“Where is he? In his bed?”
“No, he is upon the dining room table. I had a casket brought in.” Her lips quivered a little.
“I better go and see him then, before the neighbors descend.”
“Suit yourself.” She nodded in the direction of the door. “I won’t look at him again until I have to. It’s too hard for me.” She looked down at the half-filled baking tray before her, bottom lip still quivering.
“You washed him, though?”
“Nothing but my duty. Just as it’s my duty to write those cards that have to be sent.” She shook her head so the loose tendrils of hair lifted. “As if correspondence is what I want to spend my time on just now.” Her face twisted up with distaste.
“As you say, it’s your duty. His family needs to be told.”
“Well, they won’t make it here before he’s in the ground.” She lifted her chin a little.
“So be it—they still have to know. Cora said she would stop by with the mourning paper as soon as she got back.”
I stepped out of the sweltering kitchen and entered the dining room. I did not fear death—I had seen it many times before. I had washed my own children, and siblings too, but it still came as a surprise to see a body thus, so pale and smooth. Void of life.
Mads was almost unrecognizable in death. His brow was smoother than it had been for many years; all signs of strife and toil had left him. He lay there in his best suit, and a candle burned in the windowsill. She had combed his mustache, I noticed, taken better care of him in death, perhaps, than she had in the last few years of his life.
I put my fingers on the waxen hands folded on his chest. I wanted to think that his soul was at rest, wherever it was. It pained me to think of how he had struggled to maintain some sort of peace in his house while alive—that his time on earth had held so little happiness.
“Farewell,” I whispered to his still face, the mask of him, cast in death. “I am sorry,” I added. Something like guilt moved in me, twisted in my chest. I hope it was not her fault, I added, but silently, inside. Then my cheeks reddened with shame from even thinking such a thing.
The candle flickered when I opened the door and left, emitting a scent of hot wax and smoke.
Back in the kitchen, it seemed even stranger than before, how they were all at it with the sugar and the flour, with the dead man so close. Jennie’s brow was creased with concentration as she pressed the cookie cutter down in the sheet of dough, pausing from time to time to keep Myrtle from eating the almonds by pushing her little hands away from the blue enamel bowl.
“It’s all right,” Bella said across the table. “She can have one, and you too.” She was rolling out another batch of dough. They were baking for a whole army, it seemed. The grief from before was wiped from Bella’s face; it looked like any other day. “Oh,” she said when she noticed me. “Did you get a good look at him? I groomed him well, I think.”
“Oh yes, he looked very fine.” I felt faint again. The scent of melted wax lingered in my nostrils.
“It is a tragedy, of course.” Her face rearranged again, displaying grief once more.
“Well, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.” I found a spare apron behind the door and set to tie it on. “Jennie will help me with the flowers later, won’t you, Jennie?” I smiled at the girl.
“Sure, Aunt Nellie.” She gave me a quick smile in return.
“It was sad about your father,” I said, while setting to make more dough in the ceramic bowl.
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, but I could not help but note the way her gaze went to Bella for approval, as if she was uncertain if this was the right way to respond.
“We are all crushed, of course,” Bella said, and sat down on a chair, happy to leave the baking to me. “He seemed better too. He was going to work as normal.”
“Sometimes it’s sudden,” I said, not to comfort but because it was the truth. “Did he have any savings? Anything to help you get by?”
“No”—Bella’s lips tightened—“but he was insured, thank God, so that was lucky. We won’t starve just yet.”
“Good,” I said, while whipping the eggs. I could not help but remember Mads’s own words, spoken just after the fire when she had expressed similar sentiments. Such magnificent luck, he had said, in a voice dripping with bitterness.
I pushed the thought away.
* * *
—
I was there often over the next few weeks, long after Mads had been buried, to help with the girls and be of comfort. Sometimes I brought Olga or Nora, but most often I went by myself. I could not understand my sister—the nature of her grief. It blew as hot and cold as a Norwegian summer; sometimes it was as if nothing was amiss, while at other times she would cry her eyes out to strangers. When we were alone together, she did not want to speak of Mads at all.
I still came, though, for Jennie’s sake if nothing else. Myrtle was too small to mourn, but it was different for the older girl. I noted that she had grown quieter since her father died. Only when her mother was around did she make an effort to seem lively. She did not shed her tears, even when her lips quivered and her eyes turned moist but made an effort to keep her grief inside herself. Bella thought her brave, but I thought it all very sad, and brought her out in the garden to pick flowers for Mads’s grave. She seemed to enjoy that, to do something nice for him, even if he would never come back.
Then one day, as I was making a stew in the kitchen, there came a hard rapping on the front door. As I stood there stirring the pot, I could hear Bella rush from the parlor to answer.
At first, I paid little attention to the murmuring voices by the door. I glanced outside the window, though, to keep an eye on the older girls, who were out on the lawn, and caught sight of a stocky man on the porch. He seemed vaguely familiar. Then, suddenly, the murmur grew into proper words, shouted in an angry voice. I almost dropped the wooden spoon into the stew from the shock.
“You’re an evil woman, evil!” the man out there cried. “He knew it would come to this! He always knew it would come to this!”
“You’re grief-stricken.” I heard Bella’s voice, trying to appease the stranger. “Calm yourself, Oscar. We’re all shocked by his sudden death, but he was ill—”
At this, I lifted the pot onto the cooler side of the stove, took off my apron, and stepped into the hall. I should have recognized him, of course, but I had not seen Mads’s brother since their wedding. I lingered at the back of the hall, biding my time, ready to step closer if Bella needed me.
“He was not so ill that he couldn’t unburden himself to me first.” Oscar waved a piece of paper in the air, covered in thick scrawls. “I’m not surprised you didn’t write to me at once, and saw fit to bury him before I had a chance to see him.”