Together, they pack insects into cardboard boxes and load the car. The Gregorys have considerately vacated their home for a fortnight, allowing the artist to work undisturbed. The house is already decked in scaffolding. Anyone passing would assume that the new neighbors are simply adding some finishing touches, a few last details to bring the preposterous house completely over the top. Martin smiles to himself. No one would guess the nature of those details. No one would imagine, in a thousand years, the kind of creative risk the Gregorys are about to embrace—the rare kind of people they really are.
It makes sense to start at the front, where the impact will be instantly felt, and so they will be sure not to run out of bugs for the facade. Martin gingerly climbs the scaffolding to the top plank of plywood. The platform feels solid enough, but when he glances at Philomena on the ground, he feels the beginnings of vertigo and clutches a pole.
“Why don’t I stay up here, honey, and you can bring the insects up to me a few at a time,” he calls, keeping his gaze firmly on the bricks of the house. “Just whatever you can handle at once.”
Several moments later, he hears the heavy creaking of the scaffolding ladder, and then his wife’s hand is there, offering a tarantula. He laughs. “Good place to start.”
Philomena continues up and down the ladder each day of the week, and Martin uses industrial epoxy to affix the insects to the house at the painstaking rate she brings them up. It’s a lot of climbing, he knows, but she does not complain. On Good Friday, she wheezes up the ladder, smiles at Martin, then dips into her bucket and presents a swallowtail. It is a splendid specimen, zigzagged with yellow. He finds a spot for it next to a welter of houseflies, where it will glow brilliantly. Philomena balances patiently at the top rung, gripping the plywood plank with one hand and using the other to unload another insect. Martin reaches down for a praying mantis at the moment her grip relaxes. He watches as her fingers release the plank slowly, gracefully, without understanding the meaning of it. Then there is a judder of scaffolding poles as her body crumples and drops to the ground.
Martin feels suspended high above the earth for an instant, saying, “Phil?,” even as he moves to scramble down the ladder. The ground is soft, still muddy from spring rain. Philomena lies on her back. Her face is pale, and she looks at him in a kind of bemused surprise. He begins to feel for her pulse, but considers the passing moments, and instead runs down Minuteman Road to their home telephone.
When the ambulance comes, he rides in the back and watches the medical men. Their huddle obscures his wife from view. He feels absent from the vehicle, as if he is still on the scaffolding platform, holding the praying mantis. He continues to feel absent at the hospital as the doctor lays a hand on his shoulder. Sudden coronary arrest. A main artery jammed with plaque, narrowed over the years. Martin walks away from the hospital, through the parking lot and driveway, to the edge of the street. Then he turns and looks at the building that holds his wife, built of plain white cement blocks. It looks back at him, brutally mute.
The kids stay with him after the services. Claude and his wife settle into the guest room, and their two girls use the trundle bed in Claude’s old bedroom. Melinda chooses to sleep on the old brown couch. She dusts the house and vacuums, sucking up bits of foam that have found their way into the braid of the rugs. She cooks vegetarian dinners in the wok she gave them one Christmas, which they’d never used. Martin walks from room to room and sits in every chair. He cannot find a comfortable spot. Every place has Philomena in it.
The Gregorys leave a condolence card in the mailbox. Martin is glad they didn’t knock. He remains in pajamas, unshowered. He sleeps long, dreamless nights and takes ugly afternoon naps. He speaks only when necessary. The grandkids grow tired of playing board games and begin to whine softly, but are chastised by their parents. One morning, Martin walks through the house—past Melinda brewing coffee in the kitchen, Claude and the girls playing outside the window—and goes into the studio. There is still a square of insulation board remaining. With the blind motions of habit, he takes a serrated knife and carves the tapered abdomen of a wasp.
An unknown period of time passes before his daughter appears in the doorway.
“What are you doing, Dad?”
“Just keeping my hands busy.”
He knows how he must look, the few tufts of dirty white hair fanning out from his head, his pajama top buttoned haphazardly.
“Would you like to help?” he asks.
“What do you mean? Help with what?” Melinda stands stolidly in a clean black sweater and jeans. There is a tone in her voice that Martin doesn’t like.
“What do you think? With the project,” he answers, keeping his eyes on the bug.
There is a long pause, and then Melinda speaks with open rancor. “You have to be kidding me. You’re still doing this? Don’t you understand that Mom is gone?” She takes a breath. “She died, Dad. Doing your stupid project.”