But here was the thing: sometime in the ten months since she’d started working for CTSO, another link had been added to the chain. Her work was still about Caleb—it would be, always—but it was about something else now, too. It had to do with respect. It had to do with understanding that here a heart had beat and then not, here a breath had been exhaled and never repeated.
Nikki had been raised Catholic, and she remembered that once during communion, one of the hosts had fallen during the transfer from the priest’s fingers to a parishioner’s mouth. Though Nikki had already made her first communion, she wouldn’t have understood the significance of the moment if it hadn’t been for the adults around her. Her mother, standing behind her in line, drew a sharp breath and squeezed her hands tight on Nikki’s shoulders. The woman at the front of the line, the intended recipient, cried out softly. And as the priest knelt down to retrieve the wafer, Nikki could see the distress in his tilted face.
The priest picked up the host and put it into his own mouth, then brushed the floor with his hand, perhaps looking for fragments that might have broken off. Then, in an event that seemed to Nikki much more shocking than the actual dropping of the bread, he bent forward and licked the marble where the host had lain.
Nikki looked around her, but no one else seemed as surprised as she was. The priest took a small white cloth from the altar and dropped it on the spot where the wafer had fallen. Then he took a breath and continued with the service, moving on to the next host, the next waiting tongue.
Later Nikki had asked her mother about what had happened, and her mother had told her that when the consecrated host, the body of Christ, falls onto a profane surface, the priest must himself eat any pieces of it he can find. Later, after mass, he must wash the area with water three times, being careful that no crumbs are left behind. And afterward, her mother said, the water used to cleanse the spot cannot be poured into a regular sink but must be emptied into the soil or into a special drain that will return it directly to the earth. If wine were to spill from the chalice, she added, then the linen cloths used to wipe up the liquid—and even any item of clothing that had been splashed or stained—would have to be burned. Nikki had been impressed by the ritual of it, the solemnity accorded to a task that to her seemed like nothing more than a minor chore.
Now, with her strong stomach and her hazmat suit, Nikki had taken on a job that was not so different. She went into rooms where bodies had broken apart, spaces made foul by spilled blood and all the liquids a living body carries. She cleaned and she purified, and in her careful and methodical work, she honored the dead by recognizing their humanity. And she smoothed the path for those, like herself, who had been left behind among the living.
Nikki called Jeremy’s voice mail and told him to expect her in the morning.
• • •
Three days later, on Saturday morning, Nikki drove to Scott’s house. Daisy opened the door before Nikki had a chance to knock.
“I saw you,” Daisy said, hugging Nikki’s thighs. “I saw your car.”
“You did?” Nikki asked, bending to pick the girl up. This feeling of holding a small body, arms folding around her neck, feet knocking into her legs … there was nothing else like it. “Well, now I see you, too.”
Scott came into the room and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “How are you?” he asked in a tone that suggested he wanted a real answer.
“Not bad,” she said. She thought for a minute, and then said it again. “Really, I’m not bad.”
Scott nodded. “Glad to hear it,” he said.
The living room was filled with boxes stacked neatly against the walls. There wouldn’t be much to do beyond carrying them out to the U-Haul and unloading them across town. The house seemed smaller, in that way that houses do when their contents have been packed away.
Nikki looked at the fresh paint, the new carpeting that she herself had installed, and thought about the room as it had looked the first time she saw it: the dark stain just a few feet in from the door, the veil of red dots on the wall. The house hadn’t sold yet, and might not for a while; Scott probably wouldn’t get the price he wanted for it. It was always difficult to sell a house where a murder had occurred, and the specifics of this case—the fact that Ty had walked into the house to find a man with a gun on his way out with a laptop and Scott’s mother’s jewelry—called the safety of the neighborhood into question. But no one could look at this room and say that it looked like a crime had been committed there. She had done good work.
Nikki knew that Gordie’s house had been sold some time ago to help cover his legal fees, but she still didn’t know if it was CTSO that had done the cleanup work, or another company, or even Gordie’s mother, on her hands and knees with latex gloves and a bottle of Clorox. She’d never asked Jeremy, and she probably wouldn’t.
She had thought sometimes that maybe she should move, find a new place, like Scott and Daisy were doing. But it wasn’t the same; her house had not been the scene of Caleb’s murder. She could picture Caleb playing with his Matchbox cars on the kitchen floor without picturing his blood spread in a jagged stain beneath him. The place where he died was not the place where he lived, she thought. For a moment it seemed more profound than it really was.
Two more of Scott’s friends had arrived to help. They all worked together, carrying boxes out to the truck, finding small items here and there that Daisy could handle. When the truck was full, Scott locked the back and got ready to make the first trip over to the new house.
“Are we taking Papa with us?” Daisy asked suddenly. Everyone froze.
“It’s okay,” Scott said in a low voice meant for the other adults. “They don’t really get it at this age. It’s too abstract.”
He picked up Daisy and kissed the top of her head. “We’re taking our thoughts and our memories and our pictures of Papa,” he said. “Now, what do you think? Do you want to ride in the big truck?”
“Yeah!” Daisy said, bouncing up and down in Scott’s arms.
Scott tossed his house keys to Nikki. “Would you lock up?” he asked. She nodded but didn’t speak; inexplicably, she felt close to tears. She thought of Caleb, his chipmunk cheeks, the blue of his eyes. Her boy.
All children are lost, eventually. Nikki remembered Caleb on his fourth birthday, crying because he’d never be three again, and three was the only thing he could ever remember being. If he’d lived another ten years, or seventy, that little boy would be just as gone as he was now. It was like a logic problem: given the same eventual outcome, why was it that one ending was so much worse than another?
Scott lifted Daisy and buckled her into the truck. “You want to ride with us or follow us?” he asked Nikki.
“I’ll meet you there,” she said. She watched Scott and his friends get into their vehicles, start up the engines, and pull away.
When they were gone, she sat down on the grass. As long as she lived—and it might be a very long time—the central fact of her life would be that her little boy had suffered alone, that he had called out for her and she didn’t come. And as long as that continued to be true, she would pay her penance. She would stay behind after others had gone on their way. She would lock doors and clean up. She would spend her days alone, apart, ringing the doorbells of the bereaved and crossing the thresholds of houses where something terrible had happened.
Excerpt from
THE RULE OF THE CHALICE
By Octavia Frost
REVISED ENDING
Scott tossed his house keys to Nikki. “Would you lock up?” he asked. She nodded but didn’t speak; inexplicably, she felt close to tears. She thought of Caleb, his chipmunk cheeks, the blue of his eyes. Her boy. She covered her eyes, let it wash over her for a minute, and then put it aside, back in the compartment it had come from.
She locked the door and walked down the porch steps. Daisy was walking in circles on the grass, singing a quiet song, just for herself. She was here; that was something. This child was here.
Scott lifted Daisy and buckled her into the truck. “You want to ride with us or follow us?” he asked Nikki.
“I’ll come with you,” she said, surprising herself. She went around to the passenger side and got in. Daisy sat in the middle, between the two of them.
“Look how high we are,” she said. Her face was as bright as the day.
Nikki opened her window. The three of them rode along, washed in breeze. Scott turned on the radio and twisted the knob until he found a station. There was an old song playing, something that her own mother might have listened to as a kid. She and Scott both knew the words.
Daisy leaned her head on Nikki’s arm. Nikki felt the weight of the child’s body, smelled baby shampoo from her hair. There was music and sunlight, wind and the bumpy movement of the truck. They came to a corner and turned, sliding into each other as they went.
Chapter Twelve
One day a couple of years ago, I parked my car on a narrow street in the middle of Boston. As I beeped the lock and began to walk away, something unusual happened. Ducklings began to fall from the sky.
I saw first one, then another plummet through the air, to land with a muted thud on the sidewalk. They weren’t dead, these two, but they were clearly hurt. They had fallen awkwardly, and were struggling to get to their feet. As I knelt to help one of them right himself, a third duckling landed a little way away, and finally I looked up.
I was standing next to a hotel, and up at the level of the first floor there was a slim ledge that ran the length of the building. A full-grown duck stood up there, looking down at her fallen babies. She let out a husky squawk and paced a few steps from right to left, and as she did, another duckling came to the edge and propelled himself over.
A small group had gathered by this point, five or six of us who had thought we were on our way someplace important until the sky started raining birds like a biblical plague. As this fourth baby fell, we each stretched a hand forward to try to catch it. None of us succeeded, but the toppling yellow body bumped against someone’s arm, which was enough to deflect him from hitting the sidewalk with full force. This one stood up immediately, apparently unhurt, and fluffed his feathers while he waited for the rest.
What were they doing up there? I don’t know. We were nowhere near the water, and as far as I could see there was no nest. But if she didn’t lay the eggs up on that concrete shelf and warm them in that space barely as wide as her own body, then I don’t know how they got there, since clearly the babies were too young to know how to fly.
Three more times ducklings came over the edge, and three more times we broke their fall—perhaps not quite saving their lives, but at least minimizing their harm. And then the mother flew down—someone was already on the phone to whomever you call in a situation like this—and she rounded up her babies and led them away toward dangers unknown. And the five or six of us who had taken part in this unnerving incident went our separate ways, having shared something that felt as if it must hold some significance, though its exact meaning remained elusive.
This is troubling me now, as I wheel my suitcase out of the hotel and ask the doorman to find me a cab, because I sense that there’s some link between my current situation and the scene I witnessed that day, but I can’t quite connect the dots. Something about motherhood and danger, protection and risk. Or trusting fate. Or letting go.
It’s the kind of image I might try to put in a book but ultimately abandon. It’s too capacious; there are too many possible meanings, and it’s not sturdy enough to do all that work at once. Perhaps one day I’ll find a place to use it without ascribing it any symbolic significance. Let it stand as a picture, a visual non sequitur. Describe it simply, like a haiku: Pacing mother duck / Babies dropping from the ledge / Bumping outstretched hands.
Or maybe I’ll never use it, and the entire thing exists only in the minds of those who were there that day, to be wiped from the slate of human experience the moment the last of us dies. What would it matter? Why should that feel like such a loss?
• • •
When the taxi drops me at Roland’s house, I say good morning to the photographers and ignore their shouted questions as I pull my suitcase over to the security keypad and punch in the code Milo gave me over the phone. Through the gate, up the stairs, ring the bell. Roland himself answers the door.
“Good morning,” he says brightly. He’s dressed in shorts and a T-shirt; his feet are bare, which makes me feel oddly embarrassed, like I’m intruding on something intimate. “So glad you decided to take me up on my offer.”
“Thank you again, so much,” I say, stepping inside.
“Not at all,” he says. “Come with me, I’ll show you your room.”
He takes my suitcase from me, and I make a feeble show of protesting. He leads me across the chessboard floor to the staircase, and I follow him up, feeling exquisitely awkward. It’s hard to make small talk with a man whose Wikipedia entry you read twelve hours earlier.
“Where’s Milo?” I ask as we climb.
“Went back to sleep. He got up just long enough to tell me you were coming, then crawled back to bed.” He turns to smile at me. “I miss that, you know? Sleeping till all hours. Territory of the young.”
“Hmm,” I say. “I suppose clinical depression is always an option.” I was going for witty, but I’m afraid I ended up with merely odd. Well, I never said I was good with words. Not ones spoken out loud, anyway.
But Roland laughs, and the look he gives me is genuinely amused. “Or opium. Doesn’t sound like that Kublai Khan bloke had a problem with early waking.”
“Literary references,” I say wryly. “Nicely done.”
“Comes standard with the room.”
At the top of the stairs he turns to the left, the same direction as the library where I sat with Milo two days ago, and starts down the hall, pulling my suitcase along so that it follows him like a pet. He stops at the doorway of the first room on the right.
“There you are, then. I’ll let you get settled—make yourself at home. Just so you know the lay of the land, Milo’s staying across the hall, next to the library, and I’m down at the other end. My housekeeper’s downstairs. Her name’s Danielle, and she’ll be happy to get you something to eat if you’re hungry.”
“Thanks,” I say. “This is all great material if I ever decide to write a novel about a rock star. ‘Seems to know a lot about opium … hasn’t done dishes since 1974 …’”
“I’d better be careful what I say to you,” he says. He pauses and looks at me steadily, his face serious. “Listen, whatever you do, you must never open the locked door at the bottom of the basement stairs.”
I stare at him, my eyes a little too wide, and he laughs. “Kidding,” he says. “See you later. Shout if you need anything.” He turns and walks briskly down the hall.
I pull my suitcase inside the bedroom and close the door. It’s a lovely room, big and airy, decorated in blues and whites, though like the kitchen, it’s a bit anonymous. The room faces the back of the house, and looking out the window, I see a terrace below, with a pool and some deck chairs. I wish for a moment that I had a bathing suit with me—that vague, involuntary response to the mere existence of a pool—and then I realize that there’s no way I’d go walking around Roland Nysmith’s house in a bathing suit.
I sit down on the bed and allow myself a moment of panic at the reality of being here in this near-stranger’s home, without any idea of what I’m supposed to do next. I hadn’t counted on Milo being asleep, though I’m certainly not going to wake him.
I take a look around the room—open the drawers, peek into the closets—and find nothing interesting or unusual. For lack of anything better to do, I open my suitcase and start to unpack. There hasn’t been any talk about how long I’m staying. I have a ticket back to Boston on Monday, two days from now, but I don’t know if I’ll be using it.
As I’m lining up bottles of makeup and perfume against the mirror in the bathroom, I hear my phon
e buzz from my purse. I take it out and look at it. It’s Lisette.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hi, Octavia,” she says. “It’s Lisette. How are you?”
“Good,” I say. “Actually, kind of weird. I’m sitting in a guest room at Roland Nysmith’s house.” I think that if anyone will understand the surreal tint my day has taken, it’s Lisette. She used to have a true reverence for celebrity, and I don’t imagine that goes away, no matter how many rock stars you meet.
“Aaaaah!” she says, in a mock scream I find surprisingly gratifying. “Oh, how funny. Were you a total Misters girl?”
“No, not especially. But, you know … I liked them well enough, and I’ve been hearing their music for thirty years. I never thought I’d have Roland Nysmith carrying my suitcase for me.”
I laugh at the way I sound, and she joins in. I’ve always been wary of school reunions, because of their transformative magic, the way they turn you back into the person you used to be. But there’s something reassuring about talking to someone who shared your adolescence.
“So we didn’t really get a chance to talk yesterday,” I say. “How are you? What are you doing these days?”
We spend a few minutes catching up. She likes working in real estate; she’s dating a man who used to play for the 49ers. She has an idea for a book that she’d love to discuss with me sometime. We talk about who we’re still in touch with from high school. Her list is long, mine practically nonexistent.
“How was the rest of the service?” I ask.
“Oh, it was nice. Sad, but nice. A lot of people had stories to share about Bettina. Kathy’s a wreck, of course. But she’s glad to have a project to keep her busy.”
“A project?”
“Oh, you know. The domestic violence thing. And, of course, seeing your son convicted.” She laughs, which I hope is a response to nervousness.
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