Requiem

1994

The hum of voices fills the hot room, is oppressive, holds her down. How many funerals has this old house seen? How much grief has spilled on these floors? Her guess is plenty. As she looks, the patina of the old floors shines like a path down the length of the rooms to the windows. These floors polished by sadness, she thinks. Joy is hard to imagine right now.

Pamela argued vehemently with Andy when he insisted on living in this old house, never to leave, denying her wish to move nearer to a city. He trumped her dissatisfaction with his sacred vow to be carried out of here feet first. She wants to tease him about this having come true, but teasing is an ordinary thing; nothing ordinary is left for them.

The new widow stands and walks to the bay windows, her sharp focus fixed only out of here. The room behind her disappears. She is in a boat, alone, rushing with the rough water out onto Route 1; the boat is jumping, cresting waves that are the seconds and minutes of this day, and many more to come, she guesses.

Waking from this momentary ellipsis of fantasy, she startles, sees that people are looking toward her, smiling; they seem to know her, though in this moment, they are unfamiliar. Each guest looks like someone she knows, but she can't say exactly who.

Eucalyptus from the unmerciful bouquets seeps like fog along the floor, rises in small gusts with any movement. The scent chokes her. In years to come, she will make rash excuses, hurry to exit florists' shops, gift shops, funerals, waiting rooms, anywhere this cloying smell lives. She will never be in a room with this hated scent without being back here on this hot, sad day. But the present continues to unfold. Secretly, Pamela moves to the future, although she knows you can't do that safely. Tonight she will be alone, alone in a new world.

Again, the ritual in progress snaps her out of her musings, and she returns to move among the mourners. People repeat traditional sentiments as they cast timid glances toward her; she is someone as new to them as she is to herself. She feels discomfort emanate from them, discomfort that he died so suddenly, someone so young, someone so like themselves, so careful with his living. How has it happened in their guarded world?

Pamela cannot respond to the kindly meant words; a delay in understanding, an inability to grasp meaning, keeps her silent. Her discomfort grows, gathers around her in hot layers. She stops trying to respond; is only able to look back blankly at their earnest faces.

She can see the children out on the deck with their friends; a parallel ritual is playing out for them. The fact of their father's death will achieve its weight and shape in days to come. For now, they have a small sanctuary in the illusion that things will be the same. This morning, in early, intense July heat, Pamela was mowing the lawn in preparation for the day to come until her daughter called out of her bedroom window to stop making so much noise. It was so early, she was told. She stopped, of course, stunned that Leslie didn't seem to comprehend the darkness gathering ahead. Her daughter, recently graduated from Brown and teaching at the university in Portland, and her son, returning to the University of Maine in September, are in their own lives, too far from the everydays of this house to come home now. She will have to go it alone, will have to keep moving; the waves cresting at her back rise with each minute.

Words flutter, rustle around her, hang for a moment in air, and then fade to silence. She is so far from what they mean: Rotary Club meeting tomorrow, summer party at the lake next weekend, school beginning soon, someone's grandchild graduating next year; there is no possible connection between these events and her life now.

A deep need to vanish ignites with the surge of heat rising through her body. Pamela excuses herself, aiming for the kitchen. She picks up an empty serving dish as an excuse, intersects the small islands of those present who do not notice and will not follow. This isolation is hers now, a neighborhood she has moved to.

Once she is out on the front porch, the circle of chimes chants, "Nothing is left" on a disheartened breeze. She sits, listening. Was it just a week ago that these chimes were given to her for her birthday?

Pamela doesn't smoke, quit decades ago, hates the habit; but here, on this empty street, this hot porch, the new person she is becoming needs to smoke, needs a cigarette, wants the arrow of intimate smoke to pierce her. Something mighty is forming, coming, is just out of sight now on Pleasant Street but is preparing a full assault for tonight, when she will be alone. She is not afraid of the pain rolling in her, only curious; this person being born knows there is always pain with birth. She is to live in a new world, a world of shadows.

Again, a deep need for the hot scrape of smoke urges her on. She wants to fill herself, to dull the razor thoughts spinning in her head. She pins her hopes of getting through this afternoon by imagining going to the store at the bottom of this once -sweet street as soon as everyone leaves; she will buy a pack of cigarettes. Tonight out in the backyard alone, in the dark, she will smoke. The thought exhilarates her, confirms that new person rising, baptizes her; she is living in secret now.

When they moved into the house more than twenty years ago, Andrew insisted on planting vines by the porch where she sits. Now, in their maturity, they provide deep shade. She closes her eyes, remembering the ordinary day when they dug the deep, brown earth to plant the roots, but she cannot bear this thought for long. The brown of the dug earth is too fresh a wound to abide.

Shade from the heavy, heart-shaped leaves of his vine, of Andrew's vine, rides her face, quivering with a small touch of breeze. Pamela imagines the illusory cigarette in her hand, the smoke entering her lungs. She blows it out, watches as shapeless, colorless smoke drifts away, bearing the past with it. When she opens her eyes, the air around has opened around her, deepened in hue.

Into this sanctuary of pretense, a single monarch butterfly flutters, embossing its color on the air. Pamela focuses on the singular dancer, feels the chill of recognition rise; and that day on the beach comes to life from where it has been stored away.

This...