Tethered

by Amy MacKinnon

  “So you know Mr. Bartholomew?”

  “Linus lets me play here.”

  I suddenly remember the single mother who moved into one of the rentals down the street. Most nights I see the woman shuffling along the sidewalk with a child, both heading toward Tedeschi’s corner store on the next block. Sometimes I’ll catch the woman blessing herself as she passes the cemetery across the street from here, motioning her child away from the edge of the sidewalk, away from the only busy street in town. They walk in all weather, a cigarette dangling from the woman’s lips, head bent, while her little girl skips ahead. The girl doesn’t appear to know she’s dancing alongside the dead. This must be her, the daughter.

  I start to approach the child, then stop. “My name is Clara. Clara Marsh.” She raises a hand near her mouth to nibble at her cuticles. “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Trecie,” she says. With her other hand, she fingers a day lily (coquetry).

  “Trecie?”

  “Patrice, but everyone calls me Trecie.”

  A name, it’s only a name. It means nothing.

  “Does your mother know you’re here, Trecie?” I check my watch. I have only a few hours of daylight left to warm me.

  “No,” she says, her eyes meeting mine for the first time. There’s something peculiar about them. The color, so dark as if her pupils are melting, swirling, then shifting again, and the way her gaze remains steady. They seem to reach within me, prodding. “She’s probably with Victor anyway. They fight a lot.”

  “I doubt she’d be very happy if she knew you played in a funeral home.”

  Even as I say the words, I know they aren’t true. Trecie has the aura of the neglected: silently desperate, unnaturally composed. And there’s something else I recognize, though I can’t be sure what it is: the turn of her nose, the natural arch of her eyebrows, or that sense of aloneness even when in the company of others. Now it’s clear she would never cry if her mother pulled a comb through a snarl.

  I look to see if Linus’s door is still closed, if he’s meeting with a distraught family and can’t be interrupted for something as innocuous as a forgotten child. I heard voices in there earlier.

  “Are you sure Mr. Bartholomew lets you play here? Wouldn’t you rather go to the playground with the other children? It’s just down the block from Tedeschi’s.”

  She shakes her bowed head, tucking back stray bits of hair that have come loose from behind either ear. “Nobody ever yells here.” She jerks her head, suddenly beaming as she casts about the room. “I like the candles and the flowers and the chairs.” She stops, then smiles again, revealing those teeth. “I think you like it too.”

  It’s time to shoo her on, make her go home, but my beeper vibrates against my hip and my focus turns to the next tragedy. It’s the medical examiner. Instead of the cup of tea I long for, there’s a body waiting for me.

  I glance at the girl before walking down the hall to Linus’s office, wondering if it’s safe to leave a wayward child there alone, what might be missing when I return. Pressing my ear against the door, listening for voices, there’s only the scratch of writing. A brush of my knuckles against the oak panel and he calls out.

  Linus is sitting at his desk, fountain pen poised over a sheaf of papers, and for a moment his mind remains with his work. His skin is a vivid shade of black, smooth and unlined, as if his has been a life untouched by tragedy. At an age when others begin to wither and fold, everything about Linus is lush and full: his cheeks, lips, and especially his belly, always plump from Alma’s cooking. He’s saved from appearing obese by his impressive height and excellent carriage. Still, he’s a big man. His hair—gone gray now, though his mustache retains some of its color—is clipped close, his limbs are long and beginning to bend, gnarled at the fingers, and one must imagine the toes, from arthritis: osteo. I assume even in his youth his gestures were languid, intentional, backed by a remarkable physical strength. I’ve seen him lift bodies the size of tree trunks with little effort. It’s easy to stand in his shadow. When he raises his bowed head, his face softens into a smile, catching me in his circle of warmth. I take a step back.

  “You didn’t work right through lunch again, did you now? Lord, look at you, all skin and bones. Go on upstairs, Alma has some of that leftover turkey pot pie with that homemade cranberry sauce of hers.”

  “Linus, the M.E. called.”

  He drops his chin and mumbles a brief prayer before he speaks. “You call if you need me.”

  “I will,” I say, though I never do. I turn to go, but the child. “There’s a girl out in the mourning room. Trecie?”

  “Trecie?” His face twists and he appears confused.

  “Yes, about seven or eight, with long dark hair,” I say. “She said you let her play here.”

  Linus’s pen, a good one, is caught in midair and then twitches in his hand. It spasms there until he drops it and begins to massage the knotted joints of his fingers, his eyes never wavering. I wonder if he thinks I’ve lost my mind, but then he speaks. “She was paying me a visit just a little bit ago. She still here?”

  I nod. “So it’s all right, then?”

  “Oh, yes,” Linus says, his jowls lifting into a smile.

  I close Linus’s door and hear his chair creak as the latch tumbles into place. He begins to hum and then his bass drifts into song. Softly, for only his ears, but for mine, too, “Was blind, but now I see . . .”

  For all the years I’ve known Linus, there’s still much about him that confounds me. In our work, we’re privy to the underside of humanity: the bludgeoned grandfathers with generous wills; the strangled girlfriends with dead babies nestled deep within their wombs; the many shaken infants. Yet again and again he seeks the humanity in people, though again and again he must be disappointed.

  I head back to the room where Trecie is standing next to a silver candy dish brimming with peppermints in cellophane twists. I don’t expect either the candies or the dish to be there when I return.

  “You may have one,” I say. “Just one.”

  Trecie doesn’t respond, just shakes her head. She walks toward the empty room where the bodies are waked, where the old woman will soon lie. Her funeral bouquets have already been arranged, and the upholstered folding chairs line the walls, set to receive her mourners. Trecie nears the space reserved for caskets, then abruptly plops down, cross-legged, her fingers encircling her naked ankles, her tiny feet hidden inside once white sneakers with faded cartoon characters.

  “I like your hair. It looks like mine,” she says.

  My hand goes to my head, grasping the hair pulled back in its elastic. It’s a thicket of wiry brown coils, woolly, my grandmother called it, not at all something to be admired. It hangs nearly to my waist, since salons aren’t a part of my routine. I haven’t worn it loose since the day of my senior-year portrait.

  Trecie gathers her own between her hands to form a ponytail. “How do I look?”

  “Pretty.”

  She drops her hair and cups her chin in her hand as she regards me. “When you were a girl, did you wear your hair down?”

  There’s a sore just above the nape of my neck, raw and sweet, obscured by the elastic. Without intending to, my finger goes there.

  “Whenever it was long enough, I wore it up,” I say. She couldn’t know; it’s simply an innocent question. She continues to watch me, unblinking. “I have to leave now, so you should probably go.”

  She hesitates, unraveling her legs, and then lifts herself, slowly. Trecie wanders back toward the foyer, her fingers skimming the funeral bouquets along the way; the flowers wave as she retreats. Then she stops. Pointing to the room we’ve just left, Trecie says, “Where do they go when you’re done with them?”

  I must leave; I need to bring home the dead. And I don’t know how to speak to children, especially of such things. “To the cemetery, like the one across the street.”

  She nods, though she doesn’t move. “But where do they all go?” Her right h
and finds its way back to her hair and she begins to twirl a section near the crown.

  I’m mesmerized by the motion, distracted. I wonder what she means, and then I understand. True, this is a place that inspires such questions, and each time a child passes through here, inevitably he or she asks Linus or a family member. No one has ever thought to ask me. “Some people believe that after they die, they go to heaven.”

  She stops twisting her hair, her forehead wrinkled and mouth open. I’ve confused her. How to explain such a thing?

  “Like perennials.” I point to a lavender flower in one of the old woman’s arrangements. “Irises lie buried during the coldest part of the year until they blossom in May. By late spring their flowers fall away, and the leaves die in the fall. All winter they lie dormant under the ground until the next spring. Then they come back to life and bloom again.”

  Trecie tilts her head and looks at the stained-glass window casting garnet speckles across the far wall. She resumes her twisting. “Is that what will happen to all those people in the cemetery?”

  “No.” I’ve made things worse. I try to imagine a world that would appeal to a child, a beautiful lie, and try again. “Do you have a favorite place?”

  “Here.”

  “Isn’t there someplace else? Somewhere special?”

  “Victor took me to the Marshfield Fair once. I had cotton candy and got to see the whole town from the top of the Ferris wheel.”

  “Well, heaven’s like that. You go there.”

  I brace myself for more questions I can’t answer, preparing excuses and a quick exit, but she laughs, wrenching her hand free of her hair, taking several strands with it. “You’re lying!”

  I start backing out of the room, my beeper vibrating against my hip with each step. “No.”

  “Yes, you are. You die”—she smiles, snapping her fingers—“just like that.”

  I say the only words I know to say. “That’s what some people believe.”

  Trecie looks at me again, and I’m reminded of Mr. Mulrey, of being seen for the first time. “Isn’t that what you believe?”

  I feel in my pants pocket for the car keys, in my blazer for my cell phone. “You may stay here, but don’t go downstairs. That’s private. Only Mr. Bartholomew and I are allowed there. Do you understand?”

  She catches herself before a smile parts her lips, and nods instead. It occurs to me as I hurry toward the hearse that Trecie knows this already. She knows because she’s been downstairs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Death has its own aura. Whether I’m picking up a body from some downtrodden hospital morgue or a pastel hospice, its presence makes itself known before any of my five senses are alerted. If I believed in such things, I would say death tickles the sixth sense. But it’s simply instinct. Humans—all animals, really—are born to seek life and avoid death. I suppose I’m an anomaly.

  I know without checking the address the M.E. gave me; I’m drawn to the triple-decker. Sun-bleached aqua paint hanging in long strips and a limp rose of Sharon, its few remaining leaves crackling in the wind, are all that distinguish this apartment building from the others. Most everything is covered in a filmy grit. It collects in one’s ears and eyes, in one’s spit. It’s as if it rains only dust here in Brockton. The cars on blocks, the overflowing Dumpsters tucked between buildings, even the people, all appear to be some shade of gray. There are no open spaces for gardening, almost nowhere to put an Adirondack chair—almost nothing lovely to look upon if even there were, fading architecture being the exception. Though this is a city of neighborhoods—Haitians, Brazilians, Cape Verdeans, the few remaining Irish, elderly mostly, and a handful of Danes and Puerto Ricans—the young toughs and the drugs they sell make it so almost no one who lives here can afford to be neighborly. It’s said the life seeped out of them, of this city, when the shoe factories closed. All that’s left of the mills is pulverized brick and mortar, as if cremated by years of bombing raids, their remains carried off by the winds as war refugees scavenge among the rubble for meth and heroin, shaking free yet more dust.

  Through the torn screen door, I spot the patrolman shuffling about the foyer, hands dug deep into shallow pants pockets, waiting for me to arrive so he can leave. Before I reach the first step, the policeman, Ryan O’Leary, pushes open the door. I hear other voices coming from down the narrow hall, voices of authority. I look toward the street and see a Crown Vic parked across from a patrol car.

  “Vic-tor-y for the missus,” whispers Ryan, letting the screen door slam behind him.

  “Pardon?”

  “Bitch killed him.”

  “Should I leave? Is the medical examiner investigating?” I ask. I didn’t see his car.

  “Nah, M.E. left,” says Ryan. “Said it’s a heart attack, but bitch killed ’im for sure.”

  I watch Ryan twitch and jump, slide his jaw back and forth until there’s an audible pop. He arrived home last month from a yearlong National Guard rotation, eager to assimilate, the other cops eager to overlook his strain. He’d been on the department just a few years when he was called up, returning more jittery than before. He still wears a military buzz close against his scalp. His constant movement must be the reason for his wiry frame, the bulge of veins along his forearms. Though he bears the scars of childhood acne, his face is always shaved close, the scent of Polo clinging to it. Hands back in his pockets, his balance sure, he dribbles a ragged tennis ball between his feet. Ryan would do better on street patrol than on attendings. I imagine car chases and B&Es during the night are more to his liking. My eyes stray to the gun holstered at his hip. This must be torture.

  “Is it down the hall here?” I ask, feeling around my jacket pocket for a calling card to leave the family. In their grief, they may forget which funeral home they’ve chosen, or in this case, the one the M.E. chose for them. It wouldn’t be the first time. If there’s more than one person around, I’ll leave a card with the family member most composed and another on the kitchen table.

  “I been to this house a hundred times on domestics,” says Ryan, seemingly unaware of the thwack-thwack-thwack of the ball now against the house. “He used to beat the shit outta her. Hey, that’s street justice for you. Can’t say I blame her.”

  “Where’s the body?” I ask.

  Ryan catches the ball under the arch of his foot. “You got one guess.”

  I don’t mean to sigh but do. Ryan dribbles the ball between his feet and then kicks it into the street. It smacks against his patrol car before disappearing. He pulls open the screen door, holding it for me, and I walk past him toward the voices at the end of the hall. Along the way is a living room on the left, dotted with rumpled newspapers and crushed beer cans; a cramped dining room to the right that serves as a storage room for tired Christmas decorations and rabbit-eared televisions; and two bedrooms farther down on the left, both with unmade beds and clutter-strewn bureaus. I know better than to expect the body to be waiting for me in any of these rooms. Gastrointestinal distress usually precedes a heart attack.

  At the end of the hall is the kitchen and beyond that the bathroom, door slightly ajar, a varicosed foot propping it open.

  There are two plainclothes detectives, Mike Sullivan and Jorge Gonzalez, talking to a fifty-something woman in worn slippers and robe, her mutton face ringed by frayed platinum curls. She’s sitting at a Formica table, picking at a hole in her vinyl-upholstered chair, dropping yellow foam onto a pile of crumbs and dirt collecting at her feet. She appears to be crying. When she presses a crumpled paper napkin to her nose, I notice her cheeks are as dry as her hair.

  Mike Sullivan’s eyes race across her face. There’s a hardness to Mike that coarsens the softness of his Irish features. His tall frame carries only lean muscle, each fiber rigid and flexed. His hair is fixed in place and his skin is forever pale. His lips are too full for a man’s and, when he isn’t speaking, usually pressed closed. There’s a constant furrow about his brow; lines stream from the corners of his eyes as if drie
d riverbeds. Only his eyes seem bound to this world. An opaque blue, they’re always seeking the story from others, never revealing their own depths. Mike has endless questions. He’s often quizzed me about some body I’ve prepared, usually after the M.E.’s autopsy. From the tone of his voice, I expect he’ll be by the funeral home later.

  “The neighbor upstairs said she heard you and Mr. MacDonnell arguing earlier. Said she almost called us it was so bad. Did he hit you today?” Mike asks Mrs. MacDonnell.

  Her fingers leave the foam to loosen a pocket of her robe, caught beneath a thick radial of flesh, pulling free a pack of cigarettes. She fumbles with the Newports, passing a lighter to her other hand as she tugs one from the box. When she lights the cigarette, deep ravines pool around her lips. She inhales again before answering. “Yeah, he hit me.”

  “Why didn’t you call us?” asks the other detective, Jorge Gonzalez. He’s a soft touch, but then he hasn’t lived, or died, as much as Mike Sullivan.

  Mrs. MacDonnell shrugs, continues to smoke, wiping at nonexistent tears.

  I want to get on with collecting the body, but I know better than to interrupt now. Under the layers of burning tobacco and days-old trash is an even worse stench coming from the bathroom. My hope is the dead man made it to the toilet in time to evacuate his system before cardiac arrest seized him. I look again to the bathroom door, but it’s impossible to tell from the angle of the foot whether the body is sprawled on the floor or seated.

  “You said your husband had high blood pressure,” Mike says. “Was he on any medication?”

  Mrs. MacDonnell heaves herself up and shuffles over to the cabinet above the sink. She searches among the scattered bottles of cough syrup and vials, then pulls out two prescriptions. She squints at them before raising the glasses that hang from her neck onto her crooked nose. As she reads, I notice three blue smudges just above her collar. A darker, lumpy bruise, as colorful as an oil spill, seems to throb just below her right ear.