All Mortal Flesh

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “I deed to blow my dose,” Clare said.

  Margy went to a basket next to the dryer and plucked a handkerchief from the mound of clean laundry. “You’re in luck,” she said, handing it to Clare. Clare blew lustily while Margy ran one of her dishcloths under the faucet. Then she mopped Clare’s face with cold water.

  “I feel like a seven-year-old.”

  “Everybody needs a little mothering now and again.” Margy poured two mugs of coffee and sat down kitty-corner from Clare. “I suppose you’d like to know how Russell is doing.”

  Clare nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He’s taking it hard, like you’d think. Of course, in his case, he’s trying to keep it all bottled up. I wish he’d sit down and have a good cry like you just did.” She spooned sugar into her coffee. “He’s at work now. Can you believe it? He thinks finding whoever’s responsible is going to make him feel better. My poor boy.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Margy looked at her shrewdly. “I dunno. Is there?”

  Clare examined the surface of her coffee. “I mean, any way I can help you out.”

  “I guess I’ve got things well enough in hand. We can’t make any arrangements until her sister gets here—poor woman, if she didn’t take it some hard when I broke the news. She and Linda’s all that’s left of their family.”

  “Who are you going to have do the service?”

  “Well, Linda was a Catholic when she was young, but she never attended any church as long as I knew her. I figured I’d ask Dr. Tobin. He’s my pastor over to Center Street Methodist in Fort Henry. Of course”—and she suddenly sounded every one of her seventy-five years—“everything’s on hold until the medical examiner finishes up whatever he has to do. I told that to her sister, but she would fly up here. Janet’s husband’s gone to Albany to pick her up.”

  Clare smiled a little. “Sounds like you have things well in hand.” She examined the kitchen. Hand-hooked hot pads shared space with flyers exhorting citizens to STOP THE DREDGING. On the round-shouldered refrigerator, magnets held up grandchildren’s drawings and clippings about acid rain. It was nothing like her grandmother Fergusson’s kitchen in North Carolina, but it had the same feeling. Like you had rounded all the bases and come home safe.

  “I should go,” she said, making no effort to rise.

  Margy dropped her hand over Clare’s. Her knuckles were swollen. Arthritic. Clare had never noticed before. “There is something I need to talk to someone about.”

  Clare looked at her.

  “You prob’ly know Russell moved in with me about ten days ago. He seemed to be doing okay. He went to this marriage-counseling thing they were doing and came back and was on a pretty even keel.”

  Clare nodded.

  “But then Sunday, he took off. Didn’t say where he was going. Didn’t say he wa’nt spending the night here, but I didn’t see him again till Monday noontime. He was . . . it put me in mind of when he came home from Vietnam. Like his body was here, but all the rest of him was gone. And wherever he was gone to was no good place. He just went upstairs and took a nap, right in the middle of the afternoon. That’s not like him.”

  Margy pressed her lips together tightly. “The thing is, this was before we all heard about Linda. I’m . . . it seems a terrible thing to say, but I’m so worried about him. I’m worried that something might have—”

  Clare opened her mouth to cut off whatever Margy was going to say, to stop her before she said something neither of them wanted to hear, but she didn’t get the chance. The kitchen door swung in, and with a snow-shedding stomp, Russ was inside.

  Margy’s hand clutched hers. “Sweetie,” she said.

  Russ froze, the door still open, his tartan scarf half unwound from his neck.

  “Reverend Clare called on me to offer her condolences.”

  Russ’s glasses steamed opaque in the moist, warm air. He took them off and tucked them into his shirt pocket. Nothing else moved.

  Margy sighed. “Shut the door, Russell.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. His mother’s command seemed to break the spell, and he turned away from them, closing the door and shrugging out of his parka, which he hung from a hook on the back of the door.

  He tossed his scarf on top of the washing machine and bent to take off his boots. When he stood, he stared straight at Clare, and she felt his regard as an actual pain down her breastbone. With his sandy brown hair and the sun and smile lines around his eyes, he had always reminded her of summer, but his face now was winter-ravaged, his eyes revealing an inner cold so deep and absolute that he might shatter at a touch.

  Margy stood. “I need to take these clean clothes upstairs,” she said, directing her remark toward an invisible person halfway between Russ and Clare. She lifted the plastic laundry basket and whisked out of the room, abandoning both of them without a backward glance.

  Clare wanted to flee, through the door, into her car, down into town. She wanted to wrap Russ in her arms and make his naked hurt go away. The first impulse was unworthy. As for the second—she didn’t have the right or the power to ease his pain.

  Instead, she stood. Slowly. “I am sorry, more sorry than I can say, for your loss.” She bit her lower lip and thanked God she had spilled her tears with Margy instead of right now. “I know you . . . you loved her very much.”

  “I killed her.” His voice low.

  “What?” For a moment, a second only, she flashed on what his mother had been saying. It seems a terrible thing to say, but I’m so worried about him. He couldn’t have . . . he didn’t . . .

  Too late, she realized he was reading her thoughts off her face. He had always been scary-good at that. Or she had always given away too much around him.

  “Jesus, not like that.” He sounded disgusted. At himself? At her? “How could you think—”

  “No,” she started, but he cut her off.

  “I meant I killed her when I told her about us. When I couldn’t cut you out of my life and focus on my marriage. I killed her when she told me we had to separate and I didn’t fight tooth and nail to stay together. I was supposed to take care of her. I was supposed to be there for her. And I wasn’t.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.” It was an inane thing to say, and she knew it.

  He gave her a scathing glance. Their relationship—whatever it was, or had been—didn’t allow for comforting tripe.

  “All right,” she said, “tell yourself you would have been at home twenty-four hours a day. That you would have stayed by her side no matter what. That nothing bad would ever happen to her because you, Russ Van Alstyne, have the power to stop all evil things.” She ventured a half step toward him. “Does that sound like how Linda wanted to live her life? From everything you’ve ever told me about her, she was a woman who loved traveling and her business and having fun. You couldn’t have wrapped her in a cocoon even if you wanted to.”

  His face contorted. “You don’t understand. I made promises to her, and I broke them. She was angry and unhappy and confused these past eight weeks,

  and now it turns out that’s all the time she had.” His voice cracked. He turned his head away.

  She winced. This was too close to her own gnawing guilt. But this wasn’t about her. It was about him. “Do you remember what you said to me? The night you decided you were going to tell her about . . . us? You said the two of you had walked so far away from each other you couldn’t find one another with a map. And that coming clean would be a start. To walking toward each other for a change.”

  “And wasn’t that a high-minded load of crap? Yeah, yeah, I wanted to come clean. But you know who it was mostly for? Me. So I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt.” He stepped closer to her. “Sure, I wanted to patch up my marriage. But you know, underneath, there was this tiny little idea that maybe I could get permission. That she might say, ‘Okay, honey, whatever makes you happy.’ That somehow, some way, I could have both of you.”

  She bla
nched.

  “Yeah, it’s not so pretty when I put it like that, is it?” He stepped closer, crowding her against the table, looming over her in a way designed to make her feel trapped and threatened. “I wanted both of you, wanted to keep my happy wife and happy home, and I wanted you, not just meeting you for lunch at the goddamn diner, I wanted you, Clare, in my bed, underneath me. I wanted everything.” His voice fell to a hoarse whisper. “And now I have nothing.”

  The anger and grief and self-loathing rolled off him in waves. She knew he was trying to punish her, trying to make her hate him as much as he hated himself at this moment.

  “No,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “No?” he said. “No?” He smacked himself on the forehead. “Of course, everything’s changed now, hasn’t it? What was I thinking? I can have you now, right? Now there’s no inconvenient marriage in the way.” His hand closed over her wrist in a brutally tight grasp. “C’mon, the bedroom’s this way.” He yanked her arm, dragging her toward the archway. She stumbled.

  “Stop it!” she shrieked. She twisted out of his grasp. “What do you want from me?” She whacked him as hard as she could on his chest. “What do you want from me?” She hit him again, and again, until he batted her fists away and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her tight against him.

  “God damn you,” she said, and burst into tears.

  “Aw, Clare,” he said, his voice unrecognizable in her ear. “Clare, no. Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She was shaking, and he was shaking, and over her own gasps and tears she heard a terrible wrenching noise come out of Russ’s chest. His first sob was like the ricochet report of ice cracking in the spring, and then they were both crumbling, sinking to the floor, knees tangling, ribs heaving, faces wet.

  She clawed her hands free and dug them into his back, hanging on as his body spasmed with grief and his pain tore free in wracking, sloppy sobs. The sounds choking from the back of his throat were so deafening that at first she thought she imagined the ringing sound. But it went on and on, clearly audible during the lulls when he gulped air and rocked against her. She blinked away the water in her own eyes in time to see Margy Van Alstyne snatch the phone and retreat with it into the living room.

  A little while later, Margy returned. She hung up the phone and came toward them, kneeling beside her son, one arm around Clare and the other stroking the hair away from his forehead. Clare could feel him shake and relax, shake and relax, and she realized he was trying to calm himself down.

  “Sweetie,” his mother said after a minute or two, “that was Lyle MacAuley. There’s been some news.” Russ shifted away from Clare, purposefully this time, and she let him go. “Do you want to hear it, or do you need more time?” He sat back on his heels, wiping his face with one flannel-sleeved arm. He nodded to Margy.

  “Lyle said one of the boys at the high school came into the principal’s office and asked to speak to you. He claims he saw a strange car in your driveway on Sunday. Lyle wants to know if you want to go there and talk to the witness, or if he should bring the boy in for questioning.”

  “Yes,” he said. His voice was clotted. He coughed and tried again. “Yes. I’ll talk with him.”

  THIRTEEN

  Clare figured there might be places she felt more awkward. Fully robed in her vestments in the middle of a snake-handling-and-speaking-in-tongues revival, for instance. Wearing shorts and a sports bra in downtown Kandahar, maybe. But sitting in the Millers Kill High School principal’s office ranked right up there at the moment.

  After Russ’s mother had delivered the message about a possible break in Linda Van Alstyne’s murder case, Russ had staggered up from the kitchen floor like a bull suffering from one too many cuts in the ring. “I’m going,” he said.

  “Not like that, you’re not,” Margy said.

  “What?”

  “Russell Howard, you’re in no shape to be driving anywhere.”

  From the depths of the last few minutes, Clare felt a bubble of humor rise. So that was his middle name. It sounded like a 1930s movie star.

  “Mom—”

  “Listen to me, sweetie. Losing a loved one and having a baby are two times when you can’t trust your own head. I remember one time right after your father passed. I nearly plowed into a tree. I just lost track of where I was and what I was doing. Let me take you back to town.”

  “You have to be here when Debbie arrives.”

  “I’ll take him, Margy.” The offer was out of Clare’s mouth before she had a chance to think about it.

  Russ looked at her.

  “I have to head back anyway. I left my new deacon in the lurch.” She looked at Margy instead of Russ. “I’ll carry him on over to the high school, and when he’s done, I’ll drop him off at the station. I’m sure he can get a ride home with one of the officers.”

  “Okay.” Russ’s voice, tired and acquiescent, surrendering.

  “Oh.” She sounded stupid. “Really?”

  He nodded. “I guess I ought to listen to Mom.” He turned to retrieve his tartan scarf from the top of the washing machine. “I picked up too many guys who thought they were fine after drinking a few beers. Sometimes, you’re not the best judge of whether you’re good to go or not.”

  Margy unhooked his coat and handed it to him. “Will you be home in time for supper?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Margy opened her mouth; Russ seemed to realize this was an unacceptable answer. “I’ll call you if I’ll be late,” he amended.

  She nodded and contented herself with a fast, fierce hug, one for him and one for Clare. Margy didn’t say anything more, but the look she gave Clare as she followed Russ through the kitchen door didn’t need any words. Take care of my son.

  He didn’t say a thing to her during the drive down to the center of town. Which was okay by her. She didn’t know what he needed from her, and she sure as hell didn’t know what she ought to be giving him. She pulled into the buses-only zone to let him off by the door. “I’ll be waiting for you in the parking lot,” she said.

  “Would you come in with me?”

  “What?”

  “It shouldn’t take long.”

  “I don’t think that’s appropriate. I don’t have anything to do with this investigation.”

  He snorted. “Never stopped you before.”

  “Russ. Doesn’t the phrase ‘people talk’ mean anything to you? We agreed—”

  “Please.” He laid his hand over her coat sleeve. “I feel . . . I could use a little support.”

  He sounded embarrassed. He was never going to be a man who was comfortable asking for help. It wouldn’t make it any better if she told him his reaction was common in the recently bereaved. It was almost impossible, in the face of loss, not to cling to those around you. A good pastor—

  Oh, who was she kidding. She didn’t feel pastoral about any of this. She was just too stupid to say no to him.

  She opened the door and stepped out. The sky overhead was the clear winter blue that looked as if it went all the way up to the edge of space, but northward she could see a solid line of gray massing over the mountains. The next storm.

  The high school was long-and-low, an ugly, early seventies assemblage of unnaturally even bricks and orange panels. It had been built end-on against the old high school, a narrow three-story building with high windows and undoubtedly even higher heating bills.

  “That’s where the admin offices are now,” Russ said, pointing toward the old school. As they crossed the parking lot, Clare could see the two schools didn’t actually touch but were instead connected by a paved and low-walled walkway.

  “Mine was one of the last classes to graduate from the old school.” Russ opened one of the wide central doors for her, and Clare walked beneath the initials M.K.H.S. chiseled in Gothic lettering on the lintel.

  “Nice,” she said, and she could see it must have been, despite the file cabinets and spare chairs now lining the halls.
/>   “Classrooms were great,” he said. “The gym was in the basement, though. No windows, and when you went up for a dunk shot you nearly brained yourself on the ceiling. Here’s the principal’s office.”

  It wasn’t, exactly—it was the secretary’s office and waiting area, a former classroom that still had a blackboard running along one wall. Mottoes, quotes, and aphorisms had been scribbled all over it in different colored chalks. Clare wondered if the sayings were the work of students or teachers.

  Russ zeroed in on the round-cheeked woman behind the desk. “I’m—” he began, but she jumped up and said, “Russ Van Alstyne!” before he got any further. “I’m Barb Berube,” she added, bright-eyed and breathless. “Or I am now. I was Barbara McDonald back when we were in high school.”

  “Barbara—Barbie McDonald?”

  She nodded, sending kinky red curls flying everywhere.

  “I wouldn’t have recognized you. You look great.”

  “Well, I stopped ironing my hair. That helped.” The smile that started across her wide face stalled. “I am so, so sorry to hear about your wife,” she said in an entirely different tone. “If I can do anything at all, or if you need someone to talk with, please give me a call. I know what it’s like to lose a spouse.”

  Russ had stiffened as the secretary spoke; now he stood taut as a wire, his face a blend of pain and alarm. It hadn’t occurred to him, Clare saw, that his private grief was going to be the subject of public comment.

  “Are you a widow?” Clare asked, stepping into the lengthening silence.

  “No, I’m divorced,” Barb Berube said. She seemed not to have noticed Clare up to that point. “And you are . . . ?”

  Clare unzipped her parka, revealing her clerical blouse and collar. “Clare Fergusson, from St. Alban’s.”

  Barb eyed Russ once more. He was still imitating a pillar of salt. She rallied, smiled at Clare, and said, “I’ll just let the principal know you’re here, shall I?”

  As soon as she had disappeared through the door into the adjoining office, Russ rounded on Clare. “What was that?”