After Life (42 page)

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” he said again, shrugging, and then he smiled. “Bathroom’s across the hall there. You’ll have it to yourself. Men’s room’s over yonder.” He let go of my hand and gave me a quick salute. “Find me when you’re hungry.”

“Thank you,” I said, somewhat stunned. I’d expected to have to answer all kinds of polite questions. But Uncle Geoffrey just trotted back downstairs, whistling.

I went into the room and shut the door. My grubby Adidas bag, sitting on Imogen’s violet bedspread, looked like someone had drowned a litter of puppies in it. I picked it up and slid it under the bed. Cars rumbled by outside, but up here it was quiet. I moved the hyacinths to the bedside table, pushed up the screen, and leaned out the window.

Down below, people walked by. It was hard to imagine where they were all going. To restaurants, to work? Around the block and home again? A couple passed by, hand in hand, then a young man with a stroller. I was higher than most of the surrounding houses and could see the tops of the trees in the park I’d sat in that morning, and a distant glimmer of water. Was that the lake? The river? The ocean? I had no idea. I pulled myself back inside and sat on the bed. I felt too dirty to lie down, so for several minutes I just sat there with my hands in my lap. Exhaustion roared in my ears.

There was a tentative knock on the door, almost too quiet to notice.

“Come in,” I said, standing up.

“I’m sorry,” said Uncle Geoffrey. He poked his head in, but kept most of him in the hall. “I forgot to ask if you want anything.”

“Oh, I don’t think…”

“But if there’s anything you need. There’s clean linen in the bathroom, aspirin in the medicine cabinet…” He raised his eyebrows expectantly. His face was red and flustered but pleased. Clearly he wasn’t used to guests.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But thank you. I don’t need a thing.”

“Then I’ll leave you alone.” He waved again and was gone.

I spent two weeks with Uncle Geoffrey. Every day passed in almost exactly the same way, from breakfast at the kitchen table each morning to coffee in the front room every night. In between the days stretched twice as long as they did at home. Breakfast itself seemed to last all morning; we ate courses and courses of toast and jam and tea and orange juice, trading sections of the
Picayune.
Uncle Geoffrey and I, it turned out, had a lot in common. We both hated small talk and could go hours without speaking and not even notice. We hated seeing the television on when it was light out. We loved pastries. We quickly became as comfortable with each other as an old married couple, but endlessly polite, and careful to stay out of each other’s way.

My habit, after reading the classified section of the paper and circling a few ads, was to wash the breakfast dishes and walk into town. Though it was practically winter at home, the air here was still gentle and predictable; the mornings were cool, the afternoons warm enough to take my jacket off. It didn’t rain much, and the sun was out for several hours every day. The walk from Uncle Geoffrey’s house to downtown took nearly an hour, but there was no reason to hurry, and there was a lot to see on the way. I stopped in flower shops just to look and at newsstands to read the headlines. There was a neighborhood I especially liked to walk through, where café tables crowded the sidewalks and young men sat in sunglasses, their feet stuck out far enough to trip me.

In town, I was supposed to be filling out job applications and stopping by temp agencies. The second day I was there I applied for a job as a copy shop clerk and for another one in a film store. I told the truth on the applications, which was that I’d spent the last ten years as a babysitter and librarian in a spiritualist colony, because I was sick to death of lying. I couldn’t stand the thought of making up a single other thing. Though I had given up my old life, I couldn’t yet face making up a new one.

Mostly I walked around and looked. I bought myself little things with Peter’s money. There was a shopping center near the river I spent whole days in, buying pretty candles and scarves, notebooks, things to eat. I sat on benches on the pier and watched huge freighters slide by. Sometimes I kept the gifts I bought myself, sometimes I threw them in the garbage, or dropped them in the gutter, disgusted.

One afternoon, drinking strong coffee from a tiny cup at a tiny coffee shop table, I saw someone who looked like Peter. My heart leaped up. He was passing outside, walking with another boy. In the sun his black hair was nearly blue, and he wore heavy, horn-rimmed sunglasses. I got up and leaned against the window, pressing my face to the glass to watch him go. There was something odd about his behind, and his walk seemed a little bouncy for Peter. Still. Was it him? I couldn’t tell. My breath steamed the glass, and by the time I’d wiped it away he was gone.

I finished my coffee with shaking fingers. This is how it would always be, I knew. He would never be completely gone, but he would never, ever be with me.

Uncle Geoffrey was getting nervous. Every morning at breakfast, he watched uneasily as I pushed away the classified section of the newspaper and read the funnies instead. He noticed that some days I didn’t go into town at all, but stayed in my room, or, sometimes, sat out behind the house in an iron garden chair, reading. “I know you don’t have much computer experience,” he said to me one morning, trying for nonchalance. “But if you wanted a job in my office I could get you some training. It’s not all that hard, and I know you’d just pick it up.”

“You don’t have to do that.” I smiled, partly to let him know I appreciated the gesture and partly because the image of me as a clerk in a law office was a funny one. “I’ll find something sooner or later.”

“Oh, I know you will.”

“If you’d like me to pay for my room and board…”

“Wouldn’t hear of it!” he said, throwing up his hands.

But that night I bought groceries and baked a quiche, which Uncle Geoffrey ate with cautious enthusiasm. For dessert we walked to the Donut King. He held the door open for me and insisted on paying, and we sat by the window, watching the sun go down over the city.

My uncle ate his doughnut and wiped his mouth carefully with a paper napkin. “I’m sorry I was never really in touch with you all, over the years,” he said.

“Oh, it’s okay.”

“Your mother never got over our brother leaving, you know. She really worshipped him. I guess I was a little bit jealous.” He paused a moment, uneasy, then went on. “He wasn’t a very nice person. I know Patsy doesn’t remember him that well, but he was awful to our parents. To everyone. He used to ask homely girls out on dates just for kicks, and then not show up. He’d make prank phone calls, tell people they won prizes. He was always happy, happy and cruel. What makes someone be like that? I just have no idea.”

He fiddled with his napkin. “He was nice to Patsy, though. I should just keep my mouth shut. Don’t tell her I said any of this, will you? I used to wonder if the whole medium business was just her way of trying to get him back, though God knows, Wilson’s probably still alive.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

He smiled and shrugged. “Here, I’ll get you another doughnut.”

He went up to the counter and came back with a coconut one. I could hardly swallow it: my uncle’s kindness seemed so unreasonable, it made my throat tighten up. The setting sun glowed in his thin, curly hair, and he looked out at the street, shaking his head at it, like someone who’d never seen a street before.

The next afternoon, I came into the house to find my uncle hanging up the phone. I’d been outside most of the day, reading a book on botany, but now the sun was going down and it was getting cold, and my behind hurt from the hard iron chair. I kept my finger in the book to mark my page.

Geoffrey was standing by the telephone table. He hadn’t turned the lights on yet, so the hallway was dark and I couldn’t make out the expression on his face.

“I just called your mother’s house,” he said.

For a long moment, I felt that everything must be over. She told him, I thought.

“She wasn’t there. I left a message on the machine.”

I breathed a secret, relieved sigh and leaned against the paneling. My uncle rubbed his finger along his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to tell tales on you or anything. I’m just a little worried—I want things to go well for you. I hoped Patsy—Galina, I mean—could give me some advice.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“All right,” he said. But he did not look convinced.

We watched television all evening, letting the malicious noise of it fill the room. It depressed me to see the shenanigans of the sitcom characters reflected in Uncle Geoffrey’s glasses. His face was worried and sad; his lower lip pooched out and his cheeks were pale. After a while his eyes fluttered shut and his head began to nod. I couldn’t bear to sit there any longer while he snored, so I got up and decided to take a walk.

I had my shoes and jacket on and was about to head out the door when the phone rang. It was my mother, I was certain; she would be returning Geoffrey’s phone call. I stood there frozen in the hallway, not two feet from the telephone table. I wanted, suddenly and acutely, to hear her voice. I let it ring once more, and then I answered it.

“Hello?”

But it was not my mother. “Naomi,” said a man’s voice. “This is Officer Peterson.”

Horrified, I hung up. Geoffrey came up behind me, shuffling in his slippers. “Who was that?”

I could only shake my head. As I stood there, mute, the phone rang again. I turned and ran out the door.