The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [52]
“And your marriage?” the priest asked. “What was your marriage like?”
Kathryn glanced at Robert.
“It was a good marriage,” she said. “We were close. I would say that we were in love for a long time, longer than most couples. Well, I don’t how you can ever tell about other people. It’s just something you guess at.”
“And then what happened?” the priest asked.
“And then?” she repeated. “And then we just loved each other. We passed out of being in love to just loving.”
“Just loving is all that God asks of you,” said the priest.
Not once in her entire marriage, Kathryn thought, had she considered what God wanted.
“We’d been married sixteen years,” she said.
The priest crossed his legs. “Captain Lyons has been returned?”
“Returned?” she asked, at first bewildered.
“The body,” the priest said.
“There isn’t a body,” Kathryn said quickly. “My husband’s body hasn’t been found yet.”
“Then I assume you’re speaking of a memorial service.” Kathryn looked to Robert for help. “I guess so,” she said. “Well,” Father Paul said, “we can do one of two things. We can hold a memorial service for Captain Lyons, in which case I’d advise you to do so before Christmas so that the holiday might become part of the healing process rather than of the tragedy for both you and your daughter.”
Kathryn contemplated this idea, about which she did not feel hopeful.
“Or,” the priest added, “we could wait until your husband has been located.”
“No,” Kathryn said vehemently. “For my daughter’s sake, for my sake, for Jack’s sake, we need to honor Jack now. They’re crucifying him in the papers and on television.”
She heard the word crucifying and felt embarrassed for having used it with a priest. But wasn’t that in fact what was happening? she thought. They were crucifying Jack’s honor, his memory.
“They’re saying that he committed suicide, that he murdered a hundred and three people,” Kathryn said. “If Mattie and I don’t honor Jack, I don’t know who will.”
The priest studied her.
“Honor him,” she added, though she could not explain herself further.
“And I...”
She cleared her throat and tried to sit up straighter. “I doubt very much there will be a body,” she said.
That night, pacing sleeplessly in Julia’s kitchen long after Julia and Mattie had gone to bed, Kathryn began to wonder if she shouldn’t, after all, tell Father Paul that there was a living relative — Jack’s mother. And wasn’t it wrong of Kathryn not to inform the woman herself that her son had died? she wondered. She suspected that it was, but the thought of Jack’s mother alive, the image of an elderly woman who looked like Jack sitting in a nursing home, caused for Kathryn an unpleasant noise in the air, like the irritating and insistent whine of a mosquito that she wished would go away. It wasn’t simply the discovery that Jack had lied to her that troubled Kathryn; it was the continued existence of the woman herself, a woman Kathryn did not know quite what to do with. Impulsively, Kathryn reached for the telephone on the wall and called information.
When she had the correct number, she dialed the nursing home.
“Forest Park,” a young woman answered.
“Oh, hello,” Kathryn said nervously. “I’d like to speak to Matigan Rice.”
“Wow, that’s amazing,” said the woman, who was eating, Kathryn thought, or chewing gum.
“This is Mrs. Rice’s third call today,” the woman added, “and she hasn’t gotten a call in, oh, six months, anyway.”
The woman made a sucking sound, as if draining a drink with a straw.
“And in any event,” the woman continued, “Mrs. Rice can’t come to the phone. She isn’t well enough to leave her room, and in addition to all her other problems, she can’t hear very good, either, so a phone call is really out of the question.”
“How is she?” Kathryn asked. “About the same.”
“Oh,” Kathryn said. She hesitated. “I was just trying to remember . . .” she added, “when it was exactly that Mrs. Rice entered the nursing home.”
There was a silence at the other end.
“Are you a relative?” the young woman asked warily. Kathryn pondered