Authors: Renee Manfredi
“You’re a whore who is going to burn in hell,” he said. “You live in sin, and allow those who live with you to commit unnatural acts. God took the precious and the innocent from you.” Anna hung up and unplugged the phone, laughing for the first time in what felt like years. It could have been worse. Flynn could have named the dog Elvis, and the sightings would have rung in from here to Graceland.
She turned to go back inside. It was stretching into late afternoon now, which made her relax a little. Only in the cover of darkness did she feel anything akin to peace—not peace so much as stillness, which, compared to what she felt most of the day—fiercely angry or the kind of sadness that felt to her like she was drowning from the inside out—was enough for now.
Most of the time she was up all night. While the house and town and world slept, she played her cello, read movie magazines for another, and took a bath until midnight with a glass of Scotch until midnight. If she could bend her concentration around two celebrity magazines and play another hour of Brahms, then she could often get through the rest of the night. As it was, her attention didn’t usually hold out and she ended up just sitting up in bed and staring into space, not watching the television droning on in front of her.
Lighting a cigarette, she sat by the window to watch the dark draw the last of the light in. Well, it was too late to go to Violet’s now, too late to drag her out again to look for a lost pet. Violet, anyway, kept her eyes and ears open when she walked her own dogs. If Baby Jesus were around, she and her dogs would know. Now was Anna’s hardest time of day, the twilit hour of loneliness and panic. Everything in recent imagination centered on her granddaughter’s milestones: high school graduation, college, and the friends Flynn would make. Boyfriends, Flynn’s wedding, Flynn’s own children. This, more than the sight of the dead girl, was what made her faint
at Flynn’s memorial service. Anna’s whole future seemed erased, as if she was already dead. As terrible as it was to lose Flynn, it was very nearly as terrible to have to suddenly redefine, for the second time in her life, who she was.
There was a knock at her door, and then Greta walked in with a tray of food.
“Howdy,” Anna said.
Greta sat on the edge of Anna’s bed, picked up one of the movie-star magazines. Greta came in to Anna’s bedroom every night, after Lily was in bed. Sometimes an hour or more would pass before either one of them spoke. Greta usually read or sewed if Anna didn’t feel like talking. What Anna appreciated most was that Greta didn’t try to draw her out, insist that she eat, or, God forbid, try to cheer her up. Only once did Greta give her a piece of advice: “You should try to cry, Anna. It’ll help.” Anna agreed, but she was afraid once the tears started coming, they’d never stop.
Anna peeked under the foil around the plate. “Lasagna?”
“Of course,” Greta said, and laughed a little. “The fifth one this week.”
“The food of the grieving everywhere,” Anna said, and covered it back up. “People mean well. I do appreciate that. What’s everybody doing downstairs?”
Greta looked up. “Jack is organizing the kitchen, cleaning up. Marvin and Stuart are still on the phone. They’re calling Bologna, I think.”
“Any luck?” Anna unwrapped the plate, took a bite of the lasagna, then put the fork down. Marvin had been on a phone mission to find Poppy. It was good for him, she knew; good to have a task that kept grief at bay for at least a few hours every day. Stuart spoke a little Italian, so he was serving as the translator. “Anyway, I thought she was living in London. Why are they calling Italy?”
“I’m not sure. Somebody gave them a lead that she was in Italy.”
“What a complete mess. How did I have a daughter like this? She’s a complete disaster. God forbid she checks in once in a while or calls her own daughter on her birthday and Christmas. God forbid she gives the child even a little reason to hang on and to stay alive. The bitch. I’d kill her if I could. I’d shoot her dead through the heart for what she did.”
“Anna,” Greta said, setting the magazine down.
“Flynn never stopped asking if Poppy was coming home. If she had
called just once, just twice a year. If she had sent any kind of message, my girl might be alive right now.”
Greta let her rant, then said quietly, “Poppy had nothing to do with what Flynn did. She’s not responsible. But of course you know that.” She poured a glass of Scotch, handed it over. Anna took a big gulp, then a deep breath. “You don’t have to stay with me, Greta. I’m miserable. I’m terrible to be around right now.”
“I know,” she said. “But it’s all right. I don’t mind. Anger is a good thing.”
Anna sipped her drink, and picked up the phone on her night table. She heard Stuart’s halting Italian and Marvin’s murmuring encouragement, the hiss and crackle of static. She hung up. “I wanted to call Violet,” Anna said.
Greta looked up from the quilt pattern she was studying. “What do you need? Is there anything I can do?”
“I want the dog back. I want that stupid, drooling pet. It’s not fair. It’s just a dog I’m asking for.” She sat beside Greta, picked up a pieced square of the quilt Greta had begun. Pastels with bunny appliqués. “Is this for Lily?”
“Well, no,” Greta said, and looked down and blushed.
Anna stared at her friend, incredulous. “No way. You told me you weren’t seeing anyone.”
Greta shook her head. “I’m not. And I’m not,” she said, arcing her hand over her belly. “But I’m hoping to be. I want another child.” She looked up at Anna. “I mean, you knew that. This is what I’ve always wanted. Nothing has changed.”
Anna nodded. “Nothing has changed. You’re lucky. Consider yourself lucky.”
Greta put the work in her sewing bag. “I’m sorry, Anna. I didn’t even think you would notice what I was doing. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
Anna opened a bottle of mineral water. “No. You’re not. Don’t apologize.” She glanced at the clock. Nine. Which meant she couldn’t start reading magazines now, since she’d have nothing to get her to the midnight hour. Already she’d read all the latest issues of movie magazines, knew more about Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt than most teenagers. She’d have to move on to home and garden magazines next, though that was risky; only the news of Hollywood felt safe, remote from ordinary life.
The day they buried Flynn, it had rained and warmed up enough to melt the snow. The little chapel at the edge of town was beautiful, lovely and forgotten in the way of small-town churches. She and Marvin went back to it later, just the two of them, and sat in the darkened room, the morning light streaming through the stained glass. “I wish I believed in God,” was all he said. “Do you?”
Anna had shrugged, said not really. “Not a benevolent one anyway.” She stared up at the stained-glass angels, the cerulean blues and lemon yellows. “Is this my fault? Is it my doing?” she said, and when he asked what she meant, she said she didn’t know; she was barely aware that she’d spoken. Marvin slid over on the bench and draped his arm around her, sat so close that it felt to Anna like they were one body.
By two in the morning, Anna had long since run through her late-night rituals. Wide awake, she went downstairs to look for something to read, prowled through the scant offerings on the shelves in what had been her husband’s library, but was now just storage space. She rifled through boxes. Medical journals. Patient charts and long-expired drug samples. She slipped one of Hugh’s old lab coats over her nightgown. The cloth felt warm, as though he’d just taken it off, still redolent with his scent, though Anna knew she was imagining all this.
She flipped through a textbook devoted to kidneys, fascinated by the gory overlays of the pictures, the grisliness of disease and the defects of birth. She’d always appreciated the kidneys, their work ethic, found them aesthetically pleasing: like two halves of a heart separated, or two autonomous islands filtering the fleet of toxins that washed up. This, along with
Gray’s Anatomy
would have to do for bedtime reading until the next issue of
People
came out. And this one: a slim volume on diseases and malformations of the metatarsal arch—truly fascinating. She didn’t remember Hugh being especially interested in feet, but here were whole stacks of clippings about the specialization of the seventy-two bones that made up the foot’s architecture.
Anna dug out Hugh’s microscope and found the blood and histology slides she’d prepared or collected over the years. There were a dozen or so devoted entirely to Poppy, her viruses and pathologies over the years. There was no medical reason she’d saved Poppy’s—or anyone’s—samples,
just as there was no good reason why people hoarded photographs—it was a matter of preference, whether you wanted the external image or the body’s internal narrative. What sagas in a heart histology, what poetry in the bones. She pulled out one marked, “Poppy, May 1st, 1971,” a slide prepared for blood-typing. Her daughter was two weeks old, and Anna, in a postpartum haze, had convinced herself the hospital had given her the wrong baby; how else to explain her lack of maternal feelings? And here was Poppy in 1990 with anemia, her red cells as misshapen as rotten tomatoes. And this, Anna’s favorite, a highly involved staph infection, circa 1978, after Poppy’s return from summer camp in the Berkshires. Anna slid it under the lens, lost herself in the overgrowth of cells as dense as a Serrault painting. She stared at the slide until she imagined she was part of it, a tiny creature camping in the white field, nestled on the icy, jagged edge of a basophil, the dark cocoon of its nucleus as inviting as sleep.
In Anna’s desk drawer were a half dozen slides she’d prepared when Flynn was sick, or when Anna wanted to check her white count when mono had spread among the children in Flynn’s dance class. But Anna couldn’t face those reminders of Flynn just yet. She picked up the textbooks and carried them back upstairs.
At six o’clock Anna woke up and knew where the dog was. She’d dreamed of the quarry, of the place she and Flynn went swimming the day Anna took her out of school. The dream was a reenactment of the afternoon exactly, except that when she turned to look at Flynn floating in the water beside her, it was the dog instead. She went downstairs, grabbed her car keys and, on second thought, walked over to Violet’s to see if she was awake. Violet opened the door before Anna knocked, as though she were expecting her.
“Good morning,” Violet said. “I have lemon and blueberry muffins, the last of the berries I picked in August.”
Anna walked in and took her coat off. “I think the dog is still alive. I think I would know if he were dead, and I don’t feel it. He’s out there somewhere.”
“I’m sure he’s alive,” Violet said, and handed her a mug of coffee. “He’s grieving. He doesn’t want to return without the lass. He’ll be back.”
Anna watched the early sun glint off the copper pots on the wall. Violet’s
kitchen was cozy. Anna settled into a chintz easy chair next to the enormous table thinking she had no appetite, then ate four of the muffins and drank three cups of coffee. Violet settled beside her in one of the straight-back chairs. She had two summer skirts layered over a pair of thick corduroy pants. “I’m going to drive out to the quarry. I had a dream the dog might be there. Do you want to come with me?”
“Certainly,” Violet said. “But it’s early yet. Why don’t you tarry here for an hour, rest, while I take my dogs out for their morning prayers?”
“Oh, I can’t rest, especially after all this coffee. I’ll walk the dogs with you,” Anna said, but then she closed her eyes and the next thing she knew Violet was returning with the dogs. Violet had covered her with an afghan and a fire was going in the fireplace. Anna had taken such naps at Violet’s a few times; something about the house or the comforting presence of Violet always made an hour of sleep here worth five in her own home.
“It’s a fine bright day. Cold, but sparkling,” Violet said. “I took the liberty of going next door to tell your people what we were up to.”
“Thank you,” Anna said, and rose to find her coat. Her limbs felt leaden, fatigue settling like fine pollen.
Greta was packing up her and Lilly’s things when Anna got back. She knew Greta couldn’t stay beyond the weekend—Greta had a new job as a consultant with the school district, Lily had school—but the sight of anybody leaving these days pained her.
“Any luck?’ Greta asked, holding Lily’s red tennis shoe and searching under the couch, the chairs, for its mate. Greta signed something to Lily, who shrugged.
“No. We searched the quarry for two hours. Nothing. I didn’t even see any animal tracks. Anyway, it’s silly. I’m being silly. It’s just a dog.”
Greta looked over, squeezed Anna’s shoulder. “I wish I could stay.”
“When can you come back? You know, you can leave some of your clothes here. I’ll clean out a closet for you and Lily. It would mean you wouldn’t have to bother with packing every weekend.” She paused to listen to the music coming from the kitchen. David Gray, “Babylon.” Anna was indifferent to most things she heard on the radio, but during one of her drives with Jack, who had taken to flipping on Top 40 music stations the second they got in the car, this song had caught her attention.
Friday night
I’m going nowhere/and all the lights are changing from green to red
… She bought this CD, along with Dido and one by Mary J. Blige.
“Jack’s baking,” Greta said, when she saw Anna look toward the kitchen. Greta’s tone made it sound like Jack was doing something dangerous or illicit.
“Okay. Fine,” Anna said. “Good.” She carried Greta’s suitcase to the door. “Truly, why not leave this here? I’ll wash your clothes. When Friday rolls around, all you have to do is get in the car.”
“I’ll be back at the weekend. Maybe as early as Thursday night.”
“Okay. I can only count the days. Stuart comes up Thursdays through Monday. He doesn’t have to teach until Tuesday. We’re hoping he can find a position here.”
“So, they are back together?” Greta was still on her shoe safari, checking under a pile of newspapers, around the logs at the fireplace. “Oh, well. She would have outgrown them soon anyway.”
“I don’t know if they’re officially together. They seem like it. I hope so.”