Set This House in Order (34 page)

The Archangel Funeral Home was located in a part of Spokane that reminded Mouse uncomfortably of Trash Town. Mr. Filchenko, the funeral director, was a squat hummock of a man in a rumpled black suit. When Mouse attempted, as discreetly as possible, to find out whether she had spoken to him before, Mr. Filchenko evaded her questions; he also tried to discourage her from viewing her mother's body.

“Why not let us make her a little more presentable first?” Mr. Filchenko suggested. “To lessen the shock…”

“No thank you,” said Mouse. “I'd like to see her now, please.”

“It's just that death, even the most peaceful death, can have an effect on the appearance that is…unkind. And when the deceased is someone we've been close to, a best friend or a parent—”

“I'd like to see my mother
now,
please,” Mouse insisted, grateful that Mr. Filchenko was not much taller than she was.

Mr. Filchenko sighed. “If you're sure…”

He took her back into his mortician's workshop, which, like a police-movie morgue, had a double row of body lockers set into one wall. “I really think you'll be happier if you let us finish the cosmetic work first,” Mr. Filchenko said, pausing in front of the lockers. “Let us make her up nice for the funeral, dress her properly, put her in a beautiful casket with some flowers…that way you'll have a lovely parting memory of her, not—”

“Oh,” said Mouse, figuring it out. “You want to charge me lots of money.”

Mr. Filchenko paused, mouth open at this impertinence, and then tried to go on as if Mouse hadn't spoken: “As I was saying—”

“I don't need her made up,” Mouse told him. “There isn't going to be
any funeral.” She fingered the list in her pocket; it was quite specific about what was to be done. “I want her cremated.”

“Cremated, very good, we can do that.” Mr. Filchenko bowed his head graciously. “But”—looking up again—“perhaps a small memorial service first, just to—”

“No,” said Mouse. “I just want to see her, once, and then I want her cremated. Nothing else.”

“Oh-
kay
…we'll just have a look then”—Mr. Filchenko gestured at the lockers—“and then, back in my office, you can pick out a casket…”

“Why would she need a casket if she's going to be cremated?”

“My goodness!” Mr. Filchenko said, aghast. “My goodness, you don't…you wouldn't want us to just
toss
your mother into the furnace like a bag of
garbage,
now would you?”

Time broke up after that. Mouse had only one more solid chunk of memory, of a locker being opened, a slab rolling out, and a sheet being twitched back. She saw her mother's face, gone completely slack on both sides now. Verna Driver's lower incisors jutted shrewishly from her mouth; her eyes were open but fixed and unaware, finally emptied of all malice.
“All better now,”
Mouse heard a voice say.

—and then it was later, perhaps another day entirely, and Mouse was out behind the funeral home, watching as one of Mr. Filchenko's assistants loaded a covered plastic tub into the back of her rented station wagon. Mr. Filchenko was watching too; he stood just outside the rear door of what Mouse assumed must be the funeral home's crematorium, with a cross look on his face.

“This is really very improper,” Mr. Filchenko complained. “State
laws
are being broken here.”

Mouse looked at him, and was both gratified and startled to see him flinch. He recovered himself quickly, though, and said: “So, may I have it?”

“Have it?”

“My money,” Mr. Filchenko said flatly. “No-frills or not, this isn't a free service.”

Mouse reached without thinking into the pocket of the coat she was wearing, and brought out the plain envelope she found there. She handed the envelope to Mr. Filchenko, who immediately opened it, pulled out the packet of bills from inside, and began counting them. It looked like a lot of cash to Mouse, but Mr. Filchenko didn't appear to agree—he counted the bills four times, and rechecked the envelope to make sure he hadn't missed any. Finally he seemed to accept that he'd gotten all he was going to get, and tucked the money away again.

“I still say you should have gone with the urn,” Mr. Filchenko groused. “I'd have given you an excellent deal.”

Those were his last words to her. His assistant had already closed up the back of the station wagon and gone back inside the funeral parlor; now Mr. Filchenko followed, slamming the crematorium door behind him. Mouse got into the station wagon.

She looked into the rearview mirror, at the plastic tub containing her mother's ashes. She didn't like having it behind her, but at least she could keep an eye on it. To have it out of sight in a trunk—even a locked trunk—would have made her much more nervous.

She turned the key in the station wagon's ignition—

—and it was sometime later, definitely another day, just after sunrise. Mouse leaned up against the chain-link fence that surrounded the hotel construction site, the one she'd seen the signs for back in November. The site was active now. A convoy of cement trucks stretched in a line out the site's main entrance; they were pouring the hotel's foundation.

Mouse's back hurt, and she was very tired, as if she'd been up all the preceding night. She was filthy, too: her shoes were caked with mud, and there was dirt on her clothes, on her hands, and even in her hair. But though she was aware of all of this in a detached way, she ignored her own discomfort and focused on the work going on inside the fence. With each load of cement that was poured into the foundation pit, Mouse felt a corresponding lightening of her own spirits, all the anxiety of the last six months sloughing away.

Hours passed. At last—the sun was high in the sky now—the final truck emptied its mixer into the pit, and the construction workers hurried to finish smoothing the surface of the foundation before it set. Mouse turned away, satisfied. The Navigator helped her locate the station wagon; Mouse slid into the driver's seat and glanced up at the rearview mirror again. Her mother's ashes were gone.

Mouse drove to the airport, returned the rental car, and caught the next flight back to Seattle. Over the next few months, she tidied up her mother's remaining affairs. She never went back to Willow Grove; instead, she hired a lawyer to arrange the sale of her mother's house and its contents, and to close out her mother's bank accounts. Most of the money went to pay off her mother's hospital bills and other outstanding debts; the remainder went into a fund to help cover Mouse's college tuition.

A day came in September of that year when it dawned on Mouse that she had begun a whole new life. The last ties with her past had been cut; she
had become, in effect, a blank slate, and could make of herself whatever she wanted to. This realization, though liberating, also marked the start of a new series of blackouts. Where before Mouse had most often lost time in the wake of traumatic events, now the blackouts started happening in moments of relative calm—when she was out walking, or at the library, or shopping in a store.

It was around that same time that Mouse first began finding things in her apartment—clothes, jewelry, children's toys—that she couldn't remember buying. Sometimes the things were in plain sight, but more often they were hidden away in drawers and cabinets, or at the back of shelves, where Mouse would happen across them by chance. There was one closet in particular, in the alcove that connected her kitchen and her bathroom, that she learned never to look into without a very good reason.

A third thing that happened around then was that Mouse's personal finances started to unravel. Over the course of her sophomore year, the money in her special college fund seemed to evaporate. By the start of her junior year, even with her scholarship, she had to request additional financial aid in order to make tuition. That was also when she started taking part-time jobs to help make ends meet—lots of part-time jobs.

In the years that followed, as she struggled to pull her new life together, Mouse tried to think of her mother as little as possible. Though she had no direct memory of it, she knew, on some level, what she had done with her mother's remains. She didn't like to dwell on that; it was a shameful act.

Shameful, and yet comforting, too. Occasionally Mouse would still have nightmares in which her mother, dead but not dead, would creep ever closer along back roads in the dark of night. And whenever Mouse woke, in terror, from one of these dreams, she had a ready antidote for the fear. She had memorized the phone number of the reservation desk at the Spokane Charter Hotel—long since completed—and any time day or night she could dial it, and as soon as the desk clerk picked up and said, “Spokane Charter. May I help you?” Mouse would know that the hotel was still standing—and still pressing down, with the weight of all fourteen of its floors, on everything buried beneath its foundation.

She was a bad daughter, a worthless piece of shit; she had treated her mother abominably in the last months of her life. But she knew where her mother was now—always—and to know that, to be sure of it, was worth all the shame in the world.

Now, driving towards Autumn Creek, a few car lengths behind Dr. Eddington's Volkswagen Jetta, Mouse wonders what sort of final arrangements Dr. Grey made for herself. It's not something Mouse should be concerned with—she should be thinking of Andrew—but she can't help speculating.

That the doctor planned her own funeral, if any, and arranged (and probably paid) in advance for the disposal of her body, is not even a question. Despite only having met her the one time, Mouse feels sure that Dr. Grey was not the sort of person who would trust such details to anyone but herself. And Mouse can almost pity—almost!—the poor funeral director who, like Mr. Filchenko, tried to sell her a service that she didn't want.

What services would she want? A small ceremony, Mouse guesses—just her helpmate, Dr. Eddington, a few other close friends and associates, maybe Andrew. Burial rather than cremation—Mouse has an intuition that the doctor would want to continue to
occupy space
in some way, not be scattered on the winds or compacted into an urn. So, burial: in a plain casket, in an inexpensive plot, but in a cemetery that allows actual headstones. The marker will be a simple one, no fancy etching or flowery epitaph, but still imposing somehow, maybe a darker-colored stone, something to catch the eye…or bark the shins of anyone who tries to walk by without paying the proper respect.

Mouse half-smiles, imagining this, until she realizes that the grave site she is mentally picturing is actually her grandmother's, and the thoughts she is imputing to Dr. Grey are based on statements her grandmother once made, when she talked about how
she
wanted to be buried.

The memory drives Mouse away for a few minutes, long enough for Malefica to tap the Buick's brakes and wake up the driver of a Toyota that has been riding their back bumper for the past few miles. The Toyota backs
off; Malefica grins and reaches into the glove compartment for a celebratory shot of vodka. But the flask is gone, and Malefica gives way to Maledicta, who curses a blue streak at the meddling Duncan.

—and Mouse wakes up again, the Buick stopped behind Dr. Eddington's Jetta at a Bridge Street traffic light.

Andrew's landlady is standing sentinel on the porch as they drive up to the house. It's more than her usual watchfulness; she is pacing back and forth as they come into view, and runs down to the sidewalk to meet them.

“Dr. Eddington,” Mrs. Winslow says, as the doctor gets out of the Jetta. She nods reflectively, as if his arrival is a clue to a puzzle she has been working on.

“Hello, Mrs. Winslow,” Dr. Eddington greets her. “Is Andrew here?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head now. “No, and I'm worried about him. He never came home from work, and he hasn't called…”

Mouse says: “Maybe he's still with Julie.”

Dr. Eddington and Mrs. Winslow both look at her.

“He and Julie drove off somewhere together this morning,” Mouse explains. “They never came back to work.”

Mrs. Winslow gets a very complex expression on her face. “Well,” she says, after a moment, “I believe I have Julie's number. Please, come inside. Both of you.” As they are going back up the walk, she says to Dr. Eddington: “I gather you're here to deliver bad news.”

“Yes, unfortunately…” He tells her about Dr. Grey.

“Poor woman,” Mrs. Winslow says. “Andrew's going to take it very badly, I'm afraid.” She sighs. “I know there's never a good time for a thing like this to happen, but I wish it needn't have happened just now.”

“Is something else going on with Andrew?” Dr. Eddington asks.

“Yes, I think so.” Mrs. Winslow is looking at Dr. Eddington as she says this, but Mouse gets the feeling that the comment is really directed at her.

They go inside, to the kitchen at the back of the house, where Mrs. Winslow puts on coffee and water for tea. While the coffee brews and the water boils, Mrs. Winslow excuses herself and goes upstairs. She returns just as the tea kettle starts to whistle.

“There's no answer at Julie's house,” she tells them. She pours coffee for Dr. Eddington, and tea for herself; Mouse politely declines both.

“So,” says Dr. Eddington, “Andrew's been having problems?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Winslow says, and Mouse braces herself, certain now that Mrs. Winslow is going to start complaining about her. But instead, Mrs. Winslow speaks a name that Mouse has never heard before: “It's got some
thing to do with Warren Lodge, I think…have you been paying attention to the news reports about that?”

Dr. Eddington nods. “A number of my patients have been following the story. I take it Andrew was too?”

“We both were. I thought
I
was the most affected by it, and perhaps I was, at first. But on Sunday evening Andrew came home a few hours after Lodge had his accident, or killed himself, or whatever it was that really happened. Andrew had already heard about it, and he was in a state of…shock, I guess. I was pretty shaken up myself, so I didn't think much of it at first. But ever since then, he's been different. Distracted—more than usual, I mean. I'd been meaning to talk to him about it…and then today around five-thirty, when he hadn't come home yet and hadn't called, I started to get a bad feeling, and it occurred to me—Andrew was
in
Seattle when Warren Lodge died. So maybe he didn't just hear about it. Maybe he saw it.”

“That could be,” Dr. Eddington allowed. “But if he'd seen something, why wouldn't he tell you about it?”

“I don't know.”

“Who is Warren Lodge?” asks Mouse. Mrs. Winslow looks at her like she'd forgotten that Mouse was at the table, and once again Mouse braces herself for a rebuke. But Mrs. Winslow only hunches her shoulders, and in a calm voice tells Mouse a terrible story.

“So you think Andrew saw Warren Lodge get hit by the van?” asks Mouse, when Mrs. Winslow is finished.

“More likely he came across the scene of the accident after it happened,” Mrs. Winslow guesses. “Or maybe it was something else entirely, I don't know.
Something
happened to him on Sunday. I—” She breaks off in midsentence. There is a pause as she cocks her head, and then she is flying up out of her seat. “Andrew?” she calls. She dashes up the hall towards the front of the house. Dr. Eddington flashes Mouse a quizzical look—
he
didn't hear anything—and the two of them go after Mrs. Winslow.

When they catch up to her she is on the edge of the porch, peering up the darkened street like a sailor scanning the horizon for landfall. For a moment Mouse thinks Mrs. Winslow is imagining things, but then she sees him: Andrew, still about a block away, walking in the middle of the street.

As he comes closer Mouse can see that he is disheveled, his shirt misbuttoned, his hair sticking up on one side. His appearance might almost be perceived as comical, but something about it gives Mouse the creeps. In one hand Andrew grips a bottle, but he doesn't move like he's drunk; he moves
like he's on autopilot, sleepwalking. He swings the bottle absently in his fist, as if unaware that he's holding it. His expression is blank.

It looks as if he's going to go right past the house without stopping, but as he comes in line with the Victorian's front door, he jerks up short, hitting the end of an invisible leash, and executes a neat quarter-pirouette—another comic touch that isn't funny. Still blank-faced, he threads the gap between Mouse's Buick and Dr. Eddington's Volkswagen and hops up on the curb.

Missing the walk, he stumbles onto the lawn and stops short again. His eyelids flutter, and behind them, some higher level of awareness sparks to life. Mouse, thoroughly unnerved now, finds herself hiding behind Dr. Eddington.

“Andrew?” Mrs. Winslow says. Andrew looks at her, befuddled, still not all there yet. “Mrs. Winslow?” he says, slurring the words.

Mouse shifts her weight from one foot to the other, causing the porch to creak. It is a small sound, but Andrew hears it; his head pivots in Mouse's direction.

He sees Dr. Eddington.

“Andrew…” Dr. Eddington begins, but Andrew is already backing up, shaking his head. He stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk, and lets go of the bottle in his hand; the crash of glass, like the firing of a starter pistol, throws him into full motion. He turns and bolts back out into the street.

Mrs. Winslow leaps off the porch and chases after him, but by the time she reaches the street, Andrew has already got a substantial lead. She calls his name one more time, her voice cracking, then hurries to an old Dodge sedan that is parked in front of Dr. Eddington's Jetta. There is a jingle, then a clatter, of keys; Mrs. Winslow curses and bends down to the ground.

While Mrs. Winslow is retrieving her keys, Dr. Eddington turns to Mouse and says: “I'd better go with her. Can you stay here in case Andrew comes back on his own?”

“OK.”

Mrs. Winslow has managed to unlock the sedan and is behind the wheel now, trying to start the engine. Dr. Eddington runs up on the passenger side and raps urgently on the window; the sedan's engine roars to life, and for a moment there is some question as to whether Mrs. Winslow is going to let Dr. Eddington in or drive off without him. Then the front passenger door pops open, Dr. Eddington slips inside, and, before he can shut the door again, Mrs. Winslow backs up, ramming the rear end of the Dodge
into the front of the Jetta. She reverses, hits the gas, and roars off in pursuit of Andrew, the Dodge's passenger door still flapping like an unlatched gate.

“Well,
fuck!
” a voice exclaims. Mouse doesn't acknowledge it. She takes a seat in Mrs. Winslow's porch swing.

Andrew never does return to the Victorian, but over the next half hour, the sedan comes back twice. Each time, Mrs. Winslow slows down just long enough for Mouse to stand up and shake her head; then the Dodge peels out again, heads off on another search. Finally—it's getting late, after nine-thirty now—the Dodge comes back a third time and parks haphazardly. Mrs. Winslow gets out, and marches into the house with barely a glance at Mouse; Dr. Eddington, looking a bit haggard from the ride, comes up the walk more slowly.

“You didn't find him,” says Mouse, more observation than question.

“We thought we spotted him out by the elementary school,” Dr. Eddington says. “But by the time we got the car turned around”—he looks back at the Dodge, which has a brand-new dent in the right front fender—“he'd disappeared again. Still no sign of him here?”

Mouse shakes her head.

Dr. Eddington climbs the steps and leans heavily against the porch railing. “So,” he says, “how are you holding out?”

“Fine,” says Mouse. “Do you think…will Andrew be OK?”

“He should be, once he has a chance to calm down.” Dr. Eddington inclines his head towards the front door. “Mrs. Winslow is calling the police right now, so they'll be looking for him…though quite frankly, I think it might be best if he comes back on his own, once he's himself again.”

“This isn't supposed to happen to Andrew, is it?” asks Mouse. “I mean I know he's like…like me…but he told me he doesn't have blackouts. He's supposed to be…more stable.”

“He's supposed to be. But the thing about Andrew is…” Dr. Eddington hesitates, choosing his next words with care. “He, his people, should really still be in therapy.”

“He seems OK to me,” observes Mouse. “Except for tonight.”

“There are some important aspects of Andrew's own history that I don't believe Andrew is aware of,” Dr. Eddington says. He shakes his head at the question in Mouse's eyes. “Sorry, I can't get into details. Let's just say the initial course of treatment with Dr. Grey…didn't reach the intended outcome.”

“Oh, I know about Dr. Grey having her first stroke while Aaron was still building the house. He told me about it himself: how he had to finish it on
his own, with some help from you…” But Dr. Eddington only looks at her, tight-lipped, and Mouse realizes there's more to the story than she's heard. “Well,” she continues, “maybe after tonight Andrew will make an appointment with you, like Dr. Grey wanted him to.”

“I hope so,” Dr. Eddington says. “Tonight
could
be a blessing in disguise, if Andrew doesn't get into too much trouble before we find him…”

“The way Andrew was acting tonight,” says Mouse. “Is that…is that what
I'm
like, when the Society takes over?”

“It frightened you.”

Mouse nods.

Dr. Eddington smiles warmly at her. “I'll tell you what,” he says. “I'm forty-three years old, I don't smoke, I'm not overweight, and there's no history of cardiovascular disease in my family. So the odds are I'm
not
going to have a stroke while you're in my care.” He looks out at the dented Dodge, parked catty-corner by the curb. “About car accidents I can't be so sure,” he adds, “but after tonight I think I'm going to stick to doing my own driving.”

Mouse smiles too, moved more by his concern for her than by his sense of humor.

“Wow, almost ten,” Dr. Eddington says next, checking his watch. “You have work tomorrow?”

“Yes,” says Mouse. “I guess.”

“You may want to think about going home, then.”

“Oh no. I should stay…”

“If Andrew does come back tonight, it may not be for several hours yet. I'll probably stay a while myself, but—”

“Mrs. Winslow doesn't want me here, does she?”

Dr. Eddington laughs politely at this notion. “At the moment I'd say Mrs. Winslow is too focused on Andrew to even notice other people”—he glances at the Dodge again—“much less want them gone. You're welcome to stick around; there's just not a lot for you to do here, especially if Andrew stays out all night…”

“Maybe I should take a turn looking for him,” Mouse suggests.