by Paula Guran
In the old days, she thought as she stared into the closet to pick out clothes for him to wear in the casket, he would have died at home, and his sister and I and maybe another woman would have washed the body carefully, with respect, and we would have dressed him in his finest suit, and he would have laid in the coffin in our parlor.
Except we don’t have a parlor, she thought, her lips twisting into a bit of a smile as she thought of the two-bedroom apartment. No, far from it. A chuckle threatened to escape, and she wondered why she thought it was funny. Nothing was funny now; yet everything was funny.
She found the charcoal grey suit he wore on business trips, the pale grey shirt he liked, the tie adorned with red koalas that she had given him one birthday, the black socks and shoes. Belt? Of course. What about underwear? Once more she found herself laughing aloud. She did that a lot lately. People stared at her, too. She laughed sometimes in the middle of the grocery store. Just stopped pushing the cart and stood there, veggies on one side of the aisle, pasta on the other, and laughed and laughed, like seeing a can of corn was the most amusing thing. Sometimes, the laugh started out as a chuckle; sometimes it bloomed into a full-blown guffaw, and she would find her shoulders shaking, and she’d realize she had tears in her eyes.
Carefully, she folded his clothing and placed it into the large shopping bag. Then she grabbed the handle of the bag, locked the apartment, and headed to the funeral home. She walked because it was only a few blocks away—Ben used to joke that it was certainly convenient to have a mortuary nearby!—and because it was a warm autumn day, the kind of day they both enjoyed so much, the kind of day they would have gone walking with the dog. Her hand holding the bag trembled, and then she was there and up the steps to ring the doorbell. Again, she felt that bit of warmth on her palm, and she rubbed her hand against her jeans. Oh, good, she thought, I’m getting hot flashes now.
“Come in, Mrs. Martinson,” the undertaker said as he opened the door. Joseph Whyte reached out to take her hand, and once more she felt the warmth. She looked past his shoulder because she couldn’t bear to meet his too-kind eyes and saw a number in his office just off the parlor: 57. She blinked, and the number shimmered, then disappeared gradually, leaving an after-image in her mind.
“Are you all right?” Whyte asked, then said quickly, “I’m sorry . . . of course, you’re not. Come this way.” He led her into his office, and she sat, the bag at her feet.
As he talked, he showed her catalogs, and she marveled that there was such an industry built up around death. In the end she handed over the shopping bag when he said he would see to it himself. For that, she was glad. Whyte had a cousin who worked with him, and she didn’t like the man; the first day she had gone to the funeral parlor the cousin had swept her up into a hug. She had pulled away and had seen unshed tears in his eyes, and for some reason that bothered her.
Now that she was in the office, she studied the furnishings. She didn’t see that number at all, and that worried her. She was seeing things, feeling things . . . did grief cause hallucinations? She didn’t know.
Could she have been thinking of something else and then thought she saw the number? But what? Heinz 57 ketchup? Too absurd, even for me, she told herself. She rose and thanked the man, but she did not shake his hand again.
Angela got through the funeral at the church, with its solemn music and the too-sweet scent of dead lilies, and she nodded when people she knew and didn’t know approached and told her how sorry they were. She kept her hands clasped lightly around her clutch purse, as if holding onto that would keep her anchored somehow. She found she didn’t want to touch anyone, didn’t want anyone to touch her. She’d built up this little cocoon of . . . whatever . . . around herself like an invisible force field, and she didn’t want it breached. She knew that if anyone put a hand on hers or slipped an arm around her shoulder she would break down and laugh and cry and howl until they took her away and sedated her. She couldn’t take it . . . not now, not yet.
So she nodded and nodded and nodded, and all she could think about was going home and laying down for a nap, retreating from the greyness that shrouded her.
She rode in the car behind the hearse, and she endured the rest of the ceremony beside the open grave. It started to rain, but the funeral director had anticipated the bad weather, so canopies protected her and the others seated there. Then it was over. She wanted to get home, get into bed, not think, not do anything, not—
Someone called her name, and she turned and saw it was Tommy. Without thinking, she reached out because, after all, this was Ben’s dear friend from college, and the warmth blossomed beneath her palm, and past him, on a gravestone in the next row over, she saw a black numeral: 1. She blinked—and he gave her the look, the one that always made her cry, and now she began weeping uncontrollably.
“I’ll take you home,” Tommy said, and she nodded against his shoulder.
There were more pats on her back from other friends and neighbors now as they crowded around her, tapping and touching, and she felt like the world was shrinking in on her, like she couldn’t breathe. Tommy saw the desperation in her eyes, pulled her away, and escorted her to his car.
He didn’t talk on the drive back to the apartment, nor did she. She thanked him as she got out, then he followed her inside and made coffee and sat down in the kitchen and said nothing. She changed into comfortable clothes and once more in the kitchen, she sat and sipped her coffee, and still they didn’t talk.
Tommy just gazed out the window, while she continued staring down into her coffee mug. How could her husband have died so quickly? Didn’t he know they had so many things left to do? They hadn’t finished all the trips they planned, and she hadn’t given him the present for his birthday next month, and . . . and . . . and . . .
She tried to stop thinking.
Tommy made dinner for them both that night, and she pushed the food from one side of the plate to the other. She suspected that he had talked to the other friends, and they had decided to stay with her for the next few days. Tonight would be his tour of duty, as it were. She wondered briefly who would show up tomorrow . . .
She went to bed an hour or so later, while he bunked out on the couch, and in the morning he fixed them breakfast. She nibbled on the toast, then he kissed her cheek and said he had to leave. She nodded and thanked him. She listened to him leave the apartment, and she went to the window. She saw him get into the car and pull out of the parking lot, and she watched as the dump truck barreled along the street and smacked into the convertible.
She screamed and flung herself out the door and ran down the stairs . . . but it was too late. Her husband’s best friend was dead.
Another funeral. Angela stayed in the back, spoke to no one, and left before everyone drove to the cemetery. At home, she made herself some coffee, then stood at the window while the coffee cooled.
If he hadn’t come back here . . . if he had stayed for another hour . . . if, if, if.
If.
Hours became days, and days became weeks. The grey still enveloped her, still made her numb at times. She did things out of rote. She got up, went to the store, walked the dog, made a meal now and then, watched TV without seeing it, walked the dog again, went to bed. The next day was just a repeat of the day before . . . and the day before that.
Friends dropped in, bringing casseroles that she dutifully stored in the freezer, and they told her about all the things she was missing, and she nodded.
“And isn’t it just weird?” Leslie said on the first day of winter as they sat in the kitchen. “Mr. Whyte and all.”
The greyness shifted a bit. Angela frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Her friend glanced over. “Oh, I guess you’re not keeping up with the papers.”
She shook her head. “No. I get them, then don’t read them. Maybe one of these days I will.”
“Then I guess you didn’t hear about Mr. Whyte.”
“The funeral director?”
/> “Yeah, he died. Some rare fast-growing tumor. And isn’t it just so weird . . . Ben hasn’t been gone for even two months, and then Tommy, and now this guy.”
“Yeah.” Two months . . . “He didn’t seem sick when I saw him.”
“Well, he was kind of old.”
“Not that old, I thought.”
Two months. “This was in the paper, right?” Leslie nodded. Angela went to the stack of papers and flipped through them until she found the right issue . . . and yes, there was his obituary. She checked the date of his death, and it had been almost two months since she had taken her husband’s clothes to him. Almost two months, but not quite. Just a few days under.
Fifty-seven days, to be precise.
Abruptly, she sat down.
Her friend left shortly after that, and Angela was glad. She needed to think, not talk . . .
She had shaken Mr. Whyte’s hand at the funeral home. She saw the number 57. He had died that many days later.
She had shaken Tommy’s hand at the graveside ceremony. One . . . the number she had seen on a gravestone. 1. And he had died the next day.
What the hell? What is this? And she remembered that both times she had felt a warmth on the palm of her hand. And she remembered that day when she’d sat by Ben as he lay in the hospital bed, with her hand atop his . . . and the warmth had been there, even though it wasn’t possible. His skin was already cooling off; there should have been no warmth, and yet, she knew that’s what she felt.
She put her face in her hands and closed her eyes, and told herself it couldn’t be. But it was. Wasn’t it?
Somehow this . . . thing . . . this ability had transferred from her dead husband to her. She stared at her hands. They appeared no different than before, and slowly she traced the life line across her palm and thought about all the times as a kid when friends had “read” her palm and said she would live a long life and have a loving husband and four kids or more. They had all giggled because at that point they weren’t even that interested in boys.
She felt a wet nose against her leg and glanced down to see the mutt there. He wanted his walk. She stared at him and remembered that Ben had taught the dog to shake hands. No, she thought; I won’t do it. She retrieved the leash, snapped it to his collar, and headed out to the park.
How do I prove this? she wondered. Not everyone I shake hands with will die in the next week or month or year or two. Will I meet someone and then see a number that’s so huge that it indicates years or even decades?
There was only one way to find out.
Angela saw someone at the park whom she’d seen before, and she stopped to chat, and before she walked away, she extended her hand and shook with the other woman. 14. She saw the shimmering number on the wall of the building across the street.
Now to keep track, and she wondered that she could think about this so coldly, so objectively. She rushed home and found a pocket-sized notebook and made a note of the day and the shimmering number. She knew the woman’s name, so that could be verified.
Every day for two weeks Angela chatted with the woman while their dogs sniffed each other, and when she went home that night, she thought that perhaps she had been wrong. But when she saw the headlines in the newspaper the next morning, she knew she wasn’t. Her park acquaintance had gone home the night before, drowned her little child, then killed herself.
Angela put the paper down and squeezed her eyes shut. How could this woman have done something like that? She didn’t seem like she was unraveling. Each time Angela had seen the woman in the park, she had been friendly and had talked about her daughter and the plans she had for the four-year-old in the spring. In the spring. She had been looking forward to the new year, and now she was dead.
For several days Angela didn’t budge from the apartment. She took the dog out for a quick walk twice a day, then she raced home. She didn’t want to see anyone, she didn’t want to talk to anyone. She ignored phone calls; she refused to come to the door when someone pounded there. She just called out that she was fine.
Except she wasn’t fine, and she realized she couldn’t hide any longer. What must her friends think? They were already worried, but now they left messages for her. Don’t give into the grief! they said. You have to move on! they counseled. Don’t become a hermit! Think of yourself; you’re still young! Go out and try not to think!
In the morning, when it wasn’t quite as grey as it had been, Angela showered, dressed, and left the apartment.
She greeted everyone she met warmly, and she shook hands with the shopkeepers and their customers and the delivery man and mail carrier, and after each instance, she saw a number. She had her notebook with her, so each time she jotted down the number and the occasion of the meeting. She did that all day long, walking along the streets, greeting people she knew—after all, she and Ben had lived there a long time and had come to know a lot of people, if just even by sight—and then she headed home.
She kept tabs on the obits in the newspapers, and each time someone she’d shaken hands with died, she put a little check mark by the notebook item.
There were, she thought some three months later, a lot of obits, a lot of dead people. And even the newspaper reporters had started to notice the high incidence of death in that area of the city. It was odd, these clusters of death, authorities said, because the deaths weren’t all murders or suicides. Bummer about the stats not working out, she thought, and almost laughed aloud.
She watched from her window and wondered how long the people out there had to live. What about the people in the apartment building? Wasn’t there supposed to be an association meeting that night? She imagined she would have to shake a lot of hands; it was the courteous thing to do, after all.
She laughed, this time long and hard, and the dog raised his head and whined softly.
She couldn’t stay in. She had to find out about more numbers. Wasn’t there someone who didn’t have a number?
She went back out again, and headed in a different direction. Time to skew the stats some more.
She shook hand after hand all along her walk. She was the epitome of a friendly person. She smiled. She laughed when she chatted with acquaintances. 3. 17. 41. 65. The numbers shimmered and flew by her, and once she reached out to touch the numeral, but there was nothing there, of course.
She paused when she saw a patrol car cruise by, and thought the two cops inside must be searching for something, anything!
But they won’t find anything, she told herself, because who would believe it? She paused in front of a shop window and wondered who the haggard woman staring at her was. She grimaced and realized it was her own reflection. I look like hell, she thought. I have to work on myself. I have to eat better; I have to get some sleep. I have to remember to comb my hair before leaving the apartment. But as she stared at the circles under her eyes and at the hollows in her cheeks, she wondered if it was worth it.
Should I shake my own hand? she thought, trying not to giggle. Will I see a number? Did Ben do this? How long had he had this ability? And why hadn’t he said anything to her? Did he think she wouldn’t believe him? Well, maybe she wouldn’t have. But maybe she would have. He should have warned her!
And as she stared at her gaunt face—like death warmed over, her dad always said—she wondered something else.
What if . . . she took a deep breath . . . what if she wasn’t just seeing the number of days left in someone’s life? What if this whole thing was something more, something like—No. It couldn’t be, but yet . . . What if she was the one who caused these people to die? After all, there had been a lot of deaths in the area since Ben’s death. Surely, not all those people had been about to die. What if, somehow, she helped them along? Maybe it was like a roulette wheel, and when she held someone’s hand, the spinning wheel stopped, and the little death ball jumped and bounced and the number that came up was the number of days left in that person’s life.
So, if she didn’t shake someone’s hand, she wou
ldn’t know, and they wouldn’t know, and maybe they would live forever and ever. Or at least for another decade or two.
Interesting. She chuckled, and she watched as a man walking behind her glanced over at her, then looked sharply away. Don’t like what you see, eh? Me, either.
She spun away from the shop window and thrust her hands into her pockets. What now? Home to the greyness and the dog and staring out the window, or . . . or something else.
Only one way to find out, she told herself, and she walked down the street, heading to the hospital. She had to see the doctors and nurses who had worked on her husband, who had failed to save his life. She wanted to shake their hands and tell them she knew they had done all they could. Except they hadn’t. She knew that somehow they had messed up . . . or Ben would still be alive today!
And maybe when she got to the hospital, she’d find the ambulance crew there, too . . . She’d shake their hands as well, and thank them, all the while thinking they could have worked on Ben faster, could have made better time to the hospital.
And when she was done there, perhaps she would stroll to some other wards to pay a few visits. Maybe the maternity ward. She glanced down at the lifeline on her hand . . . No loving husband and no four kids, and if I can’t have them, she thought, her dried lips quirking into a smile, maybe others shouldn’t, either.
She started whistling as she walked into the greyness.
Kathryn Ptacek’s novels (in various genres) are being re issued as ebooks from Crossroad Press and Necon Ebooks. Check out her Facebook page for updates. She lives in the beautiful northwest corner of New Jersey where she keeps a lively garden. She collects teapots and beads.
“Thing about music is in the end, all we can do is face our own. I hope yours has some bop to it.”