J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

“Oh,” she said, unsure of how to respond. Their name is low? What did that mean? Officer Clarke turned and went to the door. On the way out, he apologized again. Then he closed the door and was gone.

When she could no longer hear the police car, the sitter went to the sofa and sat there, her hands folded in her lap. She thought about what she should do. In a while she got up and began to walk around the house. She played a chord or two on the piano, very quietly, so as not to wake the children. She looked at a painting of some flowers on the wall. In the dining room, on a bookshelf, she found a row of photo albums. She pulled one down and opened it on the dining table. It was dark in the room, but a streetlamp cast enough light to see by. There were pictures of a party in a dirty apartment, people holding glasses of wine and one woman drinking directly out of a bottle of liquor. Here was Mrs. Geary talking to a curly-haired man, not Mr. Geary. On the next page was a bleary photo of the Gearys collapsed into a chair, laughing. A hand belonging to someone outside the frame was pointing at them. The hand, unlike the Gearys, was in sharp focus. Later in the book there were wedding photos, not professional ones, snapshots. The Gearys appeared to have gotten married in a forest. The sitter replaced the album and took down another. Here were pictures of Mrs. Geary, completely naked, giving birth to a baby. Her red anguished face and large breasts were in shadow in the background; in the foreground were her white legs and, beneath a thick patch of black pubic hair, a small red human head, its own thin hair slick and parted, as if combed. There were more pictures of the Gearys together with the new baby. Mr. Geary was fully dressed. The rest of the album consisted of baby pictures; when the Gearys appeared it was in a supporting role. A series of pictures depicted friends and relatives holding the baby. The baby was John, the older child, who was five now. The younger one, Emma, was two; the sitter knew that the other albums probably contained pictures of her birth and infancy. But she didn’t want to look at them. She put the album back and returned to the dining table. She realized that all those people — the people at the drunken party, the friends and relatives, perhaps even the obstetrician — would have to find out about what happened. Some of them were probably finding out right now. She imagined their shocked faces and suddenly felt very sad and rested her head on her folded arms. Her face tightened, as if she were about to cry. But she didn’t. The feeling passed. Another was coming, she sensed, but it wasn’t here yet. She got up from the table and continued looking around the house. The kitchen, the den. She went up the stairs, treading lightly. She did not hesitate: she went in the closed door of the Gearys’ bedroom and switched on the lights.

It was tidy, if a little stuffy. The windows needed to be opened, the linens changed, but there was no one to do this, and no one ever would. The carpet was beige, the bedspread a knitted afghan. Family photos hung on the walls. The sitter took off her shoes and lay on the bed. At each side stood a white bedside table with a lamp on it. One of the tables also held a near-empty glass of water, a full bottle of aspirin, and a stack of parenting books. On the other was a science fiction paperback and a mug with some cold coffee dried to the bottom. She leaned over and opened this table’s single drawer. The drawer was full of junk: thread, buttons, coins, papers, breath mints. There was a deck of cards, or rather just the box. The cards were missing. Instead there was a flimsy plastic sandwich bag containing three loosely rolled joints. She held up the bag, sniffed it, set it down beside her on the bed. Then she put the box away and closed the drawer. As she did this she noticed a book sticking out from under the bed.

She knew the book. It was a sex manual. She had a boyfriend last year who bought her a copy and was always trying to get her to flip through it with him while they were in bed together. When they broke up she threw the book out. Now she took it onto her lap and paged through it. After a moment a photograph fell out. It was a Polaroid of Mrs. Geary’s face. The picture seemed to be taken in this very bed. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, and her hands were tangled in her long hair, which fell across the pillow. The sitter did not know Mrs. Geary to be long-haired: but then again, perhaps she was. Suddenly it was hard to remember. She looked at the picture for a while, then slid it into the pocket of her jeans. She put the book away, this time tucking it more thoroughly under the bed. After that, she lay back and closed her eyes. Soon she was asleep.

A noise in the house woke her. Were the sister and her husband here? No, not yet. The sound was nearer. Footsteps. A door opened. She sat up on the bed. A boy walked into the room.

It was John, the five-year-old. He seemed to have a stunned look on his face, and for a moment she imagined that somehow he had heard the news. But of course he hadn’t. He was sleepwalking. This was something the boy did. Once he had brought his pillow downstairs and mashed it onto a bookshelf and went back up again. Another time, when she went up to check on him, she found him curled on the bathroom floor, clutching the bath mat. Now he looked at her without seeing and said, “I can’t find my dog.” Maybe he was referring to his stuffed dog, Albert, who was tucked under one arm. The sitter got down from the bed and took the dog from him and gave it back. “Here’s your dog, John,” she said. John didn’t smile, didn’t change his expression at all, but his voice registered relief. “I found my dog,” he said. She put her arm around his shoulders and led him back to his room. He climbed into bed on his own. She sat on his small wooden chair while he closed his eyes and returned to restful sleep. There was a rhythmic sound in the room, and she realized it was her own breathing. She was breathing fast, shallow breaths, and her heart was thumping. She tried to calm down but couldn’t. The breaths just came faster. She left John’s room, closed his door behind her, and went back to the Gearys’ bedroom.

For a short while, the sitter stood there panting. Then she threw open the window. Inside the wall, the sash weights rattled. She picked up the plastic bag and shoved it into her pocket with the photo, and she stripped the bed and carried the sheets down the hallway and stairs. In the downstairs bathroom she emptied the bag into the toilet and flushed away the joints and dropped the bag into the little wastebasket beside the toilet. She loaded the sheets into the washing machine and turned it on. Then she went back to the sofa to wait.

It wasn’t long before Mrs. Geary’s sister arrived. She didn’t knock, she just walked right in. She looked like Mrs. Geary, but older, thinner, with a longer face. The sitter had never seen her before, but clearly the woman was transformed by grief. Her face was wet and frantic and her long hair stuck to her cheeks. The sitter stood and the sister came right at her. At first the sitter thought she was about to be struck, but the sister embraced her, harder than the policeman had done, and let out a cry. The sitter said, “The children are sleeping.”

Mrs. Geary’s sister pulled back and seemed to search the sitter’s face for something. “They’re all right,” the sitter said. “They don’t know.”

The sister nodded, backing away. She seemed afraid of the sitter somehow. Her husband had entered and stood behind her now, a lanky Asian man wearing large, wire-rimmed glasses and a wrinkled shirt. Now the sitter understood: their name was Lo, L-O. Mr. Lo nodded as his eyes met the sitter’s. She nodded back. The washing machine churned and thumped.