With an Extreme Burning

FIVE

Early Sunday morning Dix spent an hour going through what was left of Katy's things.

He had already boxed up her clothing, cosmetics, items like that; the cartons were in the garage, waiting for him to summon the wherewithal to call Goodwill or one of the homeless shelters. But he hadn't been able to bring himself to pack the remainder of her belongings. For that matter, to even go into her office and studio. The packing had to be done sooner or later—but not today. Today, all he was doing was looking.

The room was cluttered with canvases, finished and unfinished. All were oils; she'd been studying watercolors with Louise Kanvitz, Los Alegres's resident art expert, but none that she'd done had been worth bringing home to show him, she'd said. And all were the quirky abstracts that several knowledgeable people besides Louise praised as showing genuine talent. It had been Louise's lofty assessment, in fact, that had led Katy to trade full-time high-school counseling for part-time teaching so she could devote more hours to her painting. He'd been supportive. Would have been even without Louise and the showing at Louise's Bright Winds Gallery last December and the three paintings she'd sold for Katy at $350 each. The drop in household income hadn't been a problem, not with a moderate mortgage and few other debts. He'd been proud of her, and willing to do anything within reason to make her happy. Anything within reason to shore up the unstable foundation of their marriage.

In one corner was her desk, with its littered surfaces and bulging drawers. He started to it first, changed his mind, and went to the closet instead. It wasn't the storage boxes or the painting supplies or the old ledgers that drew him; it was her treasure box. That had been her name for it, the hammered copper box where she kept all the little mementoes that she'd accumulated over the years. She had shown it to him once, a long time ago, but she hadn't let him look inside. He had never tried to look on his own. He'd respected her privacy, just as she had respected his.

He opened the treasure box first. Photographs, dozens of them: Katy when she was a toddler, a little girl in her father's arms, a teenager in her prom dress, a student at Balboa State, the two of them at a community dance, on Tom Birnam's sailboat in San Francisco Bay, in atrocious Heckel and Jeckel costumes at a Halloween party, in other places and in the company of other friends and relatives. The joke engagement ring he'd presented to her—a pot-metal thing bought at Woolworth's—when she'd accepted his proposal, in lieu of the diamond to come. A sappy and mildly obscene Valentine's Day card he'd given her so many years ago he'd totally forgotten it. A tiny gold nugget she'd found on a pack-trip in the Sierras. A McGovern for President button. The plastic penis, Eileen Harrell's birthday gift one year, that hopped around like a toad when you wound it up and that had sent Katy into hysterics the first time she tried it. Other things, some he recognized and some he didn't, that had been significant to her but that meant little or nothing to him.

The desk next. Drawers, cubbyholes, accordion files; canceled checks, paid bills—by mutual consent she had done most of the bill-paying—and correspondence. Then the boxes in the closet: old tax records, old Christmas and holiday cards, and little else. He even poked through the cartons of paint supplies and the two sketchpads, one filled, one partially filled, of her charcoal drawings of places, objects, people.

Memories, little surprises and curiosities—nothing else.

Nothing incriminating.

Well, what the hell had he expected to find? A diary full of steamy references to a lover? A packet of compromising letters? Nude photos, for Christ's sake?

He felt relieved, yet vaguely disappointed and angry at himself for being disappointed. Not finding proof of infidelity should have helped put the doubts to rest, but it hadn't; they still lingered, like splinters under the surface of his mind. Maybe at some level he wanted to believe Katy was guilty, that her death had been a kind of divine punishment; at least that would give it some meaning, some justification however frail and hateful. Down deep he was angry at her, too. For dying, for leaving him alone.

His head ached. And he still felt foggy—fuzzy-skulled, Katy had termed it—from the Nembutal he'd taken the previous night. He always had that next-day reaction to sleeping pills, but it was either take one or spend the whole night lying awake, thinking too much. Maybe a swim would help clear his head. He hadn't done his fifty morning laps yet.

Outside, on the terrace, he could hear church bells in the distance. Old St. Thomas, down on Park Street, where he'd once been an altar boy. Where Katy's funeral services had been held. She hadn't been particularly religious, but she had gone to services on Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve, and it had been her wish to have a Catholic funeral and to be buried in consecrated ground. None of that for him, though. Lapsed Catholic. Lost his faith somewhere along the way. He hadn't even felt comfortable at the service, sitting and kneeling in the front pew, fingering Katy's rosary and Bible, listening to the priest talk about God the Father and Christ the first fruits and life everlasting, and thinking only: She's gone, she's gone, I'll never see her again in this life or any other.

Now, listening to the tolling of the bells, he found himself remembering his childhood, all those Sunday mornings when he'd had to get up at five A.M., in the cold dark, so his father could drive him to St. Thomas's in time for six o'clock Mass. Putting on the black and white cassock and the surplice. Preparing the Eucharist, the bread and wine that were the body and soul of Jesus Christ. The liturgy was still in Latin in those days: the robed priest with his back to the laity, chanting Dominus vobiscum, and then replying along with the congregation, Et cum spiritu tuo. The opening words of the Lord's Prayer in Latin, indelible even after all these years: Pater noster, quies in caelis; sanctificeteur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum; fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra. Fingering his own beads while he pondered the fifteen meditations on the mysteries in the lives of Jesus and Mary; while he recited an Ave Maria in English: “Hail Mary full of grace … blessed art thou amongst women … Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.” Those words were indelible, too, and yet he hadn't been able to speak them at the funeral service. Kyrie eleison. She's gone, she's gone.…

It would have been, would be, so much easier if he still believed. And what made it even harder was that he wasn't sure why he didn't, or just what it was that made him lose his faith.

He was in the garage, working on the sideboard, when he heard the car come up the hill and swing into his driveway. Now, who was that? Cecca? Yesterday he'd as much as invited her to stop by whenever she felt like it. He put down the router he'd been using, went out through the side door.

Not Cecca—Jerry Whittington. Dix felt a small letdown. Jerry was a good guy and he meant well, but he had a tendency, like Eileen Harrell, to be pushily cheerful, as if he thought it was his mission in life to infect others with his viral sunniness. They had been friends for over three years, since just after Jerry moved to Los Alegres from Washington State, and his upbeat disposition had been easy enough to take before the accident. The past three weeks, though, Jerry had made a crusade out of trying to cheer him up, drag him back into their circle of mutual friends and activities. Mostly Dix resented the hands-on intrusion. He knew the dangers of prolonged, solitary grieving and he had no intention of succumbing to them. He needed time, that was all. He just couldn't seem to make Jerry understand that.

“ 'Morning,” Jerry said. “Hey, what're you doing in those clothes? It's ten o'clock.”

“Working in the garage.”

“Well, hurry up and change. We've got an eleven o'clock tee time.”

“Golf? I'm not up to a round of golf.”

Jerry had a way of squinting lopsidedly when he was bemused. “Why'd you change your mind?”

“I didn't. What made you think I wanted to play?”

“Didn't you get my message?”

“What message?”

“The one I left on your machine. Yesterday afternoon.”

“No. I was out most of yesterday and I haven't gone near the phone since.”

“Oh. Damn. I thought it'd be a good idea for you to get out, get some fresh air and a little exercise. When you didn't call back, I went ahead and set up a foursome with Tom and George.”

“Jerry, I'm sorry. But I just don't feel up to it.”

“Do you a world of good.”

“I don't think so, not today.”

Jerry gave him a long, probing look. He was a couple of years Dix's junior, trim and sinewy from all the golf and tennis he played. Electric-blue eyes and craggy blond good looks that kept him well supplied with female companionship. You might take him, as Dix had the first time they'd met, for someone in an outdoor trade: builder, engineer. In fact he was a CPA. And a good one; he'd saved the Mallory's several hundred dollars in taxes last year. He was divorced and lived alone. The divorce, which must have been painful because he wouldn't talk much about it, was the reason he'd moved to California. The reason he'd picked Los Alegres, he claimed, was that it was a town with fewer CPAs per its population than any other he'd found. Jerry was nothing if not practical.

“You holding up all right?” he asked.

“More or less. Don't I look it?”

“A little ragged around the edges.”

“I didn't sleep too well last night.”

“Any particular reason? I mean … well …”

“I know what you mean.” He had no intention of telling Jerry about the tormentor; theirs was not the serious, confiding kind of friendship. For that matter, he wouldn't have felt comfortable confiding in any of his male friends. Maybe that was why he'd blurted it out to Elliot last night: Elliot invited confidence. Today, though, he wished he hadn't. Talking about it hadn't done him any good, had it? “No, no particular reason,” he said. “Just a bad night.”

“You eating regularly? Look a little thin.”

“Thin, hell. I'm as fit as you are. I told you how I got rid of the pot belly I was growing.”

“Hundred laps a day in the pool, right.”

“Hundred and fifty.”

“I'm impressed. If this country ever forms a Senior Olympics swim team, I'll write you a letter of recommendation.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“But you still need to get out into the world again, see your friends, take up the old pursuits. Sure I can't talk you into at least nine holes today?”

“I'd rather not, Jerry. Maybe next weekend.”

“Next weekend you've got another date.”

“Oh? What's that?”

“My place, Saturday afternoon anytime after four. I'm hosting a pre-Labor Day barbecue. Sound good?”

“Well …”

“Eight or ten friends, that's all. Cecca, Owen, Tom and Beth, George and Laura, Sid and Helen, probably Margaret Allen. I wanted Ted and Eileen to come, too, but they won't be back.”

“Back?”

“From Blue Lake. You did know they were going away?”

“No. No, I didn't.”

“Left this morning. Coming back next Monday.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Day before you start teaching again, right? School starts on the seventh?”

“Early this year, yes.”

“How do you feel about getting back into the classroom?”

“Good. I'm looking forward to it.”

“That's the attitude. College kids are full of life. Stimulating to be around.”

“Very.”

“So you'll come next Saturday?”

“If I feel up to it, I will.”

“Anytime after four, like I said. If you're not there by five, I'll come up here and haul you down bodily. I mean it, Dix. Ropes and handcuffs if necessary.”

Dix managed a smile. “All right, you talked me into it.”

“Good man. Well, I'd better get a move on. If you feel like company later on, drive over to the club. We should be done hacking divots by two. Late lunch, drinks, whatever.”

“Maybe I'll do that,” Dix lied.

When Jerry was gone, he returned to the sideboard. Another two or three days and he would have it fitted, bonded, sanded, and ready for primer sealing and then staining. It had become important to finish it as soon as possible, but at the same time to make it as perfect as he was capable. When he was done and satisfied with it, it would mark both an ending and a beginning: Then, finally, he felt he would be through grieving and ready to start living again.

Heat and hunger drove him into the house at twelve-thirty. He made himself a tuna salad sandwich, opened a beer, ate sitting at the kitchen table and with some appetite. As he carried his empty plate to the sink, he noticed the blinking light on the answering machine. Three blinks now—three messages. He hesitated, then leaned over and pressed the playback button.

The first message was the one from Jerry about the golf date. The second was from a school acquaintance of Katy's who lived in San Francisco and who said she'd just heard about the accident and oh, Dix, dear Dix, she was so dreadfully sorry, if there was anything she could do, wouldn't he please call her back right away. Dix had met her once, years before, and could barely remember what she looked like. He didn't bother to write down the number.

The third message—

“Go look in your mailbox,” the tormentor's voice said.

That was all.

Now what? Come onto the property, put something in the mailbox? Christ. Virtually no risk of anybody seeing him if he skulked up Rosemont in the middle of the night. Trees and shrubs screened off the nearest neighbors, and the mailbox was down at the foot of the drive, invisible from up here unless you were standing out on the parking area in front of the garage.

What, though? Written calumny? Lies cut and pasted out of newspapers and magazines?

Dix went out and down the drive, forcing himself to walk at a normal pace. The mailbox was the rural kind, mounted on a pole. He dropped the front lid, bent to look inside.

A little box, about six inches square. Plain white, sealed with filament tape.

He removed it gingerly, held it for a few seconds—it hardly had any weight—and then shook it. Faint rattling. Unease began to build in him. Throw it in the garbage, he thought, don't open it. Instead, his legs carried him straight uphill and into the house. He slit the tape with a knife, lifted off the lid.

The box was stuffed with cotton, a thick wad of it. When he pinched up the wad between thumb and forefinger, something fell out and clattered on the drainboard. Its twin dangled from the cotton, glinting in the sunlight that burned down through the kitchen skylights.

Earrings.

White jade teardrop earrings with a tiny sapphire set into each hammered gold clip. One-of-a-kind pair, made to order by a jeweler in Santa Rosa four years ago.

Earrings Katy had been wearing the night she died.