know. You have no idea.”
“I was the one who used to want to kill him,” he said. “You used to defend him to me.”
“We were children then.”
They walked for a while in silence. Susan was filled with a white-hot, dispassionate fury unlike anything she had known. She wished ruin on the people who owned these comfortable houses, the people who tended these yards or who paid others to tend them. She wished bankruptcy on these people, disease, unspeakable losses. She touched the trunk of a tree and thought of floodwaters roiling down this innocent street, a wall of churning mud that would break through the doors of the houses and carry off their clocks and books and chairs. She wanted to race the flood back to the mortuary, throw herself on her son’s casket and ride with it as the water swept it out into the ruined world. She imagined the living drowned and the dead floated up out of their graves, a battalion of coffins racing past the mute, shattered faces of houses and stores.
“Are you feeling any better?” Billy asked her.
“I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
“Can you face the service?”
“I suppose.”
They turned and started back toward the mortuary. Billy said, “He’s just an old man. Try and remember that.”
She said. “Remember how he used to beat you up?”
“And remember how you used to tell me he didn’t know what he was doing?”
“Yes.”
“That was all a long time ago,” Billy said.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“He’s an old man now, and whether or not he knew what he was doing when we were kids, he’s just about out of his mind with guilt about what happened. We can probably let him off the hook a little, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
“It would be better for you, too. I don’t want to seem like I’m giving advice, or anything.”
“No. I know what you’re saying.”
They walked back to the mortuary, up the flagstone path, past the discreet iron sign with the owners’ names—two brothers—done in scrolled lettering. Inside, the foyer and the green lobby had not changed. They would be like this forever. Billy escorted her into the viewing room, and when they entered, a wave of hushed recognition ran through the crowd of mourners. She could feel it. She thought of her wedding day, the moment when the march had started and she’d stepped down the aisle in her dress and veil. Todd came immediately to her, as did her mother.
“Are you all right?” Todd asked, and at the same time her mother said, “Honey, what’s going on?”
“I’m okay,” she answered. “I just needed some air.”
“Sit down,” Todd said. “Over here.”
“No. I’m all right, really.”
She reassured them as best she could, though her true attention was fixed on her father, who waited for her at the head of the aisle, near Ben’s casket. She disengaged herself from Billy and Todd and her mother. She walked down the aisle to her father.
“Susie?” he said. His face was worn and expectant, full of ravaged hope. He was dense and shame-faced in his somber suit, haggard under his suntan, jowled. He had never looked so old.
“Hello, Dad,” she said.
“Is everything okay?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.”
She stepped up to him, took his jaw firmly in her hands. She knew how crazy she must look, how vengeful, by the panic she saw skate across his eyes.
“Susan?” he said in a small voice.
She decided. Still holding his jaw, she put her mouth on his. She kept her eyes open. Soon he tried to pull away but she kept her mouth on his. She held her mouth in place and she continued looking into his eyes until she saw that the knowledge had entered him. Then she held her mouth over his a little longer, until she felt sure he knew he was not forgiven.
1994/ He had the pictures, but he never looked at them. He had them. That was enough.
He had the house and he had the pictures. He had land with a garden on it. He stood at the edge of his garden. He watched the constellations turning over the bare vines and the black scraps of the leaves. A winter moon had risen.
Ben was buried. Zoe was buried. His youngest and strangest child. His most familiar child. She had knelt here, right here, and held a tomato she’d believed to be clean. She’d worn a dark silk dress into the ground.
He had failed. He hadn’t loved enough, or had loved