Megan Abbott - Bury Me Deep

Lying in bed now, she thought of him as if on a holy mission to heal and provide salvation, conjuring vivid images of him in deep-riven Mexican mines, primitive climes where Aztec rites still held sway, like she’d seen in the pictures, like she’d seen in the magazines she peeked at while at the five-and-dime when she was very small. When she let herself, after those first rough days at the clinic, hours spent fingers pressing into typewriter ribbon, carbon stuck, ink pressed under her nails, nails torn tugging, doctors stern in white coats intoning in her ear, intoning about patients waiting and her incompetence—nights after days spent in this head-aching, body-aching fashion, she’d permit herself exactly sixty seconds of anger at her husband, of hating him even. Her husband who couldn’t keep his shaking hands off the morphia canisters, all for that gluey, glazed descent into the plush velvet, making his voice slow like an old man, flush-faced and pin-eyed, just like the hollow-chested patients at the veterans hospital in Grand Rapids. Oh, Dr. Seeley—Everett. Everett. Was it worth it? Was it that wondrous a thing?

HE’D BEEN GONE, the doctor had, two months, including even her birthday, Christmas and New Year’s Eve now coming upon, and if it weren’t for Louise and Ginny, she’d have spent it sobbing over piecework in her cold room like some kind of lost lady in a melodrama, lungs coated with coal soot or prairie dust while her husband fought in the Argonne, in Manila Bay, at San Juan Hill. But Louise and Ginny had big New Year’s Eve plans that involved a friend of theirs, one Jibs McNeary, bringing a crate full of tin-pan noisemakers, horns with blower tips, table bangers and jaunty foil hats, the latest stack of race records piled high in the arms of Mr. Scott, fresh off a sales trip through honeysuckled towns all through the South and pink champagne from Canada drunk gushingly and splashing sweetly over upturned faces gay with pleasure, red with heat, sparkling with the endless confetti purchased by the Santa sackful from the five-and-dime.

Most of all, they were glad because their friend Gentleman Joe Lanigan, gone since before Thanksgiving on a business trip back east, would be back for the party and there would be toasts and music and merriment marking his triumphant return.

Gentleman Joe was the girls’ favorite among all the men, the one they never talked about without smiling rosy cheeked and making side jokes and winking and tickling each other even, if it was late and the girls were feeling silly.

“Don’t feel left out, Marion. You’ll meet him soon enough and you’ll love him just as much as we do.”

“We’d never have met any of our friends without his kindnesses.”

“He brings ukuleles and big jars of cocktail onions and maraschino cherries.”

“All kinds of crazy stuff.”

“He calls himself the Greater Downtown Benevolence Committee.”

“He’s the welcome wagon!” Ginny said, voice tumbling giddily.

“He’s the big-brother type,” Louise said, her hand on Marion’s arm. “We all need big brothers, don’t we, now?”

NEW YEAR’S EVE CAME and the crowd was just as big as the girls said, the house burning up at near 90 degrees and the men stripping down to shirtsleeves.

Someone had brought a big chrome cocktail shaker shaped like a bell, which Louise swung like a town crier when she mixed the cocktails.

Marion limited herself to one small glass of blackberry cordial, which Jibs’s mother made herself with beaten loaf sugar and stored in her cellar.

Everyone was dancing and the music was rushing through her body even when she stood still.

Suddenly, there was a big whoop and Marion thought it must be midnight even as she knew the electric wall clock had struck eleven no more than ten minutes before.

But no, it was all because of the Big Arrival. There was a swirl of looping bodies, everyone in the room but Marion caught in some kind of cyclone, sucking them toward the opening door creaking with their weight as they crushed against it.

The top of his hat, she saw that first and would always remember it. It had a teardrop crease in the center and it was burgundy, the first time she’d ever seen a man in a burgundy hat.

She was standing in the corner of the room and they were all around him and oohing and cooing and cuddling and backslapping, “How the hell you been, Joe?” “Oh, Joe, we thought we’d never see that pretty mug again,” “Joe, wait till I tell you about the new plot up for sale on Banville. It’s a sweet deal,” “My dear, Joe, that’s the biggest bottle of hooch I’ve seen since Ma died.”

And finally, tall bottles, cans of herring and silver anchovies, a crate of pearly oysters, a tilting pile of tin hand clackers, a few sliding away from the tangle and clattering to the floor, and there he was. There he was. And Marion would remember it just like that, like everyone falling away, a package unwrapped just for her. How could she not? A motion picture actor, that’s what he looked like, with that burgundy felt hat and his broad-shouldered topcoat and shoes shining like church floors on Easter. A smile like a swinging gate and smelling strong of sweet tobacco and slivered almonds and wind and travel and far-off places. When he took the hat off, his hair, blond and bright, shone nearly pink under the overhanging paper lantern, and Marion felt herself inhale fast and her eyes unfocus.

“Who’s the peach?” he was saying, and before she knew it he’d swept her up into his overcoat and the lapel rustling up, crushing her nose, pressing into her mouth, which was somehow open.

Peering up over his coat collar, she could see his eyes dancing, his bemused smile.

“That’s Marion,” she heard someone, Ginny, say, and everyone started singing, “Mary, Mary’s the girl for me, Mary, and I married soon will be.”

She felt a hand on her wrist, cold and strong, and she was yanked from the soft cocoon.

“But, Joe,” Louise was saying, and it was her hand Marion had felt, and now Louise flung her sidewise. “We haven’t wrapped her for you yet.”

And then Ginny popped a cork and it hit Mr. Gergen, the Westclox salesman, in the eye, but he didn’t seem to notice. Everyone swarmed forward with their empty glasses and Louise wriggled behind Joe Lanigan to take his coat, running her hand down on it. “Cashmere, my love?” she asked.

“Vicuna, kiddo,” he said with a grin, clapping his hand against her face.

Men didn’t do that with Louise, not that Marion had ever seen. Not at the hospital, where they held doors for her and lifted things for her and tipped their hats. They might give lingering looks as she walked by them but they never did any wink and tickle like with so many of the nurses. And the men here, the men who came to her home, as careless as it was here, well, they sure liked to bring her presents, and maybe, maybe, they’d go as far as asking for a cuddle on the corner of the settee.

But not this. Not as Gent Joe was. Not so blithe, not so relaxed like she was a hatcheck girl, a girl in the elevator to press buttons and take pinches. Marion, even head fuzzy as it was, fuzzy like someone had run a dust rag across the whole world, took notice.

And then the crowd swallowed him again and Louise turned back toward Marion and leaned close, pressing against Marion, her velvety breast shining with spilt champagne, foam dappling.

“Help me, dear,” she said, Marion in the crook of her elbow, like a coach talking to his star player, whispering the next play deep in the ear. “Will you help me?”

“What is it, Louise?”

“In here,” she said, hitching Marion toward the door and into the hallway.

They were in the narrow bathroom and Louise was propped up on the sink. She was lifting her bristly bronze skirt up over her knees, and this time her garters were garnet colored with silver ribbon curling through.