Every day since Charles’s death had ended with Anna in tears. She had learned to swallow them, awful as they were. They burned her throat. Nausea always ensued. She hadn’t seen Charles dead on the ground, but that didn’t stop her from imagining the scene. Every vision she had was worse than the previous. She saw the blood. She saw his hip, broken and skewed in an impossible direction. She saw a hole in the back of his head. She saw his vertebrae, she saw his brain. She shoved these images away but they came back harder, and the details of the scene grew more aggressive. She saw him in the oven that cremated him. She watched his skin turn black and burn away. She saw his dust.
Bruno? She nudged her husband, who’d been asleep since before Anna had come to bed herself. Bruno? He stirred but just as quickly settled. Bruno, wake up. Put your hands on me. I want your hands. She jostled him again. This time he didn’t move at all. Wake up, wake up. Anna slid her hand under the blanket and up his arm, then down his chest, past his stomach to the waistband of his pajama bottoms. She ran her finger under the elastic. Bruno purred but didn’t wake up. Anna let her hand travel on. She pulled his pajamas away from him, then down, then she drew back the comforter and lay her head between his legs and put her lips around his cock. It was soft. She sucked it like a baby does a nipple, a child his thumb. Wake up, Bruno. Make love to me. His cock grew marginally stiff, then stopped. It wasn’t going to happen. She pulled his pants back up and fell back to her own side of the bed. When she closed her eyes she saw Charles close his own eyes that final time. She saw his very last breath.
She got up and threw on pants, a sweatshirt, shoes, and ran out of the house without locking the door. My hill, my bench. It was close to 2:00 A.M.
She was full-on bawling. I’ve lost so much! So much! Earlier that day she’d gone into the boys’ room. Charles’s clothes were still in the closet. She went in to grab the shirt he’d worn the day before he died (no one had washed it yet; Anna wouldn’t let them). She brought it to her face, but the scent of him had faded. It was almost gone. She rifled through the rest of the closet, the dresser. Nothing smelled like him. It was like losing him once more. She would never see her boy again.
It was too much. At the top of the hill she yelled, she shook out her hands, she stomped her feet. Goddammit! She fell to her knees. She curled to a ball on the cold, rocky path. Fix this! Fucking make it stop! It was a prayer, maybe to fucking itself. Wake up, Bruno, she cried as if he could hear. I need you to put your hands on me!
Anna writhed and clutched at her skin through her sweatshirt, the ground was a pillow of stone. Hands, I need hands. In the moment, Bruno was useless. Archie and Karl were unreasonable possibilities. And Stephen was gone, gone for good. Anna slid her hands beneath her shirt and up to her chest. She grabbed her breasts hard enough to bruise them. She pinched her nipples. That’s it, Anna. Yes. Yes. She had no one to rely on but herself. She put her right hand down the front of her jeans. She’d made herself wet. That’s it. That’s it. She slipped her middle finger in and rested her thumb on her clit. Yes, yes. In the shameless dark she tried to get herself off.
It was dire and wrong and even in the middle of a cloudy, starless night she felt one thousand eyes upon her. From God no secrets are hid, she thought. He knows it all already.
A dog barked. Anna bolted upright. Oh, shit. She scrambled to her feet and spun in all directions but she saw nothing. The dog barked again. I have to get out of here. Anna ran down the hill, yelling the entire way. Fuck you, God. Fuck you, universe. I need hands! Hands!
At home she could not bear the bedroom. I have nowhere to go but down. So she did. Down the basement stairs and around the corner to the root cellar. The floors were dirt and the walls smelled like rotten apples. She shrank into a corner and fell asleep on the ground. It was the farthest away she could get from the awful Eye of God.
FROM URSULA’S BEDROOM, POLLY Jean began to cry. Anna moved to stand but Ursula, queen of intervening that night, told everyone once more to stay put and came out from the kitchen and passed through the dining room on her way to get the baby. Bruno and Anna nodded in concert as she passed, an irrelevant display of marital unity. When Ursula returned just a moment later she carried a sniffling Polly in her arms. Again, in unison, both Anna and Bruno held out their arms to receive her. Bruno was closest. Ursula gave Polly Jean to him. Bruno sat the baby on his lap and turned her toward the table. The sniffling stopped when Polly saw the cake. She reached for it but Bruno said no and pushed it out of grabbing distance. Polly Jean whined and tried for it once more before giving up. She was too tired to fuss, even for cake. Bruno drew the baby closer to his body. Polly Jean yawned and sighed, then closed her eyes.