The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (8 page)

Eric threw the car into reverse, then burnt rubber leaving the parking lot. Seese had not expected Eric’s reaction to be so negative or powerful. They had discussed babies and children many times. She and Eric had even discussed how they might collaborate to conceive two children—one for him and one for her. This had been their scheme to tap into all the family trusts available to Eric the minute he married and had children.

Eric had taken the long way home, driving slowly and methodically down the winding coastal highway. They were near the apartment complex when Eric reached over and held her hand in his. Traffic was light but he didn’t look away from the road. Staring straight ahead, he said, “I can’t believe I’m behaving this way—faggot, sissy, queer, I never imagined or dreamed—” Eric had burst out laughing, but Seese could see tears. He did not turn into the entrance to the parking garage but drove to the beach. They sat in the car and watched the tide come in.
Eric was still gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the blazing wake of light from the setting sun.

Seese slid down in the seat and hunched against the wind off the ocean. Eric was motionless, frozen to the wheel. The wind flattened his thin, fine hair tight against his skull, and for an instant Seese saw how Eric would look when he was an old man.

They did not talk until they had parked in the basement garage. “I don’t even know where to begin,” Eric said, pulling Seese across the seat to hug her. As his lips brushed her cheek, Seese could hear his heart pounding. His hands were wet and cold on hers. “We have always talked and talked, you and I. And now when there is so much, I can’t say anything. So many things, so much all mixed up together.” Eric fumbled under the front seat for his brandy flask. “I want this baby to be mine and not his.” Eric passed the flask to Seese and fished around in his pocket for the vial of cocaine. Seese took a big swallow of brandy, but shook her head at the cocaine. “Here’s a change already,” Eric said, smiling brightly. “I’ve lost my comrade-in-dope.” The brandy burned all the way down. Seese reached for the flask and emptied it. The burning and coughing brought tears to her eyes.

“So now we know gay men are just men after all,” Eric said. “Irrational and piggish like all the rest. I thought I had already whipped
that
demon back to the underworld.” Eric paused and glanced around the basement garage for security people, then spooned more coke to his nose. “What I have to tell you now is even uglier.” Seese knew by his expression Eric meant Beaufrey. “He’ll go crazy when he finds out you’re pregnant again.”

Seese looked at Eric, shaking her head slowly. “How do you know? I’m keeping this one,” she said softly. “David—” Seese began, but Eric interrupted her. Suddenly he was angry. “David? David? Jesus fucking Christ! Seese! Don’t you understand about David?”

Again and again Seese had thought about that night in the basement garage. She and Eric had always been able to tease one another when one or both of them got on their “high horse.” But that night, neither of them had been able to call the other back down where they could talk. Eric had been gloomy and depressed for six weeks. He had even cautioned Seese not to take the really black moods too seriously. Eric had once been David’s lover. David had wanted a child, a son. Eric had watched her eyes and lips and knew Seese would not believe him. Eric suddenly felt exhausted, almost too weak to push open the huge Cadillac door. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Maybe he had the whole
story wrong the way most of the rest of his life was all wrong. He was the odd man out. How could his feelings or judgment be trusted?

“I throw up,” she had told him. “Morning sickness,” Beaufrey said, building a case against the pregnancy. “No,
not
that. The morphine does it.” Seese had stood her ground. No abortion this time. The pregnancy had put her on a different footing with Beaufrey. Pregnancy worked to her advantage. Beaufrey was uncomfortable. He kept looking at David. He was trying to determine how much David really wanted the child. But David was intent on photographing Serlo, who posed sullenly next to a large pot of orchids trailing long sprays of yellow blossoms like a peacock tail. David wanted the blue of the ocean and the sky through the glass wall. Serlo pulled some of the long yellow spikes of flowers over his shoulders like a cape. At home, Serlo either went bare chested or did not button his shirt.

Seese has other dreams that haunt her. Dreams in which she is in the hospital again, only Beaufrey himself stands near the bed holding a white porcelain basin. A surgical procedure has been completed. There is a sanitary napkin between her legs. A nurse helps her swallow more pain pills. As she drifts, Seese can feel nothing below her neck. Beaufrey had paid doctors to reach up inside her belly while she was knocked out, and they had cut the little tendril. In her nightmare, dozens of yellow rosebuds have been scattered over a hospital bed with white sheets. The rosebuds have wilted, and the edges of the petals have dried up. She dreams she is awake, but numb below the waist—“As usual,” she thinks she hears one of the doctors say, but then realizes it must be the effects of the injection the nurse has given her.

The chrome-yellow hue of the light had been all that Seese could remember clearly about the abortion she had had before she conceived Monte. The light that afternoon had been creamy yellow, the color and texture of roses. She had never met Beaufrey, but Beaufrey had made all the arrangements. Seese had been so high and so happy in love with David and delighted with her friend Eric she had not wanted pregnancy to spoil it. Still, Seese had been disturbed by the urgency with which Beaufrey had got rid of her and David’s embryo.

SEESE ORDERED a double shot of rum at the San Diego airport bar. There had been two hours before the flight left for Tucson. “Anything from Haiti,” she told the bartender. “This is an airport, remember?” was all the bartender said. Once they had got drunk together—her, David, and Beaufrey—on 180-proof Haitian rum. Beaufrey had been in Haiti on business. They never talked business around her. With Haitian rum Seese saw “apparitions.” “You mean
hallucinations,”
David said. But
apparitions
had been the term the nuns used. Apparitions were full of beauty and wonder and holiness.

On the flight to Tucson there was a guy who looked so much like Eric that she had felt a pounding in her ears. Once the plane was in the air, she made a trip to the lavatory so she could take another look, so she could make sure. As she sat on the cold lid of the commode, her hands had been shaking so hard she could not get the tiny spoon to her nostril. She had to tell herself to breathe deep and to relax. The cocaine helped. When she moved down the aisle past the man, she saw that his face was not nearly as handsome or kind as Eric’s had been. When the flight attendants brought drinks, she bought two rum and Cokes although they warned the flight to Tucson would be short.

Seese could not remember seeing the hills and trees or the ocean after Eric’s suicide. They had done a lot of traveling after that, but she had no memory of it. She had tried to distract herself with new landscapes when they traveled, but after Eric died, Seese had been unable to remember anything except disjointed arrivals and departures in international airports.

She had not actually seen Eric’s body. Only the photographs. David’s photographs, but somehow that had been worse. All she knew was that something had happened to her eyes, something had diminished her vision.

In air turbulence the jet airliner alternately bucked and shuddered. Seese thought of children’s books with storm clouds illustrated as big horses—wild-eyed, tails streaming down into rain and mist. From the
blue and black storm horses it was only a flicker of thought to Monte. The doctor had said it was better not to dwell on him—especially not to imagine him at times or in activities that had never happened. Of course it was all right to remember Monte as he had been. Seese let go of the idea of the children’s books. She did not think she had ever seen a book that turned thunderclouds into galloping wild horses. She looked around at the other passengers and at the back of the head of the Eric look-alike. She was proud of only a few things, but one of them was that she was as fearless as her father had been about flying in jets. He had flown navy jets and had been gone on carriers for months at a time. On his visits home, he rented single-engine planes and took her with him. He had to fly every day, he said. He didn’t care what kind of plane. He loved flying. What Seese remembered best was the moment the two of them had returned to the house. Her father had bragged to her mother, “Seese is a born flyer, just like her daddy.” Her mother had only shaken her head. Seese’s mother never liked to fly.

The thunderclouds near Tucson had caused turbulence. The other passengers were restless and some were airsick. The flight attendants were finally able to move through the cabin to take airsick bags to the lavatories. The captain was on the PA soothing the passengers. They had passed the storm. The captain used the slow, easy tones her father had used with her to announce his new assignment to the biggest, newest carrier in the Pacific fleet. That had been the good news. The bad news was the divorce. Everyone at her high school, well,
nearly
everyone, had had a divorce in the family. The school counselor said it was because their school had so many pupils from military families.

Out the window Seese saw long lines of blue landing lights outlining the runways. In the dim light she could see the grass and weeds between runways bent to the ground by strong winds. Ah, Tucson. What a nice welcome, she thought as she swallowed the last of the rum. The only places that had worse dust storms than Tucson were Albuquerque and El Paso. Her father used to tease her about going up and never coming down. Just flying and flying forever, so whatever bad weather there was down below, dust storms or even earthquakes, you wouldn’t be touched.

He had been flying bombing missions over the South China Sea when she asked him about the war. He said it wasn’t really a war. She asked him what it was like. They had been at a lobster restaurant in Orange County. He always came to see her when he was “back in the States,” as he put it. He described what it felt like flying very high and very fast. No earthquakes or dust storms could get him. Her father had
laughed then, proud to have remembered one of their little jokes together. Seese had wanted to ask him questions so he could give her answers that would help her feel better. Every evening-news show had television coverage of U.S. planes and pilots shot down over enemy territory. Even after it happened, Seese imagined he was only away on a long cruise. Seese imagined him flying and flying forever: the aviator’s vision of heaven.

From the baggage claim area Seese paused a moment in front of the sliding glass doors. Traveling with David, Beaufrey, and Serlo had taught her not to appear anxious to leave with the luggage. It was also not good to rush to a rest room either. What she was carrying with her was actually a lot more cocaine than she had ever carried alone. It was the kilo of coke Beaufrey had used to “settle up” with her. Seese knew Beaufrey would have preferred to settle up with a .44-magnum slug, but Beaufrey had David to think of.

Tucson was only one of a number of Southwest hick towns that the drug enforcement people watched relentlessly. Peepholes in toilet stalls at the Tucson International Airport were one of the airport police’s big pastimes. Seese and Cherie used to flip fingers at the invisible spies in the toilets. That was when they had been traveling just for fun—her and Cherie—carrying nothing on them. Tonight Seese just wanted to get to a motel room and sleep. The automatic sliding glass doors opened, and she let the weight of the two suitcases and the heavy shoulder bag propel her out into the night where a cold, dusty wind surged in dark waves.

She told the cabdriver “Miracle Mile.” She’d decide which motel when they got near there. The cold wind had cleared the rum from her brain. The four years she had spent with Cherie had taught Seese about cheap motels. The cab went to the end of Miracle Mile and she still couldn’t decide. She had to be sure she didn’t stay at a place she and Cherie had ever stayed, even if it had been years ago. It was patterns they used when hunting for you. Your habits and routines.

Seese wasn’t taking unnecessary chances. She asked for a room that would be “quiet,” meaning far from Miracle Mile, behind the other units. The night clerk was reading a textbook on basic chemistry. He was marking significant passages with a pale yellow marker. Seese hated people who marked books. But the clerk had given her the key without questions or hassle, something unusual for night clerks on Miracle Mile when a woman alone checked in. So Seese did not wisecrack about students who defaced books with yellow markers or mutter that writing in books should be against the law. Rum and cocaine always loosened
her tongue, but now, she would have to take it easy for a while. She needed to lie low.

THE ROOM SMELLED faintly of stale cigarettes, but that was all. Seese counted herself lucky the room didn’t reek of urine or sanitary napkins too long in the trash. She rolled a joint and propped herself up in the bed. The wind was whining along the eaves of the stucco bungalow. The gusts splattered sand against the sliding glass doors. Nights like these when she was a girl, she had pulled the covers up to her chin and had gone right to sleep. The sound of the wind had made her feel so snug and safe inside. The sound of rain did the same for other people. Eric had been the only other person who had liked the sound of the wind and sand. Because he had grown up in Lubbock, where, he said, West Texas sandstorms stripped the chrome right off the bumpers of new cars, and windshield glass was so badly sand-pitted it appeared to be fogged.