The Astral, or, Till the Day I Die. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ Books that ought to have been in production by now had been held up for months and newer projects waited for her green light. A mountain of correspondence, most of it submissions for book proposals, filled up one half of her desk and overflowed onto a chair.

      She threw herself into her work. It was the best antidote she had found yet for the pain. Not, of course, that the pain ever quite went away, it merely curled itself up into a little knot in a far corner of her mind, where it ever waited to come back out into the light.

      She saw that her coworkers eyed her cautiously, and knew that many of them wanted to talk. She understood that they were saddened for her, and horrified by what had happened; but there was a certain thrill there, too. Murder, ghastly murder, tainted everyone with its evil glamour, even those at a distance, those whose involvement was only vicarious, the more so the more gruesome it was.

      She had no desire to satisfy their grisly curiosity and avoided the hesitant glances. Fortunately, most of them kept their distance. Her assistant, Bill—black and gay—worked closely with her each day, but she had learned early on that he was a very model of discretion, a fact for which she could be grateful now.

      Only Mrs. Pendergrast from their young adult division ventured beyond her door with personal condolences. “Catherine, you poor, poor thing,” she cooed and leaned over Catherine’s desk so far that Catherine felt she meant to embrace her, and cringed inwardly. “I just can’t tell you how awful I feel for you. If there is anything I can do, anything at all.”

      “As a matter of fact.” Catherine held up a pile of sketches, needing to divert all that dripping sympathy, “These need to go back to art, if you wouldn’t mind dropping them on your way.”

      “It would be a pleasure.” Mrs. Pendergrast’s voice was a shade less cordial. One did want one’s sympathy to be appreciated.

      Later, in the ladies room, Mrs. Pendergrast shared her insights with Mrs. White from accounting. “Such a tragedy,” she said, repairing her lipstick. “Of course, let it be said, I would never, ever leave my Samantha unattended. You just can’t be too careful these days.”

      Mrs. White patted her hair and frowned. “But, that isn’t quite the way it happened, is it?”

      Mrs. Pendergrast ignored the question. “I keep her practically glued to my side every minute when we’re out. People may call me over-cautious if they like, but no one will steal my little girl.”

      After two years of marriage, Mrs. White was still childless, and afraid to question her doctor because she was sure he would share her husband’s opinion that the fault was hers. She could not help thinking, however, that if God ever granted her the little baby girl she prayed for, she would be ever so vigilant as well.

      Of course, she did understand that it had been the husband looking after the Desmond girl, but, really, you just couldn’t leave something like that up to a man. Certainly not a man as easily distracted as her Robert.

      * * * *

      At first, Catherine went every day after work to Forest Lawn Memorial Park, to bring flowers to Becky’s grave. Becky had so loved flowers. “Red and orange and yellow and white and blue....”

      “I don’t think there are any blue flowers, darling.”

      “Purple?”

      “Yes, definitely purple. And pink. You forgot pink.”

      “And pink. And purple and blue....”

      She said nothing to Walter about her visits. She had no desire to share this pilgrimage with him, with anybody.

      She and Becky had used to come here in the past, not as morbid a destination as one might have supposed. There were fountains and gardens, and an uncanny look-alike of Michelangelo’s David.

      The winter rains came. They did not in any way deter her, though by now she went only once or twice a week. The gravesite was on a knoll from which bright green lawns, salt and peppered with gravesites, spilled down to the Golden State Freeway with its endless rush of cars, their sound a murmur at this distance. She stood without umbrella and let the cool droplets fall upon her, in hope that they would wash away her grief, or at least the numbness.

      Both remained. Her soul was condemned to hold on to every memory, until surely it must break from overloading. She knew that she must one day come back to herself. She had to return to the world of the living. She could not continue as she was. If you were condemned to be alive, you ought at least to live.

      At home, she and Walter shared the house, they moved about in the same finite space and yet they remained light years apart. Sometimes she could hear him in his office, crying. Most of the time he watched her warily with red-rimmed eyes and sniffled until she thought she must scream, but how could she, eyes tearless, rail at him for his grief? She wished that she had solace to offer him, but of that her heart was empty.

      He spent more and more time at the restaurant, pleading increasing numbers of diners. She had no doubt that he found it more comfortable away from her, just as she was relieved to see him go. It was not that she hated him, nor that she even consciously blamed him for what had happened. They could hardly share their home day by day, however, without reminding one another of what was missing from it. And you could only say, “it’s all right,” so many times before that began to sound silly.

      He had lost ten pounds and gained ten years. He looked faded, like a shirt too often washed. It wasn’t only Becky those two men had killed, she thought grimly. They were killing Catherine and Walter Desmond day by day, inexorably and she felt helpless to prevent it.

      A casual question one day—“Will your mother be coming for Christmas?”—made her aware of the time she hadn’t noticed passing.

      The question caught her by surprise. “Is it December?”

      “The second.” The gravity of his tone made it sound the most important thing in the world.

      Which meant, she realized, that Thanksgiving had come and gone without her noticing. They had always made such a big deal of it in the past. Becky had been quite set in her preferences. The turkey’s wings were hers, both of them, and woe betide the foolish mortal who thought to claim one. The pie must be pumpkin.

      “Punkin pie, punkin pie, punkin pie.” She used to chant it while her mother cleared the table, brought in the pie, took the ice cream—pumpkin ice cream it must be—from the freezer. “Punkin pie.”

      “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she told Walter. She got up and began to clear the table, but she did manage to rest a hand, briefly, on his shoulder. She really did wish she could comfort him.

      He sniffled and said nothing.

      When he had gone, she went into the garage and got down a box of Christmas ornaments and carried it into the living room. The first one she unwrapped turned out to be Becky’s favorite, the little Christmas angel they had bought the year she was born. She set that aside and found another one: the papier-mâché camel with one leg missing. Becky had insisted they hang it anyway each year, legs or no legs.

      “Jesus will love him anyway, won’t he, Mommy?”

      There were, it seemed, memories attached to every ornament. She put them back in the box and taped it closed again, and carried it out to its shelf in the garage.

      A car, a СКАЧАТЬ