Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

“I feel like a seven-year-old.”

“Everybody needs a little mothering now and again.” Margy poured two mugs of coffee and sat down kitty-corner from Clare. “I suppose you’d like to know how Russell is doing.”

Clare nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“He’s taking it hard, like you’d think. Of course, in his case, he’s trying to keep it all bottled up. I wish he’d sit down and have a good cry like you just did.” She spooned sugar into her coffee. “He’s at work now. Can you believe it? He thinks finding whoever’s responsible is going to make him feel better. My poor boy.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Margy looked at her shrewdly. “I dunno. Is there?”

Clare examined the surface of her coffee. “I mean, any way I can help you out.”

“I guess I’ve got things well enough in hand. We can’t make any arrangements until her sister gets here-poor woman, if she didn’t take it some hard when I broke the news. She and Linda’s all that’s left of their family.”

“Who are you going to have do the service?”

“Well, Linda was a Catholic when she was young, but she never attended any church as long as I knew her. I figured I’d ask Dr. Tobin. He’s my pastor over to Center Street Methodist in Fort Henry. Of course”-and she suddenly sounded every one of her seventy-five years-“everything’s on hold until the medical examiner finishes up whatever he has to do. I told that to her sister, but she would fly up here. Janet’s husband’s gone to Albany to pick her up.”

Clare smiled a little. “Sounds like you have things well in hand.” She examined the kitchen. Hand-hooked hot pads shared space with flyers exhorting citizens to STOP THE DREDGING. On the round-shouldered refrigerator, magnets held up grandchildren’s drawings and clippings about acid rain. It was nothing like her grandmother Fergusson’s kitchen in North Carolina, but it had the same feeling. Like you had rounded all the bases and come home safe.

“I should go,” she said, making no effort to rise.

Margy dropped her hand over Clare’s. Her knuckles were swollen. Arthritic. Clare had never noticed before. “There is something I need to talk to someone about.”

Clare looked at her.

“You prob’ly know Russell moved in with me about ten days ago. He seemed to be doing okay. He went to this marriage-counseling thing they were doing and came back and was on a pretty even keel.”

Clare nodded.

“But then Sunday, he took off. Didn’t say where he was going. Didn’t say he wa’nt spending the night here, but I didn’t see him again till Monday noontime. He was… it put me in mind of when he came home from Vietnam. Like his body was here, but all the rest of him was gone. And wherever he was gone to was no good place. He just went upstairs and took a nap, right in the middle of the afternoon. That’s not like him.”

Margy pressed her lips together tightly. “The thing is, this was before we all heard about Linda. I’m… it seems a terrible thing to say, but I’m so worried about him. I’m worried that something might have-”

Clare opened her mouth to cut off whatever Margy was going to say, to stop her before she said something neither of them wanted to hear, but she didn’t get the chance. The kitchen door swung in, and with a snow-shedding stomp, Russ was inside.

Margy’s hand clutched hers. “Sweetie,” she said.

Russ froze, the door still open, his tartan scarf half unwound from his neck.

“Reverend Clare called on me to offer her condolences.”

Russ’s glasses steamed opaque in the moist, warm air. He took them off and tucked them into his shirt pocket. Nothing else moved.

Margy sighed. “Shut the door, Russell.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His mother’s command seemed to break the spell, and he turned away from them, closing the door and shrugging out of his parka, which he hung from a hook on the back of the door.

He tossed his scarf on top of the washing machine and bent to take off his boots. When he stood, he stared straight at Clare, and she felt his regard as an actual pain down her breastbone. With his sandy brown hair and the sun and smile lines around his eyes, he had always reminded her of summer, but his face now was winter-ravaged, his eyes revealing an inner cold so deep and absolute that he might shatter at a touch.

Margy stood. “I need to take these clean clothes upstairs,” she said, directing her remark toward an invisible person halfway between Russ and Clare. She lifted the plastic laundry basket and whisked out of the room, abandoning both of them without a backward glance.

Clare wanted to flee, through the door, into her car, down into town. She wanted to wrap Russ in her arms and make his naked hurt go away. The first impulse was unworthy. As for the second-she didn’t have the right or the power to ease his pain.

Instead, she stood. Slowly. “I am sorry, more sorry than I can say, for your loss.” She bit her lower lip and thanked God she had spilled her tears with Margy instead of right now. “I know you… you loved her very much.”

“I killed her.” His voice low.

“What?” For a moment, a second only, she flashed on what his mother had been saying. It seems a terrible thing to say, but I’m so worried about him. He couldn’t have… he didn’t…

Too late, she realized he was reading her thoughts off her face. He had always been scary-good at that. Or she had always given away too much around him.

“Jesus, not like that.” He sounded disgusted. At himself? At her? “How could you think-”

“No,” she started, but he cut her off.

“I meant I killed her when I told her about us. When I couldn’t cut you out of my life and focus on my marriage. I killed her when she told me we had to separate and I didn’t fight tooth and nail to stay together. I was supposed to take care of her. I was supposed to be there for her. And I wasn’t.”

“You can’t blame yourself.” It was an inane thing to say, and she knew it.

He gave her a scathing glance. Their relationship-whatever it was, or had been-didn’t allow for comforting tripe.

“All right,” she said, “tell yourself you would have been at home twenty-four hours a day. That you would have stayed by her side no matter what. That nothing bad would ever happen to her because you, Russ Van Alstyne, have the power to stop all evil things.” She ventured a half step toward him. “Does that sound like how Linda wanted to live her life? From everything you’ve ever told me about her, she was a woman who loved traveling and her business and having fun. You couldn’t have wrapped her in a cocoon even if you wanted to.”

His face contorted. “You don’t understand. I made promises to her, and I broke them. She was angry and unhappy and confused these past eight weeks,

and now it turns out that’s all the time she had.” His voice cracked. He turned his head away.

She winced. This was too close to her own gnawing guilt. But this wasn’t about her. It was about him. “Do you remember what you said to me? The night you decided you were going to tell her about… us? You said the two of you had walked so far away from each other you couldn’t find one another with a map. And that coming clean would be a start. To walking toward each other for a change.”

“And wasn’t that a high-minded load of crap? Yeah, yeah, I wanted to come clean. But you know who it was mostly for? Me. So I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt.” He stepped closer to her. “Sure, I wanted to patch up my marriage. But you know, underneath, there was this tiny little idea that maybe I could get permission. That she might say, ‘Okay, honey, whatever makes you happy.’ That somehow, some way, I could have both of you.”