Seeing now to her dismay that pages were badly out of order. The entire manuscript must have fallen to the floor and someone—(one of the hospital staff?)—had hurriedly, carelessly shoved it together again. What a nightmare if pages annotated by Gerard were missing for, if they were, Michaela would have no way of knowing what he’d written in the margins of the manuscript; there was no computer file for such minute editing.

  “Oh, Gerard. Forgive me.”

  Desperate, on her knees searching for lost pages. Beneath the bed, beneath the bedside table. There was page 93 badly torn, and another—page 261 . . . To her horror Michaela discovered a page so badly stained and torn, it was all but unreadable; another, the very inscription page that had made her so happy, in a corner of the room behind the bed.

  Now reading—for my ife and fir ael

  Relieved to find these pages, ravaged as they are. So grateful!

  On hands and knees the widow crawls panting, sobbing. On her belly the widow crawls like a broken-backed snake.

  33

  Skli

  Michaela! Why didn’t you call me!

  Didn’t I ask you please to keep me informed!

  What a terrible loss! A tragedy!

  Oh my poor, poor dear! Let me hug you.

  Iris Esdras swoops upon Michaela like a predator bird folding Michaela in her wings. A buxom big-hipped woman of youthful middle age with a savagely painted face, dyed-black hair parted dramatically in the center of her scalp, exotic scarves, turquoise jewelry, perfume—except her manner is kindly, generous, maternal. No one has touched Michaela with such warmth in some time and so being hugged by Iris Esdras is overwhelming to Michaela, deeply moving if (slightly, somewhat, unmistakably) smothering.

  In her hour of need Michaela has been befriended by the administrative assistant of the Institute for Advanced Research at Santa Tierra, the person with whom Gerard most frequently communicated before arriving in Santa Tierra. Ms. Esdras who’d insisted If you need any help, any information at all—please don’t hesitate to call me.

  Though she couldn’t have known Gerard well, Iris’s shock at his death appears to be genuine. The very floridity of her grief makes the widow feel anemic, inadequate. Even her inky-black mascara has smudged with tears.

  Hugs Michaela. So hard, Michaela’s ribs ache.

  Assures Michaela, her science-historian husband Gerard was admired by everyone at the Institute. What a tragedy!

  Iris insists upon driving Michaela home. They will do some grocery shopping en route. She will make the purchases, Michaela can remain in the car. Shut her eyes. Try to rest. Canny Iris seems to have deduced, from a glance at Michaela’s haggard white face, bloodshot eyes, and greasy disheveled hair, the effect of the hospital vigil upon her.

  No driving for Michaela! Her husband died just that morning, she must take care of herself now.

  But arrangements must be made for the “disposal” of the body which is held only temporarily at the hospital.

  Iris will help Michaela with arrangements at the Chapel of Chimes Funeral Home and Crematory (which the Institute recommends highly). In fact, Iris volunteers to call the Chapel of Chimes for Michaela, to make these arrangements.

  Chapel of Chimes!—Michaela’s numbed brain hears Chapel of Crimes.

  The remains of Gerard McManus, being held in the morgue at the Cancer Center, will be picked up by a representative of the Chapel of Chimes and brought to the crematory.

  Ah, Chapel of Chimes. Michaela is listening attentively.

  And this too dazzles Michaela’s numbed brain: her husband is no longer Gerard. So long as he’d been breathing, and Michaela had held him secure in her arms, he’d been Gerard. But now he has been transformed into the remains of Gerard McManus.

  Michaela wonders—But where is Gerard? Is he not “his” body?

  Would Spinoza have known? Is there a spirit that inhabits a body, or is the spirit suffused through the body? And where does the spirit go, when the body fails?

  Iris informs Michaela that she has the option of being present at the cremating of her husband’s remains and Michaela stares blankly.

  “You can make an appointment. You can be a witness. You don’t ‘see’ the incineration, however—you see the coffin moving on a conveyor belt into a furnace heated to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but beyond that—no. The process takes as long as three hours. You witness by being present at the beginning.”

  Michaela quickly shakes her head no.

  How ridiculous life is, Michaela thinks. Her husband has died and has left her unprotected and unmoored and here she is calmly discussing the “disposal” of his body with a stranger. And whether she would like to witness its incineration. She is staring at a dark-chocolate mole on the stranger’s neck.

  As Iris Esdras speaks Michaela imagines that the mole on her neck is moving. In fact there is a scattering of small moles on Iris’s neck, the size of spiders or ticks, and all of them moving almost imperceptibly. (Why does Iris not notice? Does she not mind?)

  Michaela wipes at her eyes, feeling light-headed. It has been one of her unbearable dreams recently, she realizes—a swarm of very small venomous insects crawling over her body as she lies paralyzed in her bed . . .

  One of them, crawling into her ear.

  Seeing the look of distress in Michaela’s face Iris seizes her hand and squeezes it, holding the hand against her warm silky bosom. “You will get through this, dear. We all do—we have.”

  Michaela resists the impulse to push away. No, no!—she isn’t to be claimed by strangers as one of their own.

  As for clearing out Gerard’s office at the Institute—(a new topic, for which Michaela isn’t prepared)—Iris assures Michaela that there is “no urgency” about this. She will put Dr. McManus’s books in boxes herself, she will have the console computer carefully packed, everything delivered to the house on Vista Drive. And no urgency about vacating the house—of course.

  Michaela feels a stab of panic. Vacate the house?—so soon? She and Gerard had signed a lease for the house, through August. She is sure that they’d jointly signed. She explains to Iris that she isn’t ready to leave Santa Tierra yet. She is teaching a writing course at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and she is obliged to complete the term.

  Also—(though Michaela doesn’t volunteer this information)—she can’t leave Santa Tierra because Gerard died here. The protracted anguish and agony of her husband’s death, his heroism—his spirit. She cannot leave him.

  If there is a soul, a lost, drifting soul, a soul “released” from its body—surely, that soul would remain here in Santa Tierra.

  Though Michaela no more believes in an enduring spiritual life than Gerard or his scientist-colleagues believed in an enduring spiritual life yet somehow, she believes this.

  Iris is saying, uncertainly, “Yes, of course, Michaela. You have leased the house until the end of August. But you might prefer to move into smaller quarters, while you teach your course. You might even move to Albuquerque.”

  Move to Albuquerque! Michaela is appalled. How would this be possible, when Gerard has died in Santa Tierra?

  Iris informs Michaela that if she’d like to cancel the lease to the house that could be arranged. Under these “special circumstances” she would not be penalized—“Your deposit would be returned in full.”

  Michaela protests: “But I don’t want to cancel the lease. I’m not ready to move out.”

  “It will seem like a large house for a single person, Michaela. Living up on the hill can be lonely . . .”

  “But Gerard was living there, with me. Just a few weeks ago. It’s our last place together. His clothes, his things are there. I will be working on his manuscript there. We had many places we’d intended to visit together in the vicinity of Santa Tierra. I can’t—can’t—move out, just yet.”

  “I understand, dear.” But Iris speaks hesitantly, for she does not understand.

  “I can’t leave him, just yet.”

  “Oh, my dear. Of course you can’t.”

  “I volunteered to donate ‘bone marrow’ to Gerard. For Gerard. I think that—I think that maybe it did happen . . .” Michaela pauses, confused. She seems to recall a very long needle sinking into her left hip bone. “I think they took ‘bone marrow’ from me but then, I’m not sure—they lost it . . .”

  Iris listens with much sympathy, like one waiting patiently for an opportunity to change the subject.

  “Do you think it’s possible that, if they find it—the ‘bone marrow’—if they locate it, at the hospital, they could—try again? With Gerard? Or”—Michaela falters, rubbing her left hip bone, seeing an inscrutable look in the other woman’s face—“is it too late?”

  Gently Iris says yes, it is too late. She is afraid—yes.

  But the subject is—what? Vacating the house.

  Michaela has not given her life elsewhere a thought in weeks. All of the universe has been narrowed to the vigil in the hospital, the siege at Gerard’s bedside. Even now she finds herself concerned that she is in a wrong place: she should be in room 771 at the Cancer Center, for Gerard will be upset by her absence.

  Terrifying to think that from now on, every place in which Michaela finds herself will be a wrong place.

  It fills Michaela with revulsion, to contemplate returning without Gerard to the house on Monroe Street in Cambridge, Mass., in which she’d lived with him for the twelve years of their marriage. The first thing you must do, before you even bring your stupid suitcases upstairs, is kill yourself.

  However you can, you will find a way.

  Michaela feels something strike her head—hard. She is astonished, confused—is she on the floor?

  Somehow she has slumped to the floor. Sinking, not falling. Aware that she is fainting yet unable to maintain the strength in her legs. The blow to her left temple is a rebuke.

  Iris Esdras is stooping beside her, exclaiming.

  Almost for a moment, Michaela thinks that the white-skinned woman with the savagely bright makeup has knocked her to the floor.

  Skli. Always hungry for revenge.

  “Oh, Michaela! What have you done to yourself!”

  Iris is appalled. She has pushed up Michaela’s loose sleeves, revealing eight-inch striations on the insides of both arms. Gouges in the white skin which appear to have been made with sharp fingernails, not deep but bloody. The wounds are not fresh but days old and have formed long thin stippled scabs.

  Michaela protests: “I didn’t do this. I did not do this to myself.”

  Michaela is humiliated, stunned. Wondering if somehow these wounds are related to the bone marrow extraction . . . And why is this unwelcome stranger leaning over her in the guise of comforting her while at the same time chiding her, examining the lurid scabs on her arms which Michaela has never seen before?—it is all so embarrassing.

  Gerard, dismayed by her weeping uncontrollably in the hospital, would be yet more dismayed by this.

  “Michaela! You must let me help you.”

  Iris insists upon leading Michaela into a bathroom, washing her arms gently with soap, treating the wounds with an antiseptic liquid and placing Band-Aids over the long thin scabs. Michaela winces, for there is considerable stinging pain. But mostly Michaela is abashed—this excitable woman will think that Michaela has tried to kill herself, surely she will talk about Michaela to others at the Institute.

  That poor woman—Gerard McManus’s wife—widow . . .

  So distraught, she tried to slash her wrists . . . but not very expertly.

  So quickly this has happened, Michaela is trying to understand. Her mistake was letting Skli into the house.

  Her mistake—their mistake—was entering this house which Skli and the other demons inhabited.

  “. . . will arrange for you to see a therapist, Michaela. I know several excellent therapists in Santa Tierra. I will not ‘report’ you—that would not be helpful for anyone. Obviously you’ve been under a terrible strain for weeks, seemingly with no one to help you, but this is not a solution, dear—what would your husband say?”

  Michaela is staring at her bandaged arms. Vivid white gauze, adhesive. Unconvincingly Michaela protests that she’d never seen the long wavering scratches before. She hadn’t felt any pain—none. (Until now.)

  Had she gouged herself while sleeping, with her fingernails? Or at the hospital, at Gerard’s bedside? To punish herself, as Gerard seemed to be suffering? To suffer with him?

  (But Michaela’s nails are dull, broken; she would never have been able to scratch her arms so deeply.)

  “I have not ‘cut’ my arms. This is some sort of mistake.”

  Iris, driving, makes no response. Michaela says stubbornly, in a louder voice as if Iris were hard of hearing: “I know what you’re thinking but you’re mistaken. Not even as a teenager did I ‘cut’ myself. I did not.”

  With a grim sort of satisfaction, smiling as a mother might smile, a maddening sort of concern shining in her eyes, Iris says: “Well. I will put you in contact with an excellent therapist—a ‘grief counselor’—and you can explain to him.”

  IN THE HOUSE IRIS INSISTS upon remaining with Michaela until Michaela drifts off into an exhausted sleep.

  Checking all the windows and doors. Informing Michaela, in a neutral voice, a voice trying not to scold, that Michaela had left the back door unlocked as well as sliding glass doors in the living room.

  “You must take better care of yourself, Michaela. The first duty of the widow is to stay alive.”

  Michaela is floating on a wide dark river in some sort of small boat. Gerard has told her the name of the river for they are to meet there: Rio de Piedras. On all sides are shrieks of wild parrots, monkeys. Out of the shadows the demon-goddess Skli emerges. A naked female figure with a shrieking mouth, drooping breasts, a gaping vagina like a wound, and long curved claws for fingers.

  Lightly, teasingly, these claws brush along Michaela’s arms which are not bandaged now but naked, highly sensitive.

  Oh, unbearable! With a convulsive shudder Michaela is rudely awakened.

  IMPOSSIBLE TO SLEEP. Michaela’s first night as a widow.

  Though Iris Esdras has departed, the cloying scent of her perfume remains. Almost, Michaela hears the woman’s vehement exclamatory voice elsewhere in the house, words indistinct.

  Stumbling into the bathroom. Avoids seeing her reflection in the mirror. For already she has been altered considerably, Gerard would scarcely recognize her ravaged face.

  Hesitantly, frankly afraid of what she will discover, Michaela checks the cupboard beneath the sink: yes, the malevolent carvedwood figure of Ishtikini is still there, where she’d shoved it.

  Except she is sure that she’d pushed it as far back as she could against the wall, ugly face turned away. But now it is facing her, impudently.

  Elsewhere, several other disturbing objets d’art which Michaela had hidden away remain where she’d placed them including the figure of the demon-goddess Skli. A crude carving of about eight inches in height, mostly wood, with metallic fingers, sharp curved nails like claws. Under a bright light Michaela examines the claws.

  Traces of blood? Her blood? Not sure.

  Michaela would toss the hateful thing into the ravine behind the house except that it is the property of the Institute, as the house that is leased in her name until the end of August is the property of the Institute.

  Places the thing inside the closet, shuts the door. Panting, swaying on her feet. Arms swaddled in white gauze, she will have to wear long sleeves when she goes out, to disguise the bandages.

  She has been a widow for just nineteen hours.

  34

  Grief-Vise

  In the grip of the grief-vise: all that you will do, all that you will even imagine doing, will require many times more effort.

  Lying in your bed in a damp muddle of sheets. Lying with shut arms, legs, head bowed in a paroxysm of dread of what might happen if you move suddenly, “sit up” . . .

  Hardly daring to breathe for the grief-vise will tighten around your chest squeezing the very air out of your lungs.

  Hearing a telephone ring. A doorbell, repeated.

  A voice faint, failing.

  Where are we? What is this place?

  Where are you? Michaela!

  Why have you abandoned me?

  35

  Chapel of Chimes

  “Mrs. McManus?—please come with me.”

  Mrs. McManus. Your heart sinks. Now there is no Mr. McManus, what is the ontological status of Mrs. McManus?

  The Chapel of Chimes on Alameda Boulevard, Santa Tierra, is a stately dignified stucco building with a gleaming gilt dome, white Ionian columns, a sparkling fountain into which copper pennies have been tossed.

  You wonder what the wishes might be of visitors to the Chapel of Chimes.

  Too soon! Too soon! Give us back our dead.

  Solemnly you are escorted into a large carpeted room containing a gleaming oblong table that could seat as many as thirty people. You are given to understand that funerals/cremations are not usually planned by a single individual but by families.

  Waiting in the severely air-conditioned room for a Chapel of Chimes representative to meet with you. Available for your perusal are glossy brochures, tastefully prepared photo-displays of “theme” funerals/cremations suitable for men—bagpipes, hunting and fishing paraphernalia, skiing, sailing.

  Also bowling, aviation, Star Wars, Elvis Presley . . .

  Sudden rude snorting laughter. Is it yours?

  You push the brochures aside. Through a dark-tinted window you see some sort of frantic activity outside: large dark-feathered birds scuffling about at the base of a eucalyptus tree.

  Hearing a dull muffled rhythmic beat. Possibly, the beat of blood in your ears.

  And what are you doing here, Michaela?—a voice bemusedly inquires.

  Nowhere to be but here. For all places are equally unreal.