“Tuesday evening, we believe,” Mr. Perkins said. “Miss Zapata said that the bed was not slept in and some”—he coughed delicately—“nightclothes were laid out.”
So Elspeth had lain there all night and all the next day. When—when—would Graham learn not to ask questions?
“Of course,” Mr. Perkins said, “it goes without saying that we are all extremely regretful that we didn’t check on her sooner.”
Well, yes, regrets. Everyone had them. But Mr. Perkins hadn’t left Elspeth waiting in a hotel room and then never contacted her again. Mr. Perkins wasn’t the one who had divorced Elspeth and left her to live alone. And die alone.
Mr. Perkins cleared his throat again. It was clear that Graham was leaving too many pauses in the conversation. “I thought you would want to attend the funeral on Monday.”
“Yes, of course,” Graham said.
Mr. Perkins gave him the details and Graham wrote them on the scratch pad by the phone. They said goodbye and hung up and Graham rested his forehead against the kitchen wall.
Shocking. And perhaps most shocking of all was that even at this moment, a part of Graham was happy that now he wouldn’t have to sit through dessert with Mrs. Munn.
—
It was a strange weekend. It had no—no rhythm.
Graham woke up at five in the morning on Saturday and then fell back to sleep at his normal waking time. He woke up again in the late morning and the light was all wrong—dark golden, like rancid honey.
He made cooking mistakes he hadn’t made in years. He burned the toast for breakfast, and his scrambled eggs were tough and dry. He crowded the meatballs in the frying pan and forgot to add salt to the pasta. His hamburger patties crumbled like damp sand castles and he undercooked the potatoes, making the potato salad inedible. His timing was off, too. He served lunch early and dinner late on Saturday, and then lunch late and dinner early on Sunday, as though he were a traveler trying to trick his metabolism into some new time zone.
Audra’s rhythm was affected, too. She wanted to talk about Elspeth’s death and she would begin speaking in a sad, serious tone and say things like, “Of course, we must go to the funeral” and “You must reach out to mutual friends and let them know.”
Her voice was subdued but not very subdued. It wasn’t quite as effervescent as the first glass of champagne out of the bottle—it was more like the third glass—but there were still bubbles aplenty. Then she would get a little more upbeat and say, “Who takes baths anymore? Except for, I don’t know, eccentric millionaires and maybe very elderly British people?” and “Did she take a lot of baths when you were married?” and “Who was the last person she spoke to, do you know?”
“No,” Graham said. “Maybe someone at her office.”
“I hope it was someone she liked a lot,” Audra said. “I hope that they had a nice long satisfying conversation and the very last thing Elspeth said was ‘It made me so happy to talk to you!’?”
Graham wasn’t sure Elspeth had ever said that to anyone, let alone as her last words.
“I wonder about last words, sometimes,” Audra continued. “What if your very last words were, you know, ‘I think maybe I left my curling iron on’? When Matthew first started going to elementary school, I would make sure that the very last thing I said to him every morning was ‘I will always love you,’ so that if something happened to me, that would be the last thing he remembered me saying. But that sort of fell by the wayside and now when I drop him off, I say, ‘Don’t tell me you forgot your backpack again!’ or ‘Jump out quickly before someone honks!’ You know, in general, I feel my standards of mothering have declined over the years. Doesn’t it seem like I would have gotten better after so much practice? Like by this point, I should just be able to snap my fingers and—poof!—Matthew’s dressed and fed and loved and secure? But instead it’s more like Downton Abbey and I had a couple of very strong seasons there in the beginning and now I’m cutting corners like crazy.”
Downton Abbey? What was she talking about?
Audra looked suddenly abashed and reverted to her semisentimental voice. “Do you remember when Elspeth said she liked my topaz earrings?”
(This was apparently the fondest memory she had of Elspeth, which was upsetting on a number of levels.)
Elspeth’s death was like—like—well, like a few years ago when they pulled up the carpet in the bedroom and had the hardwood floor restored. Graham had not realized his muscle memory was so strong, but for weeks, every time he entered the bedroom, he stepped down too hard, expecting the floor to be an inch higher than it was. The fact of Elspeth’s death was like that little jolt, surprising him from time to time.
How awful that Elspeth should die and his only symptoms of grief were a faint muscle memory and bad potato salad. Was that truly all he was capable of? But that was why the weekend had no rhythm, Graham realized. He was treating sorrow as a formality, or a temporary condition—like a room he was passing through and shortly he’d enter another room where some other, happier emotion was going on.
—
Before the funeral service started, Audra leaned across Graham and said to the elderly woman seated next to him on the pew, “Excuse me, but would a nice pretty lady such as yourself have a breath mint?”
The old lady gave a pleased, full-cheeked chortle. “Well, now certainly,” she said and began rooting through her purse. She was the old-ladiest type of old lady, with feathery white hair, bright red lipstick, and a little hat with white flowers on the brim.
“Here you go,” she said at last and held out a roll of peppermint Life Savers.
“Oh, thank you!” Audra said, taking one. “I had a roast beef sandwich for lunch and I can still taste the horseradish.”
“For me, it’s garlic bagels,” the old lady said.
“Garlic is the worst,” Audra said. “Did you know it comes out your pores and not just your breath? Once Graham here had lunch in Little Italy and he smelled so garlicky afterward that his office sent him home! Apparently everyone else was having trouble concentrating because there was Graham, smelling like an Italian sausage and not even aware of it.”
“Mercy!” the old lady said. She pulled back and gave Graham a long look, the flowers on her hat bobbling in a startled way.
“And don’t even get me started on tuna fish,” Audra said.
“Goodness, no,” the old lady said.
“Although,” Audra continued thoughtfully, “as I get older, this whole freshening process seems to me like a lot of upkeep. I mean, brushing your teeth, okay—that has health ramifications. But deodorant? And scented shower gel? Followed by scented lotion? And different scented shampoo, and then scented hair spray? Sometimes I think, Where does it all end? Why not just go around with bad breath and smelly armpits?”
She gestured at Graham slightly, and the old lady flicked him a little glance. Evidently he was now the world representative of body odor.