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The sky is the deepest blue it gets before it begins to look black. The stars are blue. The trees roar with wind and become quiet. I lie flat on my husband’s grave and look at the stars. Freshly mowed grass, a faint marshy smell, the ducks at the edge of the lake. This morning, resting my head against the hand dryer in the bathroom of Robert’s office. Tears start this way: the bridge of my nose, my eyelids, the whole face tingling, the clutch of a muscle in the throat. The smell of burnt coffee — homey, unloved office coffee — makes me cry. Some songs: Patsy Cline. Bad blue icing on the birthday cake the girls bought for the boss. I cry at least four times a day. The tears catch in the plastic rims of my glasses. My eyelids like slugs. While waiting for the elevator I hear laughter inside, ascending, inclusive, sexual. I cry with jealousy. Marcy Andrews coming into the bathroom after me. Unclicking her purse, getting the cotton swab out of a pill bottle, tapping two pills into my hand. Marcy smoothing her thumbs over my wet cheeks. She turns me to the mirror and she looks hard at me.

She says, Lipstick will give you a whole new lease.

I can’t be alone, I say.

The leaves in the graveyard smell leathery, pumpkinish. The branches creak when the wind rubs them together. Des’s hands folded over a rose, his wedding ring. When do the teeth fall away from the skull? Does that happen? It’s beginning to get cold. Snow on his headstone makes me panicky.

A flashlight waves erratically through the shrubs, catching the bright green moss on a carved angel’s cheek, her cracked wing. Another flashlight, soft oval bouncing in the leaves overhead,
scuffle of feet. I’m surrounded by a circle of teenagers with baseball bats and fence pickets. They step, one by one, out of the trees and bushes. Or else they have always been standing there. All the headstones, tipping, lichen-crusted. I stand up, my legs watery. We stand like that, not speaking or moving.

You seen a guy run through here?

I whisper, No. I haven’t seen anybody. Three policemen arrive and the teenagers flee. A policeman steps forward and puts an arm around my shoulder and I cry into his armpit.

Robert lowers a tool into my mouth and I say, Stop.

I say, That was a test.

He says, That was a scalpel. I would just trust me if I were you.

I feel him cut the gum and fold the flesh back. His eyes full of veins blue and violet; my blood sprays dots on his glasses. He takes up another instrument and tugs at the tooth, twisting it, and I feel it tearing away. The hoarse, sputtering noise of the suction hose removing blood and saliva. Robert worked for nothing in Nicaragua after he graduated, teaching the revolutionaries to be dentists, the distant spitting of gunfire in the fields beyond his classroom. During the dot-com boom he invested — in and out — unspeakably rich.

My tooth hits a chrome bowl with a bright ping. He begins to sew the stitches. I feel the thread move through the gum and the sensation, though painless, nauseates me. Three tight
stitches, the side of my mouth puckered. He gives me a wad of cotton and tells me to bite down. He peels the latex gloves. I worry the loose ends of the stitches with my wooden tongue. They feel like cat whiskers.

I’ve wanted to ask for some weeks, Robert says.

Maybe this is not the best time, I say.

I want to marry you, he says.

The sound of the sliding metal rings when I rip open the shower curtain unnerves me. Waiting for the toaster to pop, a butter knife in my hand, I am aware of a presence. The washer shimmies across the laundry room floor until it works the plug from the wall and the motor goes quiet. The water stops slushing. An engrossing, animated silence. Every object — the vacuum cleaner, a vase of dried thistles — has become sensitive. The fridge knows. The unmade bed is not ordinary. I put a glass down and check. It’s exactly where I set it down. Loving a dead person takes immense energy and it is making me cry.

Robert works the champagne cork with his thumbs. The cork bounces off the ceiling and hits a mirror, causing a web of cracks. He hands me my glass and I can feel the fizz on my face.

He says, This is the happiest day of my life.

We twine arms and drink and the awkward intimacy of this, the complete lack of irony — I know instantly I’ve made a mistake.

Robert is still at work and I’m watching the decorating channel. The camera slowly roves through a palatial, empty house in Vermont, a woman’s chipper voice: Here we have an oak table, very countryish, but
workable
chairs, this dining room absolutely screams to be used. Use me, it’s screaming!

I turn the TV off and listen to the shrill nothing that fills Robert’s house. Leaves swirl off the lawn in twisting columns. A brown leaf hits the glass and sticks. The starlings are flying in formation over the university. A black cloud draws together and becomes thin as it changes direction. The sky is full of grey luster and the starlings seem feverish. I remember Des parking by the university once, just to watch them. It was late, we had groceries, ice cream in the trunk.

They’re just playing, he said. I want to stay here, don’t you? I want to watch all night.

I think: If you are there, get in touch with me now. I believe suddenly that he can, that it is just a matter of my asking.

The phone rings at exactly that instant. It rings and rings and rings. Then it stops. I put my hand on the receiver and I can feel a warm thrum. Then it rings again, loud. I go upstairs and brush my teeth. I rinse and start flossing. The phone rings again. It’s ringing in all the rooms, terrifying me. I pour a bath
and get in, and when it’s deep enough I dunk my ears under the water.

Robert gives me a glass of scotch and drops into the chair beside me. He presses his watch face so the dial glows, sending a circle of green light zigzagging across his face. The sale of my house has come through. A young couple with a dalmatian. Most of the furnishings went to the Sally Ann. A closet full of Des’s shirts, a key ring with a plastic telescope, inside which there is a picture of Des and me on vacation in Mexico. It has to be held to a light. We are laughing, drinking from coconut shells. I’d let all the plants die. Robert has everything we need.

You’re tired, I say, we’re both tired.

What do you think of stem cell research, he says.

There are the dishes.

I could take a hair out of your head and make another you.

The laundry is —

Two of you. The real you and another you.

I know I’m tired.

One you is a roomful already.

I can’t have sex with you tonight if that’s what you’re thinking, I say.

Why would I be thinking a thing like that?

I’m drifting to sleep while he talks. I dream I say I want my real husband, and I don’t know if I’ve spoken out loud or not. I believe that Des is in the chair beside me and things are as they
were five years ago, as if the past can do that. Lay itself down on the present. Cover it over. Become the present, even briefly. A pair of flip-flops, I’d stumbled and skinned my toe. Des had been hammering all day. The hammering had stopped, but the silent ringing of the hammer went on. It was late September and we went to the beach.

In the morning I hear a car coming up the long driveway and I leap out of bed. A dark green minivan pulls up under the trees. The windshield is opaque with the shadows of the maple trees. The van parks and a man steps out. He’s wearing creamcoloured pants and a pastel plaid shirt. He stretches and puts his hands on his hips. He helps a little girl out of the driver’s side. She’s wearing a white cotton dress and the skirt bells with the breeze. Finally the passenger door opens and a woman gets out. I’m standing in the upstairs window, struggling to get my jeans on. There is a wave rising inside me. It’s full of light. It’s dull and smart and hurting my throat. Robert rolls over in bed.