she’d be better off dead?” he asks, to be perfectly clear.
“Some people are comforted by the idea of moving on to a place where they don’t suffer.”
“Heaven,” he says.
“That’s one possibility.”
“I’ve always wondered what a body would do forever in heaven. Hell is quite vivid in the Bible—chained head and foot in the lake of flames, the weeping and wailing. But heaven, nobody ever says what it would be like to exist there for a single day let alone forever. Tertullian tried, but I don’t find his answer very satisfactory.”
“Tertullian?”
“He was an early Christian philosopher. He said that one of the most intense pleasures in heaven would be to look down at the miseries people were suffering in hell. Personally, if that’s all he can come up with, I’ll take hell. At least there you’re experiencing the real thing, not watching it.”
She seems lost in the conversation, where to go from here. Perhaps he is getting carried away. He has that tendency. She says, “Was there a funeral?”
“Yes.”
“And did you go?”
“Yes. It was very unsatisfying. Preachers don’t know anything more about death than the rest of us. I walked out before the service was finished. Do you think that was disrespectful?”
“I’m sure the minister understood.”
“I meant to Jean.”
She rubs her eyes, taking a moment to think. “I’d say what’s important is whether you feel you disrespected her.”
“They left her bed unmade.”
“Excuse me?”
“When I left the service,” he says, “I went to her apartment to dispose of her things. The people from the funeral home, they didn’t straighten up when they took Jean away.” He can see the bed now in his mind, the white cotton blanket bunched up at the bottom, the sheets hanging off the side, her pillow on the floor. The mattress sagging in the middle, the imprint of a solitary sleeper. He remembers running his hands over the sheet as if tracing the shape of her—the curve of her legs, the bulk of her hips, her bony spine. His wife reduced to an impression in the bed, the memory of a mattress.
“That particularly troubled you?” Amy says.
He nods that indeed, the unmade bed troubled him.
She leans back, signifying a sudden change in topic. “Perhaps you could tell me about the assault that your wife—”
“Jean.”
“—that your wife, Jean, suffered.”
He shakes his head. “Another day.”
When Simon picked up the phone and heard, “I’m Dora Reed, Kenny’s mom,” two possibilities immediately occurred to him: she was calling to invite Davey to some special occasion, such as a birthday party, or there was trouble. Given recent history, more likely the latter. And so when the boy ran down the hallway Simon snared him by his shirt collar and motioned for him to stand there and wait.
“Sorry, could you repeat that, Mrs. Reed?” Davey inched toward the stairs. “Yes, I did know he took the knife to your house … Not beforehand, no, I learned about it when he came home. He said he forgot it was in his pocket.” Davey placed one foot on the first step. “Of course we don’t let him play with knives, but it’s really a letter opener, with a pretty dull blade, in fact. It’s not like a carving knife.”
Davey waved at his father. “Tell her it couldn’t cut …”
“They were what?” Simon stared at his son, the wild look of him, his cheek scratched, his hair sticking out, yet another rip at the neck of his T-shirt.
“No I didn’t,” the boy said firmly.
Simon covered the receiver. “Didn’t what?”
“Whatever she says.”
“I didn’t know that,” Simon said to Kenny’s mom. “I was under the impression the knife fell out and Davey put it away immediately … Yes, that is a different situation.”
When Simon hung up the phone, Davey was gone.
“You won’t believe my new client,” Amy said over her shoulder, reaching into the cabinet above the stove. Little tins and bottles were spread over the counter, along with toothpicks, muffin molds, birthday candles, matchbooks, and all manner of other small items that he rarely thought about.
Simon leaned against the sink, eating dark purple grapes one after another. He could consume the whole bunch easily. With some foods there was no limit to what one could eat. Restraint had to kick in. “Looking for something?”
“I’m rationalizing the spice cabinet.”
“Rationalizing it?”
“That’s what the British call organizing a space, according to a client of mine. It’s the idea that a cabinet or closet has an inherent sense of reason to it that needs to be restored every so often. I