A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [28]
I stood in line calculating how I was going to pay the formal respects. It would have been far preferable to be downstairs in the church basement cutting the cake in preparation for the “lunch,” or standing guard over the formidable coffee urn. I had offered, that is, Howard had offered for me. He had dialed and redialed numerous times until he finally got through to the Collins’s house. Theresa had told him that there were plenty of people to cover the bases.
“To cover the bases?” I had said, and Howard, because Nellie was standing in the doorway, did not reply. He rolled his eyes up and blinked, and then he left the room.
There was nothing more to say to Lizzy’s relatives. Theresa and Dan’s life would be forever changed. I couldn’t do effective CPR, hadn’t been organized enough to know where I put my swimming suit, couldn’t take care, was a heathen who barely knew how to pray. “I’m sorry,” wouldn’t really suffice.
My damp shirt was sticking to my stomach, and my wrists still smelled of the new Calvin Klein perfume, “Escape,” that I had found at Hutchin’s in the magazine. Howard’s mother had ironed the flowered skirt, and I had shaved my underarms as well as my legs with great care, with the fear that one unsightly black nub would be taken as a sign of disrespect. I was tall and fought, without much success, the habit of slouching. In line I stood erect. I reached up and pulled my hair out of its rubber band and smoothed it through the circle of my fingers, and refastened the band. It was then that I saw Mrs. Mackessy, several yards behind us. I had seen her at the hospital, in the waiting room. I had waited in the lounge for three days, doing nothing. Waiting. It seemed that from now on everywhere I went there were going to be surprising people who would remind me of unpleasant things.
In the line at church she was respectable, as always. She was wearing a full white skirt and a pink shell, and her hair was held back by a gold banana clip. She was blowing air up into her face, her bottom lip pushed out like a pout.
“Look alive,” Howard whispered, prodding me.
I nodded. Right. Look alive. He had never used that expression before. I didn’t like Mrs. Mackessy, and her boy lurking behind her skirt; I didn’t like them being in line and on top of it she was acting as if the service was an obligation, an inconvenience. They didn’t belong—they weren’t really friends. I knew that Mrs. Mackessy and her husband had gone to Theresa for marriage counseling. I remember thinking that they weren’t our kind, that they were the sort who would take their welfare checks and go bet on dogs down at the racetrack.
“Alice, move along,” Howard said, with the exacting tone of a school master. I walked the three yards to his side. I tried again to think what I was going to do when I got to the receiving line. Should I clasp each relative’s hand, or kiss a cheek and pass wordlessly on? What about Theresa’s older brother, the one who looked like a thug? He might be waiting for me with a knife up his sleeve.
What do I do? I asked my dusty feet. If Howard knew how I felt he would guide me through the line. I’d rest my weary head on his shoulder and weep quietly, inconsolably, and he’d whisper to me, all the way through. I hoped I would cry the right amount. I guessed I should hug Dan whether or not he welcomed it. He would feel me quivering and perhaps understand my fear. What to say? What to say? I hated that Howard had told me to be quiet. In church I would try my best to cry enough to make an impression, but not so much that I couldn’t stop. Because the service was not much more than a show, like a wedding, a clean and public accounting of the horror and mess that had gone before.
I took a deep breath and licked my