After what seems like a very long time but is probably only about ten minutes the door opens and a “crematory administrator” enters the room to shake your hand gravely. He is a middle-aged man in a dark suit, necktie, thick-tufted chestnut hairpiece. There is something about his protuberant eyes and just-perceptibly pitted skin that puts you in mind of—who?—Weyaki, God of Chaos?—but in an unperturbed voice he inquires if you have had time to peruse the printed material and if you have any questions and you assure him no, you have no questions, you intend to purchase the most basic cremation for your deceased husband, the plainest “recyclable” coffin, no hobby motifs, no special music. And the plainest “urn.”

  “Ah, yes! I see.”

  Weyaki is disappointed, you can tell. A steely light in eyes behind shiny bifocal glasses. Though surely Iris Esdras has informed the Chapel of Chimes that your husband was a research fellow at the Institute, an academic historian for whom a Spartan cremation would be likely.

  “There will be a memorial in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the fall. Gerard was a professor at Harvard.”

  “Indeed. Yes.”

  “A prominent professor at Harvard. All his friends—colleagues—are in Cambridge. We really don’t know anyone here.”

  Bizarre to be volunteering so much information in a hoarse stilted voice not your own. As if you owe this stranger an explanation.

  It is the most you have spoken in some time. You feel dazed, depleted.

  Somewhat chagrined, you’d heard a quaver of boastfulness in your voice. As if, if one boasts of a (deceased) husband, this will make the loss less awful?

  If indeed there is a memorial for Gerard in Cambridge in the fall you will select Gerard’s favorite music for the occasion: Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” Murray Perahia playing Chopin, Bach. Though it seems to you unlikely that you will still be alive at that time.

  Something distasteful, vulgar about remaining alive under these circumstances.

  Weyaki busies himself preparing a contract for you to sign. Rebuffed by his customer the crematory administrator is now all-business, brusque and matter-of-fact. The price of the cremation, he says, including all fees and state tax, will be $2,639.86.

  Gerard would laugh for Gerard took delight in commonplace absurdities. Why thirty-nine dollars? Why eighty-six cents?

  Weyaki glances up at you as if you’d spoken aloud. As if you’d laughed scornfully.

  All this while you have been distracted by activity outside the window which is a tall narrow dark-tinted window that emits a grudging light. In the near distance there is a stucco wall, and in front of the wall a eucalyptus tree at the base of which something is being attacked, or devoured, by scavenger birds resembling vultures.

  Whatever lies on the ground helpless, animal, human—you don’t want to look too closely. It must be dead for it is not defending itself against the ravenous birds.

  Ah, it’s white-skinned, naked—not an animal . . .

  Politely Weyaki is asking if you have any questions about the procedure and the contract?

  You are staring past Weyaki’s thick-tufted hairpiece through the window at the thrashing birds whose wide wings obscure from your view what lies on the ground, helpless to defend itself against a staccato of stabbing beaks.

  “. . . how would you like to pay, Mrs. McManus? We request that you pay the full amount now, if you can . . .”

  You stare, but cannot see. What is being devoured outside the window at the base of the eucalyptus tree, you cannot see . . .

  Weyaki turns stoutly in his seat to peer out the window, puzzled that you seem to be staring at something behind him. But he sees nothing.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. McManus? Is it—Michaela? Is there something wrong?”

  It requires far too much effort to reply to this question even with a simple no. You ignore Weyaki, making an effort to wrench your eyes away from the window.

  Lift the contract to read it closely as (you recall) Gerard would lift a page from the copyedited manuscript to peruse it when his eyes were no longer in focus.

  Another time you’d seen him squinting at the New York Times, held upside down.

  Never will you recover from the horror of seeing your brilliant husband trying to read the New York Times held upside down.

  Signing the contract but your fingers are shaking. Steady your hand with your other hand as Weyaki looks on, frowning.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t—can’t seem to . . .”

  “Mrs. McManus? Do you need assistance?”

  “. . . it’s just a tremor. It will go away in a minute . . .”

  Shielding your eyes with your other hand, from the sight outside the window. Don’t allow yourself to look.

  ASHEN FACE. BRUISED EYES. SO TIRED!

  Breathing breathing breathing that has insinuated itself into your lungs that breathe now in unison with your husband’s lungs for his death has burrowed into your life.

  EVENTUALLY, THE CONTRACT IS SIGNED.

  You have been a widow for eighty-seven hours.

  36

  The Instructions

  As follows.

  The widow’s mission to assure the husband’s safe passage from this world to the next.

  During these (crucial) days the soul will wander homeless.

  The widow will receive notification when the cremation has been completed.

  The widow will appear at the Chapel of Chimes to receive the ashes in an urn.

  Embark then with the ashes to the River of Stones.

  There, await further instructions.

  THIS IS A SURPRISE!—she is not alone.

  Waking in the house on Vista Drive chill as a morgue. In that first instant of wakefulness summoning her soul back into her body, which it enters reluctantly.

  Turns out that Michaela is not a solitary being as she’d been thinking in (premature) despair and despondency since her husband’s death. Though the house is empty of (human) habitation it appears to be filled with an excited agitation of the air like shaken water.

  Muffled voices, a chorus of voices. Even laughter.

  These voices are familiar, comforting. Though she cannot hear them clearly. A rustling of the eucalyptus surrounding the house. Cries out of the ravine. Her name is spoken, each vowel and consonant given equal weight—MI CHAE LA.

  Urgent, soothing. Patient, kindly. Melancholy.

  The name of the husband is not uttered. That is a correction, the widow surmises.

  For the particular individual who has passed away had been given a name only for convenience’s sake. A kind of shorthand, or code.

  He-who-has-passed-from-you.

  He-who-has-been-your-husband.

  He-who-will-love-you-beyond-death.

  He-who-awaits-you-beyond-death.

  37

  Hylpe Mi Plz Hylppe Mie

  “Of course—I am not going to cancel! I never break my word.”

  Breathless she hears herself on the phone. Explaining that she intends to complete the memoir course, would not dream of canceling it, nor even missing another class. The family medical emergency has been resolved.

  In fact, she intends to make up the single class she’d missed. She will explain to the students, today.

  Her oasis! While her husband has been in the hospital.

  On Thursdays dressing with particular care. Hair briskly brushed, fresh-laundered poplin shirt, white linen slacks with a crease. Upright posture, red-lipstick smile, badge of normalcy.

  Optional: white linen jacket, silk scarf knotted at throat.

  Out-of-time. Michaela can detach herself out-of-time while at the hospital the (endless) vigil continues.

  Of course Michaela has memorized all of her students’ names. Sleepless nights driving away thoughts of despair, despondency, terror how much more comforting to recite to herself the names of strangers seated around the seminar table, bright faces turned to her.

  When Michaela returns to the memoir class on Thursday afternoon not one of these strangers will have any idea why she’d been absent the previous week.

  Absurd, such vanity. As if anything matters now that your husband has died.

  EVEN LETITIA TANIK WILL HAVE no idea. Letitia, to whom Michaela has written several imploring emails.

  Letitia, I am sorry to have been out of contact. A family medical emergency came up, that is now resolved.

  Please keep me updated on your situation.

  To this email, no reply.

  Letitia, I hope that I did not upset you the other week & did not put pressure on you. I am concerned for you, still. I was thinking only of your well-being . . .

  Nor was there a reply to this email.

  Letitia, I am hoping that we can speak together after our workshop on Thursday. If you have questions for me, please do not hesitate to ask.

  And this email also, unanswered.

  OH GOD, OH GERARD—have I made a terrible mistake?

  Please help me . . .

  IN A TRANCE OF APPREHENSION driving to Albuquerque.

  He hadn’t known where she was going on Thursday afternoons, not in the final weeks. She’d ceased explaining as he’d ceased remembering and at last he was too weak and distracted to remember to ask and so she had not volunteered in the hope/expectation that he was not clear-minded enough to register that she was absent from him for several hours and during those hours was out-of-time.

  Though Gerard is no longer awaiting her in the Santa Tierra Cancer Center yet she feels his disapproval, his hurt. Where are you, why have you abandoned me?—for Michaela is a dying man’s wife and has no right to be out-of-time fleeing from him to another city.

  Her proper place is Santa Tierra. Where Gerard’s restless soul wanders.

  For such reasons she has come to fear driving on the interstate. It is reckless of her, she risks being punished. The grief-vise tightens around her chest in proportion to traffic close about her. Tight, tight—tight . . . She hears herself gasping for breath like a fish that has been plucked from the water and tossed onto the sand but if she is very calm the spell will pass, the vise will relax. For the moment.

  Traffic thunderous as Niagara Falls and, like Niagara Falls, no beginning and no end. Mammoth trucks passing her (compact, lightweight) vehicle so close on the left, the rental car is sucked shuddering in their wake.

  And there is a tug, a distinct tug, of the steering wheel, urging it to the left. Panicked Michaela grips the wheel hard, resisting.

  No. No I will not.

  Whoever this is urging her to swerve into the left lane of the interstate into rushing traffic must be a prankish sort of demon. Not one of the comforting voices, not (obviously) one of those who wish to instruct the widow in her mission.

  God damn no. I will not.

  But: guarantee of an instantaneous death.

  But: Michaela has obligations to fulfill in what remains of her life.

  As if anything matters now that your husband is dead.

  WHAT A FOOL SHE IS! And what folly this is.

  Unreality rolling in like fog. Polluted air. Almost, Michaela can taste it.

  Just breathe. Keep going. For Christ’s sake!

  Her initial mistake (she thinks) has been the (naive) mistake of the inexperienced instructor: becoming involved with a student. In particular, becoming involved in the personal/troubled life of an undergraduate.

  Except, Michaela castigates herself: you can’t say that she is really inexperienced. Nor is she a young instructor. In the matter of Letitia Tanik she has behaved impulsively, recklessly.

  Yet, Michaela is at a loss to understand what she might have done, that she’d failed to do.

  How could I ignore her? I could not have ignored her.

  Once Letitia told Michaela about the (alleged) rape—no turning back for Michaela.

  Recalling with a stab of emotion how Letitia had hugged her, impulsively—burying her face in Michaela’s neck. No warning.

  (Had that truly happened? When Michaela tries to recall, she isn’t sure.)

  Then, the shock of driving around the block, happening to see Letitia, or someone who closely resembled Letitia, on the balcony of the residence, approaching the young man . . .

  In any case Letitia appears to be absent (again) this afternoon. Michaela is stung by the rejection.

  Unless it is not a rejection: possibly Letitia has decided to drop out of the university.

  She may have reconciled with the (unnamed) young man—the (alleged) rapist.

  She may have had a breakdown. Injured herself. She may have killed herself, and you will be to blame.

  No one in the workshop takes Letitia’s vacant chair at the seminar table. As if the chair is tacitly reserved for the missing person.

  Michaela wonders if the space is being ironically reserved for Letitia. A signal that the others understand what has happened, and want their instructor to know that they know.

  But do they blame her?—Michaela wonders.

  When Letitia Tanik had been seated in that chair, slump-shouldered, heavy-sighing, sulky and restless, Michaela had been distracted and annoyed by her, wishing that the self-preoccupied young woman hadn’t turned up at all. Now, Michaela is anxious that Letitia has not (yet) arrived, it is fifteen minutes past the hour and Letitia has not (yet) arrived, soon the door to the seminar room will be shut.

  Badly tempted to ask the other students if they’d had news of Letitia, if anyone in the workshop knows her . . .

  No business meddling in the private lives of students.

  Oh—but she cared for us!

  At least, she cared for one of us.

  Blur of faces, quasi-familiar faces, can’t remember names, though she’d memorized names, quizzical stares as if the students don’t recognize Michaela after just two weeks apart. Fear that they will see through the red-lipstick smile that their instructor has been eviscerated, a husk of a woman, no longer wife but widow . . . Must impersonate whoever it is these strangers expect. A person not eviscerated.

  Michaela summons her strength, she will not weaken.

  Michaela summons her strength even as it drains from her like rain through outstretched fingers.

  Staring at printed student work she has carefully read, reread that morning in preparation for the class, that now looks unfamiliar. Entire pages unmarked, she is sure she’d annotated with editorial comments. Even her voice is hollow, halting. Her attempt at vivacity—“humor”—is greeted with blank stares. When students speak their voices are muffled and distorted and Michaela is forced to lean forward in an effort to hear what they are saying.

  As if a barrier of some kind has arisen between them. Not quite transparent Plexiglas.

  Oh, what has happened? Michaela has so loved this workshop, these students . . . Vaguely their names return to her: Melanie, Zora, Wyn, Frankie, Brett, Simon. But which names matched to which faces? Most of the students are older, not enrolled in the undergraduate college. They are mature adults, some of them single mothers, all of them working. Part-time, full-time. They have been eager, earnest. They have been very congenial. They have not disappointed. One of them, a young-old man, appears to be disabled, to a degree: stooped-shouldered, hoarse asthmatic breathing yet has not missed a class, listens intently to his instructor and nods at her every syllable. (Is this Simon? Or—a name she has forgotten?) Indeed these Thursday afternoons have been Michaela’s oasis, her interlude of hope. She’d believed that if Gerard could know what her life was apart from him he would approve.

  If I am not happy, I have the hope of making others happy. If I am beyond help, I have the hope of helping others . . .

  But the students are not so friendly this week. After the long break. As if that break were an abyss: before, after.

  Before I died. And after.

  Their faces are stiff, inscrutable. Zora is frowning at her cell phone which she has positioned surreptitiously on her knee, partly hidden by the table. Frankie is looking sullen, bored. (From waiting? But is Michaela late?) Stoop-shouldered young-old Simon sits with his arms folded tight across his narrow chest, staring past Michaela’s head—Simon, usually so shyly friendly toward her. Several persons don’t even look familiar to Michaela, who could swear that she’d never seen them before. Not only is she having trouble hearing their voices, but they also seem to be having trouble hearing her voice, squinting and grimacing when she speaks, cupping their hands to their ears, failing to respond to her remarks.

  Hello, hello, hello? Hello?

  Strange that the young people are sitting at the farther end of the table, crowded together so that they are facing Michaela at the other end. And the table is half-again as long as Michaela recalls.

  Hard to believe that a new, longer table has been substituted for the old table.

  Hello? Please speak more clearly.

  Michaela can hear voices but not words. She can see mouths moving—lips. Trying pathetically to read lips through the Plexiglas barrier. Craning so far forward her neck aches.

  Is there something wrong with her ears? An infection? A burning sensation in her left, inner ear . . .

  And her own words, muffled by the Plexiglas barrier: Can her students decipher from the contortions of her face, her mouth, her eyes what she is trying to earnestly to tell them?

  Hylpe mi plz hylppe mie

  * * *

  Running cold water into a SINK. In the faculty restroom. Splashing water on her heated face which she dares not examine too closely for fear that she will discover how her face is fading. Holding her blue-veined wrists beneath the gushing faucet. Wincing as she stoops, for the grief-vise has left angry bruises around her rib cage.

  None of this is remotely real.

  You know that don’t you?

  You are not an instructor at a university. What a joke!

  Your husband has not died, it is you who have died.

  You who are being punished for abandoning him, brain boiling with fever.

  38

  Voice Mail Message!

  And then, the widow’s life takes an utterly unexpected turn.