“Oh my God,” Mel said. “That is the single most perverted thing I’ve ever heard. No wonder you see a therapist. And the best part is they’re uncircumcised.” Mel sucked back on the cigarette, and then exhaled a smoky laugh. “I never have dirty dreams. I wish I did.”
Julie decided not to tell her sister that the man in the dream was Hut, and the woman was some red-haired young woman she’d never before seen except in a video of Matt’s. Instead, she said, “God, this is the first day I’ve really smelled how good summer is. I can smell jasmine and honeysuckle. And the lake. Even it stinks good. I haven’t noticed much of anything in weeks.”
“You’re getting back to life,” Mel said. “That’s great. I was getting a little worried. Now, tell me another dirty dream.”
6
By the middle of June, she had received the first life insurance check, and it had a lot of zeros after the three. She hated looking at that check, but she needed the money and thought how wonderful Hut had been to get such a major policy even when she had argued against it. She cried thinking about this, and felt guilty for not being a good enough wife, and that ate up a large chunk of a day. The check took care of some immediate problems, including paying off most of the mortgage, and since she felt the kids should have her for the summer, she called in some favors and got a few months leave—until at least the end of September—so that she wouldn’t be in the ER. She hadn’t really accomplished much in her few days back at work since Hut’s death anyway—they’d put her behind a desk and everyone had just watched her like she was the living dead. Livy still had nightmares about seeing someone in her room, and Eleanor told Julie it was perfectly normal for a little girl to have dreams like that after losing her father. “I bet you’ve had some nightmares, too,” Eleanor said in one of their therapy sessions.
In July, in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week, in her therapist’s office, Julie leaned back, sinking into the cushy chair.
Eleanor had that look of God on her face. Julie thought of it as “God,” because Eleanor projected a calming presence that made Julie want to open up about everything. She was a beautiful, radiant woman—overweight, but her girth only added to the Mother Earth aspect of her personality. She had once told Eleanor that she reminded her of her mother—a younger version of her—and Eleanor had said, “We can work out that problem if you want.”
The office was decorated in muted beiges and browns, and always smelled of herb tea. It was the most relaxing place that Julie knew—a genuine refuge when she needed to work out problems.
“I feel like I’m bad because I want to find things out.”
“Why do you think that’s bad?”
“He’s dead. He was killed. My mind can’t wrap around that and still wonder if he loved me.”
“Did you love him?”
Julie nodded. “I want him back so bad. I really do.”
After she’d wiped the tears from her eyes, Julie said, “But I never really knew him. I thought I did. But I just don’t think I did at all. There were those things that went unspoken. Those things I just ignored.”
“You think he was unfaithful?”
Julie nodded. “But he’s dead now. So it shouldn’t matter.”
“He may not have been. He may have been. Why do you need to know now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. You just can’t say it yet.”
“No, I really don’t know.”
“Marriage is based on trust, and what that means, really, is the opposite. You have to put blinders on to get through it sometimes,” Eleanor said.
“My mother used to tell me that all men cheat.”
“Your mother would only know that for certain if she’d slept with every married man on the planet, Julie. Are you really concerned that he was cheating on you, now that he’s dead? Or is there something else?”
“You knew him. There was always something...unspoken...his first wife …” Julie began, fumbling for words.
“Amanda had problems that had nothing to do with Hut,” Eleanor said. “Her violence didn’t come out of her marriage to Hut, Julie. She had a long history from childhood, and what was going on with her at the point they divorced had everything to do with Hut wanting to protect his son. You are going through the grief process. Stage by stage. It seems like you’re right on schedule. Didn’t you read the Kubler-Ross I gave you? Allow yourself some time. Understand that sometimes ideas float around after a violent death takes place, ideas in the head of the surviving family members, not all of which are meaningful. But they may just be ways that we all work out the shock. I would guess you’re experiencing dreams.”
Julie nodded.
“Some good, some bad, some terrible.”
Julie closed her eyes, trying not to remember the dream where the man on the shiny metal table in the morgue opened his eyes. “Just a dream here or there.”
“All right,” Eleanor said, leaning forward slightly, chin in hand, her "God" look in full glow.
“Just little things. Memories.”
“Any of them that make you angry?”
Julie fought the memory of the nightmare:
The white-blue skin of the dead man who could not be Hut.
Eyes opening.
Just milky-white eyes.
Looking up at her.
“Sometimes,” Julie said. "Sure. I get upset. Of course. Yes. But I know it's not real."
“Does Hut hurt you in the dreams?”
“No. No, nothing like that.” Julie could feel that she was blushing.
“Oh,” Eleanor said, reading her. “Sexual dreams. Seems entirely normal, Julie. Tell me about them.”
Julie nodded. “Really filthy ones. Like in porn movies.” She quickly added, “Nothing like our sex life. Which was good. It was fine. But this is like, I don’t know, cartoon sex. Ridiculous sex. Multiple...organs. Sex with women, sex with men, sex with...well, it’s all disturbing to me. I’ve never had dreams like this in my life.”
“You told me once that you didn’t think you were much of a sexual person.”
“I’m not. I’m just not. I never was. My sister is. She got the horny genes. Me, I just like it now and then if I really care for someone.” Her voice trailed off a bit, as if sorrow had returned with this thought.
“Sex and death are often intertwined in our consciousness,” Eleanor said. “Erotic dreams after the death of someone close to us...well, it’s not that strange. The French call the climax the petite mort. Little death.”
“I’m not even sure I could call these dreams erotic. There’s this sort of cartoony surreal element to them,” Julie said. “Sometimes …” The milky-white eyes. The shiny maggoty-white skin.
“Sometimes?”
“Sometimes...it’s just surreal.”
“Your mind is going to work out all kinds of issues, Julie. Expect it to. You’re lucky it’s coming through as erotic. I had a patient once who dreamed his brother slit his throat. After his brother died. Just slit his throat with a knife.”
As Eleanor spoke, Julie shut her eyes. She imagined Hut coming toward her while Eleanor’s words created an image in her mind, “Just slit his throat. Every night, for fourteen weeks he had this dream. Imagine.”
7
That evening, after the kids were in bed, Julie played some of Matt’s videos on the computer in the den, hoping to catch a glimpse of Hut and the family they’d once been.
8
The rain slashed the dark sky beyond the den window, a summer storm that was the last of a hurricane that had hit far out to sea, far beyond northern New Jersey, beyond Rellingford, a storm elsewhere, leaving heat flashes in the sky and a downpour to cool off the muggy evening. There was something comforting about the harshness of the weather. Julie clicked the mouse around until she found Matt’s video files. There were nearly a hundred of them, and she kept opening and closing the videos, depending on what they showed. The past year or so of Matt’s life flashed by:
Matt and Livy at the lake. Livy splashing around the shallow end of the pool with her friends, while Matt’s voice goaded her on to make bigger splashes.
Matt videotaping Livy trying to practice the piano—playing a little song called “The Bluebells of Scotland,” and when she hit a wrong note, she turned to the camera and said, “You’re making me mess up.”
One day, out on the canoe with all of them stuffed in, Julie sitting at one end, the kids in the middle, and Hut at the other, steering. The lake was brownish, and the sky was dazzling blue. Julie’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail that stuck through a tan baseball cap. Hut had taken his shirt off, and his hair was slick from sweat, and his skin had turned a light brown.
Matt kept surprising Livy with the camera: “I see you!”
“Shut up.”
“Livy, do not talk to your brother like that.”
“Yeah, squirt.”
“Don’t call me squirt.”
“Okay, squishy.”
“Matthew, let’s not do this. Don’t tease her.”
“He’s teasing me.”
And then, Matt had finished this brief video with a shot of his father passing him a can of Coke and saying, “Come on, kiddo, enough with the Spielberg act for now.”
9
Julie clicked on other videos. There was a series of strange ones, and she wondered if Matt might be getting artsy with the camera. A static shot of a beautiful house on a lake—maybe the lake in Rellingford, or one of the ones nearby. The house was glassed in on one side, reflecting the woods and the water. It was just a minute of a house.
Another was a shot of a chair. Nothing special about the chair. Just a wooden chair. When Julie looked closer, she saw there was a bit of rope on the floor, beneath the chair.
Another video was of a wasp’s nest. Must’ve been in the eaves of their house. It was like a small gray curled hand, with holes in it. The camera kept going in and out of focus as Matt got closer to the nest. Then, the tip of his finger touched the edge of the papery nest and quickly withdrew.
A small yellow wasp came out, its feelers vibrating. Then, a video that disturbed her, although she chalked it up to childhood fascination with the forbidden. It was just a dead dog, in the road, hit by a car, apparently. Matt had kept the camera on the dog’s body.
As she flipped the videos on and off, she began to dread some of them—he had filmed her sleeping once. From the light through the bedroom window, it must’ve been early morning.
Matt touched the edge of her cheek with his hand, and then quickly withdrew it.
The face of the sleeping Julie flushed a slight red, as if the warmth of his hand had caused a reaction.
In another one, Matt had simply filmed himself, in the hall mirror. He looked as if he’d worked himself into some kind of frenzy—his face was pale and shiny with sweat, his eyes were encircled with dark smudges, and he began touching his face all over as if checking to see if there were something wrong.
One of the videos had Matt talking to a girl at school, roughly his age. Where were they? It might’ve been the bathroom. The walls were green, with some light from a nearby window. She was pressed against the wall, and he kept closing in on her face with the camera. She had tears in her eyes. “Don’t make me,” she said. “Please don’t make me.”
10
Julie turned it off. Sat there, stunned. Didn’t know what to think. She glanced at the clock on the wall—it was nearly eleven.
After several more of these brief video clips, she found the video that had the woman in it.
The woman in the city.
She was young, and she was beautiful, and she looked like the kind of woman in her twenties who would make Hut happy.
Julie felt an insane kind of jealousy. She hated the woman. She wanted to know who she was. She felt she must be losing it if she thought a woman who happened to be at the edge of a video that her stepson had shot might be a woman who had been seeing her husband.
But still, her blood boiled a bit when she saw the red-haired woman, and her mind began imagining things.
11
She used the close-up feature to try and get a better look at the red-haired woman. Had she seen her before? She didn’t think so. Surely this was just a stranger who happened to cross the street at the moment Hut had asked Matt to put down the camcorder.
Then, she replayed other videos of the city trips on Boys’ Day Out. She saw the street again. Rosetta Street. She wasn’t sure where that was. Why would Hut and Matt be walking down that street more than once or even twice? Four times, over four or five months? Winter to spring?
Then, on the edge of one of the digital videos, she thought she saw a flash of red. She hit the close-up button, and zoomed in. The woman? Was that her face? It looked like it. It might’ve been just some other person with red hair. But it looked like the woman.
She went back to the first video that Matt had watched when she’d arrived. The Chelsea Market. Matt and Hut coming out, the camcorder capturing a moment when Hut took a sip from the white cup of coffee.
Just over Hut’s shoulder, a handful of people. She had thought they were waiting for a bus or just talking at the corner with each other.
The woman with the red hair was there, too. This time, without sunglasses. She was a bit indistinct, even in close-up. But she had glanced over to Hut and Matt and the camcorder’s unerring lens just before Matt turned the camcorder off.
12
“Why don’t you just ask Matt about it?” Mel asked.
They went out for a brisk walk in the late afternoon sunshine, while Laura looked after the kids for an hour. They were walking along the road in front of the house, then headed down the hill toward the lake.
“I can’t. You know how he is. I just don’t want to nudge him.”
“Nudge him?”
“Push him. I saw some of his videos. Some are all sunny and bright and happy. But a few are just...strange. And he filmed me sleeping. And the one of his classmate. I don’t know. It seemed...intrusive. Like he was making her do something.”
“You’re reading too much into it, Jules. For all you know, that was a drama assignment. Or it was something completely innocent. You won’t know unless you ask him.”
“All right. All right,” Julie said, clenching her fists as she walked. “But those other tapes. In the city. Seeing that woman.”
“Maybe you’re looking for things to make yourself feel better about it,” Mel said, her voice having a curious edge to it as if she were hiding something.
Julie stood still. Mel walked a few paces past her, then turned around. “What?”
“What did you mean by that?” Julie asked.
“Nobody would blame you. It’s overwhelming to me that Hut’s gone, too. That some psycho kills him in the woods not five miles from his home. But you have got to set your mind in balance, fast, Julie. You have two kids who are depending on you. Who need you badly. I’m sorry to put it this way. I am. But you have to pull it together, slap yourself awake and forget anything you’re afraid of from the past and move forward. You want to see a therapist? See a therapist. You want to take a month off work? I bet the insurance will kick in and give you summer off if you want it. But you have got to get yourself together and not dwell. That’s the best I can put it.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘feeling better about it.’ About what?”
“Hut. Being gone. Maybe if you think he was cheating on you, somehow you can deal with it.”
“This is not Little Julie weaseling out of anything,” Julie said. “This is not me at ten years old not wanting to deal with Mom and Dad’s divorce, Mel. I loved him. I loved him. I will never love any man like that again. I miss him. I ache at night knowing that I won’t ever wake up beside him again. I am torn down the middle when I have a dream about him. I have to fight to keep from crying when Livy comes to me in the middle of the night because she wants me to help get God to send him back to us. I have to look her
in the eye. She has nightmares three nights a week that a ghost is coming for her. She is seeing a psychiatrist, for God’s sake. My six-year-old daughter. And Matt. Oh my God, Mel, Matt. I have to keep him from hurting himself and maybe anyone else. I have to keep him safe when his own mother would not. And I have to tell them that life is still good. That it’s still worth something. Even if I don’t feel it inside. Even if I’m not sure it’s true. I’m not sure there’s good in the world. I’m not sure that this life is worth living. I’m not sure that if the man I love can be torn from me by some—some obscene insane fucked-up human being who the police can’t seem to catch—that I can look at my children and say, ‘God loves you. The world is God’s creation. We have a wonderful life.’ I’m not sure I can ever, ever believe that. And I won’t lie to them. But I want to know who Hut was. I want someone else to tell me what I didn’t know. I want to feel that life is worth living. Do you understand me? Do you? Can you?”
Mel had a blank look on her face. Nothing had registered. “Julie. It’s been months. It’s not like you have this luxury life. Your kids need you. I’ll help out. But don’t dwell on every little unsolved mystery of his life. He was a man. No one is perfect. You loved him. You have a beautiful daughter. She needs you like she’s never needed anyone before. You’re never going to find out if he cheated on you. He’s dead. Think of Livy. Put her first, and things will fall into place. I’m not sure that therapist is doing you any good. If you want to talk to a minister or priest …”
Julie felt an overwhelming desire to explode at her sister, but instead turned around and walked back up the hill toward her house.
13
Julie went up to her bedroom, shut and locked the door. She called the phone number she’d found in Hut’s jacket so many months before she couldn’t remember which month it had been. It felt disloyal to his memory to call it, but she reasoned that if he had been having an affair—which, with the distance of his death and the perspective she’d gained from becoming a widow, suddenly, in a violent circumstance—maybe it was partly her fault, too, maybe she was too involved with the kids and the ER and the idea of them as a couple instead of what he needed with all the stress he had at the clinic. Maybe it was just the nature of men. “All men cheat,” her mother had warned her before she’d married.
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