“No! She’s not a friend of mine.”

  “She said—”

  “No!”

  So upset, Michaela breaks the connection.

  So upset, Michaela ignores the phone ringing as Lucinda calls back. In an instant Michaela is coldly furious, raging. She has not felt such emotion in months.

  Stumbles out onto the redwood deck leaning far over the railing, hands over her ears.

  No no no no no.

  Eventually, when Michaela lowers her hands, it’s only the cries of the wild parrots in the ravine below that she hears.

  NEXT DAY, MICHAELA CALLS THE (step)daughter to apologize and explain: she is not in need of help right now.

  In her new, sane state Michaela repents of the behavior of the other Michaela deranged by grief as a rabid wild creature. But no more.

  The (good, sane) widow means to fulfill her obligations. She has roused herself from the death-spell, she will not succumb again.

  Bill-paying. Writing checks. No more mundane way of (re)connecting with the world.

  In the widow, the mundane and the penitential merge.

  In the widow, the mundane and the unbearable merge.

  For Michaela has discovered a folder of (unpaid) bills in Gerard’s desk in the rented house. Bills forwarded from Cambridge, set aside by Gerard when he was stricken with pneumonia, soon forgotten as he struggled for his life.

  It was Gerard’s routine to pay bills online, near the end of the month. Now some of these bills are past due. Among them, Gerard’s medical insurance.

  How mortified Gerard would be, Michaela thinks. That he’d failed to pay bills. Failed to do the common ordinary routine tasks he’d done so capably as a husband.

  Failed you by dying.

  A grim task, paying bills. And now newer bills, soon to be a deluge of bills from the Santa Tierra Cancer Center . . . But writing checks can be a solace in a time when nothing matters for writing checks is invariably a solitary activity, one does not miss a spouse while writing checks which Michaela can do, she reasons, until the money runs out and if/when the money runs out that will be a clear sign that Gerard has been preparing for her, that her life has run out.

  I’m here, I won’t leave you, darling Michaela.

  I have your hand. I am waiting.

  THE MOST SOMBER OF THE WIDOW’S TASKS as it is the most absurd, and the most heartrending: bringing her husband’s ashes home with her to the house on Monroe Street, Cambridge, where he’d lived for many years.

  If Gerard and Michaela had known, when they’d left the house so blithely in January: that one of them would not return but be brought back in an urn . . .

  Michaela wants to laugh wildly. But laughter in the widow is a prelude to hysterical weeping, thus not advised.

  Vaguely the (adult) children have spoken of “scattering Dad’s ashes”—in the Catskills, in a mountain stream behind a cabin in Roxbury once owned by Gerard’s grandparents which (all the relatives agree) was Gerard’s “favorite place in all the world.”

  Michaela has heard of this mythic place in the Catskills, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, long since purchased by strangers, but during the twelve years of her marriage to Gerard, Gerard made no effort to revisit Roxbury, preferring to travel abroad in the summer; but Michaela has not objected to these plans to which she has politely listened.

  In fact she has no intention of allowing Gerard’s ashes to be scattered anywhere, like debris. What a crude custom!

  Though understanding—These are just ashes. These are not Gerard.

  Lying in bed in the house on Vista Drive from which she is soon to be expelled rehearsing in her head how she will carry the urn containing Gerard’s cremains onto the plane with her. She will not check the urn with luggage. She will not ship it. She will not risk its loss.

  At the security check she will present the urn for inspection.

  This urn contains my husband’s ashes, I am bringing back to our home.

  Somberly, respectfully the widow will be waved through security.

  No doubt, one of the NSA officers will murmur that he/she is sorry for your loss, ma’am.

  As other passengers bring small dogs onto airplanes, in carrying cases that can be slid beneath the seat in front of them, so Michaela will take the urn, the ashes, the cremains of her late husband onto the plane with her, to slide beneath the seat in front of her.

  How ridiculous our lives, Michaela thinks, appalled.

  When the person is reduced to matter—obscene.

  How much less shameful just to die. And how strange, so few others have thought of this, or have had the courage to act upon it.

  That stab of guilt in the gut, a kind of nausea, that the widow is still alive while the husband is dead.

  Yet as Michaela (compulsively) rehearses the scene she begins to see that not all of the airport security officers are behaving respectfully toward the widow. Indeed, one of them is frowning suspiciously at the urn inside its maroon cloth bag, placed for inspection on the X-ray conveyor belt.

  Though Michaela has notified several officers that the urn contains a man’s cremains and though the urn is clearly stamped G. McManus. Chapel of Chimes, Santa Tierra, NM, the NSA supervisor tells Michaela sternly that the urn will have to be opened for inspection.

  Worse, it falls to the widow to open the urn as several security officers look on. Michaela has never yet opened the urn, has not wanted to gaze upon its contents, has never felt sufficiently strong enough to gaze upon its contents, and so has no idea how to open the damned urn for the lid is securely in place.

  Twist the lid? Pull at the lid? Pull hard? Michaela’s face is flushed with vexation, anxiety, guilt.

  (Will none of the security officers help her? Not one?)

  At last, Michaela succeeds in prying off the lid. Quickly shuts her eyes, cannot bring herself to look upon what is inside, that has been combusted and reduced to seven pounds, two ounces.

  Security officers examine the contents of the urn by stabbing a pen into the ashes, a gloved forefinger, groping, stirring. Michaela is upset by these crude actions but dares not object. She is dismayed to be told brusquely—Ma’am? We’ll have to ask you to step over here.

  There is some question about the contents of the urn. Despite the ID stamped onto the urn.

  . . . have to ask you to wait here, ma’am. Until we can determine exactly what is in this receptacle.

  Do cremains resemble some type of narcotics? A kind of cocaine, hashish?

  Michaela is allowed to rummage frantically through her carry-on suitcase to find the Chapel of Chimes Crematory receipt. This she shows to the NSA officer who scrutinizes it at length but shakes his head gravely.

  Ma’am there’s no way for us to know if this document pertains to this receptacle. Or, if it pertains to the receptacle, if the prior contents of the receptacle might not have been emptied out, and another substance substituted.

  At which point the widow begins to weep those helpless tears she has usually kept private.

  Wracked with tears, the human face flushes, swells. As the eyes become puffy, vision narrows.

  To weep so rawly, so openly—a kind of nakedness.

  So ashamed! Lying in her bed sweating, miserable unable to sleep Michaela foresees a contingent of security officers called, a detainment as fellow travelers look on bemused.

  An analysis of the urn’s contents by a forensics laboratory might require days, a week. Weeks. During which time Michaela cannot be allowed to fly. (Where will Michaela actually be? She would have had to vacate the house on Vista Drive; this lurid scene would be taking place in the Albuquerque airport.) Indeed, Michaela may soon be arrested on suspicion of conspiring to smuggle a controlled substance onto an interstate flight.

  WIDOW OF RECENTLY DECEASED HARVARD PROFESSOR ARRESTED

  SUSPECT IN DRUG SMUGGLING RING

  So sweating! miserable!—by this time Michaela has given up trying to sleep.

  Oh Jesus!—just die.

  Kill yourself, stop this charade. You have a cache of pills for just that purpose.

  No. She has changed her mind. She will not plan to bring Gerard’s ashes onto the plane. She will have to pack the ashes in her (checked) luggage. A new and riveting idea will be to bring the urn into the garage with her, when she asphyxiates herself at last back in Cambridge; she will set the urn in the passenger’s seat beside her, in the car in the garage in Cambridge as it fills up with thin gray clouds of exhaust, to music played by Gerard’s favorite classical music station WCRB-FM.

  And come kiss me, I’m waiting.

  49

  “Save Yourself”

  You recall having told them No thank you.

  Politely firmly telling all of them No please. Stay away.

  Yet: the doorbell is ringing. After a pause, a sound of knocking.

  Recall having locked the door (of course) yet to your horror you hear the door being pushed open—“Hello? Michaela? Are you there?”

  Throaty female voice, familiar. Yet for a moment you cannot identify it.

  Early that morning wakened by the vise tightening around your chest. Gasping for breath. Cries of wild parrots in the ravine, confused with your own racing thoughts.

  Not expecting an intruder to drop by.

  A spy from the Institute. Adamantly you’d told them no.

  Now crouching in the bathroom. Disheveled, only partly dressed. The last thing you want is a visitor. An intruder.

  In the bright-lit bathroom you’d been making an inventory of the cache of pills. Sleeping pills, painkillers. Plastic containers lined up on the counter beside the sink. Accumulation of years.

  Enough to kill an elephant.

  Feeling a thrill of apprehension, anticipation. For you are undecided what to do about the pills. In one scenario, the prudent one, you flush the pills down the toilet, careful to flush them in small enough portions so that the toilet doesn’t become clogged. In another scenario, the more exhilarating, you bring the pills home to Cambridge, Mass., with you carefully secured in your carry-on suitcase.

  Prior to the airtight garage, asphyxiation by carbon monoxide. Hours of a running motor, music lulling you to sleep.

  “Michaela, please answer me! It’s Iris . . .”

  Of course, the voice is the voice of Iris Esdras. You are filled with rage, dismay.

  The voice quavers with concern and with the thrill of such concern which is coercive, intrusive. Iris Esdras to whom you’d explained that you would not be home if she dropped by, you would not be home whenever she dropped by. Yet now, Iris has pushed her way inside the house. Iris is determined to help you, she has said. She is determined to prevent you from hurting yourself further, she has said. (For Iris is convinced that you have cut yourself, injured yourself in secret stealthy ways that are worsening.) Now, she is standing just outside the bathroom door and you see to your dismay that the door is unlocked and it is too late for you to lock it for if you do, Iris will know that you are locking it and that you are behind the door only a few inches away from her.

  Appalled, you see the doorknob turning. Iris isn’t pushing the door open—yet. Iris is just (discreetly) checking to see if the door is locked.

  If locked, the situation might be an emergency. So Iris would conclude. A dramatic intervention might be required: calling 911.

  Sirens on Vista Drive, early morning before the sun has fully arisen. Medics breaking into the house, laying their hands on the crouching cringing weeping partially-dressed woman backed into a corner of a bathroom . . .

  No choice then but to open the door. As if you’ve only now become aware of Iris calling to you.

  “Ah, Michaela! Thank God you are—all right . . .”

  Genuine relief in the woman’s white-powdered geisha face. In the heavily made-up eyes. Steel yourself for the smothering embrace.

  “. . . worried about you, dear!”

  Dear. When has Iris Esdras started calling you dear.

  You are limp, unresisting in her embrace. Your arms hang at your sides like a puppet’s. You can think of nothing to say that is not craven, accommodating. You do not want trouble, you want merely to be left alone.

  For Gerard keeps his distance, when others are near.

  A smell of talcum-powdered flesh, cosmetics. Glisten of red-painted fingernails. Iris Esdras has a face vivid as a poster. Indian-black dyed hair parted in the center of her (very white) scalp and drawn back into a tight chignon. She holds herself with the aggressive aplomb of a flamenco dancer though she is a solid woman with fleshy bosom, hips. She wears floating scarves, ankle-length skirts, nubby tops with dipping necklines that reveal the tops of large gelatinous breasts. Her shoes are golden open-toed sandals, her toenails polished and glittering.

  You assure Iris that you are all right but Iris is doubtful. She grips your thin shoulders, peers into your face as if peering into an abyss. She will prepare breakfast for you, she says. You are too thin. You are not well. She will make calls for you—the Institute will pay for your return flight, business class.

  You thank Iris but try to explain that you are not leaving Santa Tierra just yet. There are several things that Gerard has asked you to do, you will do for his sake. You have your own commitments in Albuquerque.

  Iris shakes her head skeptically. Commitments in Albuquerque? Iris is bemused, doubtful.

  You ask Iris to do a favor for you: would she please take away from the house, this very morning, the ugly carvings of demon-gods you discovered when you’d moved in and have hidden from sight . . . One is here in the bathroom, beneath the sink, and two others are in the hall closet. Ishtikini, Skli, Weyaki . . . You are not sure how to pronounce their names.

  Iris laughs and assures you that no other Institute fellows have ever complained about the art in this house, or in any of the Institute houses. Usually they are delighted with their accommodations and furnishings. What exactly do you mean, Iris asks: which “gods”?

  You tell her: the Scavenger God, the Goddess of Creation and Destruction, the God of Chaos . . . You believe that they are Pueblo gods.

  No, Iris says. Those are “prank gods”—“shadow gods”—not authentic Pueblo gods.

  But what does that mean? you ask her. Not “authentic” Pueblo gods?

  Iris shakes her head, amused. As if trying to explain the hierarchy of Pueblo gods to you would be hopeless.

  All you need to know, Iris says, is that the sculpted figures in this house are not meant to represent real gods. The demons you’ve named are frequent subjects for art because the “higher gods”—the “authentic Pueblo gods”—cannot be embodied in figures and so the “lower gods”—Ishtikini is a favorite, and the female Skli—are popular.

  You wince, hearing the names spoken aloud. You beg Iris: “Just take them away, please.”

  Iris’s sharp eyes have dropped to your bare cringing feet. She sees, for how could those sharp eyes fail to see, that your toenails are long and jagged as burgeoning claws. She sees that, though you may have showered recently, it was not sufficient to make up for weeks of self-neglect, a patina of grime is detectable between your toes.

  Iris points out, reasonably, that if you are planning to vacate the house soon, what difference does it make if there are “ugly” carvings in the house?

  You say, stammering: “Please—just take them. Now.”

  You have begun to tremble badly. In the bathroom mirror you see your ghastly-white face. You see yourself stoop to open the cupboard door beneath the sink. You see Iris Esdras’s savagely made-up face hovering above you, staring. You see both your hands gripping the Ishtikini figure with the grotesquely enlarged skull, howling mouth, pencil-thin erect penis, a figure made of dense, dark carved wood that is surprisingly heavy for its size.

  You see your hands lift the sculpted demon above Iris’s head and bring it down swiftly and hard. Taken by surprise the woman screams softly, a cry of disbelief. As she staggers and begins to fall she claws at you, pulling at your clothing, falling heavily onto the tile floor that is already blossoming with red splotches. From above you see that her skull has been broken, the chalky-white scalp has been torn, a flap of skin is hanging loose . . .

  You stare down at her. Your brain feels as if it has been utterly annihilated. At a little distance in the mirror Gerard observes, waiting.

  You know better than to look for him. If you turn your head he will vanish.

  Come to me now, Michaela.

  You have done all you need to do here.

  You turn back to Iris Esdras who stands peering quizzically at you.

  Iris is saying again that the “prank gods” should be no problem, just leave the carvings where they are if you find them ugly. These are harmless folk carvings, some find charming and others find “ugly.”

  Iris goes on to explain that she will be happy to help you ship boxes and to make arrangements for your flight home. The Institute will provide a business class ticket if you vacate the house by the first of July—

  You interrupt: “Please go away. Take this with you, and go away. Now.”

  The ugly Scavenger God is in your hand. Both your hands. You thrust it at her.

  When Iris hesitates you tell her: “Then go away yourself! Save yourself.”

  50

  The Examination

  Lie down! lie down flat on your back! on the examination table relax!

  Relax muscles, relax bones! Relax brain spilling thoughts like lukewarm water out of a tremulous paper cup!

  In the paper gown thinly covering nakedness, relax!

  Your first duty is to keep yourself alive.

  AT LAST YOU HAVE MADE an appointment with Dr. W___.

  Dr. W___ has been recommended to you by Dr. M___.

  Dr. M___ was recommended to you by (your friend) Iris Esdras.

  Very low blood pressure, Dr. W___ has discovered.

  Rapid heartbeat. “Excitation.”

  Temperature above normal (99.9 degrees Fahrenheit).

  Bloodwork will show anemia, potassium deficiency.