Picture the Dead

“That’s fine, then,” I respond calmly. “I’ll find my own way to church. But aren’t you forgetting Quinn?”

Aunt Clara’s smile curdles. “Rather, Quinn is forgetting us. He’s nowhere to be found, and I’m sure Reverend Meeks will inquire after him. It’s really quite embarrassing, and rather a snub, besides. If you see him, Jennie, please inform him that if he didn’t want to go church, he had only to tell us.” Aunt seems entirely unaware, as she clamps the door shut, that in attempting to sneak off to church without me, she has snubbed me in the exact same way.

When I reenter the house, the absolute quiet is disconcerting. I run to the back of the house and downstairs to the kitchen, still warm with the aroma of soda-bread biscuits, which Mrs. Sullivan bakes every Sunday at dawn. When I call out, my voice reverberates lonely through the passage. No answer. So the servants, too, have left me behind. While Mrs. Sullivan has not yet? reported to Aunt my trespasses of last night, she is making her disdainful point and dragging poor Mavis along behind her.

“No matter.” It’s a mile walk to First Parish. I’ll sit in a pew by myself.

But it does matter. The silence in the house feels reproachful.

Any consecrated space, Geist had said. Surely First Parish is as consecrated as any other church.

Upstairs, my Bible rests on the hall table by the coat closet. As I approach, my step is stern as a schoolmistress, and I’m bothered with a sensation that I’m not all alone here after all. Like an object that is in sight but briefly, a shimmer caught in the corner of an eye, the sound is faint. A shift. A whisper. And then, more clearly, I hear smothered laughter.

The echo of my footfall dies. I approach with caution. The sound has come from behind the closet door the very same hideaway spot where Toby and I’d whiled away the hours when we wanted to be alone. In the darkest corner, we’d hidden notes to each other; jokes and riddles and Rules for Spies, folded beneath the jars of strawberry and plum preserves that we’d devour, scraping to the bottom the treat made all the sweeter for being stolen out of Mrs. Sullivan’s pantry. Even after my twin’s death, I’ve come upon his notes to me folded and wedged into the closet’s floorboards. It is as if Toby knew, even then, what the future held. As if he was training me.

“Who’s there?” I grasp the doorknob and pull. And pull again, more forcefully, rattling the knob. Odd. There’s no way to lock the door from inside. The hinges must be stuck.

Behind the door, silence. But a resonant silence, the kind that holds the air after the final note of a concerto has been played. In my mind’s eye, I see myself and Toby huddled among the cloaks and galoshes, my teeth chewing at my knuckles as Toby used both hands to keep a firm grip on the knob before sitting back with a victorious haw! once the servant on the opposite side had given up.

But I’m on this side of the cupboard. Not that side.

“Open up!” I call. I stamp my foot and kick the door, scuffing it, to no avail. “Who’s in there? Tell me! For I can hear you!” I’m nearly wrenching the doorknob from its plate. My palms are slick, my mind wheels to steady me, to find the logic. Lotty’s little sister, perhaps? Or one of those innumerable Hodge children from down the road, sneaking out of Sunday school?

Yet now the quality of silence has changed. Emptied. Gone. I release my hold. Stand and rub my eyes with the heels of my hands.

I’m dizzy. I feel a sudden melting in the core of my body, an itch in my eyes when I blink.

My unexpected reunion with my necklace and the turmoil of the past few days have all wound me up too tight. Nothing darker than my imagination is hiding in that closet. The door sticks sometimes. Especially when it hasn’t been opened in a while.

I step back, done with it, but then pull the door in one last, vigorous wrench. It swings open with a creak that sounds like a laugh at my efforts. The new weightlessness behind the handle trips me off balance.

“Hello?” I call.

Nothing. There’s nothing inside the closet but winter wraps and the heavy smell of camphor.

22.

I see them as soon as I’m around the bend on Cypress. Beyond the spire of First Parish, beyond the snowy lawn of the old burying ground, a cluster of mourners has gathered around a fresh grave. Even considering the weather, this funeral seems paltry. I pause a moment to watch before I continue into the church.

Though Aunt Clara flung it as an accusation and is too much of a goose to know if it’s true or not, she is correct. My father was an Universalist. When he was alive, we occasionally attended services. I feel more lapsed than blasphemous, though, as I enter First Parish, where I slide into a pew in back. But this morning I crave something different from prayers and hymns. I need the breath of Will’s spirit. I need him before me. My heart aches with hope.

I open my Bible to my selected passage. My lips silently mouth the words of the ancient prayer. “Grant, O Lord, to Thy servant departed, that he may not receive in punishment the requital of his deeds. May Thy mercy unite him above to the choirs of angels.”

I’ve slid both of Geist’s prints into the book to mark the page. Viviette’s crown of irises and the heart on my breastbone are

Will’s communication in plain sight. “I forgive any crimes you’ve committed, Will,” I whisper, “and I promise that I’ll wear my necklace always, to honor our love and your memory. I’m glad you led my way to it.” There.

From my perch at the edge of the pew, I watch the drift of dust motes caught in the sunbeam through the stained-glass windows. It is mesmerizing, light and dust creating a reminder that God’s beauty is all around us.

I’ve been so eager for a sign. The fever again. The undertow. Nothing comes. After a few minutes I allow myself a peek around me. The faces of the congregation are hard in their unfamiliarity, and the air feels strained with other peoples’ fervor. We worship in unison, but our troubles are all our own.

Why did I think Will would be here? Will, who preferred a Sunday picnic to a Sunday service. Disappointment eddies through me. How stupid, really, to believe that church was a consecrated space for him. My attention falters through the rumble of the sermon, the recitations, prayers, and song. Will is like a dream just out of my reach.

A final processional hymn and the service is over. I’m first to go. Outside, walking under the dripping yews, I see mourners trudging back from the burial. Among them I see Wigs, the barkeep from the Black Iris.