Losing Charlotte (30 page)

He’d been unnerved. Knox had assumed he was angry, and he supposed it was easier that way. But what he’d really felt was too close to something: a chimera. A dangerous thing.

She was lovely, Bruce thought, watching her now. She should really take more trouble with herself, carry herself like she gave a damn. He knew this was unkind, and wondered why he cared to hold such a thing against her, at this of all moments.

She looked up and caught his eye. She raised her glass into the air in a barely perceptible motion and frowned.

T
HE VESTIBULE
of the church was crowded and dim. Ned threaded his arm around Knox’s waist, and something about this
proprietary gesture angered her. She took a breath, moved out of his grasp under the auspices of reaching toward the center table for a program. She was shaking. She didn’t want to do this. Ned moved a step toward her, shadowing her like a point guard, aware of her position at all times. He was taking her jumpiness to mean that she needed his support. What was it about that that was so hard for her to accept?

Something pulsed at the edge of her consciousness, some bloom that had yet to open; as soon as she tried to fix upon it, it eluded her, inaccessible. What? It had to do with Ned, but she couldn’t retrieve it now.

She smiled at Ned, who was speaking to one of the ushers about something. She took another breath. He was good. He’d tucked his maimed hand into the pocket of his suit pants. He looked handsome; something about the sight of him scrubbed up like this was poignant to her. His hair was still wet, the grooves the tines of his comb had made glisteningly visible. She took another breath. Bruce, her father, her mother, Robbie, the solemn officiant—all of them seemed to be moving about the chill space to little purpose, addressing one another with brief and meaningless phrases that they immediately forgot. Her father was medicated with something; this seemed clear, though to confirm it would signal to Knox that the world was, in fact, ending.

Her mother was hurrying toward the door to greet someone; Knox saw the woman she’d hired for the day to bring the boys to the service, then bring them home again once they’d made their appearance. Her mother had—gently, it’s true—insisted to Bruce that Ethan and Ben would want to know, later in their lives, that they had participated in this day, even for a few minutes, and solved the problem of who would look after them by providing the name of the lady who stepped into view now, the soft wave of her hair frosted gray around her face, holding one twin in each plump arm. The boys were dressed identically in navy blue jumpers over white shirts—also provided by her mother.

Knox was momentarily overtaken by the sense that this was a
play, and they the actors, hushed in the wings. She felt sick. Perhaps if she’d thought to drink another glass or two before leaving home, she’d feel calmer.

Ned was at her side. He whispered in her ear, “You okay?”

She nodded. Her mother drew the woman holding the twins closer, and when Ben saw Knox, he began to whimper and wriggle against the woman’s chest. Knox reached for him without thinking.

“This is my younger daughter,” her mother explained to the woman, who smiled pityingly, and handed Ben over. Knox gathered him up and kissed the top of his head, her eyes briefly closing. Ben stilled, and quieted.

“You have quite a way with that little man,” her father whispered, standing close to her now. He seemed smaller, diminished in some way, his jacket too loose on his frame.

Knox’s eyes filled with tears.

“I love you,” she whispered back.

It was time to move into the church. The place was full of people and murmur and dusty light. There wasn’t any music yet; Knox shuffled down the aisle in her appointed place behind her parents and Bruce, abreast of Robbie, who kept glancing at her as if for affirmation that he was going through the correct motions. As she walked, she was aware of the looks she and Ben were receiving, the sighs emitted when people saw the baby in her arms. She hadn’t meant to draw further attention to herself in this way, to have this special status conferred upon her, and felt some mild shame that Bruce’s arms were empty; Ethan would be brought to their pew through a side door; the woman holding him was behind them somewhere.

They slid into the pew. Ned and Robbie had switched places at some point; now Ned’s hand was at her back, guiding her. She braced her legs and sat down with care; Ben was drowsing in her arms, and she didn’t want to jostle him. Her stockings chafed her at the waist; she was hot. A current seemed to be moving through her, threading through her arteries like a wire, humming with an extraneous energy that was too much for her body to contain. Was
she going to have some sort of episode? She tightened her arms around Ben and felt grateful for the curve and solidity of the wood under her, for its smoothness. It was cherry, she thought, suddenly. Hardwood with lethal flower, horse killer.

The minister led them in prayer. Lindsay Acheson was slated to speak. After the hymn, she made her way to the gilded lectern, her round face streaked with tears.

“Charlotte was my best friend as a little girl,” she began in a reedy voice. “And though the years thrust us apart in some ways, I will never forget her high spirits, her sense of mischief and fun. Once—”

Knox glanced to her right, at Bruce. He looked frozen in place. She grazed Ben’s back with her fingers; he stirred, then rearranged himself on Knox’s breast, completely asleep now.

Lindsay continued. This is a memorial for Charlotte’s youth, Knox thought, not for Charlotte herself. The flowers at the altar were pink and fluted. The picture of Charlotte that had been chosen for the program looked too young, too innocent, to really be her. Knox had no idea where it had been taken. Had her mother asked Bruce to provide it?

The minister touched Lindsay’s arm as she descended from the lectern. He looked hollowed out to Knox, devoid of color, his robe furling around him as he moved as if there were nothing substantively corporeal under it. He smiled before speaking.

“I did not know this young woman in life,” he began. “Though it has been my pleasure to get to know the Bollings recently, and to get to know Charlotte through the recollections of those who loved her. This is one of the most difficult tasks a minister can be faced with: the memorializing of a person whose hand one never shook, whose face one never saw animated in conversation.”

Knox stole a glance at her mother, who sat rigidly upright, her fine hair teased into a gossamer cloud around her face. Her eyes were rapt; Knox could see this man could break her with a word.

“The artist Piranesi was trained as an architect. He was famous for his etchings, which took existing Roman ruins and restored them to their original glory. He re-created what was missing,
through his art. I suppose you could call this some version of my job, to fill in both my gaps in knowledge so that I may do full honor to Charlotte’s life, and to fill in the gaps in each of you today created by her loss, so that we may feel more whole, and our celebration of her more whole.”

The minister paused to sip from a glass of water that had been placed somewhere at his elbow; it took him twice as long as it should have to accomplish this small thing.

“A series of Piranesi’s etchings, though, called
Imaginary Prisons
, were different from his other works,” he continued. “These were also of architectural structures, but instead of visions of perfection, they were mazes without exits. Staircases led upward into stone walls, doors were placed without purpose. In these works, the edifice became a trap, a trick, a nightmare.”

What is he talking about, Knox thought. That he’d referred so openly to the fact he’d never even met Charlotte made her feel anxious. Couldn’t he have lied about that?

“Such is life with and without God. With God, we have the power to realize the vision of the great architect of our lives, and to realize the fullness of our relationships with others. Without God, the most magnificent of structures—mainly, us—becomes devoid of meaning and purpose. Perhaps Piranesi understood these distinct possibilities. But what it’s important to know is that without God, the process of assigning the life and death of this cherished young woman her proper place and meaning in each of your lives may become a maze from which it is impossible to discover any exit.”

Knox felt her thoughts crowding through her; she was unable to slow them down. Her knee grazed the pew in front of her as she shifted, and she found herself focusing on the place of contact, where there was a nick in the varnished surface of the wood, which glowed like something vital.

Too quickly, it was her turn. She looked down at Ben, his transparent eyelashes fanning against the skin of his cheek. His lips, the color of the altar flowers, were parted. God, he was dazzling. A
perfect thing. It was clear to her that she couldn’t wake him, that she needed to bring him with her up to the lectern now. She formed a basket with her forearms and, pressing him to her, negotiated her way over Ned’s knees, and past Robbie, who was trying to stand to make way for her, his young limbs a tangle, a puzzle he had to solve.

There was a microphone at the lectern, a dark bulb at the end of a small arc of brass, beckoning her. If she spoke directly into that, she would wake Ben, would frighten him, she thought, so she positioned her mouth slightly to the left of it, bending down, her body mirroring the shape of the brass rod, a long, slim, curved thing, live, electric. Knox rested one of her elbows on the wooden edge of the stand, to steady herself.

“I wanted to say something about love,” she said, looking up at last as the final word proceeded from her lips. There were hundreds of faces staring up at her, expectant. There were Marlene and Jimmy, their shoulders touching. She could hear she’d been too loud, despite the precaution she’d tried to take; the mike was picking her up, and Ben shifted in her hands.

“I wanted to say something about family, also, today,” she went on, though she knew it would happen, and it did: Ben’s dark eyes blinked open; they were Charlotte’s eyes; and he opened his mouth in a wail that gathered volume and urgency as it came; he had no idea where he was, or what was happening. Knox raised the top of his head to her lips, began whispering into his ear, bouncing in place. In a moment, Bruce was moving toward her, his hands splayed, his face full of understanding. She met his eyes. They’d been part of a sacred dance, the two of them, and she hadn’t understood until she was back home that it might be over for good.

“Hey,” Bruce mouthed. His face twisted into a half smile. “Let me take him.”

Knox stepped toward him, and the delicate handoff was under way; Bruce’s tapered hands closed around Ben, who started to calm in his father’s presence. Bruce moved aside, toward the side
aisle; he’d stand out of the way in lieu of returning to his seat. Knox bit her lip, resolved to gather herself. What was it she’d wanted to say? That she needed to recover? Her eyes scanned the front pew, the faces of her people, and lit on Ned’s, with his strong clean-shaven jaw and pretty eyes behind his glasses, telegraphing such encouragement in his expression. Go on, he seemed to be saying with that face, as well known to her as her own, and suddenly it came to her, what had eluded her, before. I don’t love you, she thought. Not the way I’m supposed to. When she was too overcome to continue speaking, she thought she registered forgiveness in his look, and she wanted to tell him that he didn’t understand, and that she was so sorry, so, so sorry, but then she felt the minister’s hand resting gently on her back, and she was waving her hands in front of her face, and stepping aside.

K
NOX STOOD
on the porch of the guesthouse where Bruce and the boys were staying, a baking dish in her hands. She’d spent the last two and a half hours making lasagna, though what she’d wanted was to lie down in her dress and sleep and perhaps never wake up. Instead, after the reception at her parents’, she’d driven out of the field where the car guys—the same group, with the pimples and lazy smiles and self-deprecating manners and blinding white dress shirts she remembered from all her parents’ summer parties, now gone silent, their gazes sorrowful and kind—had parked her, and made her way straight to the Kroger’s in Versailles, where she’d powered up and down each wide aisle, surprised at what she seemed to be doing. The place was a psychedelic whirl of color, vast as a midway; at this time of the evening it seemed peopled by the aimless and elderly, each customer more tragic, sunken, and shambling than the next. Her cart was overly large and difficult to keep on course. Her uncomfortable heels smacked against the linoleum to the time of the piped-in music all around her. Canned plum tomatoes, no-boil noodles, bags of shredded cheese, ground beef, oregano, cumin. She needed everything. She could smell dust here on the porch, the sour odor of
decomposing leaves. A breeze touched her face, and she knew from the weight of the air that it would rain soon. She’d finally changed into jeans while the lasagna baked, filling her cabin with an extravagance of scent that made her ashamed of the lacks it had suffered on her watch. She’d never cooked. There was so much she’d never done. The dish she held was too hot, too heavy for her to bear gracefully; she raised one foot off the ground and tried to balance it on her knee, where it teetered, the foil she’d laid over the top and forgotten to crimp under the handles sliding partly off. She’d made enough for eight people, but she hadn’t known how to reduce the one recipe she’d found in the cabin in a
Joy of Cooking
that her mother had relegated to a shelf there, probably for the sake of decoration rather than out of any real faith that Knox would put it to proper use.

Bruce opened the door. He wore a loose T-shirt with the suit pants he’d had on earlier. A burp cloth was slung over his shoulder. He held on to the edge of the door, as if he wanted to be prepared to close it after her, once she’d gone.

“Are the boys down,” Knox asked. She whispered out of habit, though the room her mother had prepared for the babies was well out of earshot.

“Hopefully,” Bruce said. He didn’t smile. “They’re in their cribs, anyway.”