Seven Days Dead (7 page)

Without much delay, she decides that she didn’t drive all this way and cross rough water to ignore her father before he dies, so she might as well screw up her courage and get this over with. Her compromise is to step through the dark to the far side of his room, where she’s close enough to discern by the faint yard lights that the old guy is securely under the covers, and appears to be sleeping comfortably.

The experience is a new one. She’s never observed him sleeping before. Somehow this strikes her as astonishing. The sight seems weird. Otherworldly. As her eyes adjust, she has the impression that he’s quickly gotten very old, an impression that drains her, and she feels, although not quite seasick again, wobbly on her feet.

Or, she tries to tell herself, she’s still getting used to a surface underfoot that’s motionless. Her feet haven’t adjusted, she keeps sensing waves.

Tiptoeing to his bedside, Maddy sits in the chair next to him and waits for her father to awaken.

She recalls him advising her one time when she was home for the summer from graduate school to get over herself, that worse fathers exist in the world.
Did I ever abuse you? Hit you? Deny you anything that wasn’t in your best interest? Did I ever wrongfully scold you?
His litany went on, and and to every question he forced her to answer honestly, the reply was always
no.
But that was the thing. He didn’t get how
mean
it was to be asking all those questions to which the answer was always
no
and yet at the same time be totally unaware of the harm he’d committed without ever abusing her, or striking her, or ignoring her, or any of the other
legitimate complaints,
in his words, that other children had about their parents all over the island. For that matter, throughout the world. He was so damn right but he was so totally in the wrong to imply that her complaints, by comparison to sordid stories, were rendered illegitimate. The cruelty of bestial parents, his argument seemed to be, dismissed his own.
Really, you’re just a spoiled rich girl brat, and if that’s your only problem, then for God’s sakes don’t complain. Enjoy it. Didn’t I send you off to the university of your choice, which just happens to be to a school as far away from me as you could possibly find? What dad does that?
And finally she could say yes, and she admitted, “Yes, you’re paying for Stanford.”

“Eight years of it,” he pointed out.

“Seven,” she corrected him. That’s about all that she had on him at the time of the discussion, that her seven years of university tuition felt like eight to him.

“Just seven years,” she repeats quietly now, her first words since entering the bedroom. Her first words spoken in person to him in three years. And having spoken, she suddenly detects his silence. Not only the still, interior quiet of the night, amid the diminishing rain and the generator going on outside, but the interior dead silence of this intimate space.

Suddenly, it feels expansive, as if it’s swallowing her up.

Maddy touches his wrist then. Her hand, that instantly, snaps back.

She feels her breath trapped in her lungs, as though they can no longer inflate nor contract.

And wills herself to touch him again.

He’s cold.

Cold, she confirms. Her father is cold.

Not
mean
cold. Stone cold.

She says what she never would have imagined saying. “Daddy.”

And flicks on the bedside lamp. Sees the nickels on his eyes.

The sight of him shocks her. The bright, sparkling money for eyes.

She’s stunned.

He did not wait for her. He’s dead.

Of course, when did he ever wait for her?

That quickly, her anger returns.

“You never, ever waited for me, not ever,” she remarks, as though the words constitute a formal complaint. Maddy sits back in the chair again, not knowing what to do, thinking that she is supposed to react a certain way, but she doesn’t know how. She may feel disconnected from this man, but death appalls her, and he is someone she has always known. Probably they were close once, a long, long time ago. She’s surprised by the anger rising through her bloodstream. When she was first alerted to the impending death of her father, she thought only, So? It’s about time. Good riddance. Yet a minute later she wanted nothing more than to get here before he passed away. She wanted to know what he’d say, and wonders now if anyone did get to talk to him. She expects that her one old friend on the island, and her father’s, the Reverend Lescavage, would have been here, but who knows whom her father let in the door these days? Could be anyone. Could be no one. Probably his whore/maid, the one who phoned, but where is she now?

Who was with him when he died, or was he alone then, too?

Who put the nickels on his eyes?

Suddenly, she feels the emptiness of the house, the loneliness of this death. Not that he deserved better, but had anyone been with him before he died, they promptly abandoned him, leaving him there.

Oh, probably to go party. Celebrate.

Thoughts boomerang in her head. She feels sorry for herself one second, angry the next, and all of it yields to regret, dismay, confusion, until she pities herself again. She senses a rising august hopelessness. For the very first time she understands that her race to arrive here derived from one lingering aspect to her nature—that she felt a lurking, private, provocative
hopefulness
swimming in her bloodstream. Her father must come clean, they must arrive at an understanding, a resolution. If she recognized it earlier she’d have done a number on herself to get rid of the whole ridiculous notion, but it crept upon her unannounced, like a flu bug, to take hold, tricking her defenses. Now that she sees it for what it is, it’s all too foreign and too late. Some deep residual
hope
has been dashed. She feels done in. As though she’ll never know that resident
hopefulness
again, only this sudden hopelessness, for now she can never know what her father was unable to touch upon in an endless litany of foul deeds, the ones he righteously claimed he never inflicted upon her, as if that absence of overt cruelty somehow negates the inexplicable, intangible, indestructible cruelty she breathed from the moment of her birth. Now that he’s dead, an inert, motionless, unrepentant
nothing,
no contrite act of repentance or fulsome admission of guilt or a complex explanation of
why
can save her, and her hope for that release is now extinguished with him.

He’s dead. That’s it, that’s all. He won’t say a word now.

His body’s not worth the ten cents that rest on his eyes.

She feels neither grief nor remorse.

Or what she feels she does not know to be either grief or remorse.

He’s been left alone, and no one on the entire island that he so dominated for half a century gave enough of a damn to do more for this defeated old man than fold his hands over his chest, give him a couple of nickels, and leave a few lights on.

A neglect that he deserves, she remits to herself.

But this dreadful silence she does not comprehend. This vacancy in her now. So she grieves, actually grieves, for words unknown that she has secretly coveted but knows now were never meant to summon more than an abject silence.

For that reason and that reason alone, Maddy, quietly, briefly, and in a way that a stranger might comprehend no more than she does, lets loose a few tears.

Then she shakes off the mood. Gets up and goes downstairs. She uses the bathroom, munches a few leftovers from the fridge, binds herself in a blanket on the La-Z-Boy, and commits herself to sleep. She’ll be surprised if sleep does overcome her, so is taken by surprise when eventually she awakens.

SEVEN

Police are outside. Men from the funeral home go about their work indoors, murmuring in low, bloodless voices, as if to ensure that the dead won’t hear. Madeleine Orrock leans against the front doorjamb to her family home, taking on the responsibility of being its gatekeeper. Down the road, a smattering of local folks, who noticed the Mounties and the undertaker’s van at the mansion, engage in repartee, generally jovial. No respectful solemnity in evidence there. A few venture onto the property to pick up a pertinent detail or two from the police, then serve as sentries, tipping off new arrivals about the goings-on. Often they speak for less than thirty seconds before the people receiving the report scurry back into town like excited chipmunks to broadcast the news farther afield. Maddy expects a marching band in a jiff, banners raised, the mayor to drop by to declare a civic holiday and a week’s festivities.

In her head, children will be singing, “Ding-dong! The prick is dead. The wicked prick is dead!” She’s not sure that she won’t want to join in.

When the housekeeper shows up on her doorstep, Maddy puts a face to her name, remembering her from previous visits, although the woman didn’t work for her dad back then. Not a bimbo, and nothing about her appearance qualifies as whorish. Maddy is secretly embarrassed by her previous harsh judgment of this rather dowdy girl. At times, her father’s influence insinuates itself in her own character and opinions. She might disapprove, yet she feels powerless to behave differently. The housekeeper desires access to the mansion. She seems to think that she has every right to be admitted. And why not? Maddy asks herself. Let her in. But she sees things differently also.

“You were close to my father?” She really wants to ask, Did he say anything?

“People say the wickedest things, don’t they? Yes, they do. I kept the house tidy-o. I got paid for that. Every once in a while he tried to cop a feel, but I never let him. When he got sicker I cleaned up his dribbles. I was never paid a fat penny for that. So no. We weren’t
close.
”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

The housekeeper knows a bald-faced lie when she hears one. Maddy can tell.

“I’m sorry,” Maddy tacks on. “It’s just that—”

“No worries. He was your dad,” Ora remarks. “You knew what to expect, am I right? Anyway, what people say. They’re all stupid in the head if you ask me.”

“I apologize for being one of the dumb ones.”

“No worries! There’s only one Einstein, right? So, can I come in?”

“Why?”

“Why?” She looks as though she’s fishing for a fib to answer the question. Ora Matheson is an island girl who lives where people are welcome at every door and to be refused entry is outside her personal experience. Maddy suffers a doubt. Perhaps she’s lived too long in Boston. “To clean the house up,” the younger woman attests. “People will be coming over, no? The house was squeaky clean when I left it, but I want to finish the job, not that you can make everything tidy-o and perfect every minute of every day, although he used to think so, your dad did. There’ll be visitors, no? How many, do you think? What’s your best guesstimate on that?”

“Probably none. Look, the house is as tidy as it will ever be. Thanks for that.” Maddy gazes out across the yard. More folks are attracted to the fuss as the day’s good news makes the rounds. “You left him alone,” she brings up, and means it as an accusation, but she’s already been corrected by this woman once and shown to be mistaken, so adds, “Didn’t you?”

“Seriously? You ask me that? Oh, hardly! I left him with Reverend Lescavage. He came over during the storm to spell me off, and because your daddy asked him to. I mean, he commanded him to come over, put it that way. So Revy came over.”

“I see.” Maddy’s eyes soften. She has no particular grievance against the island, at least not outside her family home. She feels at odds, though, as if she’s partially to blame for her father’s life, and fears that others think so. A perpetual fear. “Thanks for taking care of him,” she says. “That couldn’t’ve been easy.”

Some weird sound is released by the housekeeper, one that, while not attributable to any known language, manages to sum up Maddy’s assumption more emphatically. Looking after her father had definitely not been easy.

“Ora, I think we’ll just let the undertaker’s men do their thing and take my father out. We won’t need any cleaning, okay? I’ll let you know if that changes.”

“Oh, all righty,” the younger woman agrees, “but if I’m not full-time I charge more for cleaning up after a party, just so you know.” Quickly, she skips away and bolts off to join the company of the two officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Maddy watches her go while scarcely moving herself, then continues to survey the activity in her front yard. Overhead, clouds scud. The wind is no longer a maelstrom but is still brisk. Below the cliff that the house is situated on, waves crash ashore. Power on the island remains off and the house generator ran out of fuel an hour ago, so she’s living like everyone else and is content with that. If he were already buried, her father would be rolling over in his grave, but instead he’s subject to the ministrations of the undertaker’s crew rolling him over into a body bag. She ponders what her father’s housekeeper can be saying to the Mounties, so blithely chatting away, and why do they go on talking to her, and for so long?

*   *   *

Ora says, “He was here when I left. Put that in your pipe. Or don’t you smoke?”

“You’re sure?”

“In the flesheroo. If he was a ghost, he wasn’t good at it.”

He has to think what that means, then gives up. The senior officer remarks, “If you see him before I do, Ora, ask him to give me a buzz, okay? Thanks.”

The policeman is silver-haired and large, imposing and authoritative even out of his uniform, doubly so when dressed. He’s always known that he looks especially good when suited up. He envies his partner at the moment, who has successfully made a break for it, heading off the property to a cruiser, while he’s been snared by Ora, her fingers gripping the sleeve of his jacket. He’s prying her fingers off one at a time, although she doesn’t seem to notice, when suddenly she gets his attention.

“Hey hey hey,” Ora whispers. “The rats are climbing over the wall. Can you believe what my eyes are seeing here?”