The Ravens (21 page)

THE
TEMPERATURE
HAD
DROPPED,
and along Fifth Avenue in Duluth, the colorful building facades glittered with ice crystals. He drove slowly past his childhood home, which used to be painted blue, but was now a pale yellow. Oddly enough it didn’t bother him that strangers now occupied the house. In fact, it made him happy to know that children lived there. That his old room was in use.

This was the second time he’d driven past, yet when he came to the little flower shop at the end of the street, he turned around and drove back. He just wanted to put something behind him. Not his childhood, but something else . . . something more . . . He didn’t know exactly what it was, nor did he need to know. Something fell into place as he slowly drove back and forth along his old street. Something drifted to the bottom inside him and settled in the spot where it was supposed to be. It felt right. And it didn’t feel sad. Everything else was sad, but not this. In reality that was the most important reason why he didn’t want to leave Fifth Avenue yet. He’d found a tiny corner of life where things were the way they should be. That was a big surprise, and he realized it would be over as soon as he drove away. This was not a place in Duluth but a place in life, which meant it would be impossible to return.

When he drove past for the third time, he could tell it was enough. If he continued, the experience would be diminished. He
took one last look at the house and then left his old neighborhood without even a glance in the rearview mirror.

CHRISSY
WAS
WAITING
in the lobby of the Lakeview Nursing Home. She had on her usual Goth attire under the ankle-length black coat, but she’d pinned up her hair in a grown-up style. The minute she caught sight of Lance, she ran over to give him a hug. He couldn’t return the hug because in one hand he was holding a bunch of new, flattened cardboard boxes, and in the other a roll of garbage bags.

“I’ve got the key,” she said.

Lance looked around the lobby, which he’d walked through so many times over the past few years.

“Well, I guess we should get started,” he said.

Neither of them spoke as they rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. Only once did he glance briefly at his niece. He thought he noticed something new in her expression; she had a certain hard or closed-off look in her eye.

Standing in front of the door to room 22, Chrissy burst into tears. She handed Lance the key as if it were a dead kitten that she couldn’t stand to look at anymore.

“We just need to get through this,” he said as he unlocked the door.

Except for the fact that his mother wasn’t there, the room looked the same as always. It seemed as if she’d just slipped out to talk to someone in another room and that she’d soon appear in the doorway behind them, saying, “So there you are, you two!”

“It’s so cold in here,” said Chrissy, shivering.

She was right. The staff probably turned off the heat to save money whenever somebody died.

“We can’t work in this cold,” he said. He set the flattened boxes and the roll of garbage bags on the floor and then turned up the radiator full blast.

“Do you really want to help me with this?” he asked Chrissy without looking at her.

“Dad said he couldn’t bear it, and I’ve been here more often than him or Mom.”

“If it gets to be too much for you, just tell me.”

Lance sat down on the chair that had always been “his.” Somehow they were going to have to divide up her belongings. There wasn’t really that much. Most of her possessions had been given to family members when she moved here. Only the most personal items remained. Family photographs, photo albums, clothing, and jewelry—all those things that had been part of her daily life. When she moved out of the house on Fifth Avenue, it had felt good to go through her things, but now . . .

“Do you want the picture of the immigrants?” he asked, nodding at the photograph of the Norwegians standing on board the steamer
America
in 1902.

Chrissy sat down on the sofa, and Lance thought to himself that she too couldn’t bring herself to sit in Inga’s chair.

“No,” she said.

“But that’s your heritage,” he told her. “That ship contains everything that we are today.”

“Then I really don’t want to have it,” said Chrissy.

She had placed her hands on her lap. Lance stared at her slender white wrists sticking out of her sleeves. They looked like they might break if someone so much as touched them. For a moment he pictured again the scene of the crime. He recalled the senseless power radiating from that spot, as if something supernatural had settled in the woods.

“What about the picture of you?” he went on. “Would you like to have it? Inga thought you looked like an angel in that photo. ‘The angel from Two Harbors.’ That’s what she called you. When was it taken?”

“First year in high school.”

She leaned back on the sofa, stretching out her legs and closing her eyes. But Lance had a feeling that she could still see him through the narrow slits. Her face was impassive, pale and soft, with a slightly childish look to it. Especially the round, smooth forehead. He saw no trace of harshness, or whatever it was that he’d seen when they were in the elevator. Behind him the radiator was clucking and gurgling.

Here they had sat so many times, he and his mother, talking about family and friends, both living and dead, and about each
other while outside the darkness closed in and dusk fell over Duluth. Afterward he would drive back north alone. Bright summer evenings, fragrant with flowers, and winter nights with drifting snow that made it almost impossible to see more than an arm’s length ahead.

Lance thought he saw a faint quivering in his niece’s nostrils as she reclined in the same position, with her legs stretched out under the coffee table and her hands in her lap. He turned to look out the window. This was the view that his mother had seen every day over the past few years. The buildings and yards were covered with nearly three feet of snow. The gnarled branches of old fruit trees were black against all that white. He saw snow shovels leaning against houses, sleds tossed aside, wood stacked up, and several warmly dressed children off in the distance, running, their shouts inaudible. The low sun cast a warm glow over the old Aerial Lift Bridge, but soon the bridge would be a dark presence looming in the dusk. On the other side of the narrow bay, which was Lake Superior’s westernmost point, a lowlying wooded landscape undulated south toward the plains. But to the west and the northeast, there was only a white emptiness to see. The vast emptiness on the edge of which they all lived out their lives.

They had found her sitting in her chair. Presumably she’d been looking at the view when she died, but that was something he’d never know for sure. Or what she was feeling. Maybe it was like being sucked out the window and into everything else.

A sudden, high-pitched snore jolted Lance out of his reverie. Chrissy looked like she was about to wake up, but after a few restless smacking sounds, she dozed off again.

Lance thought it was strange that her parents had let her drive. Why couldn’t they have brought her? Okay, he could understand why Andy wouldn’t have wanted to see him, but what about Tammy? Chrissy was either high or extremely tired, and yet they had thrown up their hands and left the responsibility to her.

“Chrissy,” he said.

She opened her eyes, sighing heavily.

“Were you asleep?”

“No,” she lied.

“We need to get started. Let’s take everything that’s hanging on the walls first.”

She nodded.

Lance picked up one of the boxes from the floor and laid it out flat. With a few brisk tugs he had a fully formed box, which he sent scooting across the floor to stop at Chrissy’s feet. She got up from the sofa, every movement revealing her reluctance. Her arms hung limply at her sides as she tilted her head to one side and stared at the photos on the wall. Lance studied the back of her neck, which was now visible since she’d pinned up her hair in the new style. He couldn’t remember ever seeing it before, since she’d always worn her long hair loose.

Suddenly he heard her gasp. Lance got up, uncertain whether to touch her. He decided to take a cautious hold on her upper arms. In that instant her legs buckled. He didn’t try to hold her up, just let her fall to her knees. Then she went down on all fours. She was shaking, but the only thing he heard was her shallow breathing. He didn’t know what to do, or whether there was anything to be done at all. Just let her be, he thought, no matter what’s going on.

Finally she took a deep breath and then let out a long wail. After a moment it turned into a snarl, a growling sound that eventually faded away. Lance felt his blood go cold, but he didn’t touch her or say anything. He just waited. After a while she whispered something. He wanted to ask her to repeat what she’d said, but then he realized she wasn’t talking to him. She kept on whispering at the floor, and now he could make out some of the words: “. . . loved her so much . . . loved, loved her . . .”

He squatted down to stroke his niece’s back. She was trembling faintly, as if she had a soundless engine inside.

“I did too,” he said, his voice thick. “But we can’t give up, Chrissy. We have to go on. Somebody has to clear out the room, and you and I are the ones who are going to do it. Let’s get up now.”

Slowly Chrissy pushed herself into a kneeling position. Lance tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she pushed it away. Then she stood up, her legs wobbling, and stared at the display of family photos.

“Look how young you are, Uncle Lance.” She was pointing at his high school picture.

“Huh. Right.”

“What were you like back then?”

“Pretty much the same as I am now,” he said evasively.

Chrissy looked at him as if he were a child who had just told a hopelessly impossible lie.

“I wanted to be a historian,” he said.

“But you are.”

“No. A real historian. An academic.” He tried to laugh off his words.

“Well, that would have been a first in our family,” she said.

“You need to study hard, Chrissy. You’ve always gotten such good grades in school.”

Without replying, she began taking the photos off the wall. The first one she removed was the picture of herself, the angel of Two Harbors. Then she took down all the rest until there was nothing left but the nails they’d been hanging from. Lance vividly remembered putting the nails in the wall when his mother moved in. He’d been there when she hung up the photos. Only the newest one of Chrissy was put up later. He wondered who had put that nail in the wall for her.

“So, do you want to divide up the pictures?” asked Chrissy, looking at the bare wall.

“For now I’m going to take everything home with me,” said Lance. “Then we’ll divide up the things later, when . . . after everything is . . .”

Chrissy looked around the room.

“What should we do next?”

“Could you start by emptying the dresser and closet?”

Reluctantly she pulled out the top drawer, where Inga’s underwear were neatly folded. Lance looked away.

“Put everything in a bag,” he said. “I’ll gather up all the loose items in the room.”

He was about to pick up a pair of eyeglasses, which lay on the table, but he stopped abruptly, his hand stretched out. The glasses were not folded up the way he imagined they would be
if the person had just died. They had been set down by someone who was tired, or whose eyes hurt, someone who would put them back on in a few minutes. Inga must have set them there, he thought. She’d been sitting in her easy chair, staring at the intense white of the day, and her eyes started to hurt. Not knowing that this would be the last time, she had taken off her glasses and set them on the table. Then she closed her eyes to rest. Just for a little while. And there she had died, in her chair, without her glasses on. As they lay there, unfolded and ready for her to put them back on, the glasses revealed to him one of her last conscious acts. He pictured her taking them off and setting them on the table. In that very spot. Removing them from the room would also mean erasing her last movement. But he had to do it. The glasses couldn’t stay there forever. He placed them in the box with the photographs. Then he leaned down and grabbed a stack of magazines from the shelf under the small table between the two easy chairs. Inga’s knitting came with it.

Lance held up the knitting. Something green and white.

“Look at this,” he said. “What do you think this was going to be?”

Chrissy cast a quick glance over her shoulder.

“Probably a scarf,” she said.

“I guess we need a separate bag for . . . you know . . .”

“For trash?” Chrissy suggested.

He tore another plastic bag from the roll and put the magazines and knitting inside. After a moment’s hesitation he took the eyeglasses out of the cardboard box on the table and put them in the trash bag too.

“Here’s her purse,” said Chrissy. “Maybe you should . . .”

Lance took the black purse that he’d seen his mother carry so many times. He opened it. Inside he found several blister packs of pills. And a wallet, of course. He hadn’t thought about that. He emptied the contents of the purse onto the coffee table. Among the medicine bottles, mirror, wallet, prescriptions, hairpins, and other items were three postcards that he recognized at once. He’d forgotten all about them and was totally unprepared to see his own handwriting.

“What’s that?” asked Chrissy, who had noticed he was reading something.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

But the next instant she’d snatched the postcard out of his hand. Lance didn’t try to stop her. He just stood there, waiting for her to read what it said.