My father died three years before my mother. The doctor said it was a heart attack but Jane and I had our doubts. It had yet to be proven that my father had a heart at all.
Jane was living in San Diego by then, and I was in Mexico. I had been doing research on Cortèz, which turned into research on the the Holy Grail, which turned into research about I don’t know what. Jane was the only person who knew where I was-in a little village near Tepehuanas that was so small it didn’t have a name of its own. I lived with a pregnant housekeeper named Maria and her three cats. I dug a small excavation site in the wilds of the mountains. I found nothing, but I told that to nobody but Jane.
My mother, of course, called Jane first. She would have called me, I imagine, but she didn’t know my address, or how to dial an international call. She said that just like that my father had dropped dead. The hospital kept asking her if he had complained of gas or made sounds during the night, but my mother did not know. She got used to sleeping with earplugs many years ago to combat my father’s snoring, and she always went to bed before he did.
“Do you think,” Jane said noncommittally on the flight to Boston, “they have had sex during this decade?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t know what they do.”
Did I mention this all happened the weekend before Easter?
When we arrived at the house my mother was sitting on the front lawn. She was wearing a familiar purple bathrobe and Dearfoam slippers, although it was past noon. “Mama,” Jane said, rushing into her arms. My mother hugged Jane the way she always did: looking over her shoulder at me. I wondered, and I still do, if she looked at Jane when I was in her arms. For Jane’s sake, I always hoped so. “It’s over,” Jane said.
And my mother looked at her as if she was crazy. “What do you mean it’s over?”
Jane looked at me. “Nothing, Ma.” She pulled me aside as we climbed up the steps to the house. “What is it with her?” Jane said. “Or is it me?”
I wouldn’t know. I was the only person in that household my father did not inflict violence upon, thanks largely to my sister’s interference. Jane had given up her childhood for me, really, so what else could I say? “It’s not you,” I told her.
Jane and I were sent out to get a party platter for the guests after the funeral. Daddy’s body had been set on ice for three days now; no church would hold a service because of Easter. But now, with the funeral set for Monday, preparations had to be made. Jane and I went to Star Market’s deli counter; it was the closest and honestly neither of us cared about the caliber of the food. “Hey, honey,” said the burly man at the counter. “You having relatives over for Easter?”
While my mother went through the ritual of crying, pulling at her hair and stroking old photos, Jane and I sat upstairs in what used to be our rooms. We talked about everything we could remember that might help us put it all behind. I touched the places on Jane where there used to be bruises. I let her talk about the very worst time, but she only hinted at what had happened that night she was driven to leave.
We slept in our respective beds the night before the funeral, with the doors open in case Mama needed us. A little after three Jane came into my room. She shut the door, sat on the edge of the bed, and then she handed me a picture of the two of us, one she had found trapped between the headboard of her bed and the wall. “I’ve been thinking there’s something wrong with me,” she whispered. “I don’t feel anything. I’m going through the motions, you know, but I couldn’t care less that he’s dead.”
I held her hand. She was wearing an old nightgown of our mother’s. I found myself wondering what she wore at night, next to Oliver, in her own home. She would never sleep naked like I did. She did not like the feeling. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Considering the circumstances.”
“But she’s crying. She’s upset. And he was worse with her than he was with me.” She let those last words run together and then she got into bed beside me. Her feet were very cold, and the strange thing was, they stayed like that the entire night.
At the funeral, the reverend talked about how my father had been such a pillar of the community. He mentioned that he was a doting husband and father. I held Jane’s hand. Neither of us cried, or pretended to for the sake of decency.
It was an open casket. My mother wanted it that way. Jane accepted everyone’s condolences and I kept my arm around my mother’s shoulders, holding her up most of the time. I brought her juice and biscuits and did everything my maiden aunts suggested, to help her through such a difficult time.
By the time all our relatives and assumed friends left for the graveyard it was mid-afternoon. The funeral manager gave Jane the bill and then she disappeared. When I asked him where she had gone he pointed to the anteroom, the place they had the coffin on display. I watched her standing over his image, this wax mask that carried none of the terror and the power I knew. She ran her finger over the silk that lined the box. She touched my father’s blue ancient matter tie. Then she raised her arm. Her wrist was shaking when she whipped her hand through the air, the hand that I caught before she struck a dead man.