Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  She still has the chance to find it.

  “I’m going to take a bath before the food gets here,” she says. “Unless you want the shower first.”

  Will shakes his head. “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks.” She carries a wine glass and the half-full bottle of Shiraz, and drags her feet up the carpeted stairs.

  The master bathroom has been renovated, and she loves it, from the natural stone tile to the modern plum tones, to the deep, welcoming tub. And, yes, she did sit in every tub at the Home Depot to see which was most comfortable, thank you very much. She runs the water hot, clears a ball of hair from the drain, and plugs it. Dumps a carton of Epsom salts into the whirlpool beneath the spigot. She pours the wine, undresses, and settles into the bath. When the water is high enough, she pushes the faucet with her foot and turns it off. Takes several long swallows of Shiraz. And then she burrows neck-deep into the water, knees sticking up and cold, the rest of her skin stinging with salt and heat. Closes her eyes.

  She exhales, emptying the past two days with each breath until a knock comes on the door. “Pizza’s here,” Will says through the wood.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Want us to wait for you?”

  “No, don’t bother. I’ll be a bit more.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Will’s eyes stay averted. “It’s your phone,” he says, holding it out to her. “It’s been buzzing like a fiend.”

  Katherine sits up, back arched in a C-shape, breasts hidden against her knees. She reaches over the edge of the tub and finds her towel, dries her one hand, and then reaches for the phone. He drops it into her palm. “They’re almost all from Robin.”

  She settles back in the bath and Will shuts the warped door with an extra tug so it closes all the way. Her phone’s blue light winks at her, like yesterday evening at the hotel. She shakes her wet hand, rubs it over her hair, and swipes the screen. Seven missed calls, six from Robin Wilcox and one from Unavailable. No voice mails.

  Robin is her business partner; she calls Katherine all the time, but not from this number. It’s Thomas; Katherine had entered his cell phone number under Robin’s name, as a safeguard.

  She can’t talk to him now, doesn’t know if she’ll talk to him again, ever. She dips beneath the bathwater, a baptism of forgetting, holding her breath as long as she can, cheeks puffing out, eyes closed. She washes Thomas away in a soup of burning salt and soap scum and her own impurities. She sends him down the drain in a whirlpool of regret. Then she wipes any lingering thoughts of him away with a dank-smelling towel, clean but left too long in the washer.

  Dressing in yoga pants and one of Will’s warm sweatshirts, she joins her family in the kitchen for pizza. They’re counter eaters, all of them, standing and holding food over their hands instead of plates, the boys wiping drips of grease from the floor with the toes of their socks. Katherine grumbles about stains and napkins, and tears a paper towel off the roll for each of them. Will laughs and drinks Pepsi straight from the bottle. It’s as if yesterday never happened; at least for the moment, there’s enough melted cheese to cover it all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  His body is identified after four days. Wright shows up on the steps of the brownstone, alone, with a photograph and asks Ada if it’s Julian. She nods. His face is bruised around the mouth and chin, but otherwise he could be sleeping. Wright hands her more papers and talks of claiming the body. Her eyes float from his face to the children playing across the street. Two of them, Alonzo and Marcus, foster children of the woman living on the third floor. They toss leaves and pebbles down the metal drain grate at the curb.

  She’s like a four-year-old, navigating this thing called death, with all its traditions and requirements. When someone passed away in her community, it’s a pine box and four men with pickaxes and shovels digging a hole by nightfall. How much more complicated it is here. She’s seen movies now. A fancy coffin and special burial outfit. Pictures of the deceased and flowers and lots of people talking about what a great guy the dead person had been.

  Sophie volunteers to handle the funeral, seems honored and relieved she’s able to oversee these last things, her anointing of the body with nard. Ada gives her Pastor Ray’s number, but Sophie makes arrangements at St. Michael the Archangel. The Romanesque revival rises up around them, its arches pointing into heaven. Ada has never been in a church like this before, the air filled with the scent of melted wax and a spicy haze of incense. The voices of all those speaking around her are somehow both dulled and amplified by the vaulted ceiling and the cathedral’s thick, stone floors. “But Julian’s not Catholic anymore,” Ada says, drawing a scowl from Sophie.

  “You never stop being Catholic,” she says.

  The church fills rapidly. Ada recognizes very few faces—from Holy Zion, from the neighborhood, friends of Julian’s she’s met. The reporters, she thinks, must be here because the funeral of a plane crash victim is still newsworthy. But the others? Ada tries to survey the crowd discretely from her place in the front pew, Hortense and Mark on one side of her, Sophie and the rest of Julian’s more immediate family on the other. She sees well-dressed people with tans and expensive jewelry, people in muted suits shaking hands, and a few thick men dressed in black with dark glasses and earpieces. Though she doesn’t have a good memory, she’s certain she’s seen some of these strangers on the covers of magazines in the grocery line, or in search engine pictures.

  “Who are all these people?” she asks Sophie.

  Julian’s sister stares at her. “They’ve come to pay their respects.”

  Ada wants to say I know that, since Sophie speaks as if she’s what Grandmother would call a sandwich short of a picnic. But Hortense squints and nods a little, leaning around her to get Sophie’s attention. “She doesn’t know, Soph. I don’t think Julian ever told her.”

  “Told me what?”

  “How famous he is,” Hortense says.

  “Famous?”

  Again, Sophie inspects Ada, her eyes so like Julian’s Ada must turn her head away. “My goodness. He didn’t, did he?” She shakes her head, the tiniest of smiles on her flaky lips. “That’s my brother.”

  Hortense seems more agitated than amused. “Julian doesn’t just take pictures. He’s world-renowned for his photography. He’s won a slew of awards, Pulitzers, AP, even recognition from the president. He’s seen . . . things. He’s brought images to people they never would have known, if not for him. He’s risked his life, for pity’s sake. He . . . he . . .”

  Her voice trails away, and Ada, less surprised now by the crowd than by the urgency in Hortense’s words, can only give a little shrug and stumble around for something to say. But nothing comes.

  “That’s why he didn’t say anything,” Hortense says. She’s crying now. “He knew it would mean nothing to you.”

  Ada doesn’t see Julian’s photographs—any photographs, really, as she has browsed Julian’s collection of photography books many times—as something more than images on paper. Beautiful images sometimes. But they don’t evoke the kinds of emotions in her they seem to draw from everyone else. Vanity, her father would say, or worse, idolatry. Art is creation for the sake of creation, and that is only for Almighty God. Men must toil for their sanctification and their penance, in the briars amidst the sin of Adam.

  She supposes, if she’s honest, some part of her agrees, thinks it a bit silly to be taking pictures of everything from chewing gum on the pavement to politicians at their rallies when so much of importance is left undone. Then again, what does she know of doing important things? She worked at a farm store and waited with her family for Armageddon. And then she married a man she hardly knew and bumped around his home all day because she was afraid to walk down the street alone.

  Hortense weeps now, face in Mark’s neck, stump cupped in his hand. She has his name tattooed around her wrist bone, hidden in a garland of black wildflowers. Mark has similar ink on his ring finger ins
tead of a wedding band. Sophie’s back is to Ada as she speaks with her son and daughter. So she sits, a stranger in her love for this dead man, between the people who loved him best.

  The funeral mass begins with pomp and organ and the condolences of a priest who’d never met Julian. Family members speak. Friends speak. Hortense sings to a slide show of his photographs; her voice matches the beauty of her face. She wears prosthetics in front of all these people, rubber hands growing from beneath the long sleeves of her black sweater. When they were in college, Julian said, Hortense would wear her hands to parties but after a time, take them off because she couldn’t do much in them. Drunk frat boys would stumble upon them tucked between beer kegs or swimming in the bathroom sink. Startled cries periodically punctuated the music and Mark would say, “Someone’s found Hortense’s hands.”

  Sophie had asked Ada to say a few words but probably expected her to decline, and she didn’t disappoint, not knowing what to say and realizing once again how much of a toddler she is in this life, still sticking random objects in her mouth in an attempt to understand the world around her.

  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Sophie had arranged to have Julian cremated, telling Ada those were his wishes. Sophie had spoken to her brother about it before, had all his funeral plans notated in her family organizer. “He didn’t expect to get married, Ada. You caught him by surprise.”

  What a surprise.

  The church has a huge parish hall, not attached but built beside it, and the reception takes place there. Ada stands with Sophie and family near the door as attendees shuffle through, touching her hands and shoulder, making introductions, giving those clumsy hugs of strangers, all arms and air between them. Eventually she disentangles from the crowd and locks herself in a bathroom stall, watching the feet of women come and go beside her. They chat as they fix lipstick at the mirror and Ada spins toilet paper into ragged, cigarette-like tubes.

  “I haven’t even seen the wife.”

  “They were only married a few months, you know.”

  “She’ll make out big, with the airline settlement. I heard on the news they’re talking over a million per person.”

  “And I heard Gary Sinise was here.”

  “I’d rather look for him.”

  Giggling. Water running. More conversation covered by the automated dryer. And then a knock on her stall. “Ada, I see your shoes.”

  She twists the handle and Hortense steps in to join her. In her sleek black boots, the woman stands a head taller than Ada. And when Hortense offers her arms to her, Ada goes into them, bone against bone, brow against clavicle. She was hugged this way as a child, before she grew taller than her mother. Before she grew too old to be comforted by the body of another.

  “I’m lost,” she says.

  Hortense tightens her grasp. “We all are.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  No one brings casseroles when someone almost dies, but plenty of people get awful nosy. “Excitement by association,” Bryce tells Katherine as the phone calls come, mothers of the boys’ friends, women she’s nodded at a few times at the church, clients, and neighbors. The conversations begin the same, with an Oh my goodness, how are you doing? Are you okay? You’re so lucky. Then, after a few brief sentences by Katherine about being fine and really, it’s not that big of a deal because holding a ticket for a flight is not anywhere close to getting on an airplane, the caller launches into a story of how she almost died as well, so she totally understands how Katherine feels right now.

  Eventually she lets the calls go straight to voice mail.

  The almost-isn’t-really-almost speeches do nothing to convince her. As much as she says it, she knows how close she came to getting on the airplane. Her solution? Refusing to consider the alternatives. She wondered and wallowed for a few days and then pushed it all aside. She can’t dwell on the fact an affair saved her life. She can’t act as if she were saved for a higher purpose and now has some noble mission to pursue. So she drops back into the same patterns from last week, last month, last year. Doing normal brings back normal. Even Will, for all his emotions the day after the crash, has settled into his own well-worn cycle of work and food and Fox News.

  She picks up Evan from his photography club meeting and he’s all a-chatter about his day, mostly the antics of friends in the cafeteria and little about learning. “Want to hear Andrew’s joke?”

  “This is what I’m sending you to school for?”

  “It’s funny. Just say yes.”

  “Okay. Yes. Tell me.”

  “How are a cigarette and a hamster the same?”

  Katherine sighs. “I have no idea. How?”

  “They’re both perfectly harmless until you stick them in your mouth and light them on fire.”

  “That’s very funny.”

  “You’re not laughing.”

  “I am on the inside.” She squints at the traffic light. “Is there an arrow?”

  “Yeah.”

  She turns into the supermarket parking lot. “I have to pick up a few things. Coming in, or staying in the car?”

  “That depends. Can I get a soda?”

  “No.”

  Evan unstraps his seat belt. “I guess I’ll come in anyway.”

  She doesn’t need anything from the store, not really. She does it to continue deflating, releasing the stress and disbelief, and flattening to regular size. She works through her list. Pay the cable bill. Check. Vacuum the living room rug. Check. Make a meal everyone will complain about because they don’t like kidney beans, and doesn’t she remember that? Check. Schedule a house showing, wax her eyebrows, replace the mildewed shower curtain with the new one she bought on sale six months ago and stashed in the linen closet, forgetting about it until the other day when she refolded the fitted sheets. And now, a nice, mundane trip to Shop Rite.

  Inside the store, Katherine asks, “Divide and conquer?”

  “Sure,” Evan says. He holds out his hand for his half of the list. She folds it neatly and scores it with her fingernail, tears it over the edge of the shopping cart.

  “I’ll be in produce when you’re done,” she says. She always finishes with produce. Check.

  Evan has the bottom of the list—toilet paper, napkins, cream cheese—all things on the far side of the store. She begins in the middle and works her way to the deli counter, then the bakery, and then the fruit and vegetables. She’s sifting through green beans when she hears, “Kate?”

  She turns instinctually, and Susanna Bailey is there. They’re not close, though they’ve known one another for years. She’s mother to Seth, Evan’s best friend since kindergarten.

  And wife to Thomas.

  “Susie.”

  “My goodness, how are you?” She gives Katherine a quick but sincere hug. Oh, so sincere.

  “I’m fine, really.”

  “I’ve been meaning to call, but Thomas told me not to overwhelm you. He figured you were getting calls from everyone.”

  “I—”

  “Mom, hey, there wasn’t any Philadelphia fat free left, so I got the store brand. That okay?” It’s Evan, with Seth riding on the front of the cart.

  “Seth, get off there. You’re not five,” Susanna says, and when he steps down Thomas appears, just behind Evan, a blue basket hanging on his forearm.

  “Katherine, good to see you,” he says.

  Her hands sprout perspiration; she squeezes the handle in front of her, the plastic slickening beneath her skin. The grocery list, pinched between two fingers, flutters to the ground. Both she and Thomas bend to get it and she smells his shampoo, so familiar because Will uses the same kind. How many nights has she been in bed with her husband, her face cradled in his pillow because she switched it with hers, that scent in her nostrils so she can imagine she’s with Thomas and not Will? She pulls back, letting him crouch and rescue the paper. He offers it to her. When she doesn’t reach for it, he sets it on the child seat in the cart.

  “Thanks.” She coughs into her shoulder.


  “I know you’ve been busy with more important things,” he says, “but is Evan going on the scouting trip?”

  “That’s right,” Susanna says. She bites her knuckle. “I’m glad you remembered. We were wondering if Will could take Seth along too. We’ll be out of town that weekend. It’s our anniversary.”

  “They’re going,” Katherine mumbles. “But you’ll have to ask Will yourself.”

  “I’ll call,” Thomas says, his voice soft.

  “Evan, let’s go.” She turns to Susanna and forces a bright smile. “So glad I ran into you. We’ll have to do coffee soon.”

  Susanna nods. “Great, good. Don’t be a stranger.”

  Katherine swings the shopping cart toward the checkout area and slows only when Evan bashes her Achilles tendons with his own cart. She swears, turns, and says, “Darn it, Evan, pay attention for once in your life.”

  He withers. “Sorry.”

  Her ankles throb. She stacks her groceries onto the conveyor belt, watches Susanna and Thomas two lines down; he stacks twelve packs of spring water in front of the cashier, something she knows makes him crazy, or at least he’s told her he can’t stand that Susanna insists on bottled when they have perfectly filtered well water of their own. He doesn’t seem bothered by it now, making small talk with the young cashier as Susanna spins her wild curly hair into an elastic band and then fixes a button come undone on his plaid shirt.