Love and Sleep (54 page)

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

What touched Pierce always in Christian burials, what never failed to bring surprising tears to his eyes, was when they talked of the soul coming home, to be hurt never more. Because they couldn't say it without reminding you of all that souls do suffer. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. Nothing can touch him further.

It was very brief, and then Rosie nudged him, and a funeral-home functionary showed him his place and his handholds, and with Allan Butterman and four others Pierce didn't know, elders of the community, he carried Boney's box (was it light or heavy? Hard to say) down the aisle and out the door, onto the gurney of the hearse.

Then Pierce realized that he could not now turn toward home, but would have to go on to the cemetery, wherever it was, and help to get Boney into his closet in the earth, from which there is no exit.

"Ride with me,” Val at his elbow said. “I'll tell you a story."

Allan had persuaded Rosie to have the reception catered, at the Foundation's expense; Mrs. Pisky, still mighty in the power of her caretaking, knew what to do, and made the arrangements as though she had been thinking about them for years; so there were long tables on the lawn laid with white cloths showing the fold-marks, like linens in Florentine paintings of dead saints, and coolers beneath them full of refreshments, and young people in white shirts behind them to serve, and even a kid to help park cars. All that early morning young people had come and gone and passed Rosie in the hall or on the lawn on their errands, asking her questions in lowered voices (though they sometimes laughed among themselves as they raised their tables and laid their cloths); and now it was done and the guests were gravely entering onto the lawns too large ever to seem crowded, and were waited on discreetly. Rosie thought: the Elysian Fields. As though they had all gone over together in their nice clothes to a stiller, calmer version of their earthly life.

She had swallowed a quick drink to fortify herself, maybe too quick, she felt she floated somewhere above the scene, able to observe keenly, but not certain she could participate. There was Allan, and the men from New York, and the weedy distant cousin. Spofford, in boots and a black suit from which his brown wrists protruded, where had he found or been keeping it; he looked more like a marshal than a mourner. As she watched, Pierce Moffett broke off his conversation with him, and moved across the lawn, to speak, apparently, to the minister, who awaited him, a nice-sized drink in her own hand.

"I wanted to ask you,” Pierce said to her when they had introduced themselves. (Her name was Rhea Rasmussen, but she was no immediate relative of Boney's; they had tried hard to find the connection but had been unable to.) “When we were at the cemetery?"

"Yes."

"As we carried the, toward the, the. You asked us to stop for a moment, and you read..."

"Yes."

"And then we went on, a few steps, and then we stopped again."

"Yes."

Pierce had raised his eyes at this second pause (the old man was after all pretty heavy, he and his box) to see Val's Beetle, outside the gates, Val in it, her dark glasses on; she had chosen not to participate. And had not come to this reception. “Then again, three or four times more."

"Yes. Seven times in all, actually.” She smiled, and her smile lightened her austere features, lit her eyes.

"Well what was ... Oh.
Seven
times."

"There's an esoteric reason, one we don't really anymore..."

"The planets,” said Pierce.

"Yes.” She laughed a little. “You actually know? Usually it takes a lot of explaining. I sometimes hope no one will ask."

"Sort of, yes. For the leaving of earthly concerns and heaviness behind."

The soul, at death, sheds the body, but not the incorporeal or less corporeal spirit wrapping; that is only discarded as the soul ascends through the spheres that have governance over it. As the soul rises, it gives back the garment or integument that belongs to each sphere before it can go through to the next. That was neo-Platonic lore, Pierce thought, or Gnostic myth; Hermetic. How had it come to these northern Protestants?

"So we were pausing for each."

"They do the same thing in the Orthodox Jewish burial service.” She shook the ice in her glass and drank. “I think we probably got it from them."

"Really?"

"Yes. Did you notice our weekly service is on Saturday? We were very ecumenical. It's an interesting story. Maybe you'd like to hear it someday."

"I would,” Pierce said. “Very much.” Damn if each time they paused Boney had not in fact seemed to grow lighter. He looked into his glass, and laughed a little, imagining Boney's soul ascending through the spheres (the same spheres Beau Brachman had drawn in the dirt of his driveway), up up to the outside, wriggling out of all the heavy overcoats of earthly hurt and astral destiny. Unless of course some unforesworn attachment held him back.

Una Knox. The name tickled somewhere deep, in the wrong or unlikely part of his memory, but he couldn't reach it.

As she stood at the lawn's edge waiting for the courage to go mingle, Rosie felt a hand on her elbow.

"Oh hi, Mike."

"Rosie.” He held her arm and studied her for a long moment, looking into her face with a clear frank neutrality that was probably supposed to be open and receptive but which maybe he knew was also unsettling. Then he said: “It's hard for you."

"Yep,” she said.

"I guess you were there."

"Yep.” She supposed she could say that Boney had died in her arms, hers and Val's and Mrs. Pisky's. She remembered the long hall, the lighted bathroom. Heat lightning or something, a rocket going off, lit the windows momentarily just then.

"You had got to be pretty close,” Mike said.

"Well. Close. I don't know.” She looked at Mike, who was now gazing smiling over the funeral crowd, hands loosely clasped behind his back. The beetle-browed truculent look he had worn the last months was all gone, had been gone for a while she realized, replaced by this face, sweet, wide-eyed, even gay, and somehow predatory. He appeared a stranger to her.

"You've got a lot on your mind just now,” he said. “I don't want to interfere in your. In your grieving. And there've got to be a lot of business matters left over."

There were; lots. If you live denying you're going to die, you tend to not want to finish things. She said nothing, only clasped her own hands before her.

"This isn't easy to bring up,” he said. “But I want to ask you a favor."

"Sure.” Sure, ask: when Rosie was a kid her best friend Sylvia had explained to her that you could perfectly correctly say
Sure
when somebody said
Can I ask you a favor
, and still be able to refuse to do what was asked. Sylvia had later betrayed Rosie atrociously; she still remembered.

"Things are really changing in The Woods,” Mike said. “
Really
changing. Our whole mission could change. There are major new things coming in.” He shook his head in what appeared to be awe, and to Rosie it seemed his eyes were moist. “All I wanted to say,” he said, “is that this would really be a terrible time for anything to happen to our funding."

She said nothing to this either. She hadn't heard that big changes were sweeping through The Woods. She wondered why Mike felt responsible for the funding that the Rasmussen Foundation supplied to The Woods, which was really a small part of their income, used for research projects she understood, Rosie hadn't ever looked closely at the paperwork.

"Well gee,” she said. “I can't tell you anything, Michael."

In the middle distance toward which they both looked, a big older man in a rumpled suit stood, unattached to any group. Not someone she knew. He held a summer straw hat behind his back, and looked off placidly toward no one.

"I understand. Really. But I think if you were involved in the things that are going on there.” He kicked at a harmless patch of moss that lay before his foot, testing its tenacity. “You used to be interested. In the work up there. My work."

"Climacterics,” Rosie said. She wasn't going to ask about it. Mike laughed lightly, dismissively even Rosie thought, as though she had mentioned some ancient enthusiasm of his, motorbikes or stamp-collecting.

Who was that old guy? Not a local person, that was somehow evident. His big pumpkin face was astonishingly lined, his little eyes and features sunken in the expanse. “So what's the favor?” she said.

"I'd like you to meet somebody. Somebody who's been working with us at The Woods. I really wanted the old man to meet him, but."

"But,” Rosie said. “Yeah. So is he a therapist?"

Mike laughed, the new little overflowing-with-unsayable-things laugh. “Um. Yes."

"What's his name? Why do you want
me
to meet him?"

"His name,” Mike said. “Now don't laugh. His name is Honeybeare."

"Oh yeah?” She didn't laugh. She had actually known someone with that name, a swimming instructor, skinny and sour, under whose coaching Rosie had got to be a fair competitor.

"Raymond Honeybeare,” Mike said. “I wanted you to meet him because.” He stopped to choose among the reasons, which evidently clamored or contested within him. “Because he asked."

"To talk to me?"

"Well the Foundation."

"That's not me,” Rosie said.

"I just think,” Mike said, “that you would be very interested. I really think."

She heard that. That was Mike speaking, the little Mike inside the Mike that usually did the talking, the Mike she almost never heard anymore. “Well,” she said. “Okay. Maybe sometime."

"Now would be a good time,” he said, and took her elbow again.

"Now?"

"That's him,” Mike said, indicating the big man holding his hat and gazing at nothing.

"Oh,” Rosie said. She resisted Mike's arm pushing her gently that way. “Oh Michael no. Uh-uh."

"Just to say hello."

"There's no reason, Mike.” She was quite certain she didn't want to meet, speak to, touch that man. She felt his proximity to her, his phony aloofness, with a sudden revulsion.

"Look,” she said firmly, standing her ground. “Not now."

"When?"

"Make an appointment,” she said. “Mike I've got things to see to."

She turned away, walking quickly and clumsily in her unaccustomed heels, and didn't look back; sorry for Mike's embarrassment, sorry she could do no other, and wondering why.

She got no farther than the veranda, where Allan Butterman sat with the people who had come out from New York, Boney's weedy cousin and the members of the Foundation's board or their lawyers or agents, who had sat up front in the church with Allan. Allan raised a shrimp on a toothpick to her in salute.

"Rosie."

"Hi, Allan.” She nodded to the others, aware of their attention to her. Would this day never be over. She hoped she wouldn't have to address any of them by name; Allan had introduced her to them at the church and before that had supplied her with a list of their names, but no name had attached itself firmly to a face.

"The gentlemen have to be heading back,” he said. “They wondered if they could speak to you."

"Sure,” Rosie said. Allan had promised her she wouldn't be grilled about money or made to account for her stewardship, such as it was. Her heart nevertheless beat faster.

She took them into Boney's office, which Mrs. Pisky had tidied, though the oxygen tanks and breathing apparatus still stood against the wall, servants waiting to be dismissed. It was cool. Rosie could still detect Boney's odor, but the others would not recognize it.

Allan had said they wanted to talk, but he talked most; they only crossed their legs, adjusted their tie-knots, smoothed their beautiful suits, looked with firm but gentle kindness on her. Allan gave a brief history of the Rasmussen Foundation, looking now and then to one of the others for confirmation, and receiving nods; he cast his eyes over Boney's desk as he spoke, looking maybe for one of the long yellow pencils he was accustomed to manipulate as he talked, conducting his own discourse with it.

"Anyway,” he said at length. “You are aware that Mr. Rasmussen died intestate. We'll take up the questions involved with that another time, they're difficult but not hopeless. What's relevant here is that he did this year do all the necessary in regard to the Foundation, naming a successor as director, signing the documents."

Rosie had seen but not studied these, beautifully printed papers with maroon covers. “Successor?” she said.

"The bylaws don't specify that a member of the family needs to hold the position, but the family's
preferences
are very clear. He didn't have a lot of people to choose from, though he could have gone some ways afield. Of course he didn't."

Of course? The certainty came over Rosie, an interpretation of Allan's face at that moment, that Boney's death was going to go on issuing surprises, things he had left unsettled and unfinished that rolling Time was going to finish up for him. “Then what..."

"He named you to be the Foundation's Director, Rosie.” Allan looked at her, smiling, understanding. They were all smiling, as at a genteel surprise party. “I was just informed this morning. A little late, never mind, I imagine they thought Mr. Rasmussen had done this with your full knowledge and assent. No, right?"

"No.” She had been filling up with a feeling that she did not immediately recognize was anger. When she did realize it she was afraid to speak.

He had known this for months before he died, and hadn't told her, or asked her; afraid probably that she might turn him down. He had just left it for her, unrefusable, unacceptable, like his letter about how his remains were to be treated.

She thought of that morning, the morning of the Fourth, the last time she had really spoken to him.
I'm sorry
, he'd said.
I hate to leave you with it.
He had meant that she should continue his search. Christ.

"Well,” she said at last, all she could manage. She knew her cheeks must be aflame. “Is it legal for me to refuse?"