The Face of Death

I look down at the bed. Feeling it more than seeing it. Alexa was conceived on this bed, in some sweaty, tender moment, or maybe during something rougher and more acrobatic, who knows. Matt and I came together two and parted three. A successive joy, divine addition. I spent sleepless nights on this bed while I was pregnant. Ankles swollen, back aching. I blamed Matt for everything. Blamed him with a bitterness you can only achieve at three in the morning and 210 days. I loved Matt for everything too. A depthless love that was a mixture of real joy and hormones gone berserk. Most people start out, really, too selfish for marriage. A pregnancy will beat that right out of you.

The day after we brought her home, Matt and I set Alexa down in the middle of this bed. We lay on either side of her, and wondered at the fact of her.

Alexa was made here. She cried here sometimes. She laughed here, she was angry here, I think she even vomited here once after Matt let her eat too much ice cream. I cleaned up the bed, Matt slept on the couch.

I have learned lessons in this bed. Once, Matt and I were making love. Not having sex-- making love. It had been preceded by wine and candles. We had the perfect CD playing at the perfect volume--loud enough to create an atmosphere, low enough not to distract. The moon was lush and the night breeze was temperate. We had just enough sweat going to keep us slippery in a sexy, non-sticky way. It was sensuous defined.

And then, I farted.

It was a ladylike toot, sure--but a fart nonetheless. We both froze. Everything seemed to hang in a long, agonizing, embarrassed moment.

And then, the giggling started. Followed by laughter. Followed by howls that we smothered with pillows, until we remembered Alexa was staying at a friend's. Followed later by a different kind of sex. It was no longer storybook, but it was more tender and more true. You can have pride, and you can have love, but you can't always have both. In this bed I learned that love was better. It wasn't all farts and laughter. Matt and I fought in this bed too. God, did we have some good fights. That's how we referred to them-- 'good fights.' We were convinced that a successful marriage required a healthy knockdown, drag-out every now and then. We took great pride in some of our 'better efforts'--retrospective pride, of course. I was raped in this bed, and I watched Matt die while I was tied to this bed. Bad stuff.

I breathe in, breathe out. The raindrops fall through the tree leaves, soft but inexorable. The basic truth: You get wet when it rains, no way around it.

I consider the bed and think about the future. About all the good things that could still happen here, should I decide to stay. I didn't have Matt, and I didn't have Alexa, but I did have Bonnie, and I did have me.

Life as it used to be, that was the milk. But life in general, was pure chocolate donut, and the donut trumps the milk.

'So this is where all the magic happens.'

Callie's voice startles me from my reverie. She's standing in the doorway, her gaze speculative.

'Hey,' I say. 'Thanks for coming. For helping me do this.'

She walks into the room, her eyes roving. 'Well, it was this or reruns of Charlie's Angels. Besides, Bonnie feeds me.'

I grin. 'How to catch a wild Callie: chocolate donuts and a really big mousetrap.'

She comes over, plops down on the bed. Bounces up and down on it a few times. 'Very nice,' she judges.

'I have a lot of good memories here.'

'I've always wondered . . .' She hesitates.

'What?'

'Why did you keep it? This is the same bed, isn't it? Where it happened?'

'The one and only.' I run a hand over the comforter. 'I thought about getting rid of it. I couldn't sleep in it for the first few weeks after I came home. I slept on the couch. When I got up the courage to try, I couldn't bear sleeping anywhere else. One terrible thing happened here. That shouldn't outweigh all of the good times. I loved people here. My people. I'm not letting Sands take that away from me.'

I can't decipher the look in her eyes. Sadness. Guilt. A little bit of longing?

'See now? That's the difference between us, Smoky. I have a single bad moment in my teens, sleep with the wrong boy, get pregnant, and give up my child. I make damn sure forever-after that I never have another committed relationship. You get raped in this bed, but its strongest memories for you are the moments you shared with Matt and Alexa. I admire your optimism, I really do.' Her smile is just short of melancholy. Her lips curve in self-mockery. 'As for me? My cup runneth under.'

I don't reply, because I know my friend. She's sharing this with me, but that's all she's capable of. Words of comfort would be embarrassing, almost a betrayal. I'm here so she can say these things and know someone heard her, nothing more.

She smiles. 'Know what I miss?' she asks. 'Matt's tacos.'

I look at her in surprise. Then I smile too.

'They were great, weren't they?'

'I dream about them sometimes,' she replies, melodramatic longing in her eyes. I couldn't cook with a gun to my head. I could burn water, as the saying goes. Matt, as always, as in all things, was the whole package. He bought cookbooks and tried things and nine times out of ten the results were amazing.

He'd learned how to make tacos by hand from someone, I don't know who. Not the kind with the icky store- bought shells, but the kind where you begin with a supple tortilla and transform it on the spot into a stiff yet chewy half-moon of deliciousness. He added some kind of spice to the meat that literally made my mouth water. Callie too, it seems. She loved food, and invited herself to dinner three or four times a month. I can see her in my mind, scarfing down tacos, chewing her food while talking out of the side of her mouth. Saying something that made Alexa giggle till her milk went the wrong way and spewed out of her nose. Which was, of course, the height of hilarity, the apex of thigh-slappers for Alexa.

'Thank you,' I say.

She knows what I mean. Thank you for that memory, that forgotten bit of bittersweet, that punch in the gut that hurts and feels wonderful all at once. This is Callie, spinning in close to hug my soul, spinning back out to regain her haughty distance.

She gets up from the bed and heads for the door. She looks back at me and smiles, a mischievous smile.

'Oh, and so you know? You don't need a mousetrap. Just drug the donuts. I'll always eat the donuts.'

5

'HOW ARE YOU DOING, SMOKY?'

Elaina is asking me this. She showed up about twenty minutes ago, and after going through the requisite hugs with Bonnie, she'd maneuvered me off so that we were sitting alone in my living room. Her gaze is frankness and kindness and klieg lights. She faces me head-on, piercing me with those brown eyes. 'No bullshit allowed,'

that look says.

'Mostly good, some bad,' I say without hesitation. Being less than honest with Elaina never occurs to me. She is one of those rare people, the ones who are kind and strong at the same time. She softens her gaze. 'Tell me about the bad.'

I stare back at her, trying to find words for my new demon, the devil that romps through my mind while I sleep. I used to dream about Joseph Sands, he chuckled and chortled and raped me again and again, killed my family with a wink and a smile. Sands has faded; the nightmares now center around Bonnie. I see her sitting on a madman's lap, a knife at her throat. I see her lying on a white rug, a bullet hole through her forehead, a crimson- angel spreading beneath her.

'Fear. It's the fear.'

'What about?'

'Bonnie.'

Her forehead clears. 'Ah. You're afraid something's going to happen to her.'

'More like terrified. That she's never going to talk and end up nuts. That I'm not going to be there when she