Amy Bloom: Where the God of Love Hangs Out

“I think Anne might have escaped,” Mrs. Warburg said. “I really do. I think she might have gotten out of those awful mountains and she might have found a rowboat or something — she’s wonderful on water, you should see her on Lake Erie, but it could be because of the trauma she doesn’t—”

Mr. Warburg got on the line.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Mrs. Warburg needs to sleep. So do you, I’m sure.”

Eugene Trask and Anne traveled for four days. He said, at his trial, that she was a wonderful conversationalist. He said that talking to her was a pleasure and that they had had some very lively discussions, which he felt she had enjoyed. At the end of the fourth day, he unbuckled his belt so he could rape her again, in a quiet pine grove near Lake Pleasant, and while he was distracted with his shirttail and zipper, she made a grab for his hunting knife. He hit her on the head with the butt of his rifle, and when she got up, he hit her again. Then he stabbed her twice, just like Teddy, two to the heart. He didn’t want to shoot her, he said. He put her bleeding body in the back of an orange Buick he’d stolen in Speculator, and he drove to an abandoned mine. He threw her down the thirty-foot shaft, dumped the Buick in Mineville, and walked through the woods to his sister’s place. They had hamburgers and mashed potatoes and sat on Rose’s back step and watched a pair of red-tailed hawks circling the spruce. Rose washed out his shirt and pants and ironed them dry, and he left early the next morning, with two meat-loaf sandwiches in his jacket pocket.

They caught Eugene Trask when one of his stolen cars broke down. They shot him in the leg. He said he didn’t remember anything since he’d skipped his last arraignment two months ago. He said he was subject to fits of amnesia. He had fancy criminal lawyers who took his case because the hunt for Eugene Trask had turned out to be the biggest manhunt in the tristate area since the Lindbergh baby. There were reporters everywhere, Mrs. Warburg said. Eugene’s lawyers, Mr. Feldman and Mr. Barone, told Eugene that if he lied to them they would not be able to defend him adequately, so he drew them maps of where they could find Anne’s body, and also two other girls who had been missing for six months. Mr. Feldman and Mr. Barone felt that they could not reveal this information to the police or to the Warburgs or to the other families because it would violate lawyer-client privilege. After the trial, after Eugene was transferred to the Fishkill correctional facility, two kids were playing in an old mine near Speculator, looking for garnets and gold and arrowheads, and they found Anne’s body.

The dead body makes its own way. It stiffens and then it relaxes and then it softens. The flesh turns to a black thick cream. If I had put my arms around her to carry her up the gravel path and home, if I had reached out to steady her, my hand would have slid through her skin like a spoon through custard, and she would have fallen away from me, held in only by her clothes. If I had hidden in the timbered walls of the mine, waiting until Eugene Trask heard the reassuring one-two thump of the almost emptied body on the mine-car tracks, I might have seen her as I see her now. Her eyes open and blue, her cheeks pink underneath the streaks of clay and dust, and she is breathing, her chest is rising and falling, too fast and too shallow, like a bird in distress, but rising and falling.

We are all in the cave. Mrs. Warburg went back to her life, without me, after Anne’s funeral that winter (did those children find her covered with the first November snow?), and Mr. Warburg resurfaced eight years later, remarried to a woman who became friends with my aunt Rita in Beechwood. Aunt Rita said the new Mrs. Warburg was lovely. She said the first Mrs. Warburg had made herself into a complete invalid, round-the-clock help, but even so she died alone, Rita said, in their old house. She didn’t know from what. Eugene Trask was shot and killed trying to escape from Fishkill. Two bullets to the heart, one to the lungs. Mrs. Warburg sent me the clipping. Rose Trask married and had two children, Cheryl and Eugene. Rose and Cheryl and little Eugene drowned in 1986, boating on Lake Champlain. Mrs. Warburg sent me the clipping. My young father, still slim and handsome and a good dancer, collapsed on our roof trying to straighten our ancient TV antenna, and it must have been Eugene Trask pulling his feet out from under him, over the gutters and thirty feet down. Don’t let the sun catch you crying, my father used to say. Maybe your nervous system doesn’t get the message to swallow the morning toast and Eugene Trask strangles you and throws you to the floor while your wife and children watch. Maybe clusters of secret tumors bloom from skull to spine, opening their petals so Eugene Trask can beat you unconscious on the way to work. Everyone dies of heart failure, Eugene Trask said at his trial.

I don’t miss the dead less, I miss them more. I miss the tall pines around Lake Pleasant, I miss the brown-and-gray cobblestones on West Cedar Street, I miss the red-tailed hawks that fly so often in pairs. I miss the cheap red wine in a box and I miss the rum and Coke. I miss Anne’s wet gold hair drying as we sat on the fire escape. I miss the hot-dog luau and driving to dance lessons after breakfast at Bruegger’s Bagels. I miss the cold mornings on the farm, when the handle of the bucket bit into my small hands and my feet slid over the frozen dew. I miss the hot grease spattering around the felafel balls and the urgent clicking of Hebrew. I miss the new green leaves shaking in the June rain. I miss standing on my father’s shiny shoes as we danced to “The Tennessee Waltz” and my mother made me a paper fan so I could flirt like a Southern belle, tapping my nose with the fan. I miss every piece of my dead. Every piece is stacked high like cordwood within me, and my heart, both sides, and all four parts, is their reliquary.

When Your Life Looks Back

When your life looks back—

As it will, at itself, at you — what will it say?

Inch of colored ribbon cut from the spool.

Flame curl, blue-consuming the log it flares from.

Bay leaf. Oak leaf. Cricket. One among many .

Your life will carry you as it did always,

With ten fingers and both palms,

With horizontal ribs and upright spine,

With its filling and emptying heart,

That wanted only your own heart, emptying, filled, in return.

You gave it. What else could do?

Immersed in air or in water.

Immersed in hunger or anger.

Curious even when bored.

Longing even when running away.

“What will happen next?”—

the question hinged in your knees, your ankles,

in the in-breaths even of weeping.

Strongest of magnets, the future impartial drew you in.

Whatever direction you turned toward was face to face.

No back of the world existed,

No unseen corner, no test. No other earth to prepare for.

This , your life had said, its only pronoun.

Here , your life had said, its only house.

Let , your life had said, its only order.

And did you have a choice in this? You did—

Sleeping and waking,

the horses around you, the mountains around you,

The buildings with their tall, hydraulic shafts.

Those of your own kind around you—

A few times, you stood on your head.

A few times, you chose not to be frightened.

A few times, you held another beyond any measure.

A few times, you found yourself held beyond any measure.

Mortal , your life will say,

As if tasting something delicious, as if in envy.

Your immortal life will say this, as it is leaving.