Sourland

accelerated as in a slapstick silent film in which she might have been observed with pitying eyes, like a rat in a maze, compelled to repeat the same futile actions compulsively, unvaryingly, driving her car to the hospital and parking her car, hurriedly entering the hospital and crossing the wide lobby whose floor smelled of fresh disinfectant and taking one of the elevators to Telemetry, fifth floor, exiting the elevator and hurrying along the corridor to her husband’s room — steeling herself for what she might see, or not see, as she approached the doorway — as she approached the bed, and the white-clad figure reclining, or sitting up, in the bed —

On the curving baronial stairs Adrienne became light-headed. A woman with toffee-colored skin clutched at her arm, deftly. “Ma’am? You havin some kind of faint?” Adrienne murmured no, no she was fine, though her lips had gone numb, blood had rushed out of her face. The woman gripped her arm and helped her on the stairs. She knows where I am headed Adrienne thought.

On the next floor, Adrienne had to make her way through a long line of individuals filing into a vast assembly room. Here were far more light-skinned men and women than she’d seen in any other part of the courthouse, most of them well dressed and all of them wearing jurors’ badges; how plausible it would appear to a neutral observer, that Adrienne Myer had been summoned to the Mercer County Courthouse this morning for jury duty; she felt a stab of envy for these individuals, a powerful wish to be one of them, that her reason for being here was so impersonal, so banal and so easily resolved.

On the next floor — was this the third, or the fourth? — Adrienne found herself in another crowded corridor — here was the Office of the Public Defender. On a long wooden bench against a wall festooned with warnings — NO SMOKING — NO FOOD OR DRINK IN THE COURTROOM — DO NOT BRING CONTRABAND INTO THE COURTHOUSE — were seated a number of mostly young men, under the eye of several Mercer County sheriff’s deputies; all but two of the young men were dark-skinned, and all were wearing lurid-orange jumpsuits marked MERCER CO. MENS DETENTION. All were shackled at the wrists and ankles, like beasts.

Adrienne tried not to stare seeing one of the white men close by, slouching on the bench; he had a sharp hawkish face disfigured by an aggressively ugly tattoo jagged like lightning bolts; his rat-colored hair was pulled back into a tail — a rat-tail? Was this — what was the name — Ezra, Edro? — Edro Hodge? — the person whom Leisha had been desperate to contact? Hodge’s eyes were heavy-lidded, drooping; he gave an impression of being oblivious of his surroundings, if not contemptuous. Adrienne slipped past not wanting to attract his attention.

One floor up — two floors? — at last, Probate Court: the Office of the Surrogate.

“Ma’am — here.”

Before Adrienne was allowed into the waiting room of the Office of the Surrogate she was required to show a photo I.D — fumbling for her wallet which contained her driver’s license, but where was her wallet? — had someone taken her wallet, in the confusion downstairs? — in a panic locating her U.S. passport in the briefcase at which a woman deputy stared suspiciously — “This you, ma’am? Don’t look much like you.”

The photo was several years old, Adrienne said. Though having to acknowledge that the woman in the photo, lightly smiling, with a smooth, unlined forehead and hopeful eyes, bore little resemblance to the woman she was now.

“This is my name, though — ‘Adrienne Myer.’ My husband’s name is — was — Myer.”

How unconvincing this sounded! The very syllables — Adrienne Myer — had become nonsensical, mocking.

For if once she’d been married to a man named Myer, the man named Myer no longer existed; where did that leave Adrienne Myer?

Nonetheless, Adrienne was allowed to take a seat. The air in the waiting room was steam-heated, stale. Here was a vast space larger even than the jurors’ assembly room on the lower floor — a high-ceilinged room in sepia tones like an old daguerreotype, with high narrow windows that seemed to look out over nothing — unless the glass had become scummy and opaque with grime. Adrienne was nervously conscious of rows — rows! — of uncomfortable vinyl chairs crowded with people — their expressions ranged from melancholy to exhausted, anxious to resigned. At the rear of the waiting room the farther wall appeared to have dissolved into sepia shadow — the waiting room stretched on forever. Blindly Adrienne was seated clutching at her things — handbag, briefcase — she’d removed her black cashmere coat in this stifling heat — a glove had fallen to the floor, she retrieved with some effort — she’d been gripping her things so tightly, the bones of her hands ached. She was thinking All these people have died! So many of us.

But this was wrong of course. Everyone in the waiting room was alive. She was alive.

“I am — alive.”

Alive. It was such a curious boastful word! It was such a tentative word, simply to utter it was to invite derision.

She was thinking how, on what was to be the very last day of her husband’s life, with no knowledge of what was imminent she and her husband had made plans for his discharge from the hospital in two days. They’d read the New York Times together. Tracy had insisted on Adrienne bringing him his laptop and so he’d worked — he was determined to examine the copyedited manuscript of a lengthy article he’d written for the Journal of 20th-Century European History — though complaining of his eyes “tearing up” and his vision being “blurred.” He’d eaten the lukewarm lunch, or part of it — until he’d begun to feel nauseated and asked Adrienne to take it away. They’d quarreled — almost — over whether Adrienne should call Tracy’s parents, to deflect their coming to visit him — an arduous trip for them, from northern Minnesota — since he was being discharged so soon, and was “recovered, or nearly” — Adrienne had thought that Tracy should see his parents, who were concerned about him; Tracy had thought otherwise, now that he was “feeling fine.” The hospital allowed visitors until 9 P.M. but Adrienne left at 7 P.M. since Tracy had become tired suddenly and wanted to sleep — Adrienne was exhausted also — maintaining her cheery hospital manner was a strain, like carrying heavy unwieldy bundles from place to place and nowhere to set them down, until at last you drop them — let them fall — she’d managed to drive home and was in bed by 9:20 P.M. and at 12:50 A.M. she’d been wakened as in a cartoon of crude nightmare cruelty by a ringing phone and in her dazed sleep she’d thought That is not for me. That is not for me even as, groping for the phone, she’d known that of course the ringing phone was for her, she’d known that the ringing phone had to be for her and she’d known, or guessed, what the call was.

Mrs. Myer? Your husband is in critical condition, please come to the hospital immediately.

“Mrs. Myer? Come with me, please.”

Time had passed: an hour? Two hours? Adrienne was being led briskly along a corridor to the Office of the Surrogate. The name on the door was D. CAPGRASS. Her heart beat quickly. She’d stood so swiftly, blood had rushed from her head. Don’t let me faint. Not here, not now. Not this weakness, now. It had become confused in the widow’s mind — such fantasies are exacerbated in steam-heated waiting rooms, in hard-backed vinyl chairs — that her obligation in Surrogate Court was an obligation to her deceased husband, and not to herself; it was her husband’s estate that was to be deliberated, the estate of which she, the surviving spouse, was the executrix. If this can be completed. Then…Adrienne’s thoughts trailed off, she had no idea what came beyond Then.

Crematorium is not the polite term. Funeral home is the preferred term.

There she’d made arrangements, paid with their joint credit card.

Tracy Emmet Myer was a co-owner of this card. Tracy Emmet Myer was paying for his own cremation.

Ashes to ashes, dusk to dusk. The nonsense jingle ran through the widow’s brain brazen and jeering as the cries of a jaybird in the trees close outside her bedroom windows, that woke her so rudely from her sedative sleep.

“Mrs. Myer. Please will you sign these consent forms” — a middle-aged bald-headed man with eyeglasses that fitted his face crookedly and stitch-like creases in his forehead was addressing her with somber formality. Without hesitating — eagerly — Adrienne signed several documents — “waivers” — without taking time to read them. How she hoped to placate this frowning gentleman — an officer of the Mercer County Surrogate’s court. “And now, you will please provide these required documents, which I hope you’ve remembered to bring” — frowning as