The Obituary Writer (22 page)

“Sounds pretty,” Claire said.

“And can you picture this? She wore full-length white kidskin gloves.”

“That’s a special touch,” Claire said.

“So when you come home you’ll get a little dinner party as a prize,” Dot said.

Claire tried to imagine reentering her life after all that had happened. She tried to see herself dressing for a dinner party, sitting at the vanity with the triple mirrors in her bedroom, putting on her makeup and choosing which earrings to wear. But it seemed impossible that soon she would be able to do that: to walk arm in arm with Peter down Huckleberry Lane to Dot’s house where there would be cocktails in heavy crystal glasses, warm puffs of cheese on a silver tray, salty mixed nuts; to sit beside someone at Dot’s long dining room table and make small talk; to be witty, or even a little charming; to hug everyone at the end of the evening and let Peter help her into her cashmere coat and step out into the cold winter night; and then to thank the babysitter, check on Kathy, get into bed and wait for her husband. All of it impossible.

“I’m sorry, Dot,” Claire said, realizing that Dot had been talking. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I said isn’t it wonderful that they caught the man who did that terrible thing to Dougie Daniels? It’s finally over and we don’t need to think about it again,” Dot said with a sigh of finality.

“So much to not think about, isn’t there?” Claire said.

“Well, yes,” Dot said slowly. “Better to think about what I’ll serve for your prize dinner. Maybe beef Wellington? And to think about Jackie’s gown and how at this very minute they’re twirling on the dance floor at the Armory.”

Claire got out of bed, tucking the receiver between her shoulder and cheek and stretching the phone cord so that she could go to the window and open the blinds. Outside, snow had begun to fall again on the half-empty parking lot. The sky looked almost bright with the clouds and snow.

“It’s snowing again,” she said.

“We missed you today,” Dot told her. “Roberta’s husband actually got tickets to the ball and they’re there right now. She promised to tell us all about it tomorrow. Oh, and that couple? You know the ones who—”

“Yes,” Claire said.

“She had a bit too much to drink and got all weepy and chatty. Like the time Trudy drank too many daiquiris last summer and told everyone how she lost her virginity? So embarrassing, remember?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it seems they’re adopting a baby. A little boy just born a couple of days ago. I’m not sure Bill would ever adopt. Would Peter?” Then she added quickly, “Not that you would ever need to. I’m sure you can have more babies, right, Claire?”

“Adopt a baby?” Claire repeated. “But why in the world—”

“Mumps,” Dot said, lowering her voice. “Apparently the husband had mumps and can’t . . .”

Claire pressed her forehead against the cold window, trying to think.

“Dreadful, isn’t it? I mean, who knows what the real parents are like? Why, they could be hemophiliacs or Communists or just about anything,” Dot was saying.

Mumps?
Claire thought. The baby, Arabella, was hers and Peter’s after all. And now, Miles was about to start a family with his wife. He was moving on without her. As he should, Claire knew. Yet the loss of him, of who she was and who she was with him, made her choke.

“But darling, you need to rest. I’ll pick up your newspaper from the steps tomorrow and bring in the mail. You’ll be in your own house before you know it.”

Claire hung up the phone, sitting on the edge of the bed. She thought of her husband and what he said, that this was for the best. But that was because he believed they would never really know who the father was. One more thing not to think about. One more thing to push away. Had people told Dougie’s mother not to think about what had happened? Was the world unwilling to think about men like Smythe and babies who died too soon and women who did not love their husbands?

Well, Claire thought, she wasn’t unwilling.

A nurse came in and Claire recognized her as the one who earlier that day had predicted she would have a boy.

“I see you’re sitting up,” she said. “That’s good. You should even take a little walk.”

Claire didn’t answer.

“Just need to take your temp,” the nurse said.

“You don’t remember me?” Claire said.

The nurse put the thermometer in Claire’s mouth and watched the Timex on her wrist.

“It was a girl,” Claire said.

At last the nurse glanced up. She took the thermometer from Claire and read it, carefully recording her temperature in the chart.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said when she’d finished. She gave Claire a bright smile. “Water under the bridge.”

The hospital corridors were dim and silent. Claire’s legs felt heavy and clumsy as she moved along them, reading the room numbers as she passed. It was odd to have this swollen stomach, these large breasts, but to have such emptiness.

She paused at Room 401. Then she opened the door and stepped inside.

Her mother-in-law lay on the bed, asleep. Her color was better, a bit more pink in the cheeks. And someone had combed her hair and pulled it into a long low braid.

“Birdy?” Claire said softly. “It’s Claire again.”

But she didn’t seem to hear her. A monitor sent lines across a screen, a steady row of ups and downs that reminded Claire of the way she drew waves as a child.

She hesitated. “Something bad happened today, Birdy, and I’ve been thinking about how no one talks about things. Do you know how many people have told me to not think? To move on?”

Claire licked her dry lips.

“I had an accident and the baby died.” Claire nodded, as if validating her own statement. “It was a girl,” she added.

At this, her mother-in-law’s eyes shot open and a look of panic crossed over her.

“Oh, Lotte!” she said, tears falling down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry about Pamela.”

“No, no, it’s me. Claire,” Claire said.

Birdy stared at her hard, then let out a sigh.

“I was confused,” she said, more to herself than to Claire. “For a moment I got confused.”

“That’s all right,” Claire said.

“Someone has died?” she asked. “A child?”

“The baby,” Claire said. “Our baby.”

“Oh, darling,” Birdy said, “how awful. If I weren’t in this bed, I would make you some tea and toast. Or maybe some broth.” She nodded. “I would listen to what you have to say.”

“Yes,” Claire said softly, a feeling of great affection for this woman filling her. “Yes, that’s what I need. Tea and toast and someone to listen to me.”

“We all do, darling,” Birdy said.

12

The Return

VIVIEN, 1919

V
ivien returned home, tired and weary, from all the travel and from all the disappointment. She made a cup of Darjeeling tea, the kind that Duncan MacGregor had told her was most restorative. Sipping it, she thought of how David would say that Duncan probably made that up, but if the tea restored her, then that was all right. For the first time in over a dozen years, when she thought of David, he seemed far from her, a long-ago memory. This trip to Denver had almost erased possibility for her. Had almost erased hope.

A knock sounded on her door, soft, almost tentative. Vivien waited. For all these years, she had turned her life over to her clients and their grief. Tonight, she thought, she needed to turn to her own grief.

Another knock, firmer this time.

With a sigh, Vivien stood, smoothed her skirt and patted her hair in place. She imagined a person out there, heartbroken, desperate for someone to listen. Funny, she thought as she went to the door, that described her as well.

The woman standing there looked surprisingly like a younger version of Vivien herself. She had the same dark red hair, but with the glimmer of gold streaks that Vivien had had as a young woman. Her skin was smooth and pale, her lips full and pouty, just as Vivien’s had been before the lines of grief and age had arrived, before her own lips had grown thin and set. Even the woman’s eyes were the same cat-like green of Vivien’s.

“Are you the obituary writer?” the woman said immediately. No hellos or how are yous.

“I am,” Vivien said. She made allowances for bad behavior. Who knew what had brought this woman here to her doorstep?

Vivien stepped aside to let the woman in, but she didn’t move.

“So you’re her,” she said. “The obituary writer.”

Vivien nodded.

“You’re famous, you know,” she said.

“Well,” Vivien said, her cheeks coloring.

It was true that she had gained some fame for her obituaries, but she preferred to stay out of the limelight. Newspapers had offered her money to move—to Chicago or Los Angeles—and be their obituary writer.
Collier’s
magazine had wanted to interview her, and
The Saturday Evening Post
had asked if they might run some of her obituaries. But she’d declined all of these offers. She even refused to take an office at the Napa newspaper. She liked to meet people here in her home, to not have to interact with newspapermen and editors.

“No, you are. That’s why I want you to write my husband’s obituary. It has to be perfect. Special,” the woman added.

Vivien nodded. “It will be,” she said. “If I write it, it will be special.”

The woman peered over Vivien’s shoulder, into the parlor.

“Do you want to come inside?” Vivien asked.

The night air was cool, and the woman wore only a thin blouse in the palest green. Celadon. Like Fu Jing’s jade bracelet, the one she never took off.

“What I wonder,” the woman said, “is whether you ever write obituaries for people who are still alive?”

“Alive?” Vivien said.

The woman laughed and pointed a finger at Vivien. “That’s a good one, right? But that’s what I need. An obituary for my husband who is still alive.”

For an unsettling moment, Vivian wondered if the woman meant to kill her husband. But she was just a slight thing, and she had the nervousness, the skittish look and darting eyes of someone preparing to face grief.

It was unusual, but not the first time someone had come to prepare the obituary for a person about to die. Usually, the illness had been so long and slow that the wife was ready to be done with the business of dying.

“Your husband is ill then?” Vivien said.

And at the very sound of those words, the woman crumpled, bending in on herself and crying hard.

“There, there,” Vivien said, putting her arms around the woman and leading her inside. Her bones felt fragile beneath Vivien’s hands.

“Let me make you some tea,” Vivien said as she urged the woman onto the loveseat.

This made the woman cry even harder.

Vivien sat beside her, trying to soothe her. “I’ll make you some tea and then we’ll have a nice talk. I’m sure I can help you.”

“Tea?” she said. “Yes, that sounds good. Thank you. Do you have Darjeeling?”

“You want Darjeeling tea?” she said. “So few people know Darjeeling.”

The woman studied Vivien’s face carefully.

“I’ve heard it’s restorative,” Vivien continued.

“How did you come to know such an exotic tea?” the woman asked. Her eyes never left Vivien’s face.

“A man I knew in San Francisco,” Vivien said. “A long time ago. He had lived in India and was something of an expert.”

“I see,” the woman said.

“As I said, it was a long time ago,” Vivien said again, suddenly uncomfortable.

They sat in silence until Vivien rose. “I’ll make us both some nice tea and we can talk,” she said.

She felt the woman’s eyes on her as she left the sitting room and went into the kitchen. There, she filled the kettle with water. She lit the burner on the stove, watching the blue flame appear. She took one of the porcelain teapots and carefully measured the loose tea into it. Her hands were shaking.

Vivien paused and leaned against the sink, feeling the cold slate against her back. It was as if this woman had come for something else, not for an obituary at all. The way she’d studied Vivien. The business with the tea. Vivien could almost hear Lotte telling her to stop being ridiculous.

The kettle whistled. Vivien filled the pot and placed it on her black lacquer tray with two teacups and a bowl of sugar. She added a few pieces of shortbread on a plate. Sometimes a grieving person craved sweets.

“The tea is ready,” Vivien said as she lifted the tray and carried it out of the kitchen, into the sitting room.

She took a step in and stopped.

The woman was gone.

The next morning, Vivien baked: bread, corn muffins, molasses cookies. As she stirred and chopped and measured, the woman kept coming into her mind. But no matter how hard she thought, Vivien could not make any sense of the mysterious visitor. She made a pot of vegetable soup, then put everything in a wicker basket to bring to Lotte. Sebastian had left her a note, offering to pick her up and take her to visit Lotte. And Vivien had accepted, hesitantly. What had happened that night Pamela died was a onetime thing, a mistake made in the throes of grief. Vivien could see that. But could he?

By the time Sebastian arrived, Vivien had talked herself out of any civility she might have offered him. If David was dead, then she was going to mourn him properly. After so many years of helping others grieve, Vivien had to figure out how to do it for herself now.

She met him at the door with the basket already in her hand, her coat on and buttoned.

“Perhaps I could have some coffee?” he asked her. “After the long drive?”

“Of course,” Vivien said reluctantly. She couldn’t refuse him coffee, not after he had come for her like this.

She held the door wider to let him in. As he walked past, she noticed how he’d shaved and put on what seemed to be his Sunday best for her. That night in the vineyard had led him on, of course it had. What kind of woman does that, then pretends it didn’t happen? But what kind of woman talked about sex, especially when it was a mistake?

Sebastian found his way into the small kitchen, and was already at work on making coffee when she met him there.

He took up so much space, Vivien thought. She realized that despite all the men who had come here for her help, none of them had ever been in the kitchen with her. It felt intimate, standing so close, the steam rising from the kettle, the smell of Sebastian’s soap in the air. She saw that he’d prepared two cups for coffee, and this gesture struck her as so kind that she touched his arm.

“Vivien,” he said, the syllables of her name tumbling from his throat.

And just like that, she was in his arms and he was kissing her again, and to her surprise, Vivien was happy to have it, his mouth on hers and his rough hands already unbuttoning her coat and then her white blouse beneath. The kettle whistled, and Vivien reached over and turned off the stove.

“You have a bedroom here?” Sebastian was whispering.

“I do,” she said, taking his hand and leading him toward it.

Later, they lay naked beneath her crisp white sheets. Vivien had never seen a man so hairy, the curly black hair covering his stomach and chest. Although he had arrived freshly shaved, already she saw the blue-black beginnings of hair on his cheeks and chin. The strangeness of him delighted her. She told him this, and he laughed.

“Vivien, Vivien,” he said. “How I love your name in my mouth.”

“You haven’t asked about Denver,” she said, watching the slant of the light through the blinds. Afternoon had arrived, she realized.

“I don’t need to ask,” Sebastian said. “If you had found him, I would not be here naked in your bed.”

“I think . . .” Vivien began, but she couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Vivien,” Sebastian said. “Do you know this little bird that sings? A little yellow bird?”

“Canary?”

“Yes. Ca-na-ry,” he said carefully. “Your name in my mouth is a canary. You in my arms makes my heart sing like a canary. You are my little bird.”

“A poet, you,” Vivien said, turning her head so he did not see the tears that had unexpectedly come to her eyes.

“Birdy,” Sebastian whispered, taking her chin in his hand and turning her face toward him. He placed his lips on hers. “Birdy,” he whispered again.

For two days, Vivien tended to Lotte and her family. She washed their clothes and swept the floors. She opened the windows to let fresh air in. She made a tamale pie and a chicken pot pie and put them in the refrigerator so that there would be dinner for them during the week. The ways to help the grieving, Vivien thought as she hung the wet laundry on the clothesline outside the kitchen, were similar to helping the sick. Except mourners did not show any immediate signs of recovery.

Lotte stayed in bed most of the time, either sleeping or pretending to sleep, Vivien wasn’t sure which. She left her tea and toast on the night table and placed a vase of golden poppies beside it.

“Lotte?” she said late Sunday afternoon.

When Lotte didn’t answer, Vivien continued. “I’m going back to town now, darling.”

Still no response.

“Lotte, you have to try. If not for Robert, then for the boys.”

Vivien waited, but Lotte remained still, her face turned away.

“In time,” Vivien said softly as she bent to kiss her friend on the head. “In time.”

The ride back to town with Sebastian was quiet, Vivien lost in her thoughts. She looked out the window at the sky darkening, and tried to imagine her future. Would she go back to her routine of weekly trips to the library scouring the newspapers for amnesiacs? Although Sebastian had offered her nothing, she wondered if she might make a life with him. For the first time since the earthquake, she felt a glimmer of possibility. Vivien snuck a glance at Sebastian as he drove, a cheroot between his lips, his face lined and brown from the sun.

“Next week?” he said. “I pick you up again on Saturday?”

Vivien kept her eyes on him. “Why don’t you come Friday night?”

“And stay overnight?” he asked, surprised.

“And stay overnight,” Vivien said.

On Monday morning Vivien was awakened by the sound of soft knocking on her door. She slipped on her lavender robe and hurried, barefoot, down the stairs. Opening the door, she found the young woman from the other evening stood there.

“You again,” Vivien said, frowning.

“I apologize for my sudden departure,” the girl said. “My emotions got the best of me.”

“I haven’t even had my morning coffee yet,” Vivien said.

“Should I come back then?” the girl said. She wore a green coat with a red fox collar. The animal’s head and amber eyes unnerved Vivien.

“No, no. Come in.” She opened the door wider so the girl could enter. “Would you like to join me?”

The girl turned, her eyes narrowing.

“Are you making espresso?” she asked.

“Goodness, no,” Vivien said, trying to act nonchalant despite the question. She had not made espresso since David taught her to use that complicated machine of his.

The girl began to slowly remove the bobby pins that held her small green hat in place, her eyes never leaving Vivien as she did. The hat was the type that hugged the top of the head, with a stiff short veil on the front. Sequins sparkled from the veil in the early morning light.

“I don’t eat breakfast,” Vivien said, heading toward the kitchen. “But I have some biscotti if you’d like.”

To her surprise, the girl followed her into the kitchen, boldly taking in everything there: the china in the old cupboard; the three small paintings of cafés in Venice that hung, one on top of the other, by the window; the shadow box that Vivien had made in those first weeks after the earthquake. She had collected broken things from her flat—bits of glass and wood and porcelain—and arranged them in a wooden box. The act of building something out of all of the destruction around her had brought her a strange hypnotic comfort. It was this that the girl fixated on. She stood directly in front of it, examining each item as if it held a clue to something important.

Setting the teakettle on the stove and measuring the coffee into the pot kept Vivien from yanking the girl away from her things.

“When you were here last week,” Vivien said, working hard to keep her voice steady, “you had an unusual request.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “To write my husband’s obituary, even though he is still alive.” She paused. “He has cancer, you see.”

“I’m sorry,” Vivien said.

Abruptly, the girl turned away from the shadow box, her finger pointing back toward it. “That red and white porcelain,” she said. “Where is it from?”

Vivien didn’t look up. She didn’t have to. She knew every item in that box by heart.

“A milk pitcher,” she said. “That’s all that’s left of it. It shattered a long time ago.”