Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [33]
At department social functions I found myself calculating where she was going to spend the majority of her time so I might spend mine elsewhere. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her—it was more that I didn’t understand her, or trust her willingness to treat me with civility or respect. Stan was the nicest guy in the world, but Marsha took the current of good-natured ribbing the guys around the station bathed me in and turned it into abuse, especially after she’d downed a few drinks.
Short, stout, white, and downright ugly, as opposed to merely homely, she was the last woman you’d pick up at a bar, if you went to bars, and probably had been the last woman in the bar thirteen years ago, when she and Stan met there. Her hair was short and curly, her skin anemic-looking, her dark eyes fierce and determined. She wore a ring on every finger, several necklaces, ornate earrings that dangled alongside her jaw and made her head look about the size of an orange. Okay, so these were not particularly generous observations to be making about the wife of a coworker who’d died less than an hour ago, but I couldn’t help it. Marsha terrified me.
As soon as the door closed behind us and I was certain we were alone, I said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Marsha, but Stan is dead.”
Having watched a fair number of individuals receive this kind of news over the years, I knew this was not only the quickest but also the kindest way to say it. No equivocating, no stalling, no euphemisms. The last thing you wanted was to be forced to deliver news like this twice because you said something like “we lost him,” or “he’s passed on,” or worse, “he’s no longer with us.”
Hands at her sides, Marsha sat heavily on the sofa.
I gave her the particulars as I knew them and told her how sorry I was. “Marsha, if there’s anything I can do, tell me. I mean that. Stan was one of my favorite people. We’re all going to miss him. Terribly.”
“Was it suicide?”
“I don’t know for sure. He was talking about it earlier.”
“He was so afraid people would think it was suicide and we wouldn’t get his policy. He kept saying the life insurance doesn’t pay off in the event of a suicide.”
Her dark-blue eyes remained unfocused. Marsha tucked her arms between her thick legs—she was wearing black leggings and a loose-fitting white blouse that concealed most of her figure. “Stan thought there was something going on with the department. Then one day he got the shakes and told me he was dying. I said he was full of shit up to his eyebrows. A few days later he got dizzy and told me he had a headache—join the club—and thought he was doomed. I tried to convince him he was a whadoyacallit . . . ?”
“Hypochondriac?”
“Yeah. He spent so much time at the nursing home with Jackie, I thought he was laying pipe with a nurse there. God. I can’t believe he’s dead.”
It was at that moment, sitting in Stan’s living room listening to his wife, that I began to believe all of Stan’s theories.
Stan had had the shakes, same as me. He’d had the waxy hands, same as me. And then he’d died on the freeway the way Jackie Feldbaum had almost died. The question was: If he hadn’t died, would he have ended up like Joel?
“Well,” Marsha said, standing. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll get the kids together and go over to my brother’s.”
“Do me a favor, Marsha. Call the fire station and leave a number where we can reach you.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll find out what the city and state owe him. Get his package together. I’ll call the pension office in Olympia. Get out his insurance policies from work. And I’ll collect his stuff from the station.”
“Thank you, Jim.” I certainly didn’t want to hug her, but if there was ever a time, this was it. I opened my arms and she stepped into them. She hadn’t shed a tear. A minute later I was almost out the door when she said, “Wait.”
She left the room and moments later reappeared with a small white envelope, my name across it in Stan’s crabby printing.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know. Stan said you’d be here today and I