until Christmas Day, when Hugh opened the cardboard coffin. “If you don’t like the color, we can bleach it,” I said. “Either that or exchange it for the baby.”
I always like to offer a few alternatives, though in this case they were completely unnecessary. Hugh was beside himself, couldn’t have been happier. I assumed he’d be using the skeleton as a model and was a little put off when, instead of taking it to his studio, he carried it into the bedroom and hung it from the ceiling.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked.
The following morning, I reached under the bed for a discarded sock and found what I thought was a three-tiered earring. It looked like something you’d get at a craft fair, not pretty, but definitely handmade, fashioned from what looked like petrified wood. I was just holding it to the side of my head when I thought, Hang on, this is an index finger. It must have fallen off while Hugh was carrying in the skeleton. Then he or I or possibly his mother, who was in town for the holidays, accidentally kicked it under the bed.
I don’t think of myself as overly prissy, but it bothered me to find a finger on my bedroom floor. “If this thing is going to start shedding parts, you really should put it in your studio,” I said to Hugh, who told me that it was his present and he’d keep it wherever the hell he wanted to. Then he got out some wire and reattached the missing finger.
It’s the things you don’t buy that stay with you the longest. This portrait of an unknown woman, for instance. I saw it a few years ago in Rotterdam, and rather than following my instincts I told the dealer that I’d think about it. The next day, I returned, and it was gone, sold, which is maybe for the best. Had I bought it myself, the painting would have gone on my office wall. I’d have admired it for a week or two, and then, little by little, it would have become invisible, just like the portrait of the dog. I wanted it, I wanted it, I wanted it, but the moment it was mine, it ceased to interest me. I no longer see the shame-filled eyes or the oversized nipples, but I do see the unknown woman, her ruddy, pious face, and the lace collar that hugged her neck like an air filter.
As the days pass, I keep hoping that the skeleton will become invisible, but he hasn’t. Dangling between the dresser and the bedroom door, he is the last thing I see before falling asleep, and the first thing I see when opening my eyes in the morning.
It’s funny how certain objects convey a message — my washer and dryer, for example. They can’t speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I’m doing fairly well. “No more laundromat for you,” they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can’t cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, “Well, he must be doing something. My numbers are off the charts.” The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary and says only one thing: “You are going to die.”
I’d always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call “understanding” is basically just fantasizing. I think about death all the time, but only in a romantic, self-serving way, beginning, most often, with my tragic illness and ending with my funeral. I see my brother squatting beside my grave, so racked by guilt that he’s unable to stand. “If only I’d paid him back that twenty-five thousand dollars I borrowed,” he says. I see Hugh, drying his eyes on the sleeve of his suit jacket, then crying even harder when he remembers I bought it for him. What I didn’t see were all the people who might celebrate my death, but that’s all changed with the skeleton, who assumes features at will.
One moment he’s an elderly Frenchwoman, the one I didn’t give my seat to on the bus. In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings. I think it’s a perfectly valid rule, but it wouldn’t have killed me to take her crutches into consideration.
“I’m sorry,” I say, but before