He pulled his arms around in front of him and stared at his hands. They were quivering. Guilt tore at him. In a way, he knew, he’d aided her in what had just happened. He didn’t want to do this to himself or to Molly, but he couldn’t help himself.
Deirdre was standing by the door. “Zip your pants, David. And clean yourself up. This is kind of a place of worship, and cleanliness is the next best thing to Godliness.”
Without looking back at him, she walked from the room, leaving the door standing open behind her.
He rushed to the door and closed it.
Then he zipped his fly, straightened his shirt and tie, and opened the door again, slowly.
Deirdre was gone. The entrance area outside the consolation rooms was still deserted.
He managed to make his way to the restroom and followed her advice.
At Glory and Resurrection Cemetery, the morning sun was beginning to make the mourners uncomfortable despite the fact that they were gathered in the shade of a temporary canopy. Molly felt a rivulet of perspiration trickle down her ribs beneath the same navy blue dress she’d worn the previous night to the visitation. She didn’t like the idea of wearing the same dress, but it was the only dark outfit she owned that wouldn’t have been stiflingly hot.
Only a few dozen mourners had made the journey from the mortuary to attend the funeral. A short, gray-haired woman with puffy eyes had introduced herself near the coffin the night before as Bernice’s mother. She seemed to be benefiting from physical as well as psychological support from a lean, dark man with sunglasses, standing next to her and supporting her. Bernice’s uncle, if Molly remembered correctly.
The pallbearers had rested Bernice’s burnished steel casket on a bier. The grave was dug but covered with sagging, impossibly green artificial turf to spare those gathered the trauma of seeing into the yawning cavity in the earth that was about to receive Bernice’s body and claim it for the rest of time.
Molly wiped her eyes and leaned on David as the minister, a young, prematurely bald man with acne, finished the service with a prayer: “…shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
She didn’t remember anything else about the prayer. “Forever,” was all she could think about. Forever.
David hadn’t spoken at all during the drive to the cemetery and was standing motionless, as if lost in his own thoughts. Maybe Bernice’s death had affected him more than Molly had thought. Men were that way, keeping their feelings bottled and corked and then breaking down in private, as if grief and loneliness had to be synonymous. He’d missed the first part of the service in the mortuary chapel, and when he’d returned to sit beside her again in the pew, his face was pale and thoughtful.
The minister tossed a handful of earth onto the artificial turf, then nodded to the mourners as a signal that the funeral was over. With a sad smile, he moved toward Bernice’s mother to give final consolation.
David started to leave, but Molly gripped his arm and stopped him. He seemed startled for a second, which surprised her. Then he smiled down at her and looked all around him, as if coming out of a dream.
When the minister had walked away, she went to where Bernice’s mother was still standing with the slim, dark man.
“If you need any help,” Molly said to her. “I mean, with Bernice’s things. We live right downstairs from her apartment and we’ll be glad to do what we can.”
“That’s nice of you,” the mother-Iris, Molly remembered now-said. She might have had a slight accent, though Molly hadn’t noticed it the night before. Molly wrote their phone number on a slip of paper from her purse and gave it to her.
“She was on her swim team in high school,” Iris said. “Did you know that?”
“No,” Molly heard David say. He had joined them and now seemed himself again, free of his thoughts of death.
“We could have had an autopsy, but I couldn’t bear to think of that being done to her. She’s dead. She’ll stay dead forever, no matter why she died.”
“I understand,” Molly said. “I think you made the right decision.”
“In the water,” Iris Clark said, “she was a natural. Like a beautiful and graceful dolphin.”
“I’m sorry,” Molly said again, not knowing what else to say. The lean man might have been looking at her. She could see only her own twin reflections in his glasses.
He took Iris Clark’s arm, nodded to both Molly and David, then turned and led Iris to one of the waiting black limousines.
Molly felt David’s arm encircle her waist as they walked toward the last of the three limos.
“On her high school swim team,” Molly said.
“Freak things happen,” David said glumly.
Forever.
Molly began to cry.
24
After Deirdre described what had happened at the funeral home, Darlene looked horrified.
“That was a terrible thing to do!”
“Why?” Deirdre asked. “Just because angelic little you wouldn’t do it?”
They were walking along crowded Fifth Avenue. Darlene was wearing tight slacks that showed off her slender, shapely dancer’s legs, and a white pullover with a scoop neck that made her own neck look even thinner and more delicate. She and Deirdre had met in front of the public library, near a stone lion that guarded so much knowledge. Deirdre’s high heels were making regular clacking sounds on the concrete as she strode along the sidewalk. Beside her, Darlene walked quietly in soft soles.
“I certainly wouldn’t do it in a mortuary,” Darlene said. “And don’t tell me about all the Freudian relationships between sex and death. That’s no excuse.”
“I don’t need an excuse. Anyway, Freud was a fool.”
People glanced at them as the two women approached, then the crowds on the sidewalk parted to let them pass. Darlene had such a confident stride that folks automatically made way for her, sometimes even stepping wide to get out of her path. Deirdre was jealous. She couldn’t help but notice the deferential way people always treated Darlene, as if she were some kind of royalty.
“Why did you have sex there?” Darlene asked.
“Because I wanted to, and so did David.”
“You made him want to. I’ve been thinking a lot about your situation, Deirdre. What you wanted, what you still want, is to control David entirely. To possess him sexually and in every other way.”
“I never made a secret of that. Not with you, anyway. Propriety is the spice of life.”
“Don’t spring those cutesy puns and malapropisms on me, Deirdre.”
Deirdre didn’t like being talked to in such a manner, but an apology here might be the wisest choice. “Okay, I’m sorry. It’s an old habit.”
“I don’t like it. And I don’t approve of sex with a married man in a funeral home. It’s inexcusable.”
“But we both enjoyed the risk. This might be impossible for you to understand, but for some people sex is best when it’s dangerous. It’s much more of a thrill.”
“Does that explain why all those poor people died of AIDS?”
“It explains some of it, I bet. I didn’t realize you had such a social conscience.”
Darlene stopped walking. Deirdre continued for a few steps. then stopped and turned. They moved into a doorway so they wouldn’t be knocked down by the relentless mass of pedestrians.
“I care about you, Deirdre,” Darlene said. “I don’t want you taking those kinds of risks, sinning that way. I care about your body and your immortal soul.”
Deirdre was astounded. “Are you some kind of religious freak?”
“No.”
“Then don’t be so judgmental.”
Darlene looked down at the cigarette butts and crumpled gum and candy wrappers littering the pavement. Then she looked up at Deirdre. “Okay,” she said seriously, “maybe you’re right. From now on I’ll try not to judge.”