The Ruby Slippers (14 page)

Harrison pulls off the apron and squats to look into the face. The eyes are closed and the face is bluish-pink but not yet terrible. The signs of life – what would they be? Where should he look? He reaches for the neck, the jugular, puts two fingers there, as he has seen them do in the movies. No way of telling – his own hands too warm, too clumsy in this cold and with the savage pounding in his heart, his head. He tries the wrist – impossible yet to tell; lowers his head to bring his ear to the grocer’s mouth – maybe he would hear breathing, but no. He forces himself behind the body, scoops it to him and drags it out into the store, which is warm, comparing. He lays the grocer down flat on his back and runs to the counter. There on a hook, a shop coat, a towel and a woman’s coat! He rushes back, throws the garments over the torso, rolling up the towel to make a pillow for the head. Then he sets to, rubbing, massaging each limb, passing to it his own quivering fever, and all the time hugging at the corpse, gathering it to him for warmth and for dear life. After a while he has to stop, short of breath. He hears something – a living, moaning sound? Or is it just what happens in the movies when a dead body is moved around? He slaps the face this side, that. No good. He brings himself full over and, taking breath for two, fastens his own generous lips around the grocer’s sagging mouth – isn’t that how they do it? – and blows and blows again, and feels the pricking of the old man’s bristles, sees the swelling of the chest with his own breath. He stops, looks for life, prays to the Lord and goes again in measured seconds – one last try before surrendering to the fact of death. Then, from deep inside the deathly frame comes a shudder, then a jolt, and then a stuttering string of breaths: the corpse alive! Harrison pulls back, eyes wide, and sees the grocer’s own blue eyes flutter open to catch him there in slow astonishment – two men seeing each other in a moment they will both remember for ever – Lazarus waking to meet the gaze of his saviour and his assassin.

For the next five minutes not an action is taken and not a word is said, the grocer stretched out, fighting for every creaking breath, the frightened boy standing by, transfixed and wondering, What have I done? Where does this go? Astonished to see fingers twitching and muscles flexing with new feeling, the old eyes blinking as the numb brain comes alive to time and space, and draws together the fragments of memory that had blown apart. Harrison glances into the hateful freezer. A side of beef hangs dead centre, and on the floor a fallen knife, the one the old man had raised at him. Then he sees it. Spidery capitals, scored crude in crimson into the hanging meat, a three-line poem shouting murder:

HARRISON DID THIS
BLACK BOY NOSE STUD
ONCE WORKED HERE

The old anger surges in him. He takes up the knife, slashing at the words to obliterate them, leaving a craze of lines in their place. A whimper comes from Michael behind him, struggling to prop himself up on an arm. Harrison runs out, hissing, his eyes flashing accusingly, ‘You shouldn’a writ that! It was an accident! I didn’t know what I was doing!’

At last the old man’s lips shape themselves around words, pressing them, aching and separate, into existence. ‘I . . . I . . . was . . . dying.’ Harrison’s fury melts to see a fragile man returned to life. Michael scrabbles like an insect missing legs, not feeling his feet as they fall away under him. ‘Help me,’ he gasps, twisted and shivering.

And so Harrison knows that the grocer will live and maybe, just maybe, he will not go to jail. He rushes to the counter and lifts out the chair. As he drags Michael into it, his cheek against the cold of the face, he has only one thing to say: ‘I saved you. Remember that. I fucking saved you!’

■ ♦ ■

He lies in semi-darkness, a pool of light still spilling from the open freezer doorway. He heard Harrison’s footsteps go out the door, heard it close shut, heard him bring down the shutter to shield the scene from prying eyes, heard the steps outside fade to silence.

None of it is real and belonging to any world he knows; he cannot yet fully connect the events that led to this moment. A full five minutes it takes to link the parts to the whole: the door flying open and springing the wide-eyed boy from nowhere; Harrison raging at the sight of the knife; Harrison wild, the hatbox raised above his head; Harrison, lips like suckers, clamped around his own. Finally, Michael begins to understand the surreal narrative into which, like a sleepwalker, he has strayed and played his part and come so close (again) to dying. And once understanding is in place, common sense also announces itself and Michael realizes he has to get himself upstairs – God knows how – and get himself under the covers. Summoning the will, he prises himself out of the chair, judders to the stairway, cranking the seized pistons of his legs to take the steps one by one, and then lurches under his own dead weight along the corridor and into the bedroom, where he falls like a toppled statue on the bed. Thankful to the bone, he pulls the covers over himself and surrenders to the great warm nothingness.

S
T
Dominic’s Roman Catholic Church is not an inviting place at the best of times. The Victorian Gothic facade itself is grey and faded, and to pass through it from the brisk city into the vaulted gloom within is to make a choice between the bright world and the dark, to recognize death within life, and to wish to discover the reality beneath the world’s glittering illusions.

James made no such choice. If it were left to him, Paolo’s farewell would be held in a green and shining place, next to a rippling stream, in a sun-filled meadow. Such places exist – natural burial places or whatever they are called. Before the end, he had even allowed himself to imagine a send-off for Paolo, seeing himself as the main mover in the airy ceremony and the wake to follow. Both of these would be joyous events to strike a perfect balance and bring together Paolo’s gay friends and family members. But it hasn’t been left to him. In the past six days, not one of Paolo’s relatives has been in touch, and he knows that he is not welcome at the ceremony in any shape or form. The truth is they have taken the whole thing from him, right from under his nose; everything that would have been within his power to mark Paolo’s life; everything swiped away from him, including the body! All so that James could not claim any kind of ownership or leave any imprint of himself on what remained of Paolo.

It has taken every ounce of James’s willpower just to put on his clothes today and assume a human appearance, consisting of black suit and tie, white shirt and cufflinks (though he would have preferred something more informal). But he has decided to play by their rules; he will give them nothing to confirm their ridiculous prejudice. As if he would turn up veiled and rouged, a grieving drag-widow awaiting her moment to throw herself wailing over the coffin? No, he has taken over an hour to dress, with immaculate attention to detail, his appearance so much the man. And so James arrives below the forbidding arch, under the eroded gaze of an angel, and enters the place, pale and shaking in his dispossession. At the inner doorway an usher hands out the order of service and directs mourners to their places: ‘Are you with the family?’

James stares back, stricken, confronting the hideous truth concealed in the question, ‘No,’ is what he eventually mumbles, and is pointed towards the central pews. His eyes adjust to the amber light cast by inadequate clusters of candles, straining to fend off the encroaching dark. The church is close to full, and James shuffles into a row between a phalanx of backs in front and ranks of faces behind, stiff and pink, like flower-heads poking out from so many smooth black vases. He recognizes nobody. In how many different pockets of his existence did Paolo ever get to know so many people?

An organ plays, uncoiling a string of notes to wander the void as thin and insubstantial as life itself. At the altar stands a priest in a shining white cassock, but silent and bowed, the model for us all. Hanging shockingly behind him is the buckled image of Christ’s agony. It takes an age for a minute to pass. James allows himself a sly turn of the head, eyes wandering to seek out familiar faces. Old friends will be here, he is sure, but dispersed among the many, as isolated as he is, and as Death would have it.

A sudden tumble of chords escapes the organ and becomes an avalanche of sound, swirling into the darkest reaches. The priest raises and spreads his arms for all to stand, and in comes the procession. An assistant priest leads the way, holding high a shining cross, and behind him, a boy in robes, swinging incense. Then comes a funeral director in a top hat, tied around with a black bow. With a dramatic backward lean, he marches a slow monstrous swagger, the metronomic ticking of a black cane across his chest with each fateful step. And then – cold claw to the heart – the coffin itself, carried by six bearers. James hasn’t reckoned for it. How can it be? He has been so undone by the family’s stealing of the corpse and their imposition of these grim rites that he had forgotten there would be an actual dead body. Dead bodies and funerals kind of go together, but he simply hadn’t factored it in. The priest begins to intone and the coffin is set down in front of the altar. The six men peel away to their places among the family. So many to carry Paolo in death and so shamefully few that ever stood by him in life. He strains to see between the rows of heads; he must see it; he must force himself to look at the coffin, stark on the catafalque. How can his lovely Paolo possibly be inside that thing? It should have been a cream-white box splashed with huge corn-blue polka dots, a spray of sun, clouds and sky, a great bird in flight even – anything but this hard, dark thing, like a clumsy piece of old furniture, polished to a shine and put out for a quick sale.

Now it is all in the hands of priests with their liturgies: hymns to be sung and prayers offered. James sits, stands, kneels with the congregation and sings in the hopeless way that goes with funerals. He makes the responses in mumbles and snatches, all of these dredged up painfully from his own Catholic upbringing. And the eulogy itself – unbearable, brutally impersonal and making no reference to anything that Paolo ever did after the age of twenty-one, as if the rest of his life amounted to nothing. No mention of his successes and his wondrous flair as a designer. The cause of death is, of course, skirted around: an unexplained ‘affliction’ a sudden tragic end following complications. These awful evasions, as if Paolo had committed the sin of suicide, which in some minds it would amount to.

The tribute peters to nothing, and all glory is heaped on Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It dawns chilly on James that no one is going to speak out and recapture the Paolo that he and others know so well. If he had been allowed to arrange things, there would have been no end of friends to step up and bring to life again the real things, the moving things and especially the funny things that came from Paolo. There would have been music, too: Peggy Lee singing ‘Fever’, something from Cole Porter, and a fair share of Paolo’s beloved Johann Sebastian Bach in among The Duke, The Count and The King.

As the service nears its end, James catches sight at last of someone he recognizes: Steve, Paolo’s brother, who he once met in a bar, though little was said. Next to him are two shorter, older people, the mother and father whom he never met. Under any other circumstance he would see them as good Italians, good New Yorkers and no doubt good parents who somehow got short-changed through no fault of their own.

The words of the final blessing ring out, remote and comfortless. James’s sense of banishment is so complete that he decides there and then that, unwelcome as he is, he will not go to the cemetery and join the family for the final committal to the ground. Paolo’s sweet spirit has long since fled the scene, and James cannot bear to think that there will be no opportunity for him to express the tender things that he knows would come out hot and twisted if he ever dared to say them in such a place, in such company.

Leaving the church is purgatory. The brother and the priest have taken their stations at the door, hailing the mourners streaming between them. James lowers his head as he passes, avoiding the shaking of hands. Maybe the brother doesn’t recognize him anyway. But he can’t help overhearing the comments of others offering their respects, speaking in cleansed voices. ‘That was beautiful,’ says one. ‘Lovely service,’ offers another. Walking down the wide church steps, James starts to cry, no longer caring what anyone thinks, emptying himself of old bitterness but opening up new hollows. He weeps not for Paolo’s loss but for the failure of the world to offer good things in memory of a good man.

A hand falls on his shoulder. He turns, confused, momentarily disappointed not to find Paolo’s lean, wistful face, but discovering instead Jack’s round face fixed on him, the eyes doleful, like a loyal dog’s. Too defeated to express his annoyance, James soaks up Jack’s bland condolences: ‘You OK, James? It must be terrible for you. I saw you in there, but I couldn’t get across to you. There were other guys from Woody’s, too.’ Caught in Jack’s earnest gaze, James still can’t make head nor tail of the guy. Jack drops his head to stare at his feet, saying bashfully, ‘Speaking of which, we could go there now maybe – unless of course . . .’

‘Oh no, no, I’m done here,’ James insists, glad to draw the line between himself and this deathly place. ‘I could use the company right now.’

■ ♦ ■

Pain being the enemy of reason, Siobhan goes through her cell phone again, every nook and cranny where messages might lurk undetected: the call logs, the text boxes and the voice mails. Nothing – not that she really expected anything. She removes the cover again and shakes the battery out, just in case. She knows she is being ridiculous but it hurts so much; it has been hell just to drag herself out of her room and back into ordinary life again. Siobhan barely notices when her mom comes skirling into the kitchen and opens the oven door, but when a swirl of smoke is released, the acrid snatch at her throat makes her hot with protest: ‘Mommy!’ Fumes are in her eyes and lungs, but Corinne is in too much of a hurry to apologize and cooking is always an unwanted chore.