Waking the Dead (12 page)

“Come next to me, Fielding,” said Juliet. She was sitting up in bed now. She held the sheet modestly in front of her naked breasts. “What are you looking for?”

“I heard music,” I said.

“So?”

“I don’t know. Going crazy.”

“Come to bed,” she said. She reached out to me; the sheet dropped away. Her breasts looked full, heavy. The nipples were dark brown. With the sheet in folds over her stomach, she seemed to be rising, an apparition of fertility, from the surface of our wide, cool bed.

“You really are so beautiful,” I said, lying next to her, pressing myself close to her, locked into the great earthly logic of sorrow and desire. I pressed my lips to hers and tasted the night’s drunkenness, coming up out of her like heat off a highway. It made me want her more. Her hand was on my shoulder and now she was digging her nails into me. Juliet was not a ferocious person nor was she a ferocious lover. It embarrassed her to think of herself as being somehow different in the sexual act than she would be in other parts of her life—if you did not grunt and cry out outside the conjugal bed, she thought, then why should you adopt a new persona for those few minutes of love? She thought that women who made a great fuss over fucking were either very shrewd or insane, and she would have none of it. I didn’t mind. The gentleness of her lovemaking seemed utterly in keeping with our quiet, porous life together.

Her mouth was wide upon mine and her hand lunged hungrily for my middle, as if my hardness was proof of predestination. She pressed herself against me, lifting her hips, and I could feel her wetness against my leg. Her heartbeat came right through her chest like a tomtom. It was the drunkenness, of course, and it was the urgency that came from my life’s suddenly changing. She could feel me slipping away and it inspired her. I knew she only wanted to pull me into the heat of her need, but just as the brilliance of the moon makes its dark side seem haunted, the quickness of her passion made all of our other nights together seem all the more wasted.

She took my hand and placed it between her legs and then closed her hard cool swimmer’s thighs on me. She pushed me flat on my back and straddled me; she was now looking down from what seemed an enormous height. She touched her own breast for a moment, closing her eyes, experimenting. She seemed to be looking within herself for an image of a woman transported—but who was that woman going to be? She was rocking back and forth, without putting me inside. She exhaled and I felt a hesitation, a draft of sobriety blowing through the bright haze of her drunken inspiration. She waited a moment until it passed and then rededicated herself to the pursuit of an ecstasy that was well beyond our reach. Yet we wanted each other and, more, we needed each other. We were not waifs in a storm and I don’t know why we felt like that, but we did. Maybe all we felt was failure. We were making love in acknowledgment of our own cautious defeat, and though it was bringing us together I wondered if afterwards we’d ever be able to look each other in the eye. Juliet turned and put herself near my face and took me into her mouth. It somehow didn’t feel particularly good but its intentions were and we could enjoy it for that. After a while, she turned around and fell onto my chest. We kissed; fatigue was starting to show in both of us. I rolled on top of her. She raised her knees and placed her hands gently on my back and the specificity of the weight of her touch suddenly made it like every other time. After we were finished, I rolled onto my side of the bed and put my hands behind my head. Juliet curled next to me; her touch was casual, sleepy.

“That was so nice,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “It really was.” And then, to my great horror and even greater shame, a sob rose up in me, so heavy and round I thought I might gag. I covered my eyes. I would have liked all the life to go out of me just then, all the soft, vulnerable, humiliating, uncontrollable life.

“What did I do?” asked Juliet, anxious, weary, wanting an answer but already starting not to care.

“You didn’t do anything,” I said.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Ever since this thing with Carmichael went down, I’ve been feeling really spooked.” I turned on my side and looked at Juliet’s profile as she rolled away from me. “It’s the strain,” I said. “The ultimate horror of getting what you want.”

“You’re going to be just fine,” said Juliet. “Are you worried about me coming to Washington with you? Because if you are—I’ve thought about it. I talked to Uncle Isaac about it. I
think
I’ve made up my mind for a change.” She lifted her hands in one of those you-know-me expressions.

“What have you decided?”

“We’ll do a commuter thing. And if you get another term then we’ll see about something permanent. I think that’ll take off some of the pressure. At least I hope so.” She looked at me, asking for an answer.

“Is that what’s bothering you?” she asked after a silence.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I never expected Juliet to read my secret thoughts. ESP seemed the very least of her powers; sometimes, if she was not prepared to hear it, she could barely understand what was said to her directly. Yet now she put the back of her hand against her forehead and said, “You’re very far away, aren’t you.”

“Yes,” I said. “I guess I am. I’m remembering Sarah tonight. That music. I feel her so close. I’m sorry.”

She was silent for a few long moments and then she said, “It really hurts that you’re not thinking of me.” She sighed. I realize now she was expecting me to say something, to contradict her, to put things back in their familiar place. But I didn’t say anything. There was another noise from the street, just a car. Its headlight shined on the icy window, turning it pewter for a moment. And then, suddenly, Juliet shot up. She looked at me with wild, furious, betrayed eyes and she got out of bed. She pulled a pillow and the top quilt off and stalked naked across the room. I knew I should call her back, stop her from going, but I couldn’t. It was time to be alone. I wanted to lie there, praying for a visitation. I wanted only to feel the warmth of an impossible light.

The light from the hall raced across the bedroom floor as Juliet opened the door and then with a slam I was in darkness again. I was in darkness and I was in pain and despite all that I believed and could not believe, despite having no more expectations of the miraculous than any other ordinary modern soul, despite all the arguments of common sense and all the cautions of fear, I was waiting.

6

O
UR FIRST
C
HRISTMAS
together—1971. I had a four-day leave and we went to New Orleans. I was in uniform, flying half price. Sarah in jeans, lace-up boots, a black sweater. She was afraid of the flight. She drank down two miniature Scotches and then wrapped her arms around me and pressed her face into my chest. The plane was full. “To die on Christmas with the only man I’ve ever loved,” she said, looking up at me, trying to play it light—but the words frightened her still more deeply and she closed her eyes, shuddered.

P
ICKED UP AT
the airport by Sarah’s sister Tammy. Tammy was ample, a little sloppy. She wore a flowered dress and torn red tights. Her honey-colored hair was piled on top of her head. She and Sarah embraced, squealed. Tammy was five years older than Sarah, but seemed deferential, perhaps a little wary. “Come on, honey, I’m triple-parked,” she said, taking Sarah’s hand, looking me up and down, smiling. We got into her Opel, me in the back with my legs drawn up so my knees were practically on my chin. The car was a wreck; the torn upholstery reeked of marijuana. Sarah’s braid hung over the front seat and swayed like a pendulum as we made our way onto Airline Highway. Sarah asked after Derek, Tammy’s husband. I rolled down the window and stuck out my fingers. It wasn’t particularly warm. Tammy explained that Derek and she were probably going to get a divorce. “He’s always on me about my weight and shit,” she said. “Anyhow, what are you supposed to do with a guy who sleeps in silk pajamas with his little underpants on underneath them?”

“He’s such a skinny little thing,” said Sarah, nodding.

“Now he’s got a little brown poodle and he named the poor thing Cynthia,” said Tammy, almost sympathetically. “And he’s started shaving his own chest.”

“I’d say the marriage is over,” said Sarah.

“I know, I know,” said Tammy. She yanked down the sun visor. A joint, fat as a waterbug, was under a taut rubber band. She worked it loose, lit it. Then she found my reflection in the rearview mirror and spoke to me. “All the women in our family are walking disaster areas,” she said. “Daddy is a tyrant and all of us are weak-minded because of it. We’re just a bunch of
victims
.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Sarah good-naturedly.

Tammy took a drag on the joint and passed it back to me. Because I was in uniform, I was always obliged to prove my flexibility. I took a drag, though it was the last thing I wanted.

“Sarah was the only one of us who could stand up to him. Once, he was insulting everyone, just saying ugly things, and she scratched him right across the face. Big welts.”

“What’d he do about that?” I asked.

“He started choking her and banging her head against the floor,” said Tammy with an explosive laugh that sent the blue-gray smoke billowing out of her lungs.

“And everyone just sat there and watched,” said Sarah.

“We were
scared
, honey. Scared. We weren’t like you. We didn’t grow up thinking we had a direct pipeline to God.”

O
UR FIRST STOP
was Sarah’s grandfather’s house in Metairie. A suburban plantation: back entrance for the servants, a couple of live oak, wet green grass, a cast-iron darky with a horse hitch in its hands, Greek columns on the porch. Sarah and Tammy called their grandfather Granddaddy, but that was as friendly as it got. He lived alone now—their grandmother had died a year before, curled up in front of her dressing table, a bottle of Bacardi dark rum against her cheek.

“He’ll love
you
, Fielding,” Sarah assured me. “He’ll go for the uniform.”

His name was Eugene Williams and he’d never worked a day in his life. He was living on the last of a family fortune (made in real estate) and it pleased him to think there’d be very little of it left when he was dead. It was a kind of neatness, thoroughness, like not getting up from the table until your plate was clean. He kept everything he had in checking accounts, stashed away in banks in New Orleans and all over Jefferson Parish. Whenever he needed money, he went to one of his banks and cashed a check for five thousand dollars. The staff of black nurses who now tended him around the clock got paid in cash.

There were no books in the house, no pictures on the walls. Gold rugs. Salmon wallpaper. Candy corn in a silver bowl. A smell of cooking, detergent, dust, age, and dog. He had eight dogs. Countless cats. A white wicker cage stuffed with finches. An aquarium filled with bubbling murky water, in which little slivers of goldfish darted psychotically around. He’d just lost his raccoon—one of the nurses let the creature out and it made a dash for freedom. This lost raccoon’s name was Chapman and little Chappie’s disappearance dominated the old man’s conversation. We sat there listening to him while the cats and dogs paraded around us, brushing against our legs. “They don’t
think,
” Eugene was saying. “How do you let an animal loose like that? No chance for survival, that’s the pity. I’m sure Sarah will tell us it wasn’t deliberate.” He reached down and picked up a white angora cat by the scruff and dropped the surprised cat onto his lap, where he patted it with his large, unstable hand. He was a huge man, even after the shrinkage of age and disease. Lantern-jawed, elephant-eared, he looked like an albino Buddha. He was wearing a brown pajama shirt and gray woolen trousers. He had yet to look in my direction. He just couldn’t be bothered with new information.

A large color console TV was on, showing a college football game. Eugene was almost deaf and kept a smaller black and white TV on his lap, so he could keep his hand on top of it: he could feel the vibrations and interpret them.

“Are you taking this in?” Sarah asked me, not bothering to lower her voice. Tammy glanced at her nervously; she didn’t care for the liberties Sarah took. I nodded yes. “Smell this place and look at him,” she said to me. “He’s the most selfish man in the world and he despises all of us.”

The nurse on duty that day was a thin, lopsided black woman named Violet McAndrews. She helped get Eugene ready so we could bring him with us to Sarah’s parents’ house. She put a sweater on him, a scarf, gloves, a stocking cap. He looked like a dazed, homeless man; he squirmed and muttered insults as the nurse dressed him. She seemed not to mind, but of course she must have. His eyes were opaque; he didn’t lift his feet when he walked. For a moment, I sensed his impending extinction and felt a tremor of pity for him. He would die afraid, unhappy, profoundly uncompleted. Tammy had his arm as we walked toward the car and Sarah walked behind, doing a grotesque imitation of her grandfather’s feeble shuffle. Tammy bit her lip to keep from laughing. Mrs. McAndrews watched from the window. Eugene, of course, was wholly unaware of Sarah’s mean joke. And I was startled to feel what I was feeling—a desire to take Sarah by the shoulders and shake her.

C
HRISTMAS AT THE
Williamses’. A brick house, ugly, rectangular, looking somehow like a large bomb shelter that had risen from the ground. A cyclone-fenced backyard in which ran two Chihuahuas, Benny and Penny. “Check out Benny’s penis,” advised Sarah. “Isn’t it dominating?” It was true. The dog seemed half cock.

Sarah’s father was named after his own father, Eugene. He was well built. Arctic blue eyes, the blue of a high-pressure cold front moving in. He wore golfer’s duds: green slacks, lemon yellow shirt. The hair on his muscular arms was dark and wiry. His smile was at once panicky and vengeful. Crushing handshake. A ha-ha voice. He was an insurance agent and enjoyed making provocative statements about himself, such as, “I only play to win,” or “My paycheck is my report card.” Sarah’s mother flirted with me. It seemed automatic, almost dutiful, as if she’d once read about it. Her name was Dorothy. A large woman—the other girls had inherited her spaciousness. She had blond hair, green eyes set wide apart, one of those sensual, unhappy mouths that detective writers call “bruised.” She was clearly an alcoholic and I think she recognized in me a kindred spirit. “I’ll bet you could use a drink,” she said to me, before we were altogether in the house, before we’d even been introduced. Eugene’s drum set was prominently displayed, his Music Minus One records stacked on the Sherwood stereo console.