Torch: A Novel Part 12

"It's an ancient Chinese practice," she said when she was done. "A holistic method. They believe you can learn everything you need to know about the condition of the patient from the pulse, and then you respond accordingly."

He nodded. He didn't have the heart to ask her what she had divined. He wanted only to be alone with his wife. Pepper came in the evenings to visit Bruce, and he imagined she'd been of some comfort to Claire in the daytime. He supposed he was grateful for that. Pepper meant well, and yet whenever he was in her presence it was as if a wasp were loose in the room.

"How are you?" she asked, standing up, coming to him. She took both of his hands and squeezed and looked directly into his eyes and would not look away. She did this every time she looked at him.

"Okay." He turned to Teresa, and then Pepper did too. Teresa's face in repose was as delicate and tranquil as a sh.e.l.l.

"Why are you here so late?" He gestured for her to sit on the vinyl couch and he sat in the chair across from her.

"I felt like coming down. I thought of you and I felt that I should come. That maybe you'd like to pray." Immediately she closed her eyes and began, "Dear Lord ..."

He bowed his head and lowered his eyes without closing them entirely and listened to her pray in a steady murmur while gazing at her shoes. Lavender Keds with clean white b.u.mpers shaped like half-moons. He didn't believe in G.o.d and neither did Teresa. Or at least not the version of G.o.d that Pepper seemed to be promoting, but he didn't have it in him to say no. Certainly praying couldn't hurt, even if it did make him feel remotely like a hypocrite, and remotely like the boy he'd once been, who'd been made to go to church each Sunday, to confession every time he'd sinned. Pepper prayed for Teresa's health and recovery, for her peaceful pa.s.sage if health could not be restored, for Bruce's strength in the face of this suffering, and for that of all the people who loved Teresa. She asked G.o.d to watch over "all the children of the world and most especially Claire and Josh" and followed that with a formal prayer, something rote and vaguely familiar to Bruce, and then she crossed herself and reached out with her eyes still crushed shut and clutched his knee.

"Amen," he said and she whispered amen too, saying it fiercely, almost savagely, without taking her hand from his knee.

When a decent enough time had pa.s.sed, he said, "I appreciate it-you coming in. But you don't have to. Actually ... I thought I should tell you that my own beliefs," he glanced at Teresa, "our beliefs-I mean, in G.o.d-are not that firm. We were both raised Catholic, but we didn't stick with it. We aren't in any way religious. So prayer ..." He didn't know how to continue without offending. Out on the street far below, he could hear a car horn blare for several seconds and then stop. "Prayer," he continued, "is not going to be of much use to us."

Pepper didn't say anything. She went to the small table in the room, where they'd propped all the get-well cards, and picked one up and read it. It had a sepia-toned photo of a Conestoga wagon on the front. He wanted to rip it from her wrinkled hands.

She looked at him abruptly and put the card down, careful to prop it precisely as it had been. "Would you like a doughnut?" she asked, glancing toward a long box that sat near her coat and purse. She walked over to it and carried it to him, hoisting it up so he could choose.

He wasn't hungry, but he hadn't eaten since breakfast, so he took one-the first one his hand landed on, a glazed twist-and chewed it dispa.s.sionately as a beast in a field. When he was done he reached for his coffee, cold now, and took a swig. The coffee was strong and he intended to drink it all night. He didn't want to sleep. Ever again.

"Thank you," he said, setting his mug down. It said WYOMING! across the side; he'd taken it from the Family Room down the hall.

"They're left over from my group that meets Monday nights." She sat on the couch again and gestured for him to join her, and he did. "Speaking of which, that's something you should know, Bruce. For afterwards. We have a group, 'The Loss of a Loved One and Other Life Changes.' It's a family group. It meets once a week. You can all come together. We find that it-" she interrupted herself, a look of realization overtaking her face. "You know, we just did something that you may be interested in. In fact, it's something I'd very much like to share with you."

She stood and went to her purse, knelt to rummage through it, smiling at its contents, searching in the dim light of the room in each of its pockets and sections. She had an incredibly fit body for a seventy-year-old. She wore jeans with an elastic waistband and a sports bra that gathered her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into one firm bundle. She seemed constantly on the verge of turning a cartwheel.

"Here it is," she exclaimed. "Heavens, this purse. All the doggone things I cart around!" She stood and came toward him, holding what he could now see was a purple marker, and took the cap off. "It's a little exercise we did. Bow your head," she said, as if she was about to perform a party trick. She parted his hair with her free hand and before he could agree or disagree, she pressed the tip of the marker to his scalp.

"Now," she said, stepping back, replacing the cap on the marker. "I want you to remember that dot when you're feeling sad or lonely. You can't wash it off. Once it's there, it's there for life. It's a reminder that you're a special person. That you're a child of G.o.d, which means that you're never alone, Bruce. Not for a minute. It means that you are a beloved man who lives in the light of G.o.d's love, as we all do."

"How are the animals?" Teresa asked suddenly, her voice clear as a spoon against a jar.

They turned to her, startled. Bruce rushed to the bed.

"The animals? Fine." He put his hand on her shoulder. "Did you just wake up? They miss you-everyone does. The dogs are staying at Kathy Tyson's now, until we can all be home."

"Kathy Tyson?" She lifted her eyes to him. They appeared younger, bluer now because the rest of her had become so old.

"So they won't be lonely. With us gone all the time they don't have company."

She smiled at him and her smile was like her eyes. The only two parts of her that were still that way.

"Would you like to pray?" Pepper asked from the foot of the bed, still holding the marker.

"Actually," he said irritably, "we'd prefer if you'd-"

"Yes," said Teresa, keeping her eyes on Bruce.

That night, despite the coffee, Bruce slept. Then woke. Then he flickered back to sleep and woke again, and again and again, as if a dumb but persistent hand attached to a stick was prodding him. At last he woke entirely, instantly, and sat up in his cot as if the hand had slapped him. He knew exactly where he was. Never in all of this did he forget where he was. The room was quiet, but recently so. The silence had a luxurious quality, as if in the wake of the terrible sound that had preceded it. Teresa was asleep, bathed in the gentle lights of the machines that were stationed around her head. He watched her face and then the noise came again-the noise he presumed had woken him in the first place-and he went toward it, a horrible high pitch from one of the machines. He pressed the flat b.u.t.tons on the panel covered with numbers and indecipherable commands until the noise stopped. He stood staring at the display. Whatever he had done to silence the noise had caused the screen to rhythmically flash a series of zeros.

"You're awake," the nurse said as he glided into the room. His name was Eric. He carried a tray with a plate on it, covered by a dome-shaped lid. Teresa ate no matter what the time of day-or rather they tried to get her to eat, a thing that had become next to impossible. The evening before she'd allowed Bruce to spoon a sliver of a canned peach into her mouth and then chewed it obediently without seeming to taste it at all. The nurse set the tray down on the table beside Teresa's bed and edged in next to Bruce and pressed several b.u.t.tons on the panel and the zeros disappeared. "You were snoring like a baby when I came by here last."

Bruce gazed at him dreamily, as if unable to comprehend what he was saying. His waking life had taken on the quality of dreams, his dream life, the quality of reality. "How's your car running?" he asked after several moments.

"Fine," Eric said. He was a chubby kid barely out of nursing school. Bruce had come to know and like him over the weeks of nights he'd spent at the hospital. Eric's presence was undemanding and, most importantly, unconcerned. He hadn't tried to talk Bruce into counseling, hadn't told him how sorry he was, or how there were people "there for him," or that his wife dying so quickly was actually for the best because now she wouldn't suffer. Eric scarcely acknowledged that Bruce was having any trouble at all. In fact, he'd burdened Bruce with his own problem-a car that wouldn't start on occasion or made a knocking sound upon acceleration when it did. Twice Bruce had gone down to the parking lot with Eric on his breaks to investigate the trouble with the car.

"Has she woken up?"

"No." Then, "Once. About ten thirty, but just briefly. Maybe five minutes."

Eric took Teresa's wrist to check her pulse, watching the clock.

Bruce sensed that it was snowing. He felt that he could hear it falling outside or maybe he could smell it. He went to the window, drew back the curtains, and looked out.

"How's her pulse?" he asked, turning back to Eric.

"Good."

"There are these doctors. They base everything on the pulse. How to cure diseases and so on."

Eric nodded pleasantly and wrote on the clipboard that was kept in a bin bolted to the wall by the door.

"They're Chinese. That's the kind of thing my wife's into. Alternative things. I was thinking maybe I'd look into it, to see if they could help."

Eric began to change Teresa's catheter bag. Bruce turned back to the window and stared out the opening in the curtains. He'd been right. It was snowing, though spring was only a few days away. The wee hours of March 17, perhaps an hour before sunrise. Teresa's parents and brother would be arriving that afternoon-they'd planned the visit weeks before, not knowing how sick Teresa would become, how quickly.

"I mean, you never know. I figure it's worth a shot." He pushed his hands into his pockets. He was fully dressed, in jeans, shirt, boots. He'd slept that way for the past sixteen nights. He became aware once more of the purple dot on his head that Pepper had made. It felt wet, as if it would smear if he touched it. And also slightly weighted, as if he were balancing a book on his head. After Pepper had left that evening he'd gone into the bathroom and attempted, uselessly, to get a look at it in the mirror. Of course he couldn't see it. But it was there. It would stay. He felt it bore into him, a bullet from a soft gun.

He smoothed a hand over his hair and turned to Eric. "I'm not going to work anymore. I'm staying right here until all of this gets resolved. The kids are coming too." He thought about Claire and Joshua, driving to Duluth now, he hoped. He ached for them.

"So you'll need two more cots?" Eric asked.

Bruce nodded.

"I'll submit a request form before I leave." He placed the clipboard back in its bin and then removed his gloves, peeling them off from the inside out so that no part that had touched Teresa would touch him, and then walked out the door.

Bruce opened the curtains, wanting the light to wake Teresa when it came, feeling already how fierce it would be, the morning sun cutting against the new snow. He sat down in the chair beside her and opened the drawer of her nightstand and took the phone book from it. He had no idea where to begin, so he turned first to Chinese, though he knew that was ridiculous. Then he turned to Physicians and flipped through the pages, overwhelmed by the long list. He sat thinking for several moments and then paged through the list of doctors, scanning each name for anyone that sounded Asian and found a Dr. Yu. It was five o'clock in the morning, but such things didn't deter him anymore. He dialed the number. "I need a healer," he was going to say. Just like that. Maybe the Chinese doctor would know. Maybe he had a friend who would come and check Teresa's pulse. The phone rang and rang, so long that the ringing finally stopped and there was an almost-silence that contained almost-sounds-faint crackling, glimmers of voices and conversations on other lines. He put the phone down and sat gazing at Teresa, who, though silent, had opened her eyes.

He said her name, shaking her a little. She remained perfectly still.

"Wake up, baby," he said, shaking her harder. He put his hand to her face and at the very last moment she blinked. Though her eyes were open, she was neither looking at him nor not looking at him. She reminded him of one of those old-fashioned dolls with movable eyelids that close when you tilt them back and open when you put them upright. His mother had had one named Holly that he was forbidden as a child to touch without supervision, though he'd rarely cared to touch her, so deeply she'd creeped him out. He took the pillows from his cot and shoved them behind Teresa's back, propping her up, so now she was staring in the direction of her feet instead of the ceiling. Her lower jaw hung slack, leaving her mouth slightly ajar. He pushed it closed, but when he let go it fell open again.

"The kids are coming," he said. "Josh too-he was out ice fishing. And your parents and Tim, they'll be here by three."

If she would just make the smallest sound, the slightest motion, the most remote indication. Then he would be happy. All these days he'd been waiting for her to open her eyes and for her to keep them open, and yet now that she was doing that he wished she would close them. He placed his hand over her eyes, but they stayed open beneath it.

"You ready for breakfast?" He lifted the lid from the tray that Eric had brought in. A square of green Jell-O sat alone in a small bowl on a plate. He scooped some onto a spoon and held it to her mouth. "I made this for you, Ter. Open up. Honestly, it was so funny. I went for a walk and I ended up downstairs and then there was this kitchen and-"

She blinked.

"Here," he said, and pushed the spoon into her mouth. "You've got to eat. If you don't eat, how're you going to get better?" Streaks of green liquid began to ooze from her mouth, dripping down her chin, but he wouldn't look at her. He filled the spoon again and pushed another bite into her mouth, then turned to refill it again, but stopped himself and instead threw the spoon against the wall behind Teresa's head with all of his strength. It ricocheted onto the wall at their side, then clanged to the hard floor beneath the bed.

After several minutes he took the cloth they kept nearby and wetted it in the sink and returned to clean her face with it, wiping the green stains from her chin and throat. He opened the tube of lip balm that sat on the table beside her bed and applied it to her slack lips.

"What do you want?" he asked, smoothing her eyebrows with his thumbs the way she liked.

She coughed once and her eyes fluttered shut, then opened again.

"Do you want me to say it's okay if you die?" Pepper had told him this, that Teresa might need permission. That dying people will often wait until the people who love them encourage them to let go. "Because it isn't, Ter. It's not okay. You have a life to live, and we have our lives to live, and everyone needs you, so you can't just give up now. Do you hear me?"

She made no move or acknowledgment of him. He sat silently watching her until light began to filter into the room from the window, soft and pale, first purple, then blue.

He bent and took his boots off and then pulled off his jeans and unb.u.t.toned his flannel shirt and tossed them both onto his cot and crawled into the bed beside her and arranged the blankets over them. She wore only her hospital gown, and he pushed it out of the way so he could feel her skin against him.

"Let's watch the sun rise," he whispered into her ear and then closed his eyes. He stroked her arm, tracing his fingers down to her wrist until he found her pulse. It was strong, like he knew it would be. And fierce and small and fast. Like a force that could not be stopped or changed or helped or harmed. Like a woman who would live forever.

PART III.

... there is really no such thing as youth, there is only luck, and the enormity of something which can happen, whence a person, any person, is brought deeper and more profoundly into sorrow, and once they have gone there, they can't come back, they have to live in it, live in that dark, and find some glimmer in it.

-Edna O'Brien, Down by the River.

9.

EIGHT DAYS AFTER TERESA DIED, Bruce woke in a field.

He was still alive. It took him several moments to understand this, as he lay numb from the cold under the blue morning sky. The horses hovered over him, making chuffing sounds with their warm brown noses, and he listened to them without opening his eyes. For those moments he had no past, no life, no dead wife. He was no man in a no man's land, and reality was a glimmering series of pictures in a dream that went back no farther than the night before. How he'd stood on the front porch drinking the bottle of Jack Daniel's. How it had felt as the flesh of his cheek opened against the rock in the field where he fell. How Teresa was. How she had come to him. Silent, but there. Her eyes were the stars, her hair the black sky, her body the trees at the edge of the field, her arms the whiplike saplings that surrounded him.

He grabbed one of the saplings now with both hands and pulled on its wire stem with all his might, making a growling sound that spooked the horses, so they ran, stopping to watch him from a distance. He pulled so hard that he rolled over onto his belly with the effort, as if he were not pulling on the sapling, but it was pulling him. He let it go and it sprang back to its upright position, rooted in the frozen ground.

When he opened his eyes, a shard of gla.s.s seemed to cleave through his head. It was his life coming back to him. Beside him was a patch of vomit, congealed and almost frozen solid. Very slowly, he pushed himself up. When he made it to his knees he had to lean forward onto his hands and vomit again. Afterward, he sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He touched his face with his numb fingers, tracing the scab that had formed there.

At last he stood and staggered a few steps. The horses had begun to graze, but now they lifted their heads from the gra.s.s and stared at him expectantly until he called their names, and immediately they came to him and pressed their noses into his hands, as if he were holding apples.

The three of them began to walk home, following the path that the horses had made; the path Bruce had no doubt followed the night before, though he could not remember it. When the barn came into view, Lady Mae and Beau trotted ahead and stood in their stalls, waiting to be fed. He gave them oats and then went to the hens to get the eggs, but found none.

When he walked in the house he saw that Joshua had not come home the night before. All the lights that Bruce had turned on were still on, and the radio played fiddle music so loudly he thought he would have to vomit again before he reached the stereo and turned it off. Now that he was inside he realized how cold he was. He began to build a fire in the wood stove. Joshua had slept over at his new girlfriend's house, he a.s.sumed. Claire had gone back to Minneapolis the afternoon before-she had to go back to her job and, Bruce hoped, eventually school. Both she and Joshua were meant to graduate in June, Claire from college, Joshua from high school. In the course of their mother's dying, both of them had stopped attending school. Teresa had not been aware of this, and Bruce, though dimly aware, hadn't been able to muster up enough energy to be concerned. He'd needed Claire. What would he have done with her away at school? They would go back soon, he figured, and left it at that. They needed time to get over things, another reason for him to act soon on his plan to kill himself-he hadn't forgotten his plan-so they could grieve and get on with it.

The kindling began to burn and the heat of the flames felt good on his face as he stooped near the open door of the stove. The gash in his cheek began to pulse. It was two days after the day he'd hoped to be dead. Last night he'd been willing to die, but now he realized that drinking and then half freezing himself to death was not how he wanted to do it. It lacked dignity, but more, it could be misconstrued as unintentional. He would do what he intended to do and nothing less. He had the rope all ready to go, tied into its knot and coiled in the trunk in the barn where they kept the tack.

But today was not the day to die, he decided. So far, each day had been like that. It was one thing and then another. The day after the funeral, which was originally to have been his last day on earth, Joshua's truck broke down and he needed Bruce to help him fix it. There was a part they'd ordered that wouldn't come in for five days. Plus, he could not very well have hung himself while Teresa's parents and brother were still there visiting. In the days after the funeral he'd done his best to be a good host, despite the circ.u.mstances. He took them to Flame Lake to visit the Ojibwe Museum, to Blue River to eat walleye at the Hunt Club. They'd had a horrible shock when they arrived at the airport in Duluth, what with Pepper waiting to greet them instead of Bruce and the kids.

"There's still enough time to see the body," Pepper had told them when they got off the plane. They stood in a corner of the airport near a sheet of windows with the sun beating brutally through. "The body!" Teresa's mom had shrieked, then ran off not knowing where she was headed, bogged down by the huge purse she carried, and stopped eventually by a giant potted plant in her path.

Teresa's parents and her brother had not wanted to see the body, unlike Bruce and Claire and Joshua, who protested angrily when told at last by a curly-haired nurse that they would "have to say their goodbyes." They'd spent four hours in the hospital room after Teresa took her last breath, which all of them had missed. Claire and Joshua had been racing to Duluth after having spent hours trying to get Claire's car unstuck from the snow and slush that it had become mired in on the ice in the middle of Lake Nakota. When Bruce had woken up beside Teresa he had gone to get a cup of coffee. It sat now, its half-and-half forming a skin across its wretched surface, in the mug that said WYOMING! on the windowsill of the big window in the room. Four hours was an unorthodox length of time to stay with a dead body at St. Benedict's Hospital, but they had Pepper on their side, plus they had the excuse of Teresa's parents arriving soon.

They did their best to be un.o.btrusive. After those first rounds of uproarious weeping, they m.u.f.fled their cries by pressing their faces into pillows or one another or, most often, into the body of Teresa lying dead on the bed. She was still warm when Claire and Joshua arrived. They held on to her through her blankets, and then slowly the warmth receded, became only an island on her belly and then that cooled too and they touched her no longer.

When Bruce had entered the room with his coffee, he had not realized she was dead. Minutes before, he'd been in bed with her. Her eyes were open but seemed unchanged. He'd said a few words to her about the weather, which was cold but sunny, March but still winter. The same snow that had fallen when, as far as anyone knew, Teresa didn't have cancer still sat frozen into layers on the ground. He went to her then and took her hand, hot and swollen from all the needles attached to it, but then he looked at her and what he saw-the not thereness of her-made him fall hard and, without his being aware, from his feet onto his knees.

While they sat with her and waited for her parents and brother to arrive they cooperated with the nurses as best they could. Teresa had wanted to be an organ donor, but because of the cancer, her eyes were all they could use. Until they were surgically removed, they needed to be preserved, which, Pepper kindly explained, called for ice. They agreed to keep the bags of ice on Teresa's eyes forty-five minutes of each hour, and Bruce agreed to be the one to keep the time. He took his watch off and set it on the bed near her hip to remind himself of the task.

Finally, the curly-headed nurse stepped in to tell them that Teresa's parents and brother were waiting for them in the lobby and did not care to come up. After their initial resistance, Bruce and Claire and Joshua knew they had to go. Bruce and Joshua approached Teresa solemnly one by one, each of them bending to kiss her cold lips. Claire began sobbing hysterically all over again, even more loudly than she had when she'd first walked in and seen her mother dead. She pushed Bruce and Joshua violently away when they tried to comfort her, batting her arms at them. Then she quieted and told them without looking up that she wanted a few minutes alone with her mother.

Bruce stood silently with Joshua outside the closed door, and then together they walked to the end of the hallway, where there was a window from floor to ceiling. Joshua looked out over the streets of Duluth, and then beyond them, to the lake. Bruce looked at Joshua. He hadn't seen him for days. In the brief minutes of each day that he and Claire had not been consumed by what was happening with Teresa, they had been consumed by the whereabouts of Joshua. He had left messages on the answering machine, he had left notes on the kitchen table, but he had not appeared. Over his absence Bruce had raged, Claire had wept, Teresa in her delirium had cried out his name: Where is Joshua? Where is Joshua? until, in the last days, she had intermittently believed him to be right there in the room. Bruce still didn't know where Joshua had been and now he didn't care. He was only glad that Claire had brought him here. He knew that Joshua was also asking the question, Where was I? Where was I when my mother died and where, because of me, was Claire? He wanted to say to Joshua that it was okay, but something stopped him. It's okay kept forming in his mouth, then turning to mist.

"Your mother, she thought you were with her all yesterday," he said, which was fairly true-she'd hallucinated his presence the day before, as well as Claire's, and a dog they used to have named Monty. "She believed you were right there sitting in the chair."

Joshua turned his pink eyes to Bruce for a moment, then he shifted them wordlessly back out to the streets.

Bruce reached over and began to ma.s.sage Joshua's back, the way he'd done in countless attempts to ease Teresa's pain.

"Oh," Joshua said, leaning into Bruce's hands. "That feels so good."

When Bruce woke on the ninth day that Teresa no longer lived on the earth he knew that now was his chance. He could feel the quiet of the house around him; so quiet it was as if he weren't inside of his house but rather lying again in the field where he'd woken the morning before. He opened his eyes but felt unable to move, the weight of his sorrow pinning him to the bed.

"Shadow," he called in a high-pitched voice. "Kitty kitty. Kitty kitty." He heard her feet land on the floor above him, in Claire's room. After several moments she appeared in the doorway. "Come here," he implored sweetly, though she did not move from her place by the door. He lay in bed gazing at her. She had known Teresa as long as he had. She had been on the bed sometimes when they'd made love, making a s.p.a.ce for herself in the farthest corner as long as they didn't cause too much commotion.

He closed his eyes and said out loud, "I'll be dead soon." And then he wept in several short yelps and fell back to sleep.

At noon he woke with Shadow's weight on his chest.

He put his hands on her warm body and instantly she purred. Usually the weight to which he woke did not have a form. Usually it was a series of pictures too wonderful or terrible to bear. Images of Teresa either very happy or very sad, very healthy or very sick, each of them torturing him in their severity. Sometimes a question would occur to him with such ferocity that he felt his body grow unbelievably heavy, as if the weight of him in that instant would break the bed. Why had he not quit working immediately when they learned she had cancer? Why had he not spent every minute of every day and night with her from the moment he met her? And then darker questions would come, questions that were not actually questions, but bullets from a gun that implicated him in her death. The doctors believed her cancer had started in her lungs. Had it been the wood stove? Had it been the insulation he had scavenged from a job and used? It could have been anything, the doctor had told them, uncurious when they'd asked. But anything was anything-it did not exclude Bruce. It encompa.s.sed him and all the things he'd made for her and touched and delivered to her for almost twelve years.

He sat up and put his bare feet on the floor and then stood carefully, unsure of his legs, as if they'd recently been released from casts. He had a mission. Two missions. He was going to get the dogs from Kathy Tyson-she'd been taking care of them since days before Teresa died, and with the funeral and the comings and goings of so many people in their house, they had not yet picked them up-and then he was going to come home and kill himself.

He considered not going to get the dogs. It would make sense logistically, but he decided against it for two reasons. One, the dogs would be a comfort to Claire and Joshua and if he didn't go get them now, there would be the next funeral to deal with and the dogs would remain at Kathy's for at least another week. And two, he wanted to see them one last time.

First, he shaved. He had not shaved since the morning of the funeral and a s.h.a.ggy beard was starting to grow in. He felt the least he could do if he was going to kill himself was to shave. He also dressed in a good shirt-not a flannel one like he normally wore, but in the white shirt with turquoise snaps that Teresa loved. When he wore it she would croon her rendition of a cowboy song, which she had likely made up herself, probably the moment she first saw him in that shirt. He tried to recall how the song went, but for the life of him he couldn't. He would never hear it again, he realized, unless, of course, there was a heaven after all and then she would be there waiting for him and happy that he was wearing that shirt. She would be wearing her hospital gown with nothing on underneath, or perhaps she'd be wearing the blouse and skirt that Claire had picked out for her to wear in the casket, over her best underwear and bra, the outfit she'd worn also into the incinerator. Bruce allowed himself to wonder for a glimmer of a moment about the person who had loaded her into the incinerator. Whoever it was would have been the last person to lay eyes on her. But then he remembered that was not true. She had been burned in her casket, a state law, and the last person who saw her was Kurt Moyle, the owner of the funeral home, who stepped forward and reached up his hand and softly lowered the lid on her just as they sang the last line of "Amazing Grace."

Like her death, Teresa's funeral had not been the funeral Bruce had imagined seven weeks before when they had first learned of Teresa's cancer and he'd allowed the movie version of her funeral to play in his mind. Bruce didn't behave the way he'd thought he would. He didn't take anyone's hands in an attempt to either console or be consoled. He didn't say anything about how his wife was in a better place now. What he did was try his best not to look at anyone. Looking at people made the strength in his legs disappear. He held on to chairs, walls, at one point even to Teresa's coffin, to keep himself up. When he looked at her parents a phrase came instantly into his mind: stampeded by grief. Teresa and her parents, in her adult life, had not been terribly close. Still, at their daughter's funeral they howled and pawed with their hands, mussing each other's clothes. They were not howlers; never had he imagined that they would paw. Claire and Joshua were the opposite, moving from the chairs to their mother's coffin, from her coffin to the drinking fountain, from the drinking fountain to the little stand where they'd put the book where people could sign their names. They seemed to both know to keep moving in this circuit, apart from each other, but in synchronicity, swooping like owls on a night hunt, wide-eyed and silent. When they pa.s.sed Bruce their eyes lashed on to his like ropes for climbing that landed, dug in, then gripped and grew taut. He looked away from them as quickly as he could, though he was forced to appear to be looking at other people. Manners dictated that.

"I'm so sorry," they said, each of them, over and over.

"Thank you," he croaked. Those two words like the pits of plums he sucked the fruit from and then spit, sucked and then spit. He wondered if it were possible to add up all the people he'd thanked over the course of his entire life, whether that sum would be equal to the number of people he thanked on the one day that his wife's body was to be sealed in a wooden box, shoved into an incinerator, and burned, at an extremely high temperature, to ashes.