smiling but not so sure of himself now. Does he want to leave or—stay? Every hour of Virgil’s life seems to be so mediated.

Jessalyn’s younger son, the son who sets her heart aflutter (with worry? exasperation? dread? love?) is standing in her kitchen, hasn’t removed his oversized jacket, nor the knitted cap on his head, that looks like something purchased at a rummage sale. (It is.) Virgil’s still-adolescent skin is unevenly flushed from the cold, his eyes are watery and evasive. His fair-brown beard is sparse, wispy, but longer than Jessalyn recalls; the (darker) hair on his head is tangled and straggly over his (worn, not-very-clean) collar. Though Virgil lives only a few miles away from the family home it has been some time since he has visited Jessalyn.

Why?—no reason. Jessalyn knows better than to ask.

You can’t call Virgil, his siblings complain. Virgil can’t call you.

(Of course, if Virgil wanted to call, he certainly could. No problem borrowing a phone. But Virgil has been inconsiderately reluctant to own a phone, for in that way he would be making himself accessible to his family.)

Since he’d moved out at the age of nineteen it has been Virgil’s habit to drop by the house at unpredictable times. Of course, being Virgil, he will fail to come if he has (vaguely) promised he will. So annoyed was Whitey at his son’s “hippie” behavior, Jessalyn rarely mentioned to Whitey when Virgil visited the house, or failed to visit. She hadn’t considered it duplicitous exactly, rather more protective of both Virgil and Whitey.

A mother protects a son against the father. Is this, Jessalyn wonders, something like classical?

She has given up hoping that Virgil will reform—“re-form” for Virgil would require considerable effort, like a pretzel untwisting itself.

Except today Virgil has surprised his mother. Glancing out the window in the late morning, seeing what appears to be a Jeep making its way along the icy driveway Jessalyn is baffled: Who on earth does she know who owns a Jeep?

Not even Thom owns a Jeep. And Thom is, Jessalyn supposes, a Jeep-type.

But it is Virgil, looking both embarrassed and (covertly) proud.

“Hey, it’s secondhand, Mom. A bargain. So I can get around in the winter without having to borrow a vehicle.”

As if he expects Jessalyn to accuse him of something. What?

Jessalyn thinks that the purchase is eminently practical. Sensible. Good for Virgil, to be using the money his father had left him for a good cause. Next, he might purchase a cell phone. Make a dental appointment. Mature.

Virgil is perpetually embarrassed about money. He has few needs himself, it seems; but he has often strongly hinted that he “needs” money for one or another charitable organization—Green Space, Mercy for Animals, Save Our Great Lakes—which Jessalyn has usually provided.

(Of course, without telling Whitey. This has involved strategic transferences of money from their checking account.)

“How are you, Virgil?”—Jessalyn asks lightly. (For this is a question that must be asked lightly by a mother, put to an adult child.)

Virgil winces, or almost. Wishing to say, Jessalyn supposes, Oh who cares about me? Virgil doesn’t “exist.”

“Are you sure you can’t stay for dinner, Virgil? I could prepare this butternut squash.”

“Well. I guess—not.”

His mouth twists as if he would like to say yes.

(But why on earth can’t he say yes? This is so like Virgil!)

Jessalyn doesn’t persist as she would have once done—Are you sure? Why do you have to rush away? Too often she has seen her son’s harried look. He is like a wild creature that has been only partially tamed, wary of a collar around its neck, a tight leash.

Once Virgil has established that he isn’t staying for dinner—once his mother has accepted this—he is noticeably more relaxed. Unzips his jacket, drapes it on a chair. Beneath he is wearing paint-stained bib-overalls over a long-sleeved flannel shirt with soiled cuffs. But even the unlaundered musty scent of her son is precious to Jessalyn, flooding her with pleasure, relief.

Virgil is too shy to ask his mother how she has been. Dreading to hear an obvious answer.

I am in despair. To breathe is to feel pain. Will you release me, let me go? I am so lonely without him.

No, Virgil can’t possibly ask such a question. His heart behaves strangely when he thinks the very words Dad, Daddy. Gone.

Jessalyn tells Virgil it’s good to see him! She has been thinking of him.

Well. Virgil has been thinking of her.

Impulsively Jessalyn hugs her son. The flood of pleasure is too strong to resist. Like a teenaged boy Virgil stiffens, just slightly; holds his arms out, limp and uninvolved as scarecrow arms. But (to Jessalyn’s relief) he doesn’t shrink away.

How bony he has become! And how tall, taller than she remembers. He dreads her speaking of Whitey, she understands.

Quickly she says, before Virgil could be expected to mutter an apology for how long he has stayed away from her, “I’m really doing well, I think. I’m starting my volunteer work again, at the library. And the hospital, next Monday. I think it’s time.”

There is a pause. (Is it true, about the volunteer work? Jessalyn has returned for a half-day at the local branch of the township library, where she checks out books and DVDs and, upon occasion, reads to pre-school children during Story Hour. But she will probably not return so soon to Hammond General Hospital where she volunteers at the information desk and where every minute of every hour will remind her of entering a room on the fifth floor to see Whitey’s motionless body in death. Eyes not entirely shut, mouth slightly open. Oh dear God.)

“Tomorrow I’m going to sort through Dad’s clothes, and shoes. I think it’s time.” (Is this true? Maybe.)

Virgil asks if she wants help?

Please say no—his eyes beg.

“Thank you but I don’t think so. I mean—I’m not sure when I will actually get to it…”

Her mind has gone blank. She feels as if she has been shaken—literally: lifted, shaken like a doll so that her teeth rattled and her brain knocked against her skull. (What had she been thinking of just now?—it’s gone.)

In the awkward silence Virgil asks if he can have something to drink. Helps himself to grapefruit juice from the refrigerator, poured into his old, favorite turquoise glass that is the last remaining of a set of twelve, from Target.

(Whitey always insisted that Jessalyn make household purchases at the best stores. Jessalyn never disagreed but made many purchases at Target, Home Depot, JCPenney, about which Whitey never knew. What great glasses!—he’d surely exclaimed.)

Jessalyn spoons out (plain, low-fat) yogurt into a bowl. Slices a banana, sprinkles the yogurt with muesli and cinnamon, sets it before Virgil, who begins to eat hungrily.

Hands him a paper napkin. Distractedly, he tucks it into his shirtfront.

Care and feeding of a son. A boy.

Shy, backward, Virgil will find it hard to thank his mother. Why is he so strange? Jessalyn’s heart is suffused with love for him, and fear for him. He seems to crave affection—and care—even as he shrinks from it; even as a child he’d been like this, amid the (mostly) loving McClaren family. Virgil can be charming, even seductive, with women, and with men, for whom it isn’t likely that he can feel anything much—he can be quite playful, extravagant. She has seen women and girls stare after him in public places, his homely-handsome face radiant with feeling, energy quivering in all of his limbs. She has seen men stare after Virgil, too.

She’d wondered—sometimes. When Virgil was in high school. His notable lack of interest in girls, sex.

Unless Virgil’s interest was hidden from her. Surreptitious.

Most of the time Virgil gives the impression of (resentful) restraint. Like one hobbling in an ill-fitting shoe who nonetheless insists upon wearing the damned shoe to spite—what?—the shoe, or the self-wearing-the-shoe?

Or, the parental authority, that pushed the shoe upon him?

Jessalyn asks if Virgil would like a little more to eat and Virgil hesitates—no? yes?—as if the decision should not be his own. She laughs, and replenishes the yogurt-muesli mixture.

True, the mother has “enabled” the son to persist in such behavior—Lorene is quite correct. (Without guessing that Lorene’s own prickly, sharp-elbowed personality has got to be the consequence of “enabling” as well on the part of both parents.) But what is the alternative, exactly?—Jessalyn has never understood.

If Whitey had been more accepting of Virgil, less judgmental—that would have made a difference. Jessalyn couldn’t allow Virgil to feel less loved than the other children.

No need to indulge Thom, for instance. Thom has been fully capable of indulging himself.

It is a pleasure to Jessalyn, to see Virgil eat in her kitchen. She believes that she doesn’t want “company”—she prefers to be alone with Whitey, that’s to say her grief. But of course, Virgil is the exception.

He’d fled Hammond after his father’s death—Jessalyn had fully understood.

Her other children, certainly the girls, surely Thom, would think to ask Jessalyn how well does she eat these days; does she prepare actual meals, or eat just haphazardly (out of a yogurt container, for instance, with a spoonful of muesli sprinkled inside)—but it would never occur to Virgil to ask.

The mother is strength. You do not question strength.

“And how is—is it ‘Sabine’?”

Virgil shrugs, frowning. As if he knows very well that Jessalyn knows very well the name is “Sabine.”

“Well. She’s all right. As far as I know.”

“Is she still living at the farm?”

“Sometimes.”

Jessalyn wants to ask—But do you still see her? Are you a—couple?

Jessalyn has not given up the fantasy of Virgil falling in love, being married. Finding someone (oh, almost anyone!) who will love him and care for him as his mother does. So I can die happy.

(But what a foolish idea! Whitey would be furious if he’d heard. Foolish notion to tie her happiness to another’s well-being, and then to feel that her life has been used up satisfactorily, in such a way.)

Don’t think it—Jessalyn can hear Whitey muttering.

“You never brought her to dinner… That would have been fun.”

“Doubtful, Mom. Sabine isn’t into what you’d call ‘fun.’”

Virgil laughs with a kind of vindictive mirth.

Jessalyn supposes that this is true. She remembers another of Virgil’s girlfriends, or rather girls-who-were-friends—what was her name—

“‘Polly.’” Virgil volunteers the name ruefully.

“Oh yes, ‘Polly.’ Whatever happened to her?”

Polly had been a heifer of a girl, stern-faced, difficult. A veterinarian’s assistant with buzz-cut hair, in denim and hiking boots and with an eagle tattoo on her left wrist at which, during an awkward Sunday dinner, Whitey had stared in amazement (as he’d explained afterward) not at the tattoo so much as at the size of the wrist, as large as his own. Man. That was a big gal.

Virgil and Jessalyn laugh together, recollecting. The Sunday dinner is far enough away to laugh at, the prim way in which Polly had castigated the McClarens for eating meat—“You are putting in your mouths something that was once alive. Just as you are alive.” Polly had glared at them as if they’d been monsters.

Virgil had apologized to his guest: “I should have warned you, Polly. I guess I forgot.”

Polly! The McClarens had to stifle their laughter, this was the least Polly-like person you could imagine.

Feeling the responsibility of the hostess, as well as the responsibility of being Virgil’s mother, Jessalyn had stammered apologetically to the glaring girl: “We are—just—really just—ordinary people…”

How lame this sounded! Jessalyn’s voice trailed off guiltily.

“Don’t apologize, Mom. She’s the rude one.”

Thrilled at a dinner table quarrel for which she could not possibly be blamed Lorene had intervened in a sharp snide voice.

Polly retorted to Lorene: “I’d rather be rude any day, than carnivorous.”

“Well. I’d rather be carnivorous than rude.”

Polly shoved herself from the table, incensed. Despite the quarrel (which had flared up within the first several minutes of the meal) Polly had managed to eat a hot buttered biscuit, a large serving of yams, and mushroom stuffing; her jaws were grinding even as she charged out of the room. Virgil had had no choice (he’d explain afterward) but to run after her.

All this while at the farther end of the table Whitey had looked on more surprised than offended. Didn’t utter a word to their brash guest, which wasn’t like him, except in the aftermath of Polly rushing from the room, and Virgil close behind her, he couldn’t resist an amused chuckle—“Some folks could use a lesson in old-fashioned good manners.”

Turned out that the heifer-girl hadn’t been a girl after all but a woman older than Virgil, twenty-six at the time. She worked with him at the Chautauqua Living Farm and was in charge, according to Virgil, of hogs and oxen.

Jessalyn and Virgil laugh together, recalling Polly. Jessalyn thinks that it’s mean to bond together over poor unattractive Polly—but bonding with her son is the crucial thing.

In mimicry of Jessalyn’s plaintive words, about which Whitey and the others had teased her for years, Virgil says in a falsetto voice, “‘We are just—really—ordinary people… Forgive us.’”

That comical voice! Jessalyn wonders if this is how Virgil hears her.

“I didn’t actually say ‘Forgive us.’”

“Yes, you did. Didn’t you?”

“I did not. Whitey made that up.”

Whitey was always making things up. Half the family stories sprang from Whitey appropriating an unexceptional event and giving it a grandiloquent turn.

But once Whitey had appropriated an event, it was very hard to re-establish it as unexceptional.

“How funny, to be in charge of hogs and oxen. But if you needed someone to tend them, Polly would be your choice.” (Jessalyn is drawing Virgil into laughing at Polly again. Is this a betrayal of sisterhood?) She asks what became of Polly but Virgil only shrugs ominously as he had when she’d asked about Sabine.

No idea, Mom!

For a long moment they are silent. Mother and son pondering the long-ago girl- and woman-friends of Virgil’s.

Virgil asks Jessalyn if she has any work for him to do today, any household repairs, he has brought tools out in the Jeep. It’s customary for Virgil to fix things around the house and on the property, if he can, whenever he drops by. Jessalyn is touched that Virgil will work hard at such tasks for her, so long as he isn’t expected to do them; like Whitey she has wished that Virgil would support himself at least partially as a handyman or carpenter, at which he is surprisingly skilled. But no, Virgil is an artiste and a Buddhist, he doesn’t work for hire and most waking hours of his life are reserved, as he says piously, for art or meditation.

Virgil’s talent for household repairs had impressed Whitey, who wasn’t handy himself. But he’d rarely praised Virgil without giving an ironic little twist to his words—Our son the handyman. Good he can earn his keep if he has to.

Virgil takes pride in his handyman/carpenter tasks. Screwing in a drawer handle that has fallen off, repairing a leak in a faucet, changing a burnt-out ceiling light far too high for Jessalyn to risk changing herself, on a stepladder—he is prepared now to leave, and yet lingers in the kitchen staring at the bulletin board. (Jessalyn has noticed: not a single snapshot of Virgil remains on the board. How sad this is! But she is determined to say nothing.)

Virgil studies a newspaper photograph of Whitey, one of the older, frayed clippings. Jessalyn doesn’t have the heart to come closer, to see which one it is.

Though in fact she has memorized the bulletin board. Shut her eyes, she can reproduce it piece by piece and year by year.

“You’re sure you don’t need help sorting through Dad’s things?”

“Yes! I mean, I am sure.”

Jessalyn shudders at the thought of sharing such an intimate task even with a son.

She wonders if that is it: she doesn’t want to share Whitey with anyone else. Each article of clothing she will touch, stroke, contemplate…

Oh what has become of us?

Virgil drifts restlessly about the downstairs of the house. He has put on his jacket but has not zipped it up. The knitted cap has been stuffed into a pocket. A child who doesn’t know if he wants to go outside or stay inside.

She will not beg him to stay. She is not lonely!

(Almost) she hopes that Virgil will leave. For it is always a relief when the (adult) children leave, you no longer need to plead (secretly) with them to stay.

Easier on them, and easier on the widow.

In the front hall Virgil discovers Leo Colwin’s most recent bouquet. One of his most opulent, a dozen white and yellow roses, beginning to wilt. Jessalyn set the flowers on a table and forgotten them, and has not freshened the water in the vase for days.

“People still sending flowers for Dad?—I guess they really l-liked, loved him…”

Jessalyn tells him yes. Oh yes.

Virgil asks who’d sent these?—Jessalyn says she isn’t sure.

(No need to tell Virgil about Leo Colwin. Jessalyn is not proud of her relationship with Leo Colwin. Too timorous to hurt the man’s feelings, God knows she may end up married to him out of sheer lethargy and cowardice, a vague wish to placate and to please. Virgil has probably not heard of this shameful impasse, his sisters don’t confide in him. This is fortunate!)

Virgil has drifted into the living room which has become a deserted place recently. Even the dust motes in the air look thicker.

From the farthermost window Virgil calls that there is an animal by the creek, by the dock—“Looks like a young fox.”

Foxes locally are not so uncommon and must be quite common over on Bear Mountain Road where Virgil lives. Yet Virgil sounds excited, boyish.

By the time Jessalyn hurries to the window the creature is too far away for her to see clearly. To her eye it doesn’t have the oddly ungainly, loping gait of a fox.

Coyote? Wildcat—lynx?

Swiftly, it has disappeared into a neighbor’s property thick with pine trees.

“I used to look out my window in the night, toward the creek. Remember the screech owls?—sounding like babies shrieking. It made my blood run cold, to hear them hunting in the night and early dawn. Rabbits and other birds, we’d just see matted fur and feathers, bloodied feathers, a few bones…”

Is that how he remembers his childhood home?—Jessalyn wonders, dismayed.

Virgil confides in Jessalyn that he has been having trouble sleeping lately—“Thinking about things. It’s like my brain is on fire.”

Jessalyn doesn’t want to say I know. Doesn’t want to appropriate her son’s sleeplessness as if it were a variant of her own.

“When I’m awake, I’m OK. When I lie down, try to fall asleep, it’s like a World War Two war movie, aerial bombardment… I was thinking maybe I could sleep better, back in my old room in this house. It’s like stepping into time, into something blank like an elevator shaft when there’s no elevator, coming back to this house. But I guess it isn’t a good idea. In fact, I know it isn’t.”

Virgil’s eyelids have grown heavy. His words have slowed. In a corner of a sofa he curls up like a child, leans his head onto his arms, falls asleep within a minute or two as if exhausted. When Jessalyn hears him in the hall bathroom it is hours later, nearing dusk.

Virgil appears in the kitchen, which is the warmest room in the chilly house. He is looking excited, his voice quavers with urgency.

In his sleep, he tells Jessalyn, Whitey appeared to him! This was the first time it had happened.

He’d opened his eyes (in his dream: he was still asleep) and there was Whitey sitting on the sofa, looking at him.

“I said, ‘Hi, Dad, what’re you doing here,’ in this voice like a kid’s voice, to disguise how astonished I was, because I didn’t want Dad to know that he wasn’t alive; so far as Dad knew, he was alive, like always. You know how Dad was—he didn’t like surprises unless they were his own! But whatever he said to me, I couldn’t hear. It was like he was speaking but the words were lost. I could see his mouth moving and I could hear something, but not actual words. So I said, ‘We were wondering where you were, Dad,’ and my throat was choking, I was trying not to cry because that would tip him off, that he was dead; and it was important to keep that from Dad, not to demoralize him. And when I woke up, I could not move for a long time. It is an ontological paradox, Mom—I was given to understand. That was the meaning of the dream, that I would understand this… Dad explained it to me except not in actual words but in a feeling like music. The kind of music I was playing for Dad? Did you hear? You heard! Not music but breath, air waves. Vibrations. If a spirit could move through space it would move in that way—ripples. Dad explained it to me, without needing to say a word. I think it was from one of Dad’s books he was always reading, you know?—out in the hammock, and we’d sneak up on him and he’d have fallen asleep. But see, Dad was trying. Most people don’t. He’d look through my college books sometimes, I saw him. But he wouldn’t ask anything. Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza—he’d wanted to know. He was not an ordinary man but he masqueraded as an ordinary man, that was Dad’s way. He’d never wanted to be a businessman, he said. Not to me, not personally, but I knew. Thom was the anointed one—Thom is. But it was me Dad spoke to, just now. Telling me what we need to know. If you and I are here, Mom, it isn’t impossible that Dad is not also somewhere that is, for him, here.” Virgil has been speaking excitedly, Jessalyn hasn’t been able to follow.

Virgil adds: “Or, as we would call it here, there.”

What is her son saying? He has never spoken to her in his life, in such a way. (Is Whitey speaking through him? Is this possible?) Jessalyn is listening with all her strength.

“The absent are there, while we are here. The hereness of the absent is described as thereness, but only from our perspective. Think of Daddy traveling. He could be in Australia, he isn’t here. If he’s in Japan, you don’t encounter him here. His thereness is a property of his being elsewhere relative to you, who are here. But if he were there, you would not experience him here. And so, Daddy not being here is not an essential quality of his existence but only of your experience of his existence. Do you understand, Mom?”

Jessalyn stares at her son whose face is suffused with emotion, like one entrusted with a great, consuming vision, that has squeezed itself inside the too-small space of his brain.

She is astonished by him, confused. But there is something consoling in the mad cascade of her son’s words, she will long cherish.

Smiling wanly, shaking her head. “No. But I will try.”

So it happens, Virgil stays for dinner after all. Possibly, he will stay the night.

With much pleasure, for she has not prepared any meal in some time that involves even the stove top or the oven, Jessalyn prepares roasted butternut squash, tomato bisque soup. In the toaster oven Virgil defrosts and toasts several slices of multigrain bread from a loaf that has been in the freezer since last October. They eat together in the warm kitchen whose windows look out upon the night, vivid with reflected, antic-seeming light. Almost, Jessalyn thinks, judging from the window reflections, there is a family gathering here, a festive occasion.

“If we were eating meat we could put leftovers out on the deck, for the fox, or whatever it was,” Virgil says, with an odd air of wistfulness. Jessalyn has no idea how to reply to such a curious remark that comes out of nowhere, and fades into nowhere, inexplicably.

“IT IS AN HEIRLOOM, YES. But it wasn’t hers.”

Only in a hushed voice does Leo Colwin say her, hers.

Meaning My late wife. Maude.

He has placed it on a table, in front of Jessalyn. In such a way that it is not possible for her to fail to identify it.

“…sapphire, edged with tiny diamonds. White gold that’s worn a little thin. At a jeweler’s they can ‘size’ a ring, you know…”

Of course, Jessalyn knows. She is staring at the exquisite ring—she has never seen so large a sapphire, close-up. She must suppress the impulse to push it back hurriedly at Leo.

Am I supposed to try it on?—Jessalyn wonders.

“Would you—like to—try it on? Just to see if…”

Leo Colwin is so nervous, both his hands are trembling. Jessalyn feels a tremor growing in all of her limbs.

“I—I don’t think so, Leo— I…”

But Jessalyn has spoken softly, and Leo is hard of hearing.

Slips it onto her finger, middle finger of her right hand not third finger of her left hand. Stares in a paroxysm of embarrassment.

(But where is Whitey? She has been dreading his scorn since Leo Colwin first arrived in brass-button navy blue sport coat, tasseled moccasins, bow tie and lapel pin, to escort her to a dinner party.)

“Beautiful! I thought it would be.”

Jessalyn’s fingers have become so thin, she has had to remove her rings, which Whitey had given her, for safekeeping. And so now her hands look thin, bare, bereft; it’s no wonder Leo Colwin has thought of pressing this ring upon her.

Slips it off her finger, to push back across the table to him.

“But it’s for you, Jessalyn. A token of our friendship…”

“I don’t think so. It’s much too…”

“…a memento. For you.”

“But no, Leo. It wouldn’t be right.”

“‘Right’—why not? What else can I do with it?” Leo speaks plaintively, as if Jessalyn is becoming unreasonable.

Jessalyn can only repeat that it doesn’t seem right to her, not just yet.

“‘Not—yet’? Another time, then?”

“Well…”

“In a few months? Would that be more appropriate?”

“I—I don’t know, Leo…”

Tenderly, Leo picks up the ring. It is indeed a beautiful object, that stirs in Jessalyn only a detached, chilly admiration—no interest and no desire.

Leo returns the ring to a small felt-lined box which he slips into an inner pocket of the brass-button coat. “You are right, Jessalyn. It may be too soon—for you.”

It is March now. Jessalyn dreads dripping eaves, the first crocuses and snow flowers pushing through the hard earth close outside the house on Old Farm Road.

YOU ARE ONLY AS HAPPY as your most unhappy child.

Is this true? Jessalyn wonders if it is a statement of resignation and defeat or a goad to action and change.

If it means that you will never be happy if a child of yours is not happy; or, you must do all you can to ensure that neither of you is unhappy.

“WELL. I QUIT MY JOB.”

Sophia utters this fierce blunt astonished pronouncement as soon as she steps into the house. Her white skin glares, her eyes blink rapidly with a kind of shrinking defiance.

“Oh, Sophie! Why?”

Mother, daughter embrace. It is always a surprise to Jessalyn, her children are so tall. Even the youngest daughter.

Sophia is trying not to cry, Jessalyn knows. For Jessalyn too is trying not to cry.

Whenever the children step into the house the first thing that comes to them is Where is Whitey? Why is just Mom here?—she sees it in their faces. In the quickness with which they smile to disguise their terrible unease.

Sophia is edgy, anxious. She is also very excited. She has much to tell Jessalyn and will measure it out over the course of several hours with the precision of a scientist. Of the children, Sophia has always been the one to take pains.

“Oh Mom. Look at you.”

In fact, Mom rarely does. If she can avoid it.

Sophia laughs, Jessalyn laughs. What is there to say about a widow who has let herself go in grief.

“Your hair is beautiful, though. If you’d just comb it. Such a stark white.”

Jessalyn gathers that her stark-white hair, growing untidily onto her shoulders, carelessly parted for expediency’s sake in the center of her head, has become a subject of much excited debate among Sophia’s sisters and (female) relatives. Some are of the opinion that Jessalyn should have her hair “colored”—the soft, silvery-brown hue it had been before last October; some, a smaller number, are of the opinion that it should be left white. What would Whitey say?—is the question.

Mostly, this question is unvoiced. But Beverly and Lorene have voiced it, tactlessly Jessalyn thinks.

“You seem to have gotten shorter, Mom! What on earth are you wearing on your feet?”—Sophia, long indifferent to clothes and shoes, with a patrician sort of intellectual disdain, stares at the flat, scuffed slippers on her mother’s bare bluish feet with something like horror. “It’s freezing in here. You should at least wear wool socks, like me.”

Jessalyn’s feet are sockless but this is just an oversight. She’d forgotten about socks or stockings hours ago at dawn dressing with a sleepwalker’s vagueness in the wool slacks she’d been wearing every day for the past week, pink cashmere sweater beginning to fray at the cuffs, Whitey’s gray cardigan several sizes too large for her with the cuffs rolled up.

“I will, dear. I’d meant to. There is just so much to think about, I get easily distracted.”

Sophia looks at her, alarmed. So much to think about? After so many weeks?

She has assumed that the widow’s life is over, perhaps. Even Sophia whom Jessalyn adores. Of course, the widow understands: to all others, a widow is de trop.

“It’s been a siege,” Jessalyn explains. “I have to defend myself, so much is attacking me.” Seeing that Sophia continues to look alarmed, and perplexed, Jessalyn adds quickly, “But I have it under control, really. Please don’t worry. Don’t look concerned. I’ve filled out all the forms, I think—probate court, ‘death duties.’ I’ve met with Whitey’s team and Sam Hewett and signed papers and checks. I have a dozen copies of the death certificate. All I need to do—(Sam Hewett said there was no urgency)—is register Whitey’s Toyota Highlander in my name at the Motor Vehicle, and finish sorting through Whitey’s clothes and shoes for Goodwill.”

“Oh. I see. Well—I can help you, Mom. We could start tonight with Dad’s clothes.”

“Maybe not tonight. But soon.”

“As long as I’m here…”

“Soon.”

Since early adolescence Sophia has had faint, bluish shadows beneath her eyes. Hers is an odd, angular sort of beauty as if glimpsed through a subtly distorting lens. She’d often been too tense, too excited, to sleep: preparing for high school exams, writing papers that required extraordinary feats of concentration. Late in the night Jessalyn would discover a bar of light beneath Sophia’s door and linger in the hall wondering if she should knock, or whether she should pretend she hadn’t seen. (Usually, she pretended she hadn’t seen. Whitey would have been adamant that Sophia turn out her light, go to sleep like a good girl if he’d known.)

Mother and daughter prepare a meal together in the warm-lit kitchen as (in fact) they had rarely done in the past. At family dinners Beverly had long assumed the role of Mom’s principal helper.

Remains of the immense butternut squash Virgil had left, which Jessalyn reheats in the microwave oven. Sophia remarks how good this is, with cinnamon, brown sugar, a dollop of yogurt—“You used to make this, didn’t you? When we were kids?”

Over their meal Sophia tells Jessalyn that she has decided to leave Memorial Park. She has a temporary job with another biology lab in Hammond—“Much smaller, and I’ve taken a salary cut. Daddy wouldn’t approve at all, I think.”

“But why did you leave Memorial Park, Sophie? We’d thought you were happy there…”

“I was, for a while. I guess. It was flattering to be hired by—the director of the Lumex trials. But then, after Daddy passed away it suddenly wasn’t possible—I couldn’t come back.”

“But why?”

“Well, I guess—I’d lost my lab skills.”

“‘Lab skills’—?”

“Couldn’t bring myself to torture and kill animals.”

Jessalyn is looking blank. Sophia sees that her mother’s fine, newly white hair has been not very evenly parted in the center of her head, as if she’d drawn a comb through it quickly with eyes averted from a mirror. (And her eyes seem to be chronically moist, a condition Sophia diagnoses as “dry eye”—perpetual tearing, as tear ducts cease to function normally.)

“Lab animals. Research animals. They’re bred for experiments. They have no life outside of experiments. You must have known, Mom. I’m sure that Daddy did.”

Did she know?—Jessalyn has no idea. Like Whitey’s financial documents, Wealth Management and IRS forms she’d signed without reading, eyes averted.

What Whitey knew, or didn’t know, had never been clear to her. Vaguely it did seem (how could it be otherwise) that Beverly had put pressure on Steve to get married earlier than they’d planned, for (obviously) Beverly had become pregnant earlier than they’d planned; vaguely it did seem that Lorene had had some sort of breakdown the Thanksgiving weekend of her senior year at Binghamton when she’d refused to come home and wept over the phone. (Lorene! Weeping! Lorene had scarcely wept, since.) Thom had gotten into some sort of trouble at Colgate, perhaps not Thom personally but his fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Whitey had been one of the fathers who’d contributed legal fees to help out—exactly how much, exactly why, Jessalyn hadn’t been told for Whitey wouldn’t have wanted her to worry.

Money is the solution to most problems. Worry just gets in the way.

Mostly he’d wanted to be proud. Pride sometimes depends upon not looking too closely.

“Experimental animals are ‘sacrificed.’ In the interests of science. There wouldn’t be modern medicine without it. I understand this but—I can’t do it any longer.”

Sacrificed. Jessalyn seems to be considering this word.

“Not dogs or cats, Mom. Not monkeys. Rats, mice.”

As if rats and mice didn’t suffer quite as much as larger animals, ounce for ounce! Sophia laughs mirthlessly.

“Stroke victims’ treatment wouldn’t be possible without animal experimentation. Neuroscience has mostly worked with primates—brains closely resembling human brains. Blood-clotting, hemorrhaging. Brain surgery. At least I never did anything like that—I don’t have the training. Never opened up a monkey’s skull to take slides.”

Sophia speaks with a fascinated sort of dread as if she is thinking of someone who’d done just this. She laughs again, a harsh sort of laugh, and her eyes snatch at Jessalyn’s with a kind of defiance.

“My life came to a kind of halt. After Dad. Now I have to—I am trying to—make a new way…”

She is in love with someone. Someone has come into her life.

Jessalyn smiles encouragingly. But Sophia will measure out the news of her life methodically, warily.

It is a mother’s prerogative to touch a child: Jessalyn exercises this prerogative with restraint and discretion. Lightly brushing wisps of hair off Sophia’s forehead which feels heated, slightly damp. Your daughter is in a fever state. Crazily in love.

Since the age of eleven Sophia has had a habit of frowning. Furrowing her beautiful forehead. The fine white creases disappear now, or nearly; but will not always disappear.

Fine white creases in Jessalyn’s forehead, she has noticed more prominently in recent months.

Jessalyn’s heart aches with yearning, she wishes she could absorb her daughter’s excitement and anxiety into herself, to soften it, nullify.

After cleaning up the kitchen they decide to put on heavy coats and to walk about the property. By moonlight!

Jessalyn takes a flashlight. Whitey’s big old flashlight, kept for decades on a shelf near the kitchen door.

The snow of late winter has partially melted, and has refrozen. The air is sharply cold and very still. Jessalyn can’t recall walking with her youngest daughter, her dear, most-loved daughter, in such a way, in years, perhaps ever: just the two of them, impulsively clutching mittened hands.

A hike in the snow-crust. Down the hill to the partly frozen creek. To the small dock which Whitey persisted in calling the “new dock” though it is at least ten years old.

“Thom thought that someone might have been camping here a few weeks ago. You can’t see anything now with this snow, but Thom imagined he’d seen something.”

“Why would anyone camp here? I doubt it.”

Sharp-eyed Sophia, with her scientist’s skepticism! Jessalyn adores her.

Sophia takes the flashlight from Jessalyn to peer more closely at the snow-crusted creek bank. There are faint, trampled footprints here as well as on the dock. A scattering of animal prints. A short distance away in a tangle of broken ice, what appears to be a blood-tinged clump of fur or feathers, the remains of a predator’s prey.

Sophia tells Jessalyn about the work she’d been doing at the research institute for the past two years: injecting mice with cancerous cells and then with a sequence of chemicals to block the cancerous cells, impede their growth, shrink tumors.

“I don’t miss the Lumex project, though I do miss some of my coworkers. I think they all hate what they’re doing—but it’s ‘science.’ Serious science, which will have results. I’m grateful to have another, reasonably well-paying job. I’m thinking about returning to graduate school… My field is moving so rapidly, I have to move with it or be left behind.”

“How can you be ‘left behind’—at your age? That doesn’t seem possible.”

“Time moves more rapidly in some areas of science than in others. The field can change in months, even weeks. It’s very easy to be left behind at any age.”

Yes, Jessalyn thinks. It is very easy to be left behind at any age.

Sophia has been speaking distractedly. As if she is thinking of something else.

Wanting to ask Sophia what it is, what has happened in her life, but no. That is not Jessalyn’s way, to pry.

“Your father would be very happy to know you’re thinking of returning to graduate school. Such good use for the money he left you.”

Shouldn’t have said this. Good use for the money sounds crass, too intimate.

“Do you think Daddy had that in mind? My returning to Cornell?”

“Yes. Probably.”

This is an answer to encourage Sophia. It is not exactly a lie for Jessalyn does not lie to her children, or to anyone.

Though thinking how Whitey (obviously) divided a sum of money into five equal shares for their five children, methodical and fair-minded and with no particular intention for the use of this money. Saying to Artie Barron the equivalent of What the hell. Divide it up. Let’s get this over with.

Their wills had been drawn up together. Like going to the dentist together, root canal work—Whitey had been tense, solemn. Jessalyn hadn’t known the details of Whitey’s will and the details of her own have become vague to her.

Just can’t think of it. Can’t imagine a time when you are not.

Pointless to try, then. Fuck it! (Whitey laughs. Whitey gripping her hand.)

Sophia is shining the beam of the flashlight out onto the creek. Swift blackly-running water bearing on its surface shards of ice. In and out of splotched moonlight. (What is that faint sound? A screech owl in the distance?) Jessalyn has to rouse herself to realize where she is, shivering in the cold inside one of Whitey’s old down jackets.

The widow wakes to find herself in unexpected places.

“What did Daddy think of me?”—Sophia asks.

“What did he think of you? Your father loved you.”

“But—did he think of me? Apart from being his daughter?”

Jessalyn is mildly shocked. She has no idea how to reply. Sophia is too smart to be humored as Jessalyn might have humored the others.

“He thought you were very intelligent, and very beautiful. He worried that you worked too hard and didn’t take enough time for yourself.”

That summer Sophia remained in Ithaca assisting in her professor’s lab, returning home only once or twice, and briefly. It’s like she has married someone hostile to us. Whitey had felt slighted.

Not good to speculate how any family member feels about the others, or would feel if they were not related. Not likely that Sophia would be visiting a sixty-one-year-old widow living alone on the Old Farm Road, a woman lacking a Ph.D., with embarrassingly little knowledge of the science that is Sophia’s life; a woman whose education is in tatters, a precious fabric ravaged by moths. Indeed, Jessalyn McClaren is surrounded in Hammond by individuals like herself, well-to-do, well-intentioned, obliviously clad in the rag-remnants of their long-ago education.

In the siege she has lost everything, she thinks. Navigates herself through each day like one in a skiff, in a treacherous current.

You can do it, Jess. Hang on!

But, Whitey, I am so tired.

Your daughter is here for God’s sake. Isn’t that Sophia?

So tired, Whitey.

Jess. Jesus!

“Mom? Are you all right?”

“I—I am. Yes.”

Hasn’t been listening to Sophia. (Almost) has forgotten that Sophia is here even as Sophia is speaking to her of matters of urgent importance.

(What have they been talking about? Jessalyn can’t remember.)

“We’d better go back, Mom. All this ice. Watch out you don’t slip.”

Shining a beam of light onto the path they’d taken down from the house, in the snow.

And on the deck at the rear of the house, animal prints like hieroglyphics it is imperative for the widow to decipher.

Inside the house, preparing to leave, at last Sophia asks about Leo Colwin. She is not so happy about Leo in her mother’s life as her sisters are: the memory of Whitey takes precedence, for her, over more practical concerns.

“Leo is a friend. He has been very kind but he makes me feel like a convalescent, or someone missing a limb…”

Jessalyn’s voice trails off weakly.

“Beverly says he’s in love with you.”

Jessalyn stammers no, she doesn’t think so.

In love! What a charade.

As if she could be in love with someone who is not her husband.

“Mostly I remember Leo Colwin coming to our family dinners and just sitting there, and smiling. He was always saying ‘thank you’ when we passed bowls of food around—as if you had to say ‘thank you’ every time—he was so grateful. You and Dad were very generous to him after his wife died. Beverly says it was obvious the poor man was in love with you.”

“That’s silly. How could it be ‘obvious’ if no one noticed?”

“Beverly noticed. I think I did too… The way he’d look at you, at Thanksgiving here.”

Jessalyn is embarrassed. She wants to ask, Did Whitey notice?—but of course, Whitey would never have noticed.

Jessalyn begins laughing. And Sophia too, laughing until tears spring from her eyes.

Then, Sophia is in Jessalyn’s arms, and crying.

“Honey, what is it? Has someone—are you…”

All Jessalyn can do is hold her daughter. Until the sobbing subsides, and Sophia wipes her eyes with a tissue.

You would think Sophia’s heart is broken but no. Sophia surprises Jessalyn by saying she is happy.

“So happy, Mom—it makes me afraid.”

Jessalyn thinks—Dear God, let him not be married.

So quickly this thought comes to her, it’s as if the thought has been hovering in the air, a mother-thought, like a large clumsy moth.

Sophia is abashed at having said so much and will not say another word. Whatever has happened in her life, whoever has entered her life, is now drawing her away. She has been happy with her mother for several hours and now it’s time to return to the other who will make her happy also, or happier. The other who has not yet been named.

“Good night, Mom. I’ll call you in the morning…”

Jessalyn follows Sophia to the door. She does not want her daughter to leave just yet.

If Sophia will not confide in her just yet, she will confide in Sophia.

Gently Jessalyn takes Sophia’s hand in hers. She tells Sophia that there is something Whitey would like them to know.

“I’m not sure if I can explain. I’m not sure if I understand, myself. Whitey wants us to love him but not to miss him. Not grieve for him. That, he certainly doesn’t want. You remember Whitey was always saying, ‘… like pouring money down a rat hole.’ That’s to say, a waste of time.”

Sophia looks at Jessalyn with alarm. What is Jessalyn saying? Just as Sophia is about to leave? And in that earnest, eager voice that is entirely out of character.

“You see, Sophia, if I am here—in this house—and nowhere else—all other places are absent of me—and people would say, where is Jessalyn? Yet, I am here. So it isn’t impossible to think that Whitey is not also somewhere else that would be, for him, here.”

“Oh, Mom. What are you saying?”

“Whitey was away from the house often. During those hours, he wasn’t here; he was there—at the office, or—wherever. And if I was here, he was not here. So now I am here and he is absent from here. Except sometimes, of course—Whitey is here.”

Sophia would think that Jessalyn has been drinking but she knows that Jessalyn has not been drinking. It is worse, Jessalyn has been thinking—stumbling through the illogic of a primitive philosopher just discovering quasi-paradoxes of being, existence, nothingness and the (limited) capacity of language to express these.

“All we can know about Whitey, at a given moment, is that he is not here.”

Sophia doesn’t want to say Yes. Daddy has been cremated, his ashes are buried in the earth.

Sophia tells Jessalyn that she will call her in the morning. In the meantime, Jessalyn should go to bed.

“Good night, Mom! I love you.”

In her car, she sees Jessalyn silhouetted in the doorway waving as Sophia drives away.

By the time Sophia returns to her apartment several miles away she has become increasingly upset. She’d thought that her mother was doing reasonably well until suddenly she’d begun saying such strange things about Whitey. Though there’d been a few times earlier when Jessalyn had seemed distracted as if someone (invisible) were close by and drawing her attention…

“I’m so worried—I think that my mother is having a nervous breakdown. She said the most astonishing things tonight. She’d never spoken like this in her life—she’s always been a person who mainly listens. She seems to be turning into another person.”

Alistair Means listens sympathetically. It has been illuminating to Sophia, how sympathetic her lover often is, even as he exerts upon her a steely sort of resolve: as willful (she thinks) as her father had been with her mother, and as (usually) low-keyed, unassertive.

“Is that bad, necessarily?”

“Yes! If my mother changes into another person, the rest of us won’t know who we are.”

A WIDOW WAKES TO FIND herself in unexpected places.

A large gathering. Music, flowers. Excited babble of voices.

(Costume party? No.)

(Wedding? Someone’s daughter is being married—that must be it.)

“Mrs. McClaren! Hi.”

“—get you a drink, Jessalyn?”

(Sparkling water. Thank you!)

No one can guess, the widow has pumped herself upright, very like pumping air into a flat balloon, otherwise she’d lie flat as a deflated balloon, just a skin on the floor.

No one can guess, the effort the widow has made. That morning hauling herself up as you’d haul a (sodden, limp) body out of a bog hand over hand pulling the rope, at last upright to stand on (shaky) legs. Panting with the effort and hair stuck to her sweaty forehead and skull. Migraine headache threatening, ache in both jaws. Cannot comprehend why (is he annoyed? about Leo Colwin?) in the night Whitey seemed to have abandoned her.

Waking so cold, her jaws were trembling. Teeth chattering.

The way a skeleton would “chatter”—if shaken.

“Whitey? Please.”

Silence.

“I am so lonely, Whitey.”

Silence. (This is not like Whitey!)

“I am so tired…”

(True, Whitey was often a man of moods. Not that he’d be angry with Jessalyn but anger would settle inside him, cause him to brood, lash out irritably. Jessalyn had known how to treat him, how cautiously, always respecting what she’d learned to call The Anger.)

Yet she has made the effort for the widow is one who makes the effort.

Wedding party, old friends of the family. Children grew up together, or nearly.

Daughter is Sophia’s age. (Were they high school friends? Widow can’t quite recall.)

Not sparkling water, white wine. She sees her hand take the glass.

In this bright-lit place amid music, uplifted voices and laughter, vertical mirrors on the walls reflecting the stark-white-haired widow too many times, the widow is one who makes the effort.

There she is, Whitey McClaren’s wife. Widow.

Jesus! What is that woman doing here, alive?

Why isn’t she with Whitey?

Should be ashamed of herself, still alive.

It is true, the widow is very ashamed of herself. The widow is one who has learned that survival is shame. Alive after so many months.

Wanting to protest—But I have tried! I have tried to end this misery but Whitey would not let me.

Hiding in a restroom. Toilet stall. No eyes can follow her here.

For this ignominy the widow has carefully groomed herself, tastefully dressed in black silk, black high-heeled shoes, thin pale silk scarf of no discernible color (gift of Whitey’s) around her neck. Bloodred lipstick in a white-skinned face. Sharp cheekbones, she has lost weight. Most elegant of widows, beautifully dressed, look at that stark white hair falling to her shoulders. In hiding.

Still alive still alive still alive. Why?

“I HAVE A LICENSE FOR IT. It’s not illegal.”

Jessalyn is shocked to discover a gun in the glove compartment of Leo Colwin’s car. He asked her to get out a cloth with which he could wipe off steam on his windshield and instead, Jessalyn put her hand on something steely and cold.

Seeing the expression in his companion’s face Leo says defensively, “I can show you the license, Jessalyn, if you don’t believe me. My gun is for my self-protection and the protection of my family and friends.”

Jessalyn stares at the handgun in the glove compartment, too surprised to react. Your first thought is: Is it real?

Belatedly, as Leo continues to defend his gun ownership, Jessalyn shuts the compartment door.

“…civic unrest. Drug dealers. Gangs. Remember Pitcairn Boulevard, where black hoodlums threw rocks down onto our cars. Jigaboos, my father used to call them.”

Jessalyn is dismayed. “‘Jiga-boos’—?”

“You know—‘blacks.’”

Leo plumps out his lips to make them look fleshier. Jessalyn stares at him not understanding that he means to be “funny”—he expects her to laugh.

“You know—‘Ne-groes.’”

“I don’t think that’s funny, Leo. Please.”

“Well. I’m sorry but I do.”

Leo is flushed, frowning. It is their first disagreement.

He has had enough of her, Jessalyn thinks. As she has of him.

Leo presses his foot down on the gas pedal and propels the car forward. Boxy old Cadillac with plush powdery-gray interior like the interior of a casket. Jessalyn has forgotten where they are going—where she’d agreed to go with Leo Colwin—a dinner party, a reception, a fund-raiser at a theater, or in a hotel ballroom where festive-colored balloons bob about on the ceiling high above and a syrupy-voiced blond woman conducts a “silent auction” as the widow’s mind wanders through the vents and heating ducts in the walls seeking extinction and oblivion.

Whitey, where are you?

Can’t bear this much longer.

Please let me come to you…

He will take pity on her soon. Is that the promise?

In Leo Colwin’s company she is struck dumb, not a thing to say. Where usually Jessalyn McClaren can manage to say, in her warm comforting voice, something.

Leo is driving jaggedly. Indeed, he is very upset. This side of Leo Colwin, thin-skinned, defensive and indignant, has been hidden from Jessalyn, until now. How relieved she is! She is sure that Leo is, too.

He turns his vehicle into a driveway and brakes to a jolting stop and Jessalyn quickly opens the passenger’s door to climb out. Almost gaily, giddily calling back to the astonished man: “Goodbye, Leo. And thank you.”

NO MORE FLOWERS FROM LEO COLWIN. In relief Jessalyn throws out the previous week’s bouquet scattering bruised, browned petals in a trail to the trash though she refrains from tossing out the scummy vase as well.

Instead she washes the vase thoroughly and hides it away in an obscure cupboard.

That’s something I haven’t seen before. That vase.

Feeling such a surge of energy, such a suffusion of happiness, she will begin sorting Whitey’s clothes and shoes at last. In the morning.

PHONE RINGS, IT IS BEVERLY in an aggrieved voice.

Mom? What on earth have you done?

Mom? Pick up, please!

Poor Leo Colwin is very upset, you have treated him rudely.

This is not like you, Mom.

This is very upsetting to us, Mom.

Mom, will you pick up please?

Mom, will you pick up PLEASE?

“MRS. McCLAREN?”

“Yes. I am ‘Mrs. McClaren.’”

He’s a new deliveryman. Or rather, it’s a new florist’s van in the driveway—Hercules Flowers & Floral Designs.

For a moment the young Hispanic-looking deliveryman is doubtful. Is this the lady of the house?—at 99 Old Farm Road? Untidy white hair to her shoulders, slovenly slacks, shapeless gray pullover with soiled cuffs, no makeup, barefoot on the threshold of one of those dignified old stone houses?

He thinks you’re the housekeeper, darling.

“I guarantee you, I am ‘Mrs. McClaren.’ Thank you!”

Not altogether sure that she wants to sign for more flowers, Jessalyn signs. Though (she guesses) these are not from Leo Colwin.

A single white lily, a calla lily. Beautiful waxy-white flower on a long slender pale green stalk, looking like something sculpted. In crackling cellophane paper Jessalyn unwraps it in the kitchen tenderly—

Hugo? She has no idea who this is.

Belated condolences from a friend of Whitey’s, must be. Someone who has only just now learned of Whitey’s passing-away.

(Except: why in appreciation? Jessalyn’s mind just skims over this.)

Thinking that Hugo must be one of Whitey’s countless friends, acquaintances, business associates. Someone whom Whitey’s widow has surely met, has met more than once, should know, does know, would recognize if she saw him; if, for instance, she encounters this “Hugo” in a public place, one of those individuals who, sighting Jessalyn McClaren, come hurrying to her to clasp her hand and assure her how shocked they were to hear of Whitey’s death, how much Whitey McClaren will be missed.

One of those. The widow wants to think.

JESSALYN PUTS THE THREE-FOOT SLENDER STALK in a tall crystal vase on a counter in the kitchen where she will see it frequently; for the widow lives mostly now in the (upstairs) bedroom, and in the (downstairs) kitchen of the house on Old Farm Road.

The calla lily must be very special. It exudes a faint, unspeakably fragrant odor like something recalled only dimly—a whisper, a caress.

“WHITEY? NO MORE.”

In one of his jackets she leaves the house to descend the hill to the creek. She has not planned this, she observes herself from a little distance.

Surprising herself, the widow has become assertive. And not so weak-legged as she’d anticipated, in sensible boots striding through wet grasses, through a faint mist like breath.

It is a gusty morning in early April following a rain-lashed night. Though the air is very cold at this early hour the sky is lightening—pushing through heavy banks of cloud. Like egg-candling, she thinks. Nothing can remain opaque, all is transparent and exposed if light is strong enough.

From the creek cries of peepers!—tiny tree frogs. This is new, Jessalyn is certain that this is their first morning of life.

Crazy peeping things, I never once saw.

Jessalyn has pulled the hood of Whitey’s jacket over her head. A strand of brittle white hair is caught in the zipper. She is not certain why she has come here, why she has made her way outside in these fierce-gusting winds.

Not a good night, the previous night. How the widow has grown to dread and to hate the first, tentative cries of birds, in the twilight before dawn!

The narrow stream at the foot of the hill is rushing with mud-colored water, that empties in a lake a quarter mile away. Something exuberant in its rolling, curling, churning, twisting—like silk threads being woven, shining—a lunatic joy to the frothy shifting waves.

Sees, or thinks she sees, a small sodden animal-body amid storm debris, rushing past. And gone.

“Whitey? I think it’s time.”

Can’t expect her to endure the spring without him.

Winter she’d endured. Winter paralysis. Snow-numbing, comforting.

It feels like betrayal, that time has not ceased. Forsythia blooming along the fence she’d planted years ago, which Whitey had loved—how painful it is to her, to see it when Whitey can’t.

She’d (somehow) not expected the snow to finally melt, icicles along the eaves to drip with such ferocity, and disappear. Daffodils, jonquils, hyacinth she’d planted, tulips lining the front walk, red-stabbing tulips that hurt the eye, she’d planted (she sees now) for him.

Cries of the peepers, that had once stirred her heart, now seem to her strident, annoying. It is all too much, too soon.

At the creek she stands uncertain. She has thrust her wind-chilled hands into the pockets of Whitey’s jacket. Observing the mud-colored seething water in which small sodden nameless bodies are swept past, and lost.

When they’d first moved into the house on the Old Farm Road Whitey had built a small dock here. He’d had a rowboat and a canoe which he’d taken out infrequently, for he’d been too busy (he claimed) to make use of them; he’d taken Jessalyn out a few times onto the lake in both the rowboat and the canoe, though the canoe had frightened her for it seemed so precarious. (Just sit still, Jess!—Whitey had laughed at her. I promise, this canoe will not capsize.) Of the children it was Thom who most used the canoe, alone or with friends; he’d been eleven when he’d gone out alone onto the lake despite storm warnings, and had been on the lake, out of sight from the dock, when the storm broke. Whitey had gone out looking for Thom, tramping along the shore—“Thom! Thom!” In a trance of dread Jessalyn had followed her husband. Pelting rain, lightning. No visibility. Their terror was that the canoe had overturned and that Thom had drowned but—as it turned out—he’d made it to shore a mile away, managed to drag up the canoe, and was waiting out the storm beneath some trees.

Why hadn’t he gone into someone’s house to call home, to tell them that he was all right?—Whitey would demand afterward for of course they’d anticipated the worst, and had called 911 for help.

When Thom was finally brought home by emergency rescuers, soaking-wet and bedraggled Jessalyn had hugged him sobbing with relief while Whitey had scolded him for being careless and irresponsible.

(Of course, Whitey had been vastly relieved, too. And Whitey had hugged Thom, eventually. But it is the scolding that Jessalyn recalls most vividly, and Thom’s stammered apology.)

How long ago this was! Jessalyn scarcely recalls herself at that age (early thirties) though she recalls vividly Whitey’s scathing words and Thom’s abashed and guilty face.

Sick to death with worry. What if you’d drowned…

It was a memory Whitey would not share with Jessalyn for it had been too painful for him.

In a hurricane not long afterward most of the dock had been swept away. Whitey had had it repaired, but another severe storm a few years later swept most of it away again, and again Whitey had had the dock repaired though by this time the children were older and not so interested in rowing or paddling out onto the lake.

God damn if I’m going to give in!—Whitey had laughed grimly.

Now the dock is battered-looking but (she hopes!) sturdy enough. Tentatively Jessalyn walks out onto it, for the mud-colored water rushing beneath is very high.

In the distance the lake is shrouded in mist. It has been years since Whitey even thought of taking her out in the rowboat, still less the canoe, for a sunset on the lake.

How happy we were. Even in our fury and terror.

Loud, louder the rushing water in her ears. Drumming in her ears. There is a headache awaiting, she’d anticipated while still lying in bed in the paralysis of early-morning waking with a jolt in the dark only minutes (it seems) after she’d finally fallen asleep in Whitey’s arms as in the most merciful of oblivions.

Lifting her head cautiously from the pillow damp with sweat taking care not to dislodge the sharp ice-slivers that had congealed in her brain overnight, cold melting water like uncongealing blood.

Darling, don’t think of it. Step back.

Whitey is alert to the possibility before Jessalyn is.

The dock isn’t safe. The boards are rotted. You could fall through, one of your legs could be pierced. You would suffer, you might bleed to death. No.

You don’t want to harm yourself. The children need you. They are still our children. We all need you. Darling?

Yes, of course. She understands.

The headache is coming on. Waiting in the tall trees, the slow-lightening sky, clouds like a vise gripping her head. And the tiny tree frogs, a deafening din.

“Oh, why can’t you let me go, Whitey! I am lost without you. There is no way without you.”

Shielding her eyes, for the blinding pain has begun.