Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (17 page)

In Hong Kong, she thought, Boyd would be on duty, and the sun would be blazing hot, the streets thronged with people. Though she hated to go out at midday, when the city was so crowded, today she would have welcomed the discomfort. It was tiresome sitting in the dusty bedroom, carefully sorting and folding the scented linen from the chest of drawers. She wanted life, even if it was insistent and oppressive. She longed for the smell of the streets to be piercing her nostrils, and the heat to be beating on her head. No matter, she thought, soon done.

Soon done. Ah, there was a guilt there: the ticking off of the days until the funeral, the pacing out of her mother’s ritual removal from the world. Another seventy-two hours and the whole business would be done with, and she would be flying back to life.

As she went about her daughterly duties, she left every light burning in the house. It was more convenient to do so, she told herself, with all the to-ing and fro-ing the job required. Besides, the late November days were short and dismal, and the work was dispiriting enough without having to labor in a perpetual dusk.

Organizing the disposal of personal items was taking the longest time. Her mother had acquired a sizable wardrobe, all of which had to be sorted through: the pockets emptied, the jewelry removed from the collars. She sealed up the bulk of the clothes in black plastic bags, to be collected by a local charity shop the following day, keeping only a fur wrap and a gown for herself. Then she selected a few of her mother’s favorite possessions to give to close friends after the funeral: a leather handbag; some china cups and saucers; a herd of ivory elephants that had belonged . . . she had forgotten who they had belonged to. Some relative, long gone.

Once the clothes and bric-a-brac had been organized, she turned her attention to the mail, sorting the outstanding bills into one pile and the personal correspondence, whether recent or remote, into another. Each letter, however old or difficult to follow, she read carefully. Most she dispatched to the small fire she had lit in the living-room grate. It was soon a cave of bat-wing ashes; black and veined with burned words. Once only, a letter found tears in her: a note, written in her father’s gossamer hand, which awakened agonies of regret for the wasted years of antagonism between them. There were photographs among the leaves, too; most as frozen as Alaska: arid, fruitless territory. Some, however, catching a true moment between the poses, were as fresh as yesterday, and a din of voices spilled from the aged image:

—Wait! Not yet! I’m not ready!

—Daddy! Where’s Daddy? We must have Daddy in this one!

—He’s tickling me!

Laughter pealed off these images; their fixed joy parodied the truth of deterioration and annihilation whose proof was borne by the empty house.

—Wait!

—Not yet!

—Daddy!

She could hardly bear to look at some of them. She burned first the ones that hurt the most.

—Wait!
someone shouted. Herself, perhaps, a child in the arms of the past.
Wait!

But the pictures cracked in the heart of the fire, then browned and burst with blue flame, and the moment—
Wait!
—the moment went the way of all the moments that had surrounded the instant that the camera had fixed, gone away forever like fathers and mothers and, in time, daughters too.

She retired to bed at three-fifteen a.m., the bulk of her self-assigned chores done for the day. Her mother would have applauded her efficiency, she suspected. How ironic that Miriam, the daughter who had never been daughterly enough, who had always wanted the world instead of being content to stay at home, was now being as meticulous as any parent could have possibly wished. Here she was, cleaning away a whole history; consigning the leavings of a life to the fire, scouring the house more thoroughly than her mother had ever done.

A little after three-thirty, having mentally arranged the business of the following day, she drained the last of the half tumbler of whiskey she’d been sipping all evening and sank, almost immediately, into sleep.

She dreamed nothing. Her mind was clear. As clear as darkness is clear, as emptiness is clear; not even Boyd’s face, or his body (she often dreamed of his chest, of the fine pattern of hair on his stomach) crept into her head to pollute the featureless bliss.

It was raining when she awoke. Her first thought was: Where am I? Her second thought was: Is today the funeral, or tomorrow?

Her third thought was: In two days I’ll be back with Boyd. The sun will be shining. I’ll forget all of this.

For today, however, there was more unappetizing work ahead. The funeral was not until tomorrow, which was Wednesday. Today the business was mundane: checking the cremation arrangements with Beckett and Dawes, writing notes of thanks for the many letters of condolence she’d received, a dozen other minor duties. In the afternoon she would visit Mrs. Furness, a friend of her mother’s who was now too crippled with arthritis to attend the funeral. She would give the old lady that leather handbag, as a keepsake. In the evening it would be again the same, sorry business of sorting through her mother’s belongings and organizing their redistribution. There was so much to give to the needy—or the greedy—whichever asked first. She didn’t care who took the stuff, as long as the job was finished soon.

About mid-morning, the telephone rang. It was the first noise she’d heard in the house since waking that she hadn’t made herself, and it startled her. She lifted the receiver, and a warm word was spoken in her ear: her name.

“Miriam?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Oh, love, you sound absolutely washed out. It’s Judy, sweetheart; Judy Cusack.”

“Judy?”

The very name was a smile.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I remember. How lovely to hear your voice.”

“I didn’t ring any earlier. I thought you’d have so much on your hands. I’m so sorry, pet, about your mother. It must have been a blow. My dad died the year before last. It really knocked me sideways.”

Vaguely Miriam could picture Judy’s father, a slender, elegant man who’d smiled once in a while and had said very little.

“He’d been very ill. It was a blessing, really. God, I never thought I’d hear myself say that. Funny, isn’t it?”

Judy’s voice had scarcely changed at all; she frothed with pleasure the way she always had, the body Miriam saw in her mind’s eye was still rounded, with a lingering puppy fat. Eighteen years ago they had been the best of friends, soul mates; and for a moment, exchanging pleasantries with that breezy voice, it was as though the time between this conversation and their last had shrunk to hours.

“It’s so good to hear your voice,” said Miriam.

It was good. It was the past speaking, but it was a good past, a sunlit past. She had almost forgotten, in the toil of this autopsy she was busy with, how fine some memories could be.

“I heard from the people next door about your coming home,” Judy said, “but I was of two minds whether to call. I know it must be a very difficult time for you. So sad and all.”

“Not really,” Miriam said.

The plain truth sneaked out without her meaning to say it; but there it was now, said. It wasn’t a sad time. It was a drudge, it was a limbo, but she wasn’t holding a flood of sorrows in abeyance. She saw that now, and her heart lightened with the simplicity of the confession. Judy offered no reproof, only an invitation.

“Are you feeling well enough to come over for a drink?”

“I’ve still got a lot of sorting to do.”

“I promise we won’t talk about old times,” Judy said.

“Not one word. I couldn’t bear it; it makes me feel antiquated.” She laughed. Miriam laughed with her.

“Yes,” she said. “I’d love to come . . . ”

“Good. It’s a bind, isn’t it, when you’re an only child, and it’s all your responsibility. Sometimes you really think there’s no end to it.”

“It’s crossed my mind,” Miriam replied.

“When it’s all over, you’ll wonder what the fuss was about,” Judy said. “I coped with Dad’s funeral, though at the time I thought I was going to fall apart.”

“You didn’t have to handle it alone, did you?” Miriam asked.

“What about . . . ” She wanted to name Judy’s husband; she recalled her mother writing to her about Judy’s late—and if she remembered correctly, scandalous—marriage. But she couldn’t remember the groom’s name.

“Donald?” Judy prompted her.

“Donald.”

“Separated, pet. We’ve been separated two and a half years.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” The answer came back in a flash.

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it this evening. About seven?”

“Could we make it a little later? I’ve got so much to do. Is eight all right?”

“Anytime, love, don’t rush yourself. I’ll expect you when I see you; we’ll leave it at that.”

“Fine. And thanks for ringing.”

“I’ve been itching to call since I heard you were back. It’s not often you get a chance to see old friends, is it?”

A few minutes shy of noon, Miriam faced what she expected to be the most debilitating of her duties. Though she wouldn’t confess it to herself, she felt a tremor of disgust as she parked outside the funeral home. There was a dull, stale taste at the back of her throat, and her eyes seemed spoiled with grit. She frankly had no wish to see her mother again, not now that they couldn’t talk, and yet when the urbane Mr. Beckett had said to her on the phone, “You will want to view the deceased?” she had replied, “Of course,” as though the request had been on the tip of her tongue all along.

And what was there to fear?

Veronica Blessed was dead; she’d died peacefully in her sleep. But Miriam found that a phrase, a random phrase that she remembered from school, had crept into the back of her head that morning and she couldn’t rid herself of it:

“Everyone dies because they run out of breath.”

That thought was there now, as she looked at Mr. Beckett, and the paper lilies and the scuffed corner of his desk. To run out of breath, to choke on a tongue, to suffocate under a blanket. She had known all those fears when she was young, and now they came back to her in Mr. Beckett’s office and held her hand. One of them leaned over and whispered maliciously in her ear: Suppose one day you simply forget to breathe? Black face, tongue bitten off.

Was that what made her throat so dry? The thought that Mama, Veronica, Mrs. Blessed, widow of Harold Blessed, now deceased, would be lying on silk with her face as black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots? Vile notion: vile, ridiculous notion.

But they kept coming, these unwelcome ideas, one quick upon the heels of another. Most she could trace back to childhood; absurd, irrelevant images floating up from her past like squid to the sun.

The Levitation Game, a favorite school pastime, came to mind: six girls ranged around a seventh, trying to lift her up with one finger apiece. And the accompanying ceremony:

“She looks pale,” says the girl at the head. “She is pale.”

“She is pale.”

“She is pale.”

“She is pale.”

“She is pale,” the attendants answer by rote, counterclockwise.

“She looks ill,” the high priestess announces.

“She is ill.”

“She is ill.”

“She is ill.”

“She is ill.”

“She is ill,” the others reply.

“She looks dead—”

She is—

There’d been a murder, too, when she was only six, two streets down from where they’d lived. The body had been wedged behind the front door—she’d heard Mrs. Furness tell all to her mother—and it was so softened by putrefaction that when the police forced the door open it had concertinaed into a bundle that proved impossible to unglue. Sitting now beside the scentless lilies, Miriam could smell the day she’d stood, hand in her mother’s hand, listening to the women talk of murder. Crime, come to think of it, had been a favorite subject of Mrs. Furness. Had it been through her good offices that Miriam had first learned that her nightmares of the Bogey-Walk had their counterpart in the adult world?

Miriam smiled, thinking of the women casually debating slaughter as they stood in the sun. Mr. Beckett seemed not to notice her smile; or, more likely, was well prepared for any manifestation of grief, however bizarre. Perhaps mourners came in here and threw off all their clothes in their anguish or wet their pants. She looked at him more closely, this young man who had made a profession of bereavement. He was not unattractive, she thought. He was an inch or two shorter than she, but height didn’t matter in bed; and moving coffins around would put some muscle on a body, wouldn’t it?

Listen to yourself
, she thought, pulling herself up short.
What are you contemplating?

Mr. Beckett plucked at his pale ginger mustache and offered a look of practiced condolence to Miriam. She saw his charm—what meager supply there was—vanish in that one look.

He seemed to be waiting for some cue from her; she wondered what. At last he said:

“Shall we go through to the Chapel of Rest, or shall we discuss the business first?”

Ah, that was it.
Better to get the farewells over with
, she thought. He could wait a while longer for his money
.
“I’d like to see my mother,” she said.

“Of course you would,” he replied, nodding as though he’d known all along that she wanted to view the body; as if he were somehow completely conversant with her most intimate workings. She resented his fake familiarity but made no sign of it.

He stood up and ushered her through the glass-paneled door and into a corridor flanked by vases of flowers. They, like the lilies on his desk, were artificial. The scent she could smell was that of floor polish, not blossoms; no bee had hope of succor here, unless there was nectar to be taken from the dead.

Mr. Beckett halted at one of the doors, turned the handle, and ushered Miriam ahead of him. This was it, then: face-to-face at last.
Smile, Mother, Miriam’s home
. She entered the room. Two candles burned on a small table against the far wall, and there was a further abundance of artificial flowers, their fake fecundity more distasteful here than ever.