Chapter Twenty-Nine
TWENTY-NINE
I walk trancelike into the hallway. My voice—“Bert? Alice?”— weak from puking. The piano is lilting, delicate. The woman’s voice smoky, with a texture both rich and lethargic, like a stretching cat. I float slowly downstairs, feeling as though I have been filled with helium. The front door is standing open. Outside, the streetlights are halos against a crescent moon in a cloudless sky.
“Alice?” I say again. Silence. “Hello?”
Trembling legs threatening to spill me over. The music rises and falls, sonorous in the living room. The television is still playing although the sound has been muted. An advert for toothpaste, everyone smiling as if at gunpoint. The curtains are open. Alice’s can of lemonade sticky beside the record player. I stand there, swaying slightly, black roses blossoming in my vision before I collapse into the chair. There’s a voice in my head that won’t stop talking.
You know what that bloodied eye means, Mina. It’s a sign of asphyxiation, isn’t it? You know what asphyxiation means, don’t you, Mina? Don’t you?
I pick up the remote control and switch off the television set, then turn to the stereo and lift the needle from the record. Billie Holiday, the label reads. The cover is leaning against the wall and I pick it up and oh wow, there she is, the white gardenias in her black hair, her poise, those striking features. I lift up the sleeve and turn it around. There, right there, is the song Mary and Bert danced to on their wedding day, the song Alice said that Bert often played when Mary was having her hair cut. “Blue Moon.”
Maybe Alice played it to her, Mina, while you were preoccupied in the basement. Maybe she played it so Mary could hear it one last time as Alice took the life from her.
I shut out that voice. I can’t listen to it right now. I need to move. I need to tidy up before Bert gets back. He’ll have a terrible shock when he hears about Mary. My hands are shaking so badly that the record glides through my fingers as I try to slip it back into the sleeve and only sheer luck stops it from falling to the floor. I try again to slide it in, but something is blocking it. Frustrated, I jerk the record out and look inside the sleeve, thinking the obstruction is an insert or tissue paper. But it’s not. There’s something stuck there, all the way back. Taped to the cardboard. I reach in for it, hearing the soft ripping sound it makes as I pull it free. It is an envelope. The paper is thick and creamy, expensive. No writing on the front and when I turn it over, I notice the back is tucked in but not sealed shut.
It’s called petechiae, Mina. That redness of the eye. It’s a result of physical trauma. But you already know that, don’t you?
“Mina?”
I turn slowly, staring at Bert who is standing in the doorway with a box of groceries, smiling at me in a puzzled way that creases his eyes. “What’s going on? Where’s Alice? Why is the front door open?”
I stand, shoving the envelope into my pocket and push my hair away from my face. I can still taste bile at the back of my throat.
“Bert—”
“I managed to get the last pint of milk. We’ll be back to rationing if this carries on. In the war my mother had to cook with powdered egg.”
“Bert.”
He pauses and then he must see something in my expression or in the way I step forward as if to take his hand. He takes an automatic step away from me.
“No.” He is shaking his head. “No, don’t. Don’t tell me, Mina.”
“Bert, I’m so sorry.”
The words seem to ambush him, making him stoop in agony, his face cruelly lined. The box slides slowly out of his hands as I go toward him, putting my arms around him, feeling his frail shoulders begin to shake with hoarse, helpless sobs. “I’m sorry, Bert. She’s gone. I’m sorry.” Over and over.