Chapter 11
Katherine
Katherine believed that when the work was going well things just fell into place, as if by magic. It was the artist’s job to open herself up, let herself be guided to whatever the next step might be.
Today was not a day when things were going well.
Work on the new box wasn’t off to a great start.
She was having a hard time making any kind of decisions: Should she use a photo of Gary, or make a little Gary doll to sit at the table with the gray-haired stranger?
And what would she put on the table? It seemed a huge responsibility, choosing his last meal.
Of all the scenes she’d re-created so far, this one relied the most on her imagination.
All morning, she’d felt Gary’s presence so strongly there with her that she was sure he’d been watching over her shoulder, mocking her. She could smell him, almost taste him in the air around her.
What do you think you’re doing? he asked as she stared dumbly at the empty wooden box she’d just made.
“Trying to understand why the last thing you ever said to me was a lie,” she said out loud, her voice full of bitterness.
It wasn’t only that final lie that bothered her—it was everything that had happened in the days leading up to it. Gary had clearly been keeping something from her.
Two weeks before the accident, they’d gone on a weekend trip to the Adirondacks.
The trip had given her such hope. It was the middle of October, the leaves were at their peak of color, and the air was full of change.
They’d taken the Harley and stayed in a rustic cabin in the woods.
It was the first time they’d gone away since Austin’s death, and they’d actually had fun—for once, they weren’t completely consumed by grief and fury.
They drank a bottle of wine by the fire, laughed at each other’s jokes (Katherine said the man who ran the cabins had a nose like a turnip, and Gary went on to give produce features to everyone they knew—the best was Katherine’s sister Hazel, who had a head like an artichoke, spiky hair and all).
They laughed until their bellies ached, then made love on the floor.
And Katherine had thought that, at last, their heads had come back up above the water, they might not drown.
They would find a way to continue on, to make a new life together without Austin.
Maybe, just maybe, they’d have another child one day.
Gary had even brought it up that last night, face flushed from wine. “Do you think?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she’d told him, smiling and crying at the same time.
“Maybe.”
She’d felt closer to Gary than ever. Like they’d been on this tremendous journey together, had seen each other at their absolute darkest, but here they were, coming out the other side, hand in hand.
On the way home, they’d stopped at a little antique store.
Gary had bought a metal file box full of old photos and tintypes to add to his collection.
There were some old letters and folded, yellowed pages tucked in among the photos, as well as a couple of envelopes.
When he opened up one of the envelopes, he’d discovered the funny little ring, which he’d given to Katherine, slipping it on her finger, saying, “To new beginnings.” She’d kissed him then.
One of those hungry, dizzying kisses from back in their college days.
And she believed, as she turned the little ring on her finger, that they would start over.
But when they got back from the trip, Katherine immediately sensed that something wasn’t right.
Gary was pulling away again, worse than ever this time.
He was staying out late, leaving early, spending hours closed up in his studio—the workspace he’d walled off at the back of their loft.
When Katherine asked him what he was working on, he shook his head, said, “Nothing.”
She reached out to him every way she could think of—cooking his favorite dinners, suggesting they take another motorcycle trip before the weather got too cold. She even tried asking him to tell her a story about the people in the photos he’d been restoring.
“I’m not working on any restorations right now,” he’d told her.
Then what was he doing, hour after hour, in his studio, door locked, music cranked up so high she could feel the pulse of it through the floorboards?
She kept the little ring on that he’d given her, staring at it, willing it to take her back in time to the way things had been at the cabin. But Gary remained distant, secretive.
She feared he was going back into the dark place he’d lived in after Austin died.
The place where he was not only a man Katherine couldn’t recognize, but one she had actually been frightened of.
A fragile man who drank too much, and who was prone to violent physical outbursts in which he would destroy thousands of dollars’ worth of camera equipment or smash their large-screen television.
Once, perhaps two months after Austin’s death, Gary broke all the wineglasses in the kitchen and used a shard to slash at his forearm.
The slow leak of blood told Katherine he hadn’t hit a major artery, but he might not be so lucky if he tried again.
“Gary,” she’d said, her voice as level as she could make it as she stepped slowly toward him. “Put it down, sweetie. Put the glass down.”
He looked at her as though he didn’t recognize her, and the truth was, she didn’t know him in that moment, either. Behind his eyes, there was no trace of the Gary she had fallen in love with and married.
“Gary?” she said again, as though trying to wake him gently from a bad dream.
He raised the jagged edge of broken glass and took a step toward her. She ran out of the apartment, terrified.
She never forgot his eyes: black and hollow, like empty, shadowy sockets.
They started grief counseling the following week.
There were tearful, desperate apologies, and the rages gradually became rarer, briefer, more controlled.
Eventually they stopped altogether—the boundless anger replaced by simple sadness.
Gary was himself again, a mourning version of himself to be sure, but recognizable. Katherine believed they might be okay.
And then, back in October, once they’d returned from their weekend away, it seemed all the warning signs were back. Gary was letting the monster of his own grief take over again. And she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
Then he left one morning to go to a photo shoot, and later that night, she was facedown on the couch, screaming into the cushions, clawing at them until they ripped, because two police officers had knocked on her door.
Unsure of how to move forward with the inside of the His Final Meal box, she decided to begin work on the outside, and was giving the box a brick facade, making it look like Lou Lou’s Café.
But when she went to paint the sign above the door, she couldn’t find any of her smallest paintbrushes.
They must still be in a box somewhere, but she had already unpacked the cartons labeled ART SUPPLIES. Katherine sighed in frustration.
She spotted Gary’s battered red metal tackle box, which he’d used to organize his supplies for cleaning and restoring the old photographs he collected.
There should be a small brush in there—he often did retouching by hand.
Most people did all their restoration on the computer these days, but not Gary.
She popped open the box and went through it: can of compressed air, white cotton gloves, cotton swabs, soft cleaning brushes and cloths, alcohol, dyes and toners, and there, at the bottom, in a plastic case all their own, were the brushes, including just the one she needed.
Lifting the case out, she saw there was a small hardcover book tucked underneath. How odd.
Visitors from the Other Side
The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea
It felt like a funny joke, a book Gary had planted there for her to find right now: This is what I’ve become, a visitor.
She reached for the book, flipped it open to page 12:
I have been despondent ever since. Bedridden.
The truth was, I saw no point in going on.
If I’d had the strength to rise up from my bed, I would have gone downstairs, found my husband’s rifle, and pulled the trigger with my teeth around the barrel.
I saw myself doing just that. I visualized it.
Dreamed it. Felt myself floating down those steps, reaching for the rifle, tasting the gunpowder.
I killed myself again and again in my dreams.
I’d wake up weeping, full of sorrow to find myself alive, trapped in my wretched body, in my wretched life. Alone …
Leaving the case of brushes, Katherine stepped away from the art table with the strange little book clenched in her hand.
She crossed the living room, grabbed the cigarettes and lighter from the coffee table, curled up on the couch, turned back to the very beginning of the book, and continued to read.