The Obituary Writer (10 page)
“This obituary,” Vivien said firmly, “has every important fact about the deceased. This is the obituary her husband wants.”
She didn’t know for certain that this last point was true, but she believed that when he read it, he would agree.
The man scowled. “What’s this business about pearls sleeping?”
But Vivien was done with this newspaperman. She instructed him to run it that very afternoon, and then she stepped outside where, for the first time in the six months since David had disappeared in the earthquake, she finally could take a breath without it hurting to still be alive.
Perhaps it was foolish of her, but Vivien booked a room for the night at the Hotel Majestic. She arrived in front of it on Sutter Street, and stared up for what felt like a very long time at its distinctive bay windows, trying to guess which room was number 208. Finally, she gave up, remembering that she had not paused to admire the view that night she and David spent here. Vivien lifted the handle of her trunk and dragged it to the entrance.
A bellhop hurried to take her trunk for her, and Vivien followed the man inside the elegant lobby. Everything seemed both familiar and foreign. How caught up in David she had been that long-ago night! All she could think of was touching him, and having him touch her. The check-in had seemed interminable. The slow ride up the elevator eternal. Had they even bothered to turn on the lights when the key finally opened the door and a bed awaited them? It seemed to Vivien now that their clothes came off right at the door, as soon as they stepped inside.
“Is room 208 available?” she asked the man at the desk.
“208,” he said, turning to the row of cubbies behind him that held keys.
Vivien’s eyes followed his finger as it danced across the row of second-floor room keys.
“208,” he said, his finger stopping abruptly.
He removed the large key hanging from a golden rope.
But when he held it out to Vivien, she found herself refusing it.
“No,” she said, “I’ve made a mistake. I’d rather stay in a different room.”
His face did not belie any frustration or confusion. “A different room then,” he said, replacing that key and handing her another one.
Vivien followed the bellhop who was moving her trunk into the elevator. Inside, she pressed her back against one wall, remembering how David had pressed his body against hers that night, perhaps in this very elevator. She closed her eyes, almost feeling his rough face against her own smooth neck.
“Ma’am?” the bellhop asked. “Are you going to faint?”
Vivien opened her eyes and shook her head. What was she thinking coming back here?
“You look like you saw a ghost,” the bellhop said. “We got one, you know. Up on four. He fills the bathtub with water and walks up and down the halls.”
He paused to measure the effect of his story.
“Some people,” Vivien said, “do believe in ghosts.”
“They say he’s harmless,” the bellhop said as the elevator came to a jerky halt. “But anyway, he doesn’t come down to the third floor.”
Vivien studied the bellhop’s earnest face. A ruddy complexion and the sort of nose that came from too much drinking, a road map of veins.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing a ghost,” Vivien said.
He looked startled, but she didn’t explain further. How could she? What was there to say?
The restaurant in the Hotel Majestic was surprisingly empty. Vivien was seated discreetly in the back corner. A woman dining alone always raised eyebrows. Quickly she scanned the large menu. Why, they served crab Louis salad, Vivien read, delighted. She and David used to go to the St. Francis Hotel just for their crab Louis. She hadn’t had it since she left the city. When the waiter came, she ordered one.
“Oh,” she said as he turned to leave, “and a glass of Chenin Blanc.”
“Yes, madame,” he said, gratuitously polite.
Vivien knew he found it odd, even disturbing, that she dared come into the dining room without a man, eat her dinner alone, and have the audacity to drink wine as well.
It had been a long time since she’d dressed up and sat in a fine restaurant like this, and she surprised herself when she realized that she missed it. The buttoning and smoothing and primping. The smell of powder and perfume. She missed David’s hand on her arm as they entered a restaurant, how he pulled out the chair for her and glided it back into place. The candlelight flickered, casting everyone in the room in a soft glow. Vivien watched the other people eating and drinking—couples with their heads bent close together, men smoking cigars and sipping brandy from crystal snifters. Her gaze settled on a man eating alone, like her, one sleeve of his jacket pinned up. He’d lost the arm in the war, no doubt. She thought briefly of all the obituaries she had written in those months, the Spanish influenza coming right on the heels of the war, the deaths adding up with terrible speed.
The waiter brought her wine, and right behind it came a cart with her dinner. He made a lavish show of tossing the sliced hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes, asparagus and cucumbers with the white crabmeat.
“Shall I add the dressing, madame?” the waiter asked, a small silver ladle poised over the bowl of orange dressing.
Vivien nodded.
“Bon appétit,”
the waiter said officiously before he walked away.
Vivien picked up the heavy silver fork and took a bite of crab. The familiar taste brought with it a rush of memories so strong she had to put the fork back down and work hard to swallow. Alone in Napa, her days had taken on such a similarity that she had almost forgotten pleasures like these: good food, good wine, the murmur of conversations. But sitting here tonight, Vivien ached for all of it, and more. How she missed the companionship, the touch, of a man.
She got to her feet quickly, and laid some bills on the table. Before the waiter could make his way to her, Vivien had already hurried out. Was this how she was meant to spend her life? Alone, untouched, unheard? The thought was almost too much to bear. Would someone meeting her now even believe that she had once been like these people, carefree and pretty and loved?
In her room, Vivien unpinned her hair and began to brush it. She still brushed it for one hundred strokes, a habit she’d never given up. She washed her face, first with hot water, then with cold. Her aunt had taught her that this was the best way to keep the pores open and fresh. It had worked too; Vivien always had a clear complexion. Now of course there were small lines around her mouth and eyes, but still her skin was clear and with good color. She rubbed cold cream onto her face in a circular motion, then put all of her toiletries into their small bag and put the small bag back into her trunk. These simple rituals calmed her.
The sheets on the bed felt cool and luxurious. Vivien stretched out, plumping the pillows and trying to block out the memories. As soon as she closed her eyes, hoping to sleep, someone knocked on her door, loud and repeatedly.
“Go away,” she called.
But the knocking persisted.
She sat up.
Throwing back the bedclothes, Vivien got out of bed. The knocking was louder, almost frantic now.
“One minute!” she called.
She dug her robe out of her trunk and tied it hastily around her.
At her door, Vivien’s eyes rested on the Italian man from Napa. Sebastian, the one who followed her around the library and worked at Robert’s vineyard.
“Signora,” he said, his face filling with relief at the sight of her. “Oh, signora,” he said, his shoulders drooping with some motion she couldn’t quite make out.
His name was on the tip of her tongue, though she couldn’t recall it.
“Sebastian,” he said, all four syllables rolling from his tongue.
“What in the world . . . ?” Vivien began, unable to articulate her surprise and confusion.
“Mrs. Lotte, she say, ‘Find Vivien. Try Hotel Majestic.’”
“Lotte sent you?” Vivien said, even more confused.
“Mrs. Vivien,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “May I bother you for some water?”
“Yes, of course,” Vivien said, holding the door opened wider so he could enter her room.
Embarrassed in her nightclothes, her hair loose, Vivien bent her head as she poured him water from the pitcher by her bedside.
He sipped it, trying to calm himself.
“What is it?” she asked when she thought he was composed.
But at the sound of the question, he began to cry again.
“I don’t know how to say it,” he said.
“Just say it, that’s all,” Vivien said.
Sebastian looked at her, right into her eyes.
“The little girl,” he said.
“Pamela?”
He nodded. “Pamela, yes. Pamela is dead.”
Among those who come to the house there is sure to be a woman friend of the family whose taste and method of expenditure is similar to theirs.
—
FROM
Etiquette
,
BY
E
MILY
P
OST, 1922
CLAIRE, 1961
T
he telephone rang, shrill and piercing. Claire got up slowly, hoping it didn’t wake Kathy. She walked down the dark hallway to the small table with the heavy black phone perched on it. Beside the phone sat a yellow legal pad and a blue ballpoint pen as if waiting for important messages.
“Hello,” she answered.
“It’s me, Clairezy,” Peter said.
“How is she?” Claire asked, his use of her old nickname making her feel awkward.
“Not good,” he said. “It appears to be a heart attack.”
“How terrible,” Claire said. “And on her birthday too.”
“Strange to see her so . . .” He hesitated. “Vulnerable,” he said.
Claire almost said
I’m sorry,
but caught herself.
“How are you?” she said instead.
“There’s vending machine coffee,” he said. “And a tin of cookies in her room. I don’t know who brought them. Those Danish ones? Butter cookies in different shapes?”
“Those are good,” Claire said.
“Did you sleep?” Peter asked.
“No.”
Silence settled between them.
“I was just in your old room and remembering you telling me how you and your mother made that skateboard out of . . . what was it? An old roller skate and a plank of wood?”
“We called that thing the Tornado,” he said. “Painted it purple with a big twister down the middle.”
She heard him sigh.
“Maybe I should come to the hospital?” Claire said.
“I’ll come and get you first thing,” he said. “Try to sleep a bit.”
“I wonder if John and Jackie can sleep tonight,” she said. As soon as she said it, she realized how foolish it sounded, how inappropriate.
“Maybe not,” Peter surprised her by saying. “Maybe they’re sitting up thinking they’re the luckiest two people on the planet.”
She smiled at the idea. “Well,” she said, “maybe they are.”
“I’m using the phone at the nurses’ station,” he said.
“Oh. Of course.”
“Clairezy,” Peter said, his voice low.
“What?”
“I love you,” he said. “As much as I hate you, as much as I can’t stop thinking about—”
“Ssshhh,” she said. “Not now.”
They hung up and Claire stood there in the quiet. Her ankles were still swollen and she stood barefoot on her sore feet, the cool wood of the floor beneath her. The heat coming up through the radiators hissed and crackled. She opened and closed her fingers. They were also swollen, and her rings cut into her. She tried to twist first the solitaire diamond, then the gold band below it, but neither would budge.
Claire picked up the heavy receiver again and placed her finger in the small circle marked Operator. She hesitated briefly, then dialed it. When the operator answered in a clipped nasal voice, Claire had to take a breath before she said, “I want to make a long-distance call.”
“Do you have the number?” the operator asked, all brusque efficiency.
Did she have the number? Claire almost laughed. She’d memorized it months ago, repeating it over and over as she drove or drifted off to sleep. That number had seemed almost magical. No, it had been magical. Just dialing it had made her shiver with excitement.
“Valley one,” she said now, “three nine five nine.”
In the space between them, Claire heard pages turning.
“Hold please,” the operator said.
Claire realized she was holding her breath as she waited for the phone on the other end to ring. She closed her eyes, imagining Miles asleep in a bed she had never seen, beside a woman she did not know. She knew his hair would be sticking up at funny angles. She knew how he must smell, of his Right Guard deodorant and the pomade he used to try to keep that hair in place. He would taste of Gleem toothpaste and cigarettes and of the Jameson’s he liked to sip.
Abruptly, the silence ended and a loud ringing filled the space between him and Claire. He was there, at the other end of that telephone. She imagined it ringing in the dark, waking him. Waking his wife too, no doubt. But he would be the one to rouse himself and answer it. If she said nothing, would he still somehow know that she was the one calling?
Then, just like that, as if no time had passed, his voice was in her ear, rough with sleep.
“Hello?” he said.
Again Claire took a small sharp breath. She thought of all the things she had dreamed of saying to him these past few months. Silly things, like how well the
coq au vin
recipe from
the
New York Times
had turned out and how she thought Chet Huntley looked ill like he maybe had cancer and how she had bought the 45 of “Save the Last Dance for Me” and cried whenever she played it.
“Hello,” he said again, weary.
And big things. Big things like how she missed him, how she could not bear to remember the blue of his eyes or the way his hand felt on her thigh when they drove together because remembering them broke her heart all over again. Absently, her hand caressed her belly.
Oh, Miles,
she thought.
His voice came through the lines again, softer now. “Claire?” he whispered hopefully.
Claire nodded, unable to speak.
“Please tell me it’s you,” Miles said, all the pain she had caused him in his voice.
Slowly, Claire lowered the receiver and hung up.
What had she been thinking? Her hands were shaking. She needed a cigarette.
Claire
. He’d said her name. How beautiful it had sounded.
Sitting at the kitchen table, Claire sipped another glass of scotch and smoked a cigarette, her hands still trembling.
When the door opened, she froze, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Peter?” she said.
But instead, Connie from downstairs walked in.
“I heard footsteps,” she said, helping herself to a cigarette from Claire’s pack. “Any word?”
“Peter just called,” she said. “It appears to be a heart attack.”
“Not good at her age,” Connie said matter-of-factly.
She sat across from Claire, picked up the bottle of scotch and read the label to herself.
“Michael’s got colic,” Connie said. “The kid hasn’t slept through the night since he was born.” She sighed. “Fourteen months. Jimmy’s all eager for the next one and I’m like, when that kid sleeps straight through, we can talk about it.”
“My neighbor Dot,” Claire said, “she put her baby on the dryer and ran it and it worked. It calmed him right down.”
“You don’t say?” Connie said. “Hmmm.”
She got up and retrieved a glass from the cupboard, pouring herself a healthy amount of scotch before sitting back down. In the harsh kitchen light, Claire saw that her eyes looked like someone who needed a good night’s sleep—ringed with dark smudges, weary.
“I put some brandy in his bottle sometimes,” Connie said. “Just a little. When I’m desperate.”
“You should try the thing with the dryer.”
Connie nodded. Her eyes traveled over Claire in a way that made her squirm. “When are you due?” she asked, her gaze settling on Claire’s stomach.
“Sometime in spring. I don’t really know when it happened, so . . .” Claire held up her hands in defeat.
Connie nodded again. Something in the way she looked at Claire, appraising her, made Claire feel like she knew everything about her.
“So sad about Birdy,” Connie said, and Claire could see that she really did feel bad.
“What was she like?” Claire asked. “When Peter was young?”
“Glamorous,” Connie said. “Exotic. She didn’t look like any of the other mothers on the block, I can tell you. But older too, which we found really curious.”
“Peter always says she was, I don’t know, shy?”
“Maybe,” Connie said, frowning. “We all thought she was just kind of fancy, you know? Our mothers were making spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and Birdy was cooking these little bites of chicken and exotic vegetables in a wok. You know what a wok is?”
Vivien admitted she wasn’t sure.
“It’s like a big steel bowl that you put on the stove and cook food in really fast. We used to all stand around and watch her. And the smells! Ginger and I don’t know what.” Connie shook her head, remembering. “We all wished she was our mother, in a way.”
“So she was fun to be around then?”
“Not fun,” Connie said. “Just different from anybody I ever knew before. She was always kind of sad, even when she smiled. My mother said that once and I realized she was right. ‘Birdy,’ my mother told me, ‘has suffered something great and mysterious.’ That’s what we all thought. But she loves Pete. Whenever he came inside, her face lit up. We could see how pretty she must have been once.”
“What color do you think Jackie will wear tomorrow?” Claire asked, suddenly wanting to change the subject.
Connie looked surprised. “Um . . . red?”
“Really?” Claire said politely. Jackie was not going to wear red to the inauguration. Red was too déclassé. “My neighbor Dot is having a little contest—”
“The dryer lady.”
“What? Oh. Oh, well, yes. All of the ladies in the neighborhood cast a vote on what color Jackie is going to wear and whoever chooses the right one wins.”
“Wins what?” Connie said, frowning.
“It’s silly but the winner gets a little party with daiquiris and tea sandwiches and her favorite dessert. Like queen for the day.” Dot had even made a tiara out of cardboard, spray painting it gold and covering it in glitter.
“So what color did you pick?”
“Pink,” Claire said.
Connie wrinkled her nose in distaste. “She won’t wear pink,” she said.
“Well, I think she will. With her dark hair, she’d look beautiful in pink.”
“I think she’s homely,” Connie said. “Too horsey.”
Claire couldn’t think what to say. Jackie Kennedy homely? No one thought that. She was beautiful and stylish and sophisticated. Everyone Claire knew wanted to be just like Jackie. Dot and Roberta and Trudy had all gotten their hair cut like Jackie’s. Trudy read in
Time
magazine that Jackie spoke fluent French, and she went to the library and got French tapes so that she could learn too. She peppered her conversation with French phrases, and ended her sentences by saying,
“n’est-ce pas?”
“Her jaw,” Connie was saying, “is too big.” Connie jutted her own jaw and lower teeth forward to demonstrate. Laughing, she poured herself more scotch, and topped off Claire’s glass too. “She’s from here, you know.”
“Well,” Claire said, “Newport.”
Connie rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “That’s still Rhode Island. Her father, what do they call him? Black Jack or something? He’s a drunk and a gambler and a womanizer. It’s true.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Claire said.
“I don’t like womanizers,” Connie said. “Thou shalt not commit adultery, right?”
Again Claire got the feeling that Connie knew. She fussed with the buttons that ran down the front of her nightgown, avoiding Connie.
“I told Jimmy if I ever caught him with another woman, I’d cut his balls off.”
Claire looked up.
“I would too,” Connie said evenly.
“I don’t think we can say what we would do in hypothetical situations,” Claire said. Her mouth and throat had gone dry. “We just don’t know until it happens.”
Saying this, she thought of the look on Peter’s face that day. She had opened her eyes and caught sight of Peter over her lover’s shoulder. He was on top of her and they were naked and Peter stood in the doorway of Kathy’s room looking surprised, as if he could not make the details add up.
“Really?” Connie said. “Maybe you don’t know what you’d do,
hypothetically
, but I would cut his balls off.”
“Well,” Claire said.
“Did you ever meet Angie Fiori?”
Claire shook her head.
“Lived down the street. Pete knows her. We all went to high school together. Anyway, you’re not going to believe this, but
she
was doing her brother-in-law.”
“Really,” Claire said, putting her hand up to stop Connie, “I don’t want to hear this.”
Connie’s thin eyebrows lifted. “Her husband beat the crap out of his brother, but I think he should have thrown her out. I mean—”
“I have to try to get some sleep,” Claire said, standing up. The scotch had made her dizzy, and she held on to the table for support.
Connie narrowed her eyes.
“How did we ever get on this topic anyway?” Claire said, forcing a chuckle.
“Jackie,” Connie said.
“Right.” Claire waited for Connie to stand too, to go back downstairs. But she just sat there, waiting. “Will you watch tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Connie said. She brightened. “Tell you what. If she wears red, I’ll cook you dinner, and if she wears pink, you can cook me dinner.”
“Great,” Claire said, even though that was a silly idea. Her mother-in-law was probably dying; how could she cook dinner for Connie?
“What would you cook? If you won,” Connie said, still not making a move to leave.
“I don’t know,” Claire said. “Probably
coq au vin
.”
“Cocoa what?”
“Chicken. In wine sauce. It’s my specialty, kind of.”
“Huh,” Connie said. “Okay. I’ll make you spaghetti and meatballs. I make the best meatballs. Ask Jimmy.”
“I really need to go to bed,” Claire said. “I’m sorry.”
Connie looked surprised. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”
She shrugged and said, “For going to bed, I guess.”
The first time she saw Miles was at Trudy’s on a Saturday night in May. It was the Saturday right after Dougie Daniels disappeared. Claire and Peter arrived late.
“Babysitter,” Peter had explained.
“Regina Knightly,” Claire said, which was enough for all the women to nod.
“Enough said,” Trudy said, offering a tray of hors d’ouevres.
Regina Knightly was always late, and slow-moving, the last-resort babysitter in the neighborhood. When Cheryl Merckel babysat, she taught the kids her high school cheers, right down to the cartwheels. Beth Piper did elaborate art projects. Diane Carrington wrote plays for them to perform. But Regina Knightly just ate the leftovers and left the dirty dishes in the sink. The women suspected that she rifled through their dresser drawers, spritzed on their perfume, even stole their husbands’ condoms. But no one could ever prove any of this.