A Secret Rage (17 page)

Grace Funeral Home was housed in an old mansion with pillars. It was a freshly painted, carpeted, well-kept-up place. Ordinarily, I’d have rather admired it for the gracious air it gave to a grim business.

Ray Merritt and Alicia’s mother, Celia Anley, were standing close to the door to receive mourners. Ray was gray and ghastly, Mrs Anley so rigid she looked like a mannequin. Mimi quivered when she saw them, and I knew she was afraid of what they’d ask her. Neither Ray nor Celia had been permitted into the house until it was cleaned by good and loving neighbors. Cully had told us that; he’d heard it from Alicia’s aunt at the filling station.

When Ray’s eyes met mine I knew I shouldn’t have come. I had lived through it. I knew without doubt that he was wishing I’d died in Alicia’s place. If the attacker had to kill, Ray Merritt wished the victim had been me, not Alicia. At that second, Ray Merritt was struck from the list, at least as far as I was concerned. He’d never liked or trusted me. If he had been the rapist, I would have died instead of Alicia, without doubt. I started to extend my hand, saw Ray wouldn’t touch it if I did, and quickly moved on to Mrs Anley, whom I’d met years before. Alicia had had at least one brother, but I knew she’d been the only daughter her widowed mother had.

‘I’m so sorry.’ I felt I was expressing regret that I was alive, rather than sorrow that Alicia was dead.

‘Bless you, Nickie,’ Mrs Anley said.

She remembered me, then. I waited for the chill of condemnation I’d seen in Ray’s face. Instead, Mrs Anley hugged me and led me aside. ‘Don’t mind Ray,’ she told me quietly. There were traces of Alicia in the shape of her mouth. Though Mrs Anley had become very heavy, the likeness was there.

‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing right now,’ she continued. She sighed. She gathered her thoughts. ‘There’s a choice,’ she said slowly, not looking up at me anymore. ‘Not always. But for Alicia there was a choice.’

I was mystified. I shifted nervously, twisted the cuff of my navy dress, and waited.

‘From what I’ve heard . . . you chose to endure it, and live through it. My daughter’ – she spoke slower and slower – ‘chose to fight. I’m not saying she chose to die, but she chose to take that chance. It proved to be the wrong choice, for her . . .’ I had bent lower and lower, to catch her near-whisper. Suddenly Mrs Anley was finished, and she turned to resume her place by Ray.

I stared after her. How much ‘choice’ had I had? I simply hadn’t been able to move. I’d been awakened from a heavy sleep, precipitated into a situation already established. I was sure Alicia had wanted to live fully as much as I had. But if it comforted Mrs Anley to believe that Alicia had had some freedom of will in the matter . . . Then I was enlightened. Mrs Anley was
proud
that her daughter had fought so hard. That was the only warm feeling left to Alicia’s mother: pride, that her daughter had gone down fighting every inch of the way. Death before dishonor.

Cully and Mimi were comforting Ray, who’d begun to cry in the unpracticed way of men, with great heaves of his shoulders. I was standing conspicuously by myself. I felt, ridiculously, that everyone in the room was looking at me sideways. The One Who Got Away.

With a rush of relief I spied old Mrs Harbison, our next-door neighbor, standing by an archway leading to another room. I scooted over to her as swiftly as I could manage, hoping to blend with her into a clump of mourning. Poor old lady, she was sandwiched between houses evil had visited. She was wondering, I discovered, if it might come to her house next. She told me that right after she left the funeral home she planned to depart for a prolonged visit to her married daughter in Macon. I told her I thought that was a great idea.

The open archway led into another, smaller, room. I hadn’t looked in, since I was concentrating on Mrs Harbison. Now the old lady inclined her head and said, ‘You ought to go see her.’

I had no idea what she meant, but I turned obediently and stepped through the archway. And there, to my absolute horror, was Alicia in her coffin. I thought I was going to scream. I flinched backward, but Mrs Harbison had a firm grip on my arm and steered me forward relentlessly. The old lady had no doubt that I wanted to see Alicia ‘laid out’; in her time she must have seen so many people die that viewing the faces of the dead was simple routine.

All too soon I was by the gleaming coffin looking down at Alicia. Her face was colorless and smooth and still. Of course . . .

For the first time the absolute immobility of the dead struck me. The complete absence of movement, even the tiny movements of breathing, seemed so remarkable to me that I couldn’t turn away. I wondered briefly if I should, after all, have gone in to see my father. And I wondered how the mortician had managed to fix Alicia up. I felt an eerie professional curiosity about the makeup he’d used. Why had Ray wanted the coffin open? Why on earth had the family consented to lay Alicia out in front of anyone who cared to take a look? It seemed the worst invasion of privacy I’d ever witnessed. I was appalled; but I was also spellbound. She’d looked so awful when I’d last seen her: mouth open, eyes wide, legs sprawled, covered with blood. What I was seeing now, I forced myself to admit, was better – and, after the initial shock, strangely comforting.

Here was no woman frozen in final pain and fear. This was a serene Alicia: clean, her hair arranged, her face turned to one side to cover a scalp wound I remembered. She had the dignity she’d had in life. She was presented as she would have wanted. But I swore to myself on the spot that I would put something in my will about closing my coffin.

I was only vaguely aware of Mrs Harbison wandering away. When I finally looked up from the face I’d last seen smeared with blood, I met Don Houghton’s eyes. His face was smooth and still and white. I shuddered. He looked at me steadily, with an unwavering disregard of what lay literally between us. ‘It’s always a shock, isn’t it?’ he commented.

Maybe it was the carefully dimmed lighting, maybe it was the overwhelming presence of death, or my own horror at seeing Alicia – but he didn’t seem to be the same Don Houghton I’d known for all these years. Not the same man who’d taken us to the zoo in Memphis, the man who’d borne so patiently and lovingly with his difficult wife. I would rather have looked at Alicia’s corpse than at the face of this stranger. When I lowered my eyes, I observed as if from a distance my own hand gripping the rim of the coffin so tightly that my knuckles had turned white. I snatched my hand away.

This man is also on the list, I thought. There was only one list in my life, a list of names. And this man, the father of two people I loved, was on it.

‘In the midst of life . . .’ Don quoted ponderously.

I glanced up involuntarily. He was looking down this time, at Alicia. ‘I always liked that girl,’ he said simply. He walked around the coffin, passing within two feet of me as he went through the archway.

Thank God Cully is so tall. I spotted him immediately and flew to him like a bird homing to its particular tree. He was engaged in low-voiced conversation with a group of college people: Barbara, the Cochrans, Jeff Simmons, a couple of familiar faces I couldn’t label. I jerked at Cully’s coat. He swung round with a surprised look. When he saw my face, he mumbled an excuse over his shoulder and moved me away.

‘I have to get out of here,’ I said through clenched teeth. He saw I meant it, and quickly asked Theo to get Mimi home; and without waiting for an answer he whisked me out the door and into the parking lot just in time. I sped to a clump of bushes on the far side, and I vomited.

‘Romantic, huh?’ I gasped between heaves. He wisely kept his mouth shut. I loved him so much for that that I could have kissed his hands. But love and throwing up, fear and throwing up, don’t blend. In the end, all you think about is throwing up.

That night Cully’s training paid off in spades. He didn’t ask me any questions on the way home. He just murmured soothing things about a hot bath and bed, exactly what I’d been dreaming of myself. I leaned back against the car seat in a jelly of exhaustion. Things gradually quieted down internally.

It wasn’t just the eerie conversation with Cully’s father that had upset me so violently, or Mimi’s painful withdrawal, or Ray’s hostility, though all had contributed. When I’d looked down at Alicia’s still face, I had seen my own. I had seen my longer, thinner hands folded on my waist.

It had been a vile moment, worse than a glimpse of my mother dead drunk, worse than the leer I’d seen in my stepfather’s face; worse, even, than my rape. During that long ordeal, I’d known my enemy. He was right there on me. Now I didn’t know who he was, whether he was observing me, or whether his hatred of me was spent or active. I’d finally reached the end of my rope. My reserves of courage were exhausted. My almost-faded bruises seemed to take on new life. My gums around the loosened teeth ached. I thought I tasted blood in my mouth again.

As I brushed my teeth in the blessed solitude of the bathroom, I decided it would suit me just fine if nothing ever happened to me again in my life. Nothing more distressing than misplacing my keys, nothing more elating than successfully matching some drapes to a rug. Yes, that would suit me just fine.

To make myself feel better, I let myself dream dreams I normally would have dismissed from my mind. Would Cully ask me to marry him? Given the example of my own mother’s remarriage, the misalliance of Elaine and Don Houghton, and Cully’s and Mimi’s washouts, it was amazing that I wanted to contemplate marriage. But the dreams fed you as a child are almost impossible to dislodge. Those dreams can be very comforting when just being an adult is a burden.

As I soaked in the bathtub under a mound of bubbles, I conjured up a vision of myself in candlelight satin and a picture hat (I’d worn a wedding outfit like that in a show once), marching down the aisle to meet Cully – who was in a tux, of course. The whole tableau was fuzzily framed by an old-fashioned church full of flowers and people who wished us well. Mimi was beaming by the minister, her arms full of flowers – but not wearing a hat like mine, I decided judiciously; Mimi would look like a fool in a picture hat . . .

By the time I was ready to switch off the bedside lamp, Cully tucked in beside me, I had designed Mimi’s whole outfit and selected my china and silver. Cully’s love for the wounded, his air of remoteness, had completely vanished in my vision – as had my memory of the years I’d knocked on the doors of his awareness in vain.

As I sank into sleep, Cully’s breathing even and quiet beside me, I almost fantasized myself a virgin again for the wedding night.

* * * *

The funeral was scheduled for Tuesday at two. When I got up that morning it was raining, a cold autumnal rain. I let Mimi give me a lift to my first class; I didn’t want to start the day soggy. I had been debating whether or not I should go to the service. I decided, after slogging between my second and third classes, that I couldn’t. I’d already come up with a rebuttal to the argument I expected from Mimi. But when I got back to the house and announced my decision she only nodded.

Cully had an appointment that would keep him in his office till the last minute, so Mimi left alone. She was drawn with exhaustion: Her eyes looked hollow. Her emotions had been burned away by their intensity. Our conversation, what there was of it, was strained. We all needed time to heal. I wondered if we would have it.

The house was silent except for the patter of the rain. After I watched Mimi’s car back out of the driveway, I tried to settle at my desk with a stack of work. I was doing well in most of my classes so far, particularly well in my English classes. I’d been so afraid that what I’d been through would ruin my grades that I’d actually been working much harder. Desperate concentration helped keep the wolves at bay.

I was supposed to read
Macbeth
for my Shakespeare class. It was fortunate that I was already familiar with the play, because I couldn’t bury myself in concentration. I tried the devices that usually worked, but nothing seemed to help. The cats were having a running (and vocal) battle, both irritable at being trapped inside by the rain. I kept imagining Alicia’s funeral and feeling guilty I hadn’t gone, if for no other reason than to bolster Mimi. We might be estranged, but love is a habit as well as an emotion.

After I’d run through all my rational reasons for feeling restless, I discovered the true one. I was alone in the house for the first time since I’d gotten raped.

When I realized that, I closed my Shakespeare and began to piece together a conspiracy. If Mimi wasn’t home, Cully was; if neither of them was in the house, it was while I was at school or studying in the library. Since I hadn’t consciously been avoiding an empty house, it occurred to me that the other two had been orchestrating their departures and arrivals to ensure I wasn’t alone. In an instant I was sure of it.

Well. I was alone now. I listened to the drip of rain off the eaves, and stared out the side window into the soaked vegetation between Mimi’s and Mrs Harbison’s empty house. I shivered a little and pulled my sweater closer around me, doubled over my breasts. I couldn’t sit there at the desk a moment longer; not with my back to the silent room.

I prowled the house. Attila had curled up to sleep in my clothes hamper, but Mao drifted at my heels. Upstairs, downstairs, from the kitchen to my bedroom. Back into the living room. All my favorite colors were there, my own harmony in the rugs and furniture; but I took no pleasure in it, in the fineness of the workmanship and wood. I stood at a front window and peered out at the houses across the street. They looked forlorn and dismal in the steady mist.

A man was slogging down the opposite sidewalk, his collar pulled up and his head covered with a plastic-treated rain-hat. I eyed him with idle curiosity, not recognizing him as any of the regular neighborhood walkers. A persistent cuss, to be taking his constitutional in this weather. Only when he was exactly opposite my window and had turned to look at the house did I recognize that the man was John Tendall. I started to open the front door and call to him to come share tea or hot chocolate – that’s how desperate I was. Even flashy Tendall, the detective, whom I associated with that horrible night, seemed preferable to the hush of the house. I caught myself with my hand on the doorknob.