The Obituary Writer (3 page)

She walked her client to the door. For a moment she was afraid Mrs. Benton would hug her again, but instead the woman just pressed Vivien’s hands in her own soft ones before hurrying out.

Vivien stood in her small office, listening to the clock tick and breathing in the scent of lavender. She stood for some time, trying not to think about those three fatherless children in Monticello, or Mrs. Benton’s sour smell, or her own long-missing love. But as always, this last was impossible.

Vivien Lowe met David Gardner on an afternoon in May on Market Street in San Francisco. She was wearing an oversized, ridiculous blue hat that she had owned for exactly ten minutes. It was spring and she was twenty-two years old. She saw that hat in an expensive milliner’s shop and without thinking about it at all, she bought it. The hat made her feel foolish and sophisticated. She pretended she was a Frenchwoman, a Parisian, instead of an English teacher at the Field School, a private school for girls on Nob Hill. Lotte would laugh at the hat, Vivien knew that. She would laugh and then beg to borrow it. Lotte had been her best friend since they themselves were students at the very school where Vivien now taught. Both of them had been orphaned young, and this sad history had made them instant friends.

Catching her reflection in the window of the Emporium, Vivien smiled. Perhaps she would go inside and take the elevator to the fourth-floor tearoom and have a sandwich, pretending to be French. She would order her sandwich in a French accent, and pretend not to understand when the waitress in her pink and white uniform asked if she would like lemon or cream in her tea. Vivien giggled at the thought.

“I’ve never seen a woman who enjoyed herself quite so much as you do, mademoiselle,” a man said.

Vivien saw his reflection in the glass too. He was tall and broad-shouldered with golden hair. He was smirking.

“Je ne comprends pas,”
Vivien said. She had always received A’s in French.

The man replied in such rapid French that Vivien turned away from their reflection to see him better.

He laughed at the look on her face.

“That is quite a magnificent hat,” he said.

Embarrassed, Vivien turned and continued down Market Street, wondering how he had known her fantasy of being a fancy Frenchwoman. She wondered what Lotte would say about this, if Vivien mentioned it. In three weeks, Lotte was getting married and it was hard to get her attention and keep it for any length of time these days.

Footsteps rushed up beside her. “Pardon me,” the man—that rude man—said. “I couldn’t resist teasing you.”

Vivien wished she had not bought the hat. Or that she could take it off now. Maybe she would just give it to Lotte, although her friend certainly wouldn’t be needing it up in that one-horse town she was moving to. In Napa, people grew fruit and made wine and had babies. The thought of losing her friend made Vivien’s eyes tear. They had been together forever, since they were six and wore the gray jumpers that all Field girls wore in the lower school. Now Lotte was moving a world away.

The man, whom Vivien had stopped noticing, touched her elbow. “I’ve upset you,” he said.

She shook her head. “I forgot you were here,” she said honestly, missing Lotte already.

They stopped walking. Vivien saw her streetcar approaching but did not move to catch it.

“What then?” he asked her.

She did not know how to articulate her loss. It seemed too large for words to capture it.

Without warning, the sky grew dark and large fat drops of rain began to fall hard and fast. The man took her elbow again and guided her into a small restaurant at the corner. Already, Vivien’s skirt was wet. The hat drooped.

A waiter rushed over to them and offered a table for two by the window. He pulled Vivien’s chair out for her, then slid it back to the table, handing her a large, heavy menu. It was, she noticed, all in French. The stranger was sitting too, ignoring his menu and staring at Vivien instead. Outside, rain lashed the window, which rattled from the wind.

“A storm,” Vivien said.

“Quite,” the man said.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m not in the habit of picking up strange men on the street and allowing them to take me into dim French restaurants.”

The man grinned at her. He was older than she, with fine lines at the corners of his green eyes.

“And I,” he said, “have never fallen immediately in love with a hat. Until now.”

The waiter hovered nearby.

Vivien knew that some people believed that in the moments before death, a person’s life flashed through their mind. Although she did not believe she was dying as she sat in that French restaurant on that May afternoon during a rainstorm, her life did pass before her. The vague shadowy images of her parents; her Aunt Irene and the house on Fremont Street; all of those years at the Field School for Girls with their Latin and French and Literature; holding Lotte’s hand; the small room in the boardinghouse across the bay in Oakland where Vivien lived while she studied at Mills College; her first beau, Langston Moore, who kissed her with such passion her teeth ached afterwards; the classroom at the Field School that was hers now with its neat rows of desks and the girls in their gray skirts and white blouses and the smell of chalk dust and books being opened; her first glimpse of the blue hat in the window of the milliner’s shop.

The man, this stranger sitting across from her, was speaking to the waiter. Ordering supper, she realized.

Vivien stood abruptly, banging her knee against the table and spilling some water onto the starched white tablecloth.

“I can’t eat supper with you,” she said. “I have to be at Lotte’s bridal shower at the Fenn Club.” She was going to be late, she realized, and without even telling the man her name, Vivien rushed outside into the rain. Her streetcar was there, ready to close its doors. She shouted to the conductor, and lifting her skirt, ran across the street, hopping onto the streetcar, wet and out of breath. From the window, she saw the man standing in the doorway of the restaurant, still holding one of the white linen napkins, like a soldier offering surrender to his enemy. For the first time since he’d spoken to her in front of the Emporium, she saw the thick gold band on his left ring finger.

“It’s infatuation, that’s all,” Lotte told Vivien.

It had been three days since Vivien had met the man on Market Street, and she had not had a good night’s sleep or been able to keep him out of her mind. Even as she sat with Lotte recording the wedding gifts for her, murmuring over the heavy silver and delicate crystal lined up on the dining room table, all she could think about was that man.

Sometimes she blurted, “The audacity of him! Assuming I’d want to eat dinner with him.”

To which Lotte, tracing the bluebells on her china, replied, “And him a married man too.”

Or Vivien would say dreamily, “He is handsome, though.”

“And married.”

Vivien sighed. She hadn’t told Lotte that part of what kept her up at night was imagining his wife, hoping she was ill or insane or something that would allow him to pursue Vivien. But then she would worry over how he would ever find her again. She was just a nameless stranger in a blue hat.

“Love is something else,” Lotte was saying now.

Vivien, bored with her job of carefully writing down each item and the name and address of who had sent it, was contemplating how she might find him. If she went to Market Street and stood in front of the Emporium every afternoon, would he pass by again?

“It’s a more practical feeling, Vivvie,” Lotte said as she unwrapped yet another china plate. She admired it as if she had not already received six others. “Love is reliable. Infatuation is temporary.”

Vivien realized she’d been holding a sterling silver fish knife for far too long, and lost track of who had sent it.

“Have you recorded that yet?” Lotte asked her.

The thank-you notes, engraved with dark brown letters on thick cream paper, waited on the sideboard to be written.

“Yes,” Vivien lied, and laid it on the table. “It doesn’t matter,” she continued. “I’ll never see him again.”

“Which is a good thing,” Lotte said. “Since he’s—”

“I know.”

“You’ll see at the wedding. Robert has some very handsome friends. And a cousin who’s a dentist in Boise.”

“Idaho? No thank you, Lotte. You might be willing to move to the country, but I prefer to stay right here, thank you.”

“Boise is a city, Viv.”

Vivien made a sound in her throat which she hoped Lotte took as agreement.

Lotte walked dreamily around the table, her fingers fluttering over her wedding presents as if she were already placing them in her new home.

“If I went back to the very spot where I first saw him,” Vivien said, pretending to admire a sterling silver ice bucket, “do you think he might pass by?”

“One of Robert’s friends also owns a vineyard. We could be neighbors,” Lotte said, her eyes shining. “Our children could be best friends too. And we could grow old together.”

Vivien smiled. “That sounds nice,” she admitted.

It did sound nice. More than nice, Vivien thought. It sounded right. She and Lotte had been like family to each other ever since both of their parents had died during the influenza epidemic. By coincidence, they each had a spinster aunt who took them in. By coincidence, those aunts lived next door to each other in Pacific Heights. Although both of those women were loving and kind to the girls, Vivien and Lotte found comfort with each other. At night, Lotte always turned her nightlight on and off three times. And Vivien responded by doing the same. It was their way of saying
Good night. I’m here.

Now of course Lotte was leaving San Francisco. Leaving Vivien. Lotte was starting a family of her own, with Robert and her china and silver. What was Vivien supposed to do by herself?

“What’s this friend’s name?” Vivien asked Lotte, a panic rising in her chest. “I’ll pay special attention to him.”

Perhaps that was what she should do. Fall in love with the vintner, move to Napa, manage a vineyard and have babies and keep Lotte close.

Lotte brightened. “Thomas,” she said.

“That’s a good strong name,” Vivien said, carefully unwrapping white tissue paper and lifting a crystal goblet from its nest there. “I always liked the name Thomas.”

“There,” Lotte said, her voice heavy with relief. “You’ll forget all about this other man. You’ll see.”

But it wasn’t infatuation. That’s what Vivien understood almost immediately when she saw David again. That very afternoon, as she and Lotte opened the wedding gifts, the doorbell rang and a letter was delivered for the woman in the blue hat, in care of Lotte.

“I had just two clues. Your friend’s name was Lotte and her bridal shower was at the Fenn Club. I trust this will find you and we can have our dinner together, though by now it has probably grown cold. Tonight? At eight-thirty? Yours, David Gardner, Esq.”

“You can’t go,” Lotte told her.

But of course, Vivien did.

Ah, David,
Vivien thought, that too-familiar ache of sadness filling her.

Mechanically, Vivien collected the teacup and saucer, the small plate of cookies, from the table. She would wash them in the kitchen, then climb the stairs to her bedroom and take a long warm bath. She would enjoy a glass of Lotte’s wine, and climb into bed to read until she grew drowsy and could finally sleep. Her nights were often exactly like this one. But rather than causing boredom or loneliness, this solitary routine brought her comfort.

Vivien rinsed first the teacup, watching as the Earl Grey disappeared down the drain, then its saucer, both of them rimmed with a silver stripe. Her wedding china, she and David called it, even though there had never been a proper wedding. Exactly half of it had survived the earthquake. The irony of this was not lost on Vivien, herself a surviving half. Vivien took a cookie, a lacy Florentine, and nibbled it as she rinsed the plate. She realized she had not had any supper and considered making herself a little something. There were good fresh eggs in the icebox, and mushrooms, the dirt still clinging to them, waiting on the counter. Vivien imagined cracking two eggs in the cobalt blue bowl, and stirring them with some salt and pepper. She imagined wiping the mushrooms clean, slicing them, then sautéing them in butter.

In her mind, she could see the result, a golden omelet, earthy with mushrooms and a snip of the chives she grew on her windowsill. But instead, Vivien turned off the light in the kitchen and went upstairs. A book lay open on the night table. Without undressing, she picked it up and settled onto the bed. She could almost hear Lotte reprimanding her.
Eat! Take a walk! Let the Italian man who adores you buy you dinner in town.
She could hear Lotte telling her,
You are wasting your life on a dream, Vivvie.

Vivien placed her finger on the page, and closed the book. If David had died, she thought for the millionth time, she would have felt it. She would have felt his life leaving. By now, he would have come to her somehow—in a dream, as a ghost,
somehow
. She shook her head, as if she were actually arguing with Lotte. He had to be out there. He had to. If not, then Lotte would be right. She had wasted so many years on the dream of him, on this sliver of hope.

These kinds of thoughts could keep her up all night, Vivien knew. She opened the book again, and forced herself to focus on the words there.

“I used to wish I could have this flattering dream about Antonia,”
she read,
“but I never did . . .”

And soon, Vivien was back in Willa Cather’s world, safely removed from her own.

TWO

Persons under the shock of genuine affliction are not only upset mentally but are all unbalanced physically. No matter how calm and controlled they seemingly may be, no one can under such circumstances be normal. Their disturbed circulation makes them cold, their distress makes them unstrung, sleepless. Persons they normally like, they often turn from.

—
FROM
Etiquette
,
BY
E
MILY
P
OST, 1922