Talking to the Dead Read online

  Kevin speaks through clenched teeth. “I thought you read the tags before you threw them in the washer.”

  I run a causal hand down his torso, from his shoulder to his navel. “I thought you talked to me before spending that much money for one shirt.” I climb the stairs, still munching the croissant.

  He follows me, ranting about the shirt.

  In the bedroom I change into my pajamas, half listening. He thrusts the fabric toward me, not quite in my face, but just under my chin. He pulls his hand away quickly, as if realizing he may have gone too far. “It’s silk, you know.”

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t even recall seeing it before now.

  I turn the tap on and wet my toothbrush, raising my voice over the noise of running water. “We’ll never get our five-bedroom house if you keep buying hundred-dollar shirts,” I say it in a singsong, slightly teasing voice, hoping to relax him.

  He hollers back, “You’re missing the point completely.”

  I walk back to the bedroom, toothbrush in mouth, and stick my head in the room. “I’m sorry the shirt is ruined. Really I am. But it’s just a shirt, Kevin.” I return to the bathroom. If he made any reply it was lost in a stream of flowing cool water.

  My hands shook as I dialed the hospital courtesy phone. I turned and looked at Maggie sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital corridor. She raised her eyebrows at me in question and I held up my hand, palm forward, in response. It took two attempts before I was able to punch in the correct series of numbers. I finally succeeded, then accidentally dropped the receiver and stood, dumbly, watching as it swung like a pendulum from the cord. I picked it up and squashed it to my ear. I heard the ringing of the phone and the wail of a distant siren at the same time. After two more rings Heather answered.

  “Can you come and get me at the hospital?” I said into the phone.

  “Kate, what happened? Are you okay?”

  I squeezed the receiver. “We’re fine. Can you come and get us?”

  “We?”

  “Maggie Cunynghame and me. I’ll explain when you get here.” She agreed, and I hung up. I stared at the numbers on the phone.

  I felt my heart banging, two-fisted, against my ribs. My sister had lied to me. And I was going to find out why.

  My stomach clenched with impatience. It had been a long process of waiting, loading and unloading Maggie from Heather’s compact car, installing her in her home, ensuring her comfort and safety, and promising to call every hour to check on her. On our way out I looked back to see Maggie sitting in a recliner, swaddled in blankets and piled high with her cordless phone, remote control, box of tissues, and two cats. A cup of steaming tea sat on a small table beside her. Her new crutches were within easy reach. She gazed lovingly at the television and didn’t even look up when we stepped out the door.

  I walked to the car, suppressing a gag of nervousness. I needed to ask Heather about Kevin’s clothes. She couldn’t have gotten them from the hospital if Kevin wasn’t wearing anything when he arrived. Where did she find them? Why didn’t she tell me?

  I eased myself down into the passenger seat and felt the dull throb in my neck return. The painkillers they had given me were wearing off. I fished in my purse for the prescription the doctor at the hospital had written for me, and showed it to Heather. She glanced at it and nodded, yes, we’d head to the drugstore next.

  She backed out of Maggie’s driveway. We rolled slowly past the debris of the accident still lying on the road. Glass from my broken headlights, bits of yellow from the side of Maggie’s car. I did that, I thought. I looked at the pieces of car scattered on the ground and felt an odd sense of disconnection from them. It had happened, but it felt unreal. I carried the impact of the moment in my aching muscles, yet my mind couldn’t connect with the events. As if my psyche was already too full of events to process and trauma to make sense of, so it rejected this newest piece of information. Yes, it said, we’ve been in a crash, but I can’t deal with that right now. As we drove past, a silver fragment of my bumper gleamed up at me like a wink.

  15

  I stood at the tall pharmacy counter and slid my debit card through the slot on the machine. I idly punched in my numbers and turned to look at Heather. She was studying a bottle of some kind of herbal medicine. She looked beautiful in her baby blue T-shirt and creamy cotton shorts. She pushed her hair to one side. She read the ingredients label off the bottle. Her lips moved as she read. She was my brilliant, ordinary sister. And a liar.

  “Rejected,” said a voice from behind me.

  I turned and faced the pharmacist. “Excuse me?”

  “The transaction,” the pharmacist said, sliding the card toward me.

  I stared down at it. How can a debit card be rejected?

  “It says nonsufficient funds,” came the reply to my unspoken question.

  “Non—” I began. Frozen. Donna had told me that the bank account was frozen but that she would take care of it. That was over a week ago. She must have forgotten, I thought. “Heather,” I called, not bothering to turn around.

  My sister came and stood beside me. I held up my useless bank card. She looked at it, then at the pharmacist, then back at me. She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet.

  The two painkillers went down with water. Heather took the glass from me and put it in my sink.

  She gave me a gentle push toward the living room. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

  I sank into the sofa and felt an immediate sense of relief and weariness. I closed my eyes.

  She stood, looking at me. “You need me to stay?”

  I shook my head. “Heather, I need the truth.”

  “Truth? About what?”

  “Kevin’s clothes,” I said as I opened my eyes in order to see her reaction.

  Heather’s face turned to wood, an expression I couldn’t interpret. Her eyes darted back and forth like two trapped birds. She sat down hard on the sofa. I leaned toward her.

  “I asked about Kevin’s missing watch at the hospital. The nurse said there was no watch. More than that, Kevin had been naked when he arrived at the hospital.”

  “Watch,” Heather said in a dull whisper. She looked down at her hands.

  It confirmed what I suspected. I’d never mentioned Kevin’s missing watch to Heather, but she already knew it had not been among the articles of clothing she’d brought back to me. Could I get her to tell me the truth? “The day of the funeral, I asked you to come with me to the hospital, to get his things. You said you’d go alone instead.”

  “I did,” Heather said. “Then I brought them here. You were sleeping, so I put them at the bottom of the bed and left.”

  I had had a dream that night, of Kevin standing over me. When I awoke, his clothes were lying at the bottom of the bed. It must have been Heather I sensed in the room.

  I shook my head. “How did you manage to get his clothes from the hospital if he had been naked when he arrived there? They never had his clothes in the first place.”

  Heather spread her hands out in front of her. “Obviously the nurse today got it wrong.” She placed her hands on her knees and gave me a sad smile. “Kate, you’ve had a long, rotten day. The last thing you need is to get worked up about a simple misunderstanding.”

  I furrowed my brow. “She read it right off the chart.”

  “So what? So someone wrote wrong information on a chart.” Heather threw her hands around. “I’ll bet it happens all the time. The clothes at the bottom of your bed were the ones Kevin was wearing that day, right?”

  “Yeah …” I said in slow motion. Or, at least they could have been. I still could hardly remember anything about the morning of the day he died, including what he’d been wearing. But they were Kevin’s things. I didn’t see any point in mentioning my memory loss to Heather. I also didn�
�t tell her how my head was beginning to feel loose and disconnected from my body.

  “Well there you go,” she said like she had just closed the case. “Whoever wrote that in the chart must have not seen Kevin until after the doctors had removed his clothes.”

  I felt a rush of warmth through my limbs as all the muscles in my body seemed to relax at once. The pills were taking effect in a hurry. “Removed them?”

  Heather leaned forward. “They would have needed his clothes out of the way in order to work on him. To try to save him.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes again. I tried to picture it; white coats, bright lights, hands pushing and pulling clothing out of the way, sharp voices calling urgent orders. It made sense.

  A warm exhaustion filled my bones and turned my muscles to liquid. “Painkillers,” I mumbled and eased into sleep.

  “You’ll sleep your life away,” Kevin said.

  My eyelids drifted open, then slammed shut. My limbs were loose and indistinct. Where was I? “Where are you?” I said, my voice thick and veiled. Silence. I should have known better. Questions were a no-no. I moved my hand, but it wouldn’t move. I tried my finger, but I couldn’t feel it. “Drugs. I took drugs.”

  “You’re Briar Rose, sleeping your life away.” His voice was soft, slightly mocking.

  “I can’t feel anything.”

  “Once, you had the flu and slept for twenty-six hours.” He sounded close, as if whispering in my ear.

  I lifted my arm to touch him, but it just lay there on the couch. “I’m awake now.”

  A soft laugh, like a rolling mumble. “You’re sleeping.”

  “I wish I could touch you.”

  “And once, you stayed up for thirty-six hours straight. I don’t know why.”

  I counted my breaths, like sheep, four, five. “That was when Dad died. I couldn’t sleep.” Ten, eleven. “Is it good to be dead?”

  Silence.

  Eighteen, nineteen.

  16

  I had a lot to do. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and I’d accomplished exactly nothing. Rendered useless by a backlog of guilt, indecision, and painkillers, I sat at my kitchen table drinking my fifth cup of coffee and stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of me.

  I tapped my pencil in time with the ticking clock. I sipped my coffee. I needed to make another list. Maybe it would organize my thoughts, spur me to action. My hand drifted to the paper and the pencil wrote: Call Maggie. Guilt slithered down my throat into my gut. How could I have hit her with my car? What was I thinking, pulling a U-turn like that? I owed her so much. She had visited me after Kevin’s funeral, when I needed someone to talk to; offered encouragement and a list of counselors’ names. And how did I repay her? I slammed into her car and sent her to the hospital with a gouged leg. Not cut, gouged. Thirty-two stitches. That was two days ago. I picked up the phone and dialed.

  Maggie’s voice boomed out of the receiver, “How’s the neck, pet?”

  I reached back and touched my spine with the cool coffee spoon. “Better. What about your leg?”

  She let out a short chuckle. “I’ll live.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you.”

  “You’re in abominable pain. I know, your sister told me.”

  “Heather told you? When?”

  “She was here this morning. She’s been checking on me a couple of times a day. What a gem, that girl.”

  “Yeah,” I said in a slow, dull voice. “She’s matchless.” I gave my head a feeble shake, hoping the details of my recent conversation with Heather would fall loose. All I could recall was Heather’s voice, fast and high pitched.

  “About your car,” I said to Maggie. “We never exchanged insurance information.”

  “Let’s take another day or two just to be injured. Paperwork can wait. You won’t be charged. I told the police they can’t charge you with anything. They said they wouldn’t. Nice chaps.”

  “Charged?” I hadn’t thought of that. A laser of pain shot me between the eyes. How many things are there in the world that I hadn’t thought of? Frozen bank accounts, life insurance, mortgage papers, police charges. Watches.

  I gulped my coffee and briefly wondered about mixing caffeine with codeine. My right leg twitched.

  Maggie’s voice pulled me back to the present. “Just a ticket, that’s all. And as for the car, well, I was thinking of getting a new one anyway. The smashup just helped me make up my mind about it. As soon as I’m up to it, I’m going to the dealership and pick up that PT Cruiser. Have you seen it? It’s purple. Gorgeous, just gorgeous.”

  I couldn’t believe how happy she sounded. “I’ll bring you some food later on,” I said, thinking of my well-stocked freezer. “Compliments, again, of Heather.”

  “No need, dear. Several ladies from the church have been comin’ round bringing me meals. I’m a well-fed cripple, I assure you.”

  Maggie was apparently inundated with visitors as she recuperated. I cast a glance around my blank kitchen. Heather hadn’t been back since the day of the accident. I had run her off. Bullied her with my suspicions and questions.

  I hung up and went to work on my to-do list. I put a line through Call Maggie. Under it I wrote Call Donna. I needed to figure out my finances. I ran a soft finger over the numbers on the phone. I dialed a different number instead.

  The phone rings and I jump up from my seat on the floor to answer it. I hop over two sets of legs and swerve around a couple lost in conversation by the stairs. Our small house is bursting with friends. I reach the phone on the fifth ring. It’s Blair. I push the receiver tight against my ear and plug the other ear with a finger. “Where are you? Everyone is here already.”

  “Listen, I don’t think I’ll come.” Blair’s voice is muffled. I barely hear him above the racket of music and talking.

  “How come? Are you sick?”

  He sighs, “Just not up to a party tonight.”

  I wave dismissively, even though he can’t see me. “Oh, come on, just get over here. You’ll have fun. The place is hopping with cute chicks.”

  “That’s the last thing I’m interested in, Kate.” It’s not like him to be testy. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  A roar of male voices drowns out all other sounds. A group of guys pushing each other’s shoulders in good-natured challenge. Something’s up, I think, smiling. “I think the guys are planning something—maybe a game of football out front,” I tell Blair.

  “Kate, you and I need to talk,” he says. I look at the friends milling around our house. Then I spot her. A pretty blonde standing by herself in a corner, looking around as if searching for someone. Ah-ha. I can’t recall her name, there are so many to keep straight, but I recognize her as one of Blair’s girlfriends. She looks cute and pouty and I think to myself that Blair must be avoiding running into her.

  I’m about to say something when a hand reaches out and pulls me into the kitchen. Kevin, smiling and flushed in the overheated house, says, “Who’s that?”

  “Blair. He doesn’t want to come.”

  Kevin takes the phone from my hand. “Be here in five minutes, dude. We’re going to scrimmage in the front yard and I need your passing arm.” Kevin hangs the phone up. “He’ll come.” He’s still holding onto my arm.

  I look at the phone. “He sounded upset.”

  He lifts one brow. “He’s fine. And besides, I’m the only man you need to worry about.” He smiles in a lusty way and we laugh. “Having fun?” he says.

  “A wonderful time,” I say, trying to free my arm from his grip and rejoin the party, but he holds firm. Something in his eye makes me stop short, catch my breath.

  He takes a half step toward me. “You look amazing tonight, Mrs. Davis.” He speaks from the back of his throat, making his words sound low and growling. The par
ty can wait. He leans down, our foreheads touch. He says, “You are so beautiful, you know that?” Then he kisses me. He takes his time as if our house wasn’t full of people. He lingers over my mouth until I no longer hear the din of people talking, music blaring. When he lets me go he says, “I’m having a good time too.” He saunters off and joins a group of guys talking hockey. I watch him for a moment, everyone so at ease with each other, and I am overcome by a feeling of belonging. Loved by our friends, yet having a secret place in the midst of them where he and I are alone, even in a crowd.

  I picked up the phone and dialed.

  A deep voice. “Hello?”

  “You said if I ever needed you—”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Blair rapped on the kitchen door. I opened it and said, “Hi. Let’s walk.”

  We headed uptown, toward the elementary school. I walked fast, like something creeping and relentless was following us. Blair easily kept pace, his long legs taking one stride to every two of mine. It looked like he was growing his hair out. He was wearing a faded T-shirt the color of pea soup that read, “Don’t should on me.” He looked young and moppish. A perk of operating a skateboard shop, I supposed.

  We entered the deserted school yard, and I headed toward the playground equipment. The school had recently installed an immense tire swing that looked as though it could hold six or seven children at one time, maybe more. It could swing back and forth and spin around at the same time, like an amusement park ride.

  I walked over to the tire, swung one leg up and over, and sat down, straddling it like a horse. Blair did the same, across from me, and then leaned back onto one of the three chains suspending the swing. He closed his eyes and raised his arms up, folding his hands behind his head. His body looked strong, like flesh stretched over granite. I swallowed hard and looked away. We swayed on the swing for a long moment.