She immediately recognized the grief on his face. The flat eyes rimmed in red. The face blotchy from tears.
“Are you the obituary writer?” the man asked in a voice hoarse from crying.
“Vivien Lowe,” Vivien said, extending her hand.
But the man did not offer his. He took a step back, and opened his arms wide as if to indicate the size, the enormity of what had brought him to Vivien’s door.
“They’re dead,” he said. “Both of them.”
Vivien walked over to him, taking his arm and gently guiding him toward her. Grief paralyzed you. She knew this. It prevented you from getting out of bed, from moving at all. It prevented you from even taking a few steps forward.
“You found your way here,” she told him softly. “That is quite an accomplishment.”
He let her bring him inside. He let her slide his heavy black coat from him and lead him to the sofa. With her fingertips on his shoulders, Vivien gently pushed him down so that he was sitting.
“Both of them,” he said again.
Vivien sat in the chair across from him. His hands, folded as if in prayer, were creased with dark red. Blood, she realized, swallowing hard.
“Who, darling?” she asked. “Who has died?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he tried to speak.
“It’s all right,” Vivien said, patting his knee. “I’m going to make you some hot tea. And some toast. I bet you haven’t eaten anything in hours.”
He shook his head, as if the very idea of eating was impossible to comprehend.
“You sit right here,” Vivien said.
She poured him a glass of water for his dry throat, and placed it in his hands. When he didn’t take a sip, she wrapped her hands around his and lifted the glass to his cracked lips. The man began to drink, greedily, water spilling down his stubbled chin and onto his white shirt, which Vivien saw also had dark rust spots splattered across it. He finished the water and held out the glass for more. Three times Vivien refilled it for him.
After the last glass, the man stood, clutching his stomach.
“I’m going to be sick,” he said.
Vivien brought him into the bathroom, holding his damp head while he vomited into the toilet.
“There, there,” she said as he retched.
Finally, he collapsed onto the floor, pressing his body against the wall. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and long legs. His dark blond curls were flattened with sweat, and he gave off the iron smell of blood.
He looked up at her, shaking his head as he spoke.
“Everything seemed to be going fine,” he said, his voice filled with disbelief. “She was doing fine.”
Vivien kneeled beside him.
“Who?” she asked.
“My Jane.” Saying the name out loud made him choke on it. “And our daughter.” His eyes shined with tears. “We were going to name her Hazel. Hazel Jane.”
The grief-stricken want to hear the names of those they’ve lost. To not say the name out loud denies that person’s existence. People seeking to comfort mourners often err this way. They lower their eyes at the sound of the dead’s name. They refuse to utter it themselves.
“But you have,” Vivien said, beginning to understand what had happened. “You have named her Hazel. She’s Hazel Jane.”
“Hazel Jane,” he said softly.
Vivien stood and opened the small cabinet above the sink. She took out some baking soda and some lavender water.
“You’ll freshen up now,” she said. “I’ll make your tea and toast while you freshen up.”
He got awkwardly to his feet.
“Then we’ll sit down and talk and I will write something beautiful for Jane and Hazel,” Vivien said.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome . . . ?”
“Benjamin.”
“Benjamin,” Vivien repeated.
As Vivien sliced two pieces of sourdough bread from the loaf, Emily Dickinson, that strange reclusive poet from Massachusetts, came to her. She had read both of her collections, Poems and Poems: Second Series, and been struck by the simplicity and power of the writing. That combination seemed to speak to the grief of the young man in her parlor too.
The teakettle whistled and Vivien poured the boiling water over the tea leaves waiting in the cup.
Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me, Vivien thought.
No, that one wasn’t quite right. It didn’t capture the permanence of this double loss. Wife and infant daughter. Gone.