Days go by. Through my office window, I hear people walking outside, their shoes sound heavy: boots, lace-ups. North Beach is busy this time of year. Voices talk about gravy recipes and what pound turkey to buy. It’s almost Thanksgiving, everyone’s getting ready for family and friends to arrive. Marie has invited me to eat with them again this year. I told her I’d try. The holidays are my busiest time. Deaths keep building from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. Christmas Day, in fact, is often the worst. Nobody knows why, not even the experts. My personal theory is holiday stress. High expectations and no downtime.
In the afternoon I’m talking with a couple who have an uncle in hospice. The phone rings and I let the call click over to voicemail. Money’s no object with these people and we’ve lots to decide. When I finally get a chance to check the messages, I hear Denis’s voice.
“Hello Lena,” he says. Then he goes silent as if I’m about to pick up. “I got your bill,” he finally continues. “It doesn’t seem right to just mail you a check. The funeral was—” Another pause, shorter than the first. “Stunning.” I’ve never heard Denis use that word before.
“How about I stop by?” he says. “I mean, if you’re not too busy.” Another pause. “This is Denis. You’ve probably guessed that. I just wanted to—make sure. Call me, okay? Bye. Either way. Okay? Bye.”
I don’t phone Denis right away. It’s not just that word—stunning—that has me wondering. It’s his whole voice. Faster, and more energetic. He certainly isn’t going to ask me to move in again. Sex? Is that what he’s after? I’ve seen grief do that to people, wear away a layer of formality. Drive them into other people’s arms.
“Sure. Come by,” I tell him later, trying to sound casual, which is much easier over the phone. We bat around times and end up with Saturday morning.
“I have two funerals later,” I say. “But nine o’clock should be fine.”
“Terrific,” Denis says in that new voice of his.
Saturday morning, I’m up before seven fussing with my hair. My bangs stick together and the whole left side won’t lie straight. And I can’t decide what to wear. Finally I pick out a robin’s egg blue A-line, something more traditional than usual, but that still shows off my legs. I add a strand of silvery pearls.
I walk into the mortuary. At ten thirty this morning, we have Dr. Guffano, a surgeon who had a thriving practice in North Beach for forty-odd years, someone I’ve heard of but never met. He’s a narrow-chinned man with arms that rest peacefully inside the casket. Someone with a remarkably unwrinkled face that doesn’t need much. A little powder, pink blusher, tawny lipstick, that’s it. I trim a few nose hairs, smooth an eyebrow, and straighten his striped tie. I move the wreath near the casket to make more room for the flowers Dr. Guffano’s widow had me special order. But the Stargazer lilies and orange chrysanthemums haven’t arrived yet. The doctor has a big family coming, a loving family, who want to honor a life well lived.
Nine o’clock comes and goes. Nine-thirty. I pick a speck of lint off the coffin, tilt the lid open a fraction more. Just stopping by, I think. Dropping off a check. What kind of life have I lived? I stare at an empty chair. I want to dive back into bed, blot out the morning.
No chance of that. The wreath is still missing. And that’s what the widow will look for first thing when she walks through the door.
“You’re kidding,” I say to Ramon at the Secret Garden when he tells me the arrangement isn’t quite finished yet. After all the business I’ve thrown their way.
“Please see that the wreath is ready,” I tell him. “I’m coming right over.” I can drive there faster than they’ll be able to deliver them.
I phone Marie and see if she can hold down the fort. Just a few minutes, I tell her, so I can get to the flower place on Columbus and back. Sure, she says. She’s done this before. I take my Cadillac hearse. No one dares ticket a hearse.
But Columbus Avenue is jammed, and the side streets, worse. All of San Francisco is out, people streaming by holding pie-shaped boxes, or trying to balance two, three shopping bags. A Porsche, SUV, and Chevy pickup fight for the only parking space in sight and a Mercedes sits on the sidewalk in front of Peet’s Coffee, its emergency lights flashing. Pedestrians weave in and out of the traffic, not even bothering to make it to the crosswalk.
As I inch by, people stare at the silver hearse. The morning started out cool and gray—cold, really—but now it’s warm, a Bay Area Thanksgiving warm. I roll down the window, roll it up again. The brake lights ahead stay red, a horn blares. Shit. Forty-five minutes until Dr. Guffano’s funeral. “I haven’t even hit Jackson Street yet,” I say when I phone Marie. “Can you greet any early birds?” She agrees. The light turns red, green, and red again.
My phone rings. A second later, I hear pounding on the back of the hearse. What the hell? I answer the phone and suddenly there is Denis standing outside my door. He taps on the window, his cell pressed to his head.
“Lena,” he says in my ear. “Could you please let me in? Marie said you were stuck in traffic.”
“What happened?” I say, opening the window. We put our phones down. “You weren’t there.”
“Yes, I—”
A horn blasts.
“You’d better get in.” I click open the passenger door.
Denis settles in the seat, blinking, and looking around the dark interior. “I’ve never been the inside one of these before. It’s huge. Curtains and everything.” He turns and stares through the sheer cotton panels into the empty space behind us.
I stare at his legs. He’s wearing shorts, not Madras, but smooth beige khakis, and the loose brown sandals I remember from the party. I couldn’t see his legs that night—too crowded—but now his calves look strangely familiar. They’re covered lightly with dark hair, which emphasizes his almost-delicate looking ankles.
“What happened? Tell me.”
“Lena, I was there. Ten. Right on the dot.”
“Denis, we agreed on nine o’clock. Remember?”
“No. It was definitely ten.” Sweat is starting to bead on Denis’ forehead. He smooths his hair with the flat of his hand. “Oh—it doesn’t matter. Here I am. Here you are. We made it.” His dark blue eyes flash.
“Right,” I say, irritated. “Great morning. No flowers. Terrible traffic. You.”
Denis stretches out a long leg. “So,” he says, ignoring what I just said. “I wanted to thank you, Lena. You know, in person. You did a wonderful job with the funeral. Everything was stunning.” There’s that word again, as if he practiced it, as if he practiced all these words.
“You’re welcome,” I say. “Your mother was a good woman.” All this urgency for a thank you? But we talk on—Thanksgiving, the warm weather—until abruptly Denis is silent.
“You’re probably wondering,” he finally says.
This time I don’t hold back. “You’re right. Who is she?”
“She?”
“The woman at the funeral.”
“Alta, you mean? A friend.”
“I’ll bet,” I say. My reflection crawls by in an empty bookstore window— my head looks warped in the glass, one silver pearl is stretched big. “Denis, I know you’ve moved on. It’s really none of my business.”
“That’s the whole point. I—I haven’t moved on. ” He talks quickly now. How, okay, Alta was a girlfriend, of sorts, but that’s over now. He dated other women, too, over the past couple years, but nothing worked out. None of them were any fun. He looks right at me. “Then my mother—”
“I know.” I slide my foot off the brake and the hearse slips forward. “I really am sorry.”
“No—I mean, thank you. I miss her, all the time. You two were alike, I think. More than I realized. But that’s not what I wanted to say.” He pulls in a shaky breath. “When I asked you to move in, Lena, suddenly like that, I knew it was wrong from the second I saw your
eyes change. We could have kept going. I mean, the—everything was amazing. But I couldn’t take the words back, could I? Not without making everything much worse.”
My mind zings back and forth: Dr. Guffano’s widow probably walking through the door this very minute, the gap where her flowers are supposed to be, what Denis really means.
“I blew it, Lena.”
In the silence that follows, a strange suspended moment holds me. The brake lights blur ahead but I barely see them.
It’s this moment that I would remember decades later, after our long marriage, and Denis’s death, which was not sudden but lingering, full of remissions and on-and-off hope. How still and blue his eyes look now, unblinking now as they would be later when I’d bend over his body, tears staining his pink cheeks. Because I’d dress Denis, too, put him in a soft green shirt open at the collar and slip brown sandals on his feet, the sandals he’d worn to the party, is wearing today. No one would know they were there but me.
Denis lets out a long, half-whistle of a breath. “Guess I just blew it again.” He reaches for the door handle.
“No. It wasn’t just you.” When he looks confused, I finally admit, “Who made mistakes.”
Denis smiles a small—infuriatingly small—smile. He catches my fingers in his. Now he’s taking my hand, arm, shoulder, and pulling me close. Kissing me. His mouth tastes like some kind of sweet-salty spice and his sweaty smell, I love it.
Horns shriek. The flowers! I quickly drive forward to fill the gap that’s opened ahead of us. But the traffic refuses to let up. Maybe Denis and I should get out, walk. The flower shop’s not far. Maybe we could make it there faster than driving. I imagine petals, moist coolness, dark green.
But I can’t just leave the hearse.
“What are you doing?” Denis says when I suddenly veer toward the sidewalk.
People part like we’re a silver tidal wave coming. A few don’t look surprised. This is San Francisco. I slowly edge the tires up and over the curb. But as soon as we’ve cleared the concrete, I stop and gun the engine of the hearse. Just for the hell of it.
Breathe
Lewis had been wanting some of that nitrous for hours. He’d had this dream—a predawn dream—that must have had something to do with his father dying because he couldn’t get the hospital stink out of his head. He’d woken up with his jaw burning, a back tooth singing out with pain.
He had switched years ago from a perfectly fine dentist over on Divisadero to Ed Karr here in Noe Valley because Karr had nitrous. The drywall guy Lewis had been working with at the time swore by it. “Nitrous messes with your head in the best possible way,” he’d grinned. Said Karr was pretty free with the stuff. Free was right. Floating free, his head plastered against the ceiling, his body drifting below, Karr’s beige walls tingling.
“The doctor will be right in,” a voice called. He caught sight of the blonde woman who had shown him the room and disappeared. A new dental assistant, Lewis supposed. She hadn’t been here three months ago.
He flipped through the National Geographic she’d handed him to read, planets colliding on the cover, orange and purples erupting. He pulled up one sock and bunched it down tightly again. Four Advil had only kicked back the pain some. Where was old Karr?
Outside, branches with hanging green things pushed against Karr’s picture window as if they wanted in. Wild fruit maybe. Lewis closed his eyes, reopened them. Helena would know. His wife must have spent half of the twenty-seven years they’d been married in the backyard tending one thing or another. San Francisco’s amazing, she said. Green even in winter. Helena knew the names of living things. He knew about houses, built dozens. Knew how to get a frame up quickly in the rain, hang a door so it closed with a satisfying click, slam in one nail after the other.
Karr walked into the room. “Lew,” he said, “How’s it going?”
Lewis lifted himself off the chair enough to shake Karr’s hand. “Not bad, Ed.” His dentist’s palm felt moist as always, spongy.
Karr sat and swiveled the stool closer. His hair lifted in gelled strands that swept across his head in a buoyant curve. “Nice win for the Warriors yesterday. Did you catch the game?”
“Nah. I had to work. It’s busy.”
“That’s a good thing in construction, right? Busy?”
“Right.” Lewis stared out the window.
“So. Your tooth.” Karr flipped on the dental light and Lewis opened his mouth. He felt a stab of pain.
“Crown, definitely,” Karr said, glancing at the chart. “Looks like bruxism might be a factor. Are you having trouble sleeping, Lew? Any jaw pain?”
Lewis folded his hands tightly over his chest. “No.”
Fuck if he was going to say anything. He’d started grinding his teeth six months ago after his father was admitted to the ICU and it’d gotten worse since. Whole days went by he could hardly chew. Karr wasn’t the only one who wanted to know what was wrong, or in Helena’s case, why he was so sad, so angry. In the beginning, he’d blurt out his father had just died. Sorry, they’d say. I’m so sorry for your loss. Helena looked at him with sad eyes. Well, the last thing he wanted was Karr’s pity.
A few months ago, he was pedaling through Golden Gate Park, looked over, and saw Karr riding next to him. “Gorgeous day,” Karr had said, slowing down. But even that had been too fast. Lewis sucked in his breath so it wouldn’t sound like it was coming hard, was able to shoot the breeze—for a second—until Karr passed, and waving, rode out of sight. Down by the windmill, there was his dentist again. Waiting for him, it seemed. Christ. What could Lewis do but try to ride alongside? Get winded all over again.
An invitation had come. Beer at Karr’s place, which turned out to be a condo on Nob Hill with two bridge views. He and Helena lived on a narrow street in Bernal Heights near 280. After a few Jolly Pumpkins, Karr showed Lewis the training bike he’d set up in front of the big screen, the custom Fuji-Sportif for zipping across the Golden Gate, the mountain bike he used to climb up and over Mount Tam. Twice in a day. In the spare bedroom, Karr had stashed Speedplay cyclers, portable tool kits, screw-in spike cleats for the occasional pickup soccer game, and water bottles in glass, enamel, and stainless steel. Shit.
Before, things had been straightforward with Karr. Lewis saw him once, maybe twice, a year, and got his teeth worked on. Now Karr was friendly, wanted to ask questions.
“Ed,” Lewis said. “What would you say to getting the nitrous started?”
“Sure.” Karr looked where silver tanks usually stood. He frowned and called over Lewis’s head to someone in the hall. “Molly?”
The blonde reappeared, said she’d be right back with the nitrous.
Karr turned and began opening one cabinet drawer after another. Instruments clinked. Lewis picked at a pin-size hole in his T-shirt. He stared at the corner where Karr’s beige walls met.
“Mr. Dellmeyer?” He looked to see Molly staring at him. She was amber-eyed, with thick white blonde hair pulled into a long braid that ran down her chest. She inched a steel tank closer. “Ready?”
He nodded.
She gently positioned the gray mask over Lewis’s nose, its two rubbery arms spreading in opposite directions. “How does that feel, Mr. Dellmeyer? Is that comfortable?”
He inhaled deeply. “Yes.”
“Good.” Karr clipped a white bib under Lewis’s neck and buzzed the chair flat. Lewis drew in another breath.
Hands were moving above him, sharp instruments passing between Molly’s delicate fingers and Karr’s more muscular ones. “No, this,” they were saying, and “Yes, that.” All those instruments, Lewis knew, would end up in him. His mouth didn’t seem big enough. His whole body, hardly big enough.
“Open please, Lew.”
Karr smiled and Lewis sent a half-smile back, not to Karr’s eyes, but his teeth, the whites of which looked uncomfortably familiar.
Lewis felt his mouth open.
Another one of Karr’s routines. First nitrous, then the needle. Lewis’s head sank into the headrest, the base of his skull expanding. Karr stretched over him, holding the novocaine-filled syringe just out of sight. “Quick pinch, Lew,” he said. Karr’s hand dove down and Lewis felt the slow jerked plunge in his gums. His forever-bleeding, forty-nine-year old gums.
“You all right, Lew?” Karr said, the needle still in Lewis’s mouth.
His tongue had turned thick. Better to nod, Lewis thought, which he did. His head fell further back on the headrest.
“Ran into Helena and Toby the other day by Union Square. What’s Toby in now, eighth grade?”
Here Lewis didn’t nod. Didn’t need to. He knew Karr would go on. And on. Last time, he’d talked about cycling. The problems with the Tour. Today, he started in about Toby. How he remembered seeing Lewis and Helena right before Toby was born, how huge Helena had been, not that huge was bad, and later, the surprise of running into the three of them at Mission Rock Cafe, Toby big and pink, Helena, exhausted. Understandably exhausted. He was all for kids, had plenty of kids as patients, but as for being a father, that he’d pass on. Marriage, too. Lewis didn’t want to know why Karr had never married. Maybe he’d never found a woman perfect enough. Or liked to fool around. None of Lewis’s business, really.
“But you and Helena,” Karr said, “you’ve been together a long time. You have a good marriage.”
He thought of Helena this morning, the tight line of her mouth wanting something. He’d forgotten to drive Toby to school. Big fucking deal.
“You’re not the only one who’s got to get to work, you know, Lewis,” she’d said.
Suddenly he’d heard himself yelling, screaming things he couldn’t quite remember but knew for certain weren’t too swift. Something about how she always had to have everything perfect, and if perfect was what she needed in a husband, she’d better go look someplace else.
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