by Will Boast
Coming off the plane, I felt purposeful, unfettered, the taste in my mouth cool and clean as peppermint. Only on the train did I think to turn on my phone. I expected my mom to have already left a text or two. But there was only a voicemail, from a number that didn’t come up with an ID. I played it. “Daphne”—an unfamiliar voice—“sorry to disturb you. This is Carianne, Bill’s wife. Bill, from your group . . .”
I should’ve waited till I got home. Instead, foolishly, I did as she asked and called her right back. She picked up, asked if I was sitting down.
“Sort of,” I said. “I’m on the train.”
She was saying something about Miranda. Miranda had gone by Sherman’s to drop off a fruitcake, like she did every holiday season. Sherman had missed the last meeting. That close to Christmas, the few of them that showed up figured it’d slipped his mind to cancel. They’d called, and he said, yeah, he’d forgotten, sorry. Sorry, everyone. Two days later Miranda, fruitcake in hand, knocked for a while, thinking maybe, of all things, he’d gone out. Then she got a strange feeling, went downstairs and knocked on the neighbor’s door. The guy turned out to be the landlord, and . . .
“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “I’m not ready for this.”
When the landlord let them into the apartment, Sherman was on the couch, head lolled back. His skin was ashen, and when they touched him, cool and dry, papery almost. He’d taken a handful of the pills and tried to wash it down with a fifth of Gordon’s gin.
“Bill thinks Sherman must’ve switched off before he even got past the neck of the bottle,” Carianne said. “That he must have dropped the gin but got down enough pills.”
“Ah, fuck, I . . .”
“Bill says the percentage of people who do it around Christmas is—”
“Have we called his family? Do they know?”
“His sister was listed for emergencies. She’s flying in tomorrow. He also listed you, Daphne.”
“He did?”
“We thought we’d try the sister first.”
“Right.”
The news delivered, Bill’s wife got off the phone. She said he needed to call everyone else in the group, even those who hadn’t attended in months or years. She said Bill wished he could do it himself. But he was just so upset.
My fingers could barely end the call. I sank back into the seat, head against the scratched Plexiglas window, went right past 16th Street and several stops across the bay before I had it in me to get off and change to a train back into the city.
I feared the moment when I opened the door to my apartment and felt again how empty it was. But when I got home, I just stood on the threshold, staring at all of the beautiful, anonymous furniture, the national parks prints that had nothing to do with me, the group of hand mirrors that reflected back eight different Daphnes, none of them complete. My “Cozy Roost.” Why had I ever cared so much about this finely wrought cage? I wandered the apartment, picking things up, putting them down. All I could smell was my old childhood room still clinging to my skin.
I WENT TO WORK. I was supposed to have the week off, but what else was I going to do? Anyway, the lab was quiet. I’d decided to go to HR on Friday and give my notice. I’d tell them I didn’t want to run hardware. It was further from the reality of what MedEval did, but it wasn’t far enough. I’d tell HR that, with thirteen years’ experience, Byron was the only reasonable choice to take over the lab. If they thought I’d kept the budget tight . . . But there was a little flu outbreak among the dogs, and the night-shift techs and I had to quarantine and treat the sick ones, make sure it didn’t spread to them all.
Pin came in and spent an afternoon helping us. She and I took a break, went over to the café. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I was quitting. But I also couldn’t resist a confession. I told her all about the condition, gave her the well-rehearsed speech. What did it matter? I wouldn’t have to deal with the aftermath. Pin nodded slowly as I spoke, as if none of this were a surprise.
“Oh, Christ, Byron told you. That prick.”
“No, he has never said anything. It is just that we notice your . . . We call them your ‘Wednesday faces.’ You get them more in the middle of the week.”
“You all probably think I’m a real dragon.”
She was weighing her answer carefully.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I can take it.”
“We give you the doubt benefit. Always doubt benefit. Not easy to be the boss.”
It took a moment to untangle the idiom, and then I liked it too much to correct her.
I SPENT THE REST OF THE WEEK with the dogs. By the time Saturday came around, I just had time to take a car to the mall, buy a black dress, and make it to the funeral. The parlor was on Geary, not far from Sherman’s apartment, the exterior an anachronistic seafoam green. Inside, however, it was all dark wood and organ music playing quietly from hidden speakers. I looked for everyone from group. They were, prudently, sitting in the back, the small clutch of them together, some already with heads bowed. We headbobbers were naturals at funerals.
The viewing line curled all the way around the room. How had a guy who’d barely left the house known so many people? Maybe these were all family or internet friends. I thought about going straight to join the group but got in line instead. Finally, I came to the casket. The top half was open, and there lay Sherman. Or some waxen replica of him in a nondescript suit, without one of his loud, sharply pressed shirts. I reached out to him, then stopped short and gripped the edge of the casket. Turning away, I made an effort to shore up my knees. But there was no need. Grief was too bewildering, too tangled. It pulled you in every direction at once.
A Universalist priest led the service and said comforting, only vaguely religious things. I sat next to Miranda, who halfway through let her head droop on my shoulder. The priest invited anyone who so wished to say a few words in remembrance of Sherman Allen Steward. His sister, a petite woman with a stylish, chopped hairstyle, spoke first. Next came two childhood friends. Then Teshawn was at the podium, talking about everything Sherman did for the group and for the online community, how much of a difference he’d made. Everyone else must have heard him speaking with the barest inflection, like he was reciting a script. But I could hear him struggling, pushing every word past the thick murk of the pills. “The people who remember you,” he said, “are the people you looked after.” Miranda’s head on my shoulder grew heavier. Then the organ music came back up. The coffin lowered into the floor.
People started to leave. The group stayed put, heads lolling forward or back, arms hanging at their sides, jaws drooping, eyelids going up and down like window shades. I was the only one fully upright. Consciously or not, we’d pushed our chairs out into a loose circle.
“Well, that’s the end of us,” Miranda said.
“Someone can take it over,” I said. “Maybe share the administrative stuff.”
“And who would that be?”
“I don’t know, Bill? He’s organized. Or his wife is.”
“Bill didn’t even make it today. He had ‘child care conflicts.’ And, Jesus, letting Carianne make all those phone calls . . .”
“We could just migrate over to the web forum,” I said. “That’s easier all around anyway. And I’m sure someone on there would take over the hosting.”
“Group’s the only thing getting some of these people through the week. It disappears, they’re going to dry up and blow away.”
Some of these people. Miranda was talking about herself.
“Well, go for it,” I said. “If you want to keep the thing going.”
“Yeah, Miranda,” Teshawn said, “teach us. Give us that professor thing.”
“I won’t have the time,” she said. “I’m going back on the job market.”
“Oh, you didn’t get—”
“The war on academic freedom continues. Anyway, no one listens to me. The only one they listen to besides Sherman is you, Daphne.”
That’s when I told them all I was
leaving, moving back home, back in with my mother. Surprise flickered over their faces. Miranda’s expression sagged. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Did she actually care whether I stayed or left? I listened to them all halfheartedly debate replacements for Sherman. At one point, a beautiful young woman came over and embraced Teshawn. My heart boomed out for him—a girlfriend?!—then he introduced her as his cousin. After a time, I pulled my shawl over my shoulders and readied myself to slip away. Sherman’s sister caught me before I could.
“You’re Daphne, aren’t you?”
“Sorry for your loss.” The words came automatically. “Sherman inspired us all.”
The sister had the same shy smile and kind eyes as Sherman, but she was a tiny thing, as delicate as he’d been bearish. I was wary of her. What if, any second now, her tears came shuddering through?
“Daphne, I’m sorry to be so brief. There are so many people to talk to. Could you come by Sherman’s apartment this evening? There’s something he wanted you to have. Do you know the address?” I said I’d dropped him off there once. “Oh, good. It’s a relief that you can come.”
We agreed on six o’clock. I kicked around the Grove for a couple of hours, then took a car out to Sherman’s place. The fog had already come in, covering the whole street of pastel houses in gray, shimmering haze. I asked the driver to wait for me.
The sister let me in. She wore jeans now and an oversized cashmere sweater. “Oh, thank you for coming, Daphne. I know it’s an inconvenience.”
“None at all.”
Almost ceremonially the two of us sat on the couch, right at the edge, as if poised to get up and check on a roast. I looked around. The apartment was smaller than I’d imagined it. Sherman had been tidy, everything tightly shelved, the books and CDs all lined up by color. The furniture and accents were masculine without being overly restrained, the whole place tastefully, impeccably done. So, I wasn’t the only one.
“How are you?” I tentatively asked the sister.
“It’s not real yet. Even seeing his body didn’t make it real.”
A question lingered on my tongue. “Are you . . . like him?” I gestured at myself. “Like us?”
The woman seemed to have a very inward glance, as if she were off somewhere pondering some nagging, eternal question. “The mysteries of inheritance. It missed me.”
“That’s lucky.”
She pondered further. “But sometimes, you know, I was envious of him. He knew himself so well. He was so careful about his feelings. But he was generous with them, too. Whenever I was going through something, he always knew what to tell me. He just knew. I think the condition made him, I don’t know, in awe of what it is to feel.”
I nodded. “He was . . .” Something was pushing its way up: a laugh, a shout, the urge to vomit maybe. “He was so . . .”
“No rush,” the sister said. “Take your time.”
“I undermined something that meant a lot to him. He put a lot of faith in it, and I just shit all over it.”
“The Stanford study? He knew those things were Hail Marys. He struggled. He always struggled. I don’t think there’s anything any of us could’ve done. I’m angry with him. Furious. But I understand why he did it, as much as you can understand these things.”
“A lot of them, the group, they’re really shaken.”
“And you?”
My throat was so tight I could barely swallow. “I’m getting by.”
“He left a note, just instructions really. He never had a real will drawn up.”
“You never think the moment will actually come,” I said and hoped the woman didn’t hear the hitch in my voice.
Prince Hairy slunk into the room, even more alien and hairless and desiccated in person. Wizened, I thought. Wizened, shriveled, shriven, shrimpy. My thoughts were all over the place. He butted at the sister’s leg, asking to be fed.
“Good timing,” she said. “I was wondering where he got to.”
Then I understood why she’d asked me to come.
“I can’t,” I said. “I really can’t. I’m moving.”
“Of course. Sherman said, ‘A long shot, but maybe Daphne Irvine would want His Highness.’ He’s been declawed. That’s about the only thing easy about him. And no fur to get all over everything.”
“He always looks like he has about a week left.”
“Since I arrived I’ve been expecting to find him belly up. Sherman kept preparing himself for the day he’d finally go. Who knew he’d last longer than—?”
The sister put her hand on her chest, which heaved underneath it. She looked like she was going to hiccup. Then she was in my arms, her sobs thrumming through me. I resisted a moment longer, and then they became my own. She held me up. She’d done this before.
“You really don’t have to,” she said when we’d pulled ourselves together. “I’ve spoken with the SPCA. They’re full. But they’ll make it very humane.”
“I know. They’re good. They do good work.”
Prince Hairy was lying on his side on the rug, blinking slowly in a ray of sunshine. He was so skinny he looked translucent. He turned his head and looked at me haughtily, aristocratically, as if he’d already made the decision for me.
I SPENT THE NEXT WEEK staging the apartment, trying to make it look its most inviting, like someone else’s home. I called my broker. We agreed on a listing date. “And should we choose a day for me to come over and take some pictures?” the woman said.
I laughed ruefully. “Ah, no, I’ve got that taken care of.”
New Year’s passed quietly. Brook and I watched a couple of movies on my flat-screen, British comedies that came out when we were in college, more wry than hilarious, more adorable than moving. It didn’t matter. I spent half the night with my head lolled back on the couch.
“You can’t go,” Brook said.
“I don’t really have a choice anymore. Not since that bath.”
“You can’t. I won’t let you.”
At midnight, we popped a bottle of prosecco. “Don’t you want to go out?” I said. “Isn’t there a club or a secret warehouse party or an orgy you should be getting to?”
“There’s at least five.”
“Well?”
“I already have enough regrets for the new year.”
I went over to the dresser, pulled out a vacuum-sealed package. “Here, a belated Christmas present.” Her pajamas.
“Those are yours, not mine.”
“Then keep them for me,” I said. “For when I come visit.”
THE NEXT MORNING I was woken by Prince Hairy sitting proprietarily on my chest. I shooed him off, and he emitted one plaintive cry, the first noise I’d heard him make. He looked at up at me reproachfully. “Happy New Year to you, too,” I said groggily.
I rolled over for my phone, opened my in-box, and there it was: an email from Ollie. “hi,” the subject read. My finger hovered over the screen. I could open it. If it was just more spam . . . But, no, I couldn’t. Not yet.
To distract myself through the morning and early afternoon, I thumbed through The Return of the Native on my phone. But I couldn’t concentrate. It was all I could do not to open the email.
At two-fifteen, I felt myself growing anxious, the old familiar acid and twitch. I called my car service. Half an hour later, I was outside the church. The boys from AA were just going in. The action figure held the door, raised his coffee. I wished him a happy 2012. He gave me a red-eyed, bleary wink. “Party of the decade last night,” he said, still drunk.
When I went in, they were all arranged in their circle, in the same spots as always. We looked around at one another. No one knew what to say. We were going to have our own little memorial for Sherman—the only reason, I told myself, I’d come today. But, finally, I couldn’t take the silence.
“Okay, then,” I said, “where should we start?”
I CAN’T SAY EXACTLY when it was. Somewhere, perhaps, in the middle of Miranda telling us how Sherman ha
d once talked her through her brother nearly dying in surgery after a hit-and-run. On his end of the line, Sherman had waited nearly forty minutes for her to come out of an attack, murmuring words of encouragement the whole time. “He would’ve waited hours,” she said.
Or maybe it was on my way home. When I came out of the church, my car service was waiting. We’d gone long, and I apologized to the driver, gave him forty extra bucks for his trouble; I was going to walk home. I went through the park, taking the same route I had all those months ago with Ollie, wandered down the Panhandle, through the Haight and Duboce Triangle. The same concerned-looking joggers, the same casually, expensively dressed people with their pampered, happy dogs, but somehow the very city seemed to glimmer and hum. The afternoon turned misty, the chill, heavy mist that comes before several days of rain, the air so raw it made me shudder with something like anticipation.
So maybe it was then that I knew: I wasn’t leaving. I couldn’t. As hard as it had been to make a life here, as hard as that life was, I couldn’t walk out on it now. Not on Brook, not on my group or my workmates. Not even on the dogs.
I was so lost in the realization that, without looking, I stepped out into an intersection. A silent, stealthy Prius squealed to a stop, blasted its horn at me. The buzzing leapt up. My knees started going out from under me. Diamonds glinting on the river, my father, my father waving to me—the image slid right in. It should have brought terror, shock, grief. Instead there was only something clear, hollow, and still. And I tasted sorrow, but only faintly. I stayed on my feet.
The rest of the way, I wanted to look at my phone, open the email. But I would save it till I got back to the Grove, back to the couch. Whatever it said, it could wait at least that long. As I came into my neighborhood, the fog had started to gather, blurring all the lighted signs. PERFECT DETAILING. My sign burned out of the gray evening. For a moment, it blinked off, faltered. ERFECT.
And then it blinked on again.