Sudden Death (excerpt)
Melanie taped up the last of the boxes and made a quick call on her cell phone. “Bring the truck around back,” she said. “And hurry the fuck up. We’ll load from the cellar.”
She checked her watch. An hour to go until the funeral. She pocketed the phone, deciding to heave it in the river once they unloaded in Bangor.
***
The church had reached capacity. Caroline was sandwiched between James’ ex, Linda, and an older man whom she recognized but couldn’t place. “Whole town’s here,” the man said, giving Caroline’s hand a light squeeze. “We lost a true hero.”
To her left, Linda alternated sniffling with an occasional dab at a tear. A packet of Kleenex rested precariously on her knees. Caroline brushed away a wayward strand of hair, annoyed. Her brother had been captain of the Academy’s hockey team, student body president, but a hero? He’d given up a scholarship to MIT to get married, to stay in this shithole fishing village and become a drunk. Hero was not how she’d describe James.
The music stopped abruptly as Reverend Desjardins plodded down the aisle. He had officiated at her mother’s funeral twenty years ago, the last time Caroline had been home. She had made it back in time to visit her mother at the tiny hospital the day before cancer stole her mother’s last breath. The hospital had shut down five years ago. Sunrise, aptly known as the town where the sun first rose in the U.S., now lay on the brink of being sundowned.
As the reverend droned on in his New Brunswick monotone, Caroline surveyed the crowd. She was overdressed, her heels and makeup as out of place as she felt just being back in town. James’ first girlfriend, Betsy, stood against the back wall in black jeans and turtleneck, long black hair shrouding her like a veil. Mike Halloran, who owned the only remaining grocery store in town, had his arm around her. The room was filled with the staccato of sobbing. And still, Caroline could not cry.
***
Betsy’s brother, Sam, was my best friend. We’d all grown up together, went to Miss Cloutier’s preschool, attended the same Sunday school classes at the All Saints By the Sea every week. We all played hockey, too, but in Betsy’s case it was field hockey at the Academy. Sam and I played for the Academy, and later, for fun after school, usually against some of the scrappier townie dropouts who’d realized lobstering was a more lucrative career path than a diploma.
Sam and Betsy were twins, Sam and I were buddies, and inevitably, I fell in love with Betsy. But at fifteen, do you really know what love is? All I know is this: I never felt that intensity again. Not even when I was married to Linda.
Betsy and I started dating our junior year. She wore my ring around her neck; it was way too big for her birdlike fingers. I was head over heels for her. But love is fleeting, at least for Betsy, anyway. After a few months, she dumped me for Mike Halloran, Mr. Hockey himself, All Star Goalie award winner twice in a row. Mike had money. Mike had a new truck. And Mike had my girl.
***
Betsy met Caroline at camp, the funeral and reception long over. Fog hovered above the Cove, gloomy and gray. Camp. It had been in the family for generations, the cottage where James and she spent every childhood and teenage summer. James had moved in with Linda shortly after their wedding and installed a woodstove and storm windows to survive the brutal Downeast winters. And he’d never left.
Caroline stepped over the mound of trash bags lining the deck. Seagulls had scavenged through most of the garbage, whiskey bottles and macaroni boxes strewn everywhere. The screen door hung precariously on one hinge.
“Guess Jimmy lost interest in dump runs,” Betsy said. “Along with everything else.”
Caroline walked inside. “What happened to the couch?” She went into the kitchen. The sink overflowed with dirty dishes and mugs. “And the refrigerator? And Grampa’s dining room set?”
Betsy headed upstairs. “There’s nothing up here at all,” she hollered. “No beds, no lamps, no bureaus. What’d he and Melanie do, sell them for drugs?”
Caroline stumbled halfway up the stairs. She’d forgotten how steep they were. “What the hell are you talking about? Melanie? Drugs?”
Betsy pointed to the empty syringes and burnt foil scraps on the floor. “Well, Caroline, if you’d ever bothered to get your stupid head out of your ‘life coaching’ ass and actually listened to your brother, I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you?”
***
She sat in the passenger’s side of the U-Haul, leaving the driving to Alvin. “Can this thing go any faster? We gotta get this load to Bangor before Jack leaves.”
“Christ, Mel, I got it floored,” Alvin said. “Truck’s a piece of shit.”
A logging truck passed them. Chunks of bark and splinters ricocheted off the windshield.
“Fucking Airline.” Melanie lit a Kool. “If it’s not loggers, it’s the fog that gets you.”
In the end, it was neither.
***
I left the hiding place by the All Saints right after my funeral service began. The morning was now filled with an abrupt silence after everyone had shuffled into church and the doors slowly closed. When we were kids, Sam and I had found this spot behind the rhododendron hedges where we’d sometimes hide out, swapping baseball cards instead of going to Sunday school.
I drove back to camp. It felt weird here, too, like the part of the buzz when you’re painfully aware of everything. The smell of the mud flats. The fog soaking into your skin. The sound of silence, which is never really silent at all. I walked inside.
The place had been completely cleaned out, I mean, literally everything but the kitchen sink was gone. This had Melanie all over it. Her final score. No doubt in my mind.
Appliances and TVs can be replaced. But the portraits on the wall? Family photo albums and mom’s pottery? Even our Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews, for fuck’s sake, and my entire baseball card collection. That bitch didn’t just steal memories. She stole pieces of my life.
I shook out a handful of oxys from the bottle in my sweatshirt, figured what the hell. I had nothing left to lose. My soul was dead long before the funeral.
Ebb Tide
Serene surveyed the bookstore, spotting Harry as he slowly waddled toward the front row. Perfect. The rusty chairs spanning the room were largely empty; turnout was even sparser than the reading she’d held at the tiny library on the island last week. That was okay. What mattered most was that Harry was there.
A few more stragglers sat down. She smiled at Harry and opened the hardback book. “’I was thirty years old and I thought my life was over,’” she began. “’The withdrawals were so horrendous, all I wanted was to die.’” A pause, followed by a tight smile. “’But it was then I realized my life was just beginning.’”
She paused again. Harry, gazing at her in fervent reverence, began to clap. A few others applauded uncertainly. “And tonight, as I stand in front of you, my story is one of success.” She snapped the book shut. “Sure, I’ve had some setbacks. But if you’d told me five years ago that I’d be the author of a successful memoir, and, on a book tour, I’d have plunged the syringe in a vein, laid back and laughed.”
She strolled away from the podium, limbs too long for her spindly body.
“Wait, that’s it?” A woman from the audience jumped up from her chair. “That’s all you’re gonna read? Can I at least get an autograph?” She pounded her book accusatorily.
Harry gripped her arm with a gnarled hand and looked up at her. He seemed diminished, somehow, since she’d seen him yesterday. “Let’s go, Serene. I know how hard this is for you.”
They walked to the motel together in the glittering silence of a mid-January evening. Harry checked them in with his credit card and the clerk handed them each a key. Thank you, Jesus, Serene thought. Separate rooms.
***
It was kind of sweet, Serene thought, as she cleaned her apartment, how Harry followed her around like a puppy dog. A shrunken, wrinkled, half-deaf puppy dog. A recent widower, he lived alone now on the island. Serene passed his tiny cottage on her way to the ferry each day, noting the overgrown bushes, the sagging front steps, the paint peeling from the clapboards in sheets. Her kids called him “old man Carson,” but even so, he got around pretty well, slowly shuffling down to the café for his morning cup of tea.
She kicked a pile of Legos under the bed. Pop Tart wrappers littered the floor. In the living room, the kids yelled over the blare of the television. She stomped her foot loudly. Kids were the last thing she needed right now. “For chrissake, shut the hell up! Both of you!”
She checked her watch, a gift from Harry. Last week, when they had combed through his late wife’s treasured jewelry and antiques, he’d plucked out an exquisite diamond-studded Cartier watch. “You’ll never be late again,” he told her, and slid it on her wrist.
She had less than a half hour before Harry arrived for their dinner date. Ample time to tidy the apartment and warm up the frozen lasagna she’d bought earlier that day. She’d left her hair unbraided for the occasion, glossy red locks cascading down her back. Her tank top showed just the right amount of cleavage. And she’d skipped makeup entirely. Harry loved her freckles.
She’d become adept at reinvention, her skills as a chameleon learned during boarding school. Last night, she’d been Serene Steele, the former addict-turned-writer, published writer, to be exact. Tonight, she’d be the caring neighbor, with just a touch of adoration thrown in. Men. Such one-dimensional creatures. So clueless.
Humming softly, she gathered the stack of unopened mail from its precarious spot on the edge of the coffee table. A pink envelope addressed to Diane Steele fell to the floor. She lit a vanilla spice candle and ripped the envelope into tiny pieces, its PAST DUE stamp and addressee a distant memory.
***
The following morning, Serene had the apartment and kids packed up in a record two hours. As she prepared to leave, she pulled a manuscript from the custom leather briefcase Harry presented to her last night at dinner. “For your writing career,” he’d said. “This way you’ll always remember me.”
Remembering Harry wasn’t going to be a problem. He’d been an easy mark, what her father would have called a “rollover.” She opened the envelope paper-clipped to the manuscript. Twenty-five large. And in a cashier’s check, no less. He had included a note, written in the spiky penmanship of an octogenarian: “Dearest Serene: My deepest thanks for agreeing to edit my memoir. I am deeply honored by your belief in me. Much love and appreciation, H. C.”
She dumped the manuscript – a whopping thousand pages – in the bulging garbage bag and locked the door behind her. Finally, a way off this Godforsaken rock.
****
Harry cradled his tea mug, staring out the café window as the ferry passengers walked down the hill to the island pier. “Any word from Serene?” he asked the woman behind the counter.
She walked over to Harry and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s been almost three weeks, Harry. Three weeks. She’s not coming back.”
With shaking hands, he pulled a small velvet box from his backpack and carefully positioned it on the table. “But I bought -- I thought…” He slumped in the chair; it swallowed his withered frame. Serene had been overjoyed when he’d asked her to marry him, her striking green eyes as radiant as the candles that accompanied the romantic lasagna dinner she’d made especially for him.
Harry collected his backpack and trudged outside toward the pier. The snowbanks were melting now, sidewalks still a dirty mix of snow and ice. “Harry!” the café woman yelled, clutching the jewelry box high in her hand, like Lady Liberty’s torch. “You forgot your ring!”
The sea had begun to sink below the pier. The tide was going out. And Harry kept walking.