'Stay with me, promise. Don't leave.'
I held her cold hands, rested my head against hers as she fell asleep. I watched her in the light of the bedside lamp, which was always on now. Her mouth was open, she snored heavily. I told myself, things will turn out all right. Ron would come home or he wouldn't, and we'd just go on together. He wouldn't really send me away. He just didn't want to see how damaged she was. As long as she didn't show him, that was all he asked for. A good show.
21
CLAIRE WAS still sleeping when I woke up. I got up, careful not to disturb her, and went out to the kitchen. I poured myself some cereal. It was very bright, quiet, a pure crystalline light. I was glad Ron was gone. If he were here, there would have been phone calls, the whine of the coffee grinder, Claire might be up making breakfast with her smile painted on. I decided to stay in my silk pajamas a while longer. I got my new paints out and painted the way the light looked on the bare wood floor, the yellow tray of sunlight, the way it climbed the curtains. I loved when it was like this. I recalled days just like this when I was young, playing in a patch of sunlight when my mother slept in. A laundry basket over my head, squares of light. I remembered exactly how the sun looked and felt on the back of my hand.
After a while, I checked on Claire. She was still asleep. The room was dark gray, no morning light penetrated the west-facing French doors covered with blinds. It smelled stale. She had one hand flung across the top of the pillow. Her mouth was open, but she wasn't snoring now.
'Claire?' I put my face right in hers. She smelled of sherry and something metallic. She didn't move. I put my hand on her shoulder, shook her gently. 'Claire?' She didn't do anything. The hair stood up on my neck and arms. I couldn't hear her breathing. 'Claire?' I shook her again, but her head flopped like Owen's giraffe's. 'Claire, wake up.' I lifted her by her shoulders and dropped her. 'Claire!' I yelled at her, hoping she would open her eyes, that she would put her hand to her head and tell me not to shout, I was giving her a headache. It was impossible. She was playing a trick, pretending. 'Claire!' I screamed into her sleeping face, pumping my hands on her chest, listening for her breath. Nothing.
I searched the bedside table, the floor. On the far side, I found the pills on the floor, along with the empty sherry bottle. It was what I'd heard falling when we were talking through the door. The pill bottle was open, the pills spilled out, small pink tablets. Butalan, the label said. For Insomnia. Do Not Take With Alcohol. Do Not Operate Machinery.
The sounds I was making were no longer even screams. I wanted to throw something into the fat ugly eye of God. I threw the Kleenex box. The brass bell. I knocked the bedside light off the nightstand. I pulled the magnet box from under the bed and threw it across the room. Ron's keys and pens and clippers fell out, the Polaroids. For what? I ripped the blinds off the French doors, and the room blinked bright. I took a high-heeled shoe from the foot of the bed and smashed through the windowpanes with it, cut my hand, couldn't feel it. I took her silver- backed hairbrush and threw it overhand like a baseball into the round mirror. I took the phone and beat the receiver against the headboard until it came apart in my hands, leaving dents in the soft pine.
I was exhausted and couldn't find anything more to throw. I sat back down on the bed and took her hand. It was so cold. I put it against my hot wet cheek, trying to warm it up, I smoothed her dark hair away from her face.
If only I had known, Claire. My beautiful fucked-up Claire. I lay my head on her chest where there was no heartbeat. My face next to hers on the flowered pillow, breathing in her breath that was no longer breath. She was so pale. Cold. I held her cold hands, slightly chapped, the wedding ring that was too big. Turned them over, kissed the cold palms, my hot lips on the lines. How she used to worry about those lines. One ran from the edge of the hand and crossed the line of life. Fatal accident, she said it meant. I rubbed the line with my thumb, slick with tears.
Fatal accident. That thought was almost unbearable, but possible. Maybe she hadn't meant to do it. Claire wouldn't have planned it like this. She hadn't even washed her hair. She would have prepared, everything would have been perfect. She would have written a note, explaining everything two or five ways. Maybe all she wanted was to sleep.
I laughed, bitter as nightshade. Maybe it was just an accident. What wasn't an accident. Who wasn't.
I picked up the squarish white bottle still half full of pills. Butabarbitol sodium, 100 mg. It practically glowed in my hands. The worst always happened. Why did I keep forgetting that? Now I saw this was not just a bottle, it was a door. You climbed through the round neck of the bottle and came out somewhere else entirely. You could escape. Cash in your chips.
I looked deep into the jar of pink pills. I knew how to do this. You took them slowly. Not like in the movies, where they took them by the handful. You'd just puke them up. The trick was to take one, wait a few minutes, take the next. Have some sherry. One by one. In a couple of hours, you passed out, and it was done.
The house was still. I heard the tick of the clock on the bedside table. A car drove past in the street. Fresh air came through the broken windows. She lay with her mouth open on the flowered pillow in her red bathrobe in the brightness of the morning. I rubbed my cheek against the wool of her robe, the robe Ron got her, she hadn't taken it off for days. God, I hated that bathrobe, its cheery red plaid. It was always too bright. He never really knew her.
I put the lid back on the pills and dropped them on the bed. I had to get rid of that robe before anything. It was the least I could do. I pulled down the covers. The robe was all twisted around, bunched up in the back. I opened the belt and pulled her out of it, how thin she was, how light, her ribs were individually displayed. I laid her back down, careful, careful, I could hardly look at her. Like Christ in her shell-pink underwear. In her dresser I found a soft mauve angora sweater. This was more Claire, the soft color, the plush wool. I put my face into it, hungry for softness, let it soak up my tears. I sat her up. It was hard, I had to lean her against me, overwhelmed by the scent of perfume and her hair. I could hardly breathe, but somehow I pulled the sweater over her head, somehow threaded her arms through, pulled the softness down over her bony shoulder blades. I sat and hugged her, pressing my face to her neck.
I arranged her on the pillow like a princess in a fairy tale, in a glass coffin, a kiss should awaken her. But it didn't work. I closed her mouth, smoothed the sheets and blankets, found the silver brush in the debris and brushed her hair. I found it comforting, I had done this for her when she was alive. She never even said good-bye. The day my mother left, she didn't look back either.
I knew I should call Ron. But I didn't want to share her with him. I wanted her all to myself for just a little while more. When Ron arrived, I would lose Claire for the last time. He didn't know her, he could bloody well wait.
I couldn't get it out of my head, I was right there when she died. If only I'd woken up. If only I'd imagined what could happen. My mother always told me I had no imagination. Claire called me and I didn't go to her. Wouldn't even open my door. I had told her the worst thing was to lose your self-respect. How could I have told
