by Andrew Lanh
***
I started calling Karen, but her machine kept coming on. Its redundant message, mournful and solemn in the best of times, took on macabre overtones that alarmed me.
“Karen, call me. It’s Rick.”
But at one o’clock, idly dialing her number, she surprised me by picking up. “Hello.” Brusque, businesslike.
I didn’t answer at first.
“Hello.” Again.
“It’s Rick.” I heard her sigh, unhappy. “I wanted to see if everything was all right. Do you need any help?”
“I’m really busy, Rick.”
“I know. I’ll help.”
“I don’t want your help.”
“Karen, you can’t do all this alone. It’s not good.”
She spat out her words. “I know what’s good for me.”
“I know, I know. But I’m a friend.”
“You’re not a friend. You’re a hired boy I fired last night.”
“I’ll see you at the funeral.”
She answered with the raucous, unfunny laugh bitter people make. “I suppose so. It’s obviously open season on my family.”
She hung up.
***
I had to retrace my steps. Something boiled beneath the surface. What? I decided to follow up on one loose end—Hattie Cozzins’ IOU for twenty grand borrowed from Marta some time back. That curious scribbled paper needed some explaining.
In the middle of the afternoon, unannounced, I knocked on Hattie’s door, and stood there a long time. The hallway to her apartment was freshly painted, but the old walnut woodwork hadn’t been scraped or sanded. A new layer of thick paint had been carelessly slapped on. Some splatter on the tile floor, drips of deck green paint on the doorknob. An old building, and successive generations of cheap paint lent the dim hallway a faded, spent look—all dressed up but nowhere to go.
I was running my finger over the glossy paint when the door opened slowly. Hattie watched me. She said nothing, her eyes squinting as though she were looking into the sun.
“Hattie,” I blurted out.
She smiled dreamily.
I’d obviously wakened her from an afternoon nap, yet she also betrayed the drained, blowzy look of someone coming out of a hangover. Today she wore no makeup, missing that blatant layer of sweet-scented old-lady powder she’d worn the last time I met her. Her skin looked as crinkly and tender as snapped kindling.
“I remember you.” She stood back and waved me into the room with a flip of her wrist and a slight nod. The small room smelled close and thick with old clothes and the cloying, fragrant aroma of spilt bourbon.
When I sat down, she began speaking, her whiskey voice raspy. “What do you want this time?” Blunt, a finger pointed at me. “You have to make it quick. I’ve been sick.”
“I’m sorry. I just have one question.”
She closed her eyes, as though bolstering herself for some unpleasant inevitability. “Shoot.” Like she was at a gaming table.
I told her about the note Karen and I had found among Marta’s possessions. “You were in her debt?”
She chuckled, low and throaty, lost for a second in her own thoughts. A heartbeat. “I hoped that damn note had got lost. But I should have known Marta would have tucked it somewhere. There were two, a typed one she made me sign. Me, a friend. A formal one, she said. The handwritten one wouldn’t do.”
“I didn’t find that one.”
She was still chuckling. “I managed to steal that one back one day when Marta wasn’t looking. I knew where she’d hid it. The other—the one you found—she told me she’d thrown it out. She threw nothing out.”
Buddha talked to me: Abstain from taking what is not yours.
I shook my head. “Well, she kept the paper because you hadn’t repaid the loan, right?”
“True.”
“Why not?” Looking around the cramped room, I wanted to open a window to let the cold November chill seep in, smother the cobwebs of the dank room.
“Look, mister. Marta lent me that money begrudgingly. She was a cheapskate—and a nuisance. We fought, but I was desperate. I had to blackmail her—I can admit that now because she’s dead and it’s all unimportant.”
“About what?”
“Nothing important, at least now. She cherished this reputation as this devout Catholic woman, marching in anti-abortion protests, wooing the priest when she lied in the confessional, buying flowers for the altar at Easter. Mother Angelica with flowers in her hair. But drunk, the two of us, we could get crazy. I knew Marta’s seamier side, the casino broad, hell to pay, and one time, hammered, she tried to perform a—well, a sex act on a man in an Atlantic City bar. She wasn’t serious, of course. God, we were in a tavern, but the play-acting got a little too—how shall I put it?—risqué. He turned out to be a vacationing priest from New Haven—a little loose wire himself, I might add—but Marta’s values clashed, as it were. She was always torn between being the Catholic angel and a hotsy-totsy devil in a red dress marinated in patchouli. So she was humiliated. She really wasn’t like that, of course. A moral prig, most of the time. But, of course, I threw that in her face, threatened to tell Joshua and Richard Wilcox. Her niece Karen. It was cruel of me, but it had its effect because she lent me the money.”
“But you didn’t repay it.”
“A gambling debt. I got in heavy with some guys. Something stupid. They’re—what can I say?—unyielding. And I continued to gamble. I kept promising her, but I didn’t want to. I actually couldn’t. She was sitting on a pile of cash. She even plotted to get Joshua’s treasure. Then she was dead.”
“And you didn’t have to.”
“I thought I was free.”
“You didn’t like her, did you?”
She pursed her lips. “It’s funny. She often irritated me—that I knew. But I didn’t really know I hated her until after she died. I didn’t kill her, by the way. Get that notion out of your pretty skull, young man. But when she died it hit me how much I resented her. She got so much damn attention by killing herself. Look at this—you’re here talking about her long after she’s dead. She was a cheap woman. With money, with men. You should have seen her and Joshua. Snotty, snobby. ‘Joshua’s instructing me in the classics.’ What? I thought to myself. Classic positions? Honey, you got them down pat. Kama sutra. At our age it’s—kama suture.” She screamed out a laugh. “Her and his books and art and shit. Irish shop girl. Slop girl. She pushed right in there and took what she wanted. I got leftovers, always. I was the church mouse, and she’d throw me crumbs. You know what she used to say? ‘Good enough.’ She always used that expression with me. ‘He’s good enough for you.’ Or ‘That dress is good enough for you, Hattie dear.’ Second string. I was a fool.”
“But now she’d dead.”
“And I still can’t pay that loan.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She smiled. “That’s not the case you’re hired for, is it, dearie?”
I smiled. “Exactly. It’s your business.”
“So it’s over.”
“Well…”
She cut me off. “So now you can leave. Tell Karen to stop this nonsense.”
“She’s busy with the funeral.”
Hattie’s expression shifted, her eyes danced. “What are you talking about?”
She didn’t know, I realized. “Her brother Davey took his own life.”
“You’re kidding. Runs in the family, don’t it? God, how Marta hated him.”
“I heard.”
“He got what he deserved.”
“How so?”
“We all knew he was a filthy little faggot.”
Chapter Thirty-five
The next morning Hank showed up as I got ready for the funeral. I opened my door to find him standing there in a double-breasted suit, something
I’d never seen before. “I only dress up for the Vietnamese New Year’s,” he said.
“Tet trendy.”
“Can I meet girls at funerals?”
“Yeah, catch them when they pass out from grief.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” A pause. “I spoke to Aunt Marie, Rick.”
“And?”
“I’ll call her again this afternoon. She said—maybe.”
I nodded.
“You’re making me nervous, Rick.”
“I do that to a lot of people.”
“C’mon. We don’t wanna be late.”
We were late. But there were few mourners at the funeral. There had been no calling hours, and a priest officiated at O’Brien Funeral Parlor, housed on a side street off Main in a rambling Victorian house. We arrived in the middle of it. The priest was counting a Rosary. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee…The words fell in the empty room like rain echoing on a quiet street. Uncomfortable with the chanted words, I held back, staying in the anteroom, waiting, looking in. I signed the guest book. Hank didn’t.
As we walked in, Hank whispered, “No Mass for a suicide, Rick. Mom told me that.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Karen sat by the casket, alone, dressed in a black dress that looked too old for her, layers of lace draped around her neck and down her arms. She wore her hair up, pulled back, severe. For a second, approaching her, I was reminded of Aunt Marta. An old woman sat nearby but periodically sat in the empty seat next to Karen, holding her hand, smothering her neck with words. Karen stared straight ahead, unmoving, never looking at the coffin.
The folding chairs held perhaps ten people. Old people. There was a youngish man I recognized as a worker with Davey at the garden shop. I craned my neck around and in the corner, sitting with his back against the wall, his eyes closed, his legs stretched out in front of him, was Ken Rodman.
Hank slipped into a chair, out of the way. The room looked spartan, and I realized why. There were scarcely any flowers. One small bouquet rested on the coffin, red and white carnations. But none of the huge gaudy sprays I was accustomed to seeing at funerals. I hadn’t sent flowers, as I had to Marta’s funeral—I don’t know why—but others obviously felt the same way.
“Karen, I’m sorry.” I took her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. She was icy cold.
She mumbled thanks but didn’t look into my face. I repeated myself until, awkward, I turned away. I passed by the coffin, not even stopping, but I glanced at the calm face. The Davey I knew was gone. None of the anger, none of the fierce confusion that colored his awful days and furious nights. This was a stranger.
Ken was motioning to me, so I sat down next to him. He shook my hand. “Terrible business.”
I nodded.
We lapsed into painful silence. I didn’t want to be sitting next to him. Hank glanced back at us, confused. He looked out of place, this lanky, young Vietnamese man sitting in his Sunday best, alone.
The funeral director entered, with obvious on-staff pallbearers lined up behind him, all with mask-like somber faces. Everyone stood to leave, the priest reappeared, and Karen seemed confused, turning left, then right, her hands against her face. She looked like a hurt child. Buddha talked to me: Tears give us no peace of mind. We lose ourselves and lose our power.
The director announced that there would be no service at the gravesite but friends were invited to Karen’s apartment at one o’clock for a celebration of David Corcoran’s life. That announcement took me by surprise. I didn’t think she’d want that.
“You going?” Ken asked.
“I guess so.”
“I want to. Davey and I were very close.”
“I thought you saw each other a few times.”
He gave me a weird look, as though baffled. “You don’t understand.”
He was right. I didn’t. Outside I introduced him to Hank. He stared at Hank, not remembering that they’d met at the house. “This your brother?”
“Yes,” I said.
Hank chose not to go to the apartment, which made sense, so I dropped him off at my apartment. “Call me later,” he insisted. “I’ll try to reach Aunt Marie again.”
I nodded.
Greeting me at the door, Karen was smiling. “I’m glad you came.”
Most of those in the apartment had not been at the funeral parlor. They were neighbors, I guessed, from the looks of them. Or acquaintances of Karen’s from the shopping arcade. Some old friends of Marta’s perhaps. Fifteen or so people, most of them old women dressed similarly in black dresses and white sweaters, slow-moving penguins of grief, patent leather purses gripped tightly. Marta’s Brown Bonnet brigade? Maybe. For Davey—I doubted that. But I was pleased to see them there. Karen had plastic trays of supermarket cold-cuts, Palmer rolls, sheet cakes, a coffee urn, and a table with half a dozen liquor bottles. Ice melted in a soup bowl.
I watched Karen wherever she was in the room. She was buoyant, lively, embracing people, her smile constant. She bounced from person to person, sharing the same laughter with each one, so many seconds long, the same pitch. Curtain call.
Sitting in a chair by the window, I talked to no one. Karen passed by me, smiled down at me, and let her fingers graze my shoulder, not affectionately, but a simple acknowledgment of my presence. She turned her face away, widened her eyes as she greeted someone else. At that moment she looked like Marta. The few times I’d spent with Marta she’d been affectionate in that impersonal way, but I recalled the way she turned her head, twisted her neck, a thin show of teeth as her eyes brightened.
Dressed in matronly black, hair pulled into that Emily Dickinson bun, Karen moved like her dead aunt. It stunned me. A conversation came back to me—Karen talking about her childhood, a time when Marta wanted her to be some replica of herself—a severe teenage matron. Here was Marta again, resurrected, down to the morning-glory blue eyes with the gray cast in them. I didn’t know why I was surprised. She was, after all, her niece. But the uncanny resemblance—the awful trappings borrowed from an old woman—unnerved me.
Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I realized something else I’d not spotted—so much of Marta now inhabited the apartment. Since I was last here, Karen had done what she told me she would never do. She’d carted so many of Marta’s belongings to the apartment. All the things she despised were here. A floor lamp with a stained yellow fringe shade, a gaudy ceramic urn with ivy growing in it, a small plastic ottoman that was dyed a fifties turf green. On and on. Odds and ends, her aunt’s garage sale world. All the stuff she should have thrown out, flea market inventory. It alarmed me, this behavior. Here was a lost Karen. Had she added Marta’s sofa and chairs, the room would have been—Marta’s. Now I wondered whether those stale, faded pieces would arrive soon. This was not the Karen I’d talked to at the beginning of my investigation. The room was a museum now. This was homage to a dead woman.
I sat down near a bookshelf that now held Marta’s souvenirs, especially her Russian tourist relics, all crammed together. Karen had nailed Marta’s fake Russian Orthodox icon of Jesus to the wall. Nearby was a fan labeled “Atlantic City,” and a cup saying “What Happens in Vegas.” Stacks of photographs in frames were piled on top of each other, yet to be displayed. This was Marta’s scrapbook of her tourist junkets with Hattie. Marta’s junk wall, and it had been moved here.
Suddenly now, turning around and surveying the room, I felt closed in. Karen was across the room, bending over an old woman, and I felt my skin get clammy. Karen was disappearing from this room, and Marta was coming back. Was I imagining it? I picked up a piece of embroidery from the shelf, some cutesy cat design, and I smelled it—Marta’s smell, I imagined. Certainly not Karen’s. The tablecloth on which the makeshift buffet was spread looked yellowed and old. It probably came from a closet in Marta’s house. There was a patina of old sensibility here,
of stale talcum power and the K-Mart perfume of blue-haired ladies. I swear to God—it gave me the willies.
Karen had placed Marta’s small collection of books between plaster-of-Paris Virgin Mary bookends. The leather-bound books, the odd nineteenth-century volumes, cheap reprints mostly, a battered Ivanhoe, all looking out of place here. I ran my fingers over the spines. The delicious feel of old books, the dusty aroma of unturned, flaking pages.
And then, in that echoey room, I found myself thinking of Vietnam. I am a young boy, sitting in the barracks-like quarters, waiting to be taken to the airport—and America. A cyclo driver speeds by, and I wonder why my friend Vu had to disappear. I think of his beaten father—the frozen man. Tranh Xan Tan. I am wearing frayed dress pants, a couple of sizes too big, a blue-denim shirt with the smell of too many washings in lye soap, and a small bag, like a gym bag, but made of cardboard treated to look like old leather. Sitting there, quiet, nervous now, afraid of America, I open the case. I want to be sure my Sayings of Buddha book is there, not because of what it says, but because I need something of my mother. I can see Sister Le Han Linh coming through the doorway, coming to gather me. I tuck the slim volume in my shirt pocket, and snap the bag shut. I wait. I am calm.
Now, sitting in Karen’s crowded room, I felt the same calm the moment my mother’s book rested against my bony chest. Peace—ease. Everything in harmony. Now Buddha talked to me:
Any object is an object for any subject.
Any subject is a subject for any object.
Buddha says that the relationship of all parts
Relies in the end on the one part that is missing.
Sitting there, in that magnified calm, I understood those words as though they’d been written on the spot for me. I thought of Grandma’s words. “There are no holes in eternity. What’s missing is already filled in.”
…the one part that is missing…
I sat up, jolted by the words. Buddha. Buddha. The room suddenly got narrow, then large again. Space: empty: void.
I knew the meaning of the missing part. I felt it in my bones. Quietly, watching Karen out of the corner of my eye, I found my coat in the hall closet. I walked back into the living room. There was no one I wanted to say good-bye to, but I had another purpose for going back inside that room. No one was looking—I hid an object in the folds of my coat. A common thief. In a rush I was out the door, standing on the landing, my heart pounding. I could be wrong, but I didn’t think I was. Pieces of a puzzle. I believed I had the one part that was missing. Everything is already complete because there can be no holes in eternity. I closed my eyes. I had the answer. Or at least I thought I did.