On the drive home from the last oncology appointment, Beatrice’s car had thunked then clanked then clattered, the shifting tonalities of engine failure. She’d flipped on her hazard lights and drifted to the berm, out of the traffic streaming from Charlottesville toward Nelson County.
The highway was noisy with vehicles, gusty with wind and hotter than the parking lot she’d left. Hotter than her back porch in full sun, the perfect place for container gardening.
Floyd, the long-gone ASPCA mutt chosen and beloved by her nephew and niece, Alvis and Cece, during one of their long-ago summer visits, had loved to lay out there. He’d angle himself so his hindquarters were shaded by the Roma tomato plants she had tied to the railings, his snout twitching in the sunshine and shifting breezes, basking in the warmth of the flying-by, flooding, fucked-up world, dog-certain that this moment was the best one.
And this next one.
And then the one after that.
* * *
Five people were jammed in the Subaru wagon. Cece and Alvis sat on either side of their mother Liana, Beatrice’s sister, who had the box of Beatrice’s cremains on her lap. Paul, Liana’s husband drove. Gregory, Cece’s fiancé, rode shotgun.
Liana’s heart threaded tight along her throat, into her chest. She had to sneeze. She dug tissues out of her purse and snuffled into them as Paul accelerated.
Theirs was one of a handful of cars on the Golden Gate heading to the city. Beatrice had told Cece to scatter her in the Bay, near the museums, which she considered the headwaters of her life. She’d explicitly said nothing formal or fancy, Cece had reported after deplaning with the cremains in a sober grey bag. Not one of those services that would take the family out on a boat, provide a lovely wreath or other token. Liana thought it might be illegal to dump cremains in the Bay without a permit. Since none of them had had time to ask about it, they’d agreed to go when no one else would likely be around. Pre-dawn, Christmas morning.
“Beatrice would have enjoyed this,” Alvis said. “A rogue mission in the early morning to dispose of the body.” His curls were flattened over one ear; he’d always slept hard, almost without moving, even as a baby.
“Alvis, please,” Paul said but Cece giggled.
Gregory turned so he could be heard in the back seat. “Your family have any other bodies they’ve disposed of questionably? Other skeletons I should be aware of before marrying in?”
“No, we’re staid, solid, upright citizens. No secrets,” Alvis said.
Paul caught Liana’s eye in the rearview mirror. He really was staid and solid, though that had not exempted them from the challenges inherent in a forty-year partnership. He steered with one firm hand on the wheel, the other around his coffee mug, which held their Christmas Special: cardamom pods and star anise added to the brew basket.
“Beatrice was the one who would have buried bodies,” Cece said, and Alvis added, “And so she was the fun one—you know, aunt instead of parent.”
“Remember Floyd? I loved that dog,” Cece said. The summer of Floyd had been the summer both Liana’s children had spent six entire weeks with Beatrice and her then-husband Troy. Liana couldn’t remember what on earth she and Paul had been doing that summer. House-hunting? Rewiring the house after they’d found it? Trying to conceive the third child they’d both wanted?
“Did I ever tell you about Floyd’s funeral?” Alvis leaned across Liana to address Cece. The cremains box dug into Liana’s stomach.
“What funeral?” Cece, five years younger than Alvis, still indulged in occasional childish piques. It was a wonder to Liana that her daughter had secured tenure.
“It was years after Troy had left her for that girl. I was on the cross-country road trip. So that was like 2008? 2009? She’d called me to say Floyd had an intenstinal tumor or something. I made better time than I thought I would and arrived in Virginia a day early. It was almost dark when I pulled up and I heard Troy and Bea on the back porch. I didn’t want to walk into the middle of anything awkward and I guess it’s fair to say I hid behind that huge rhodendron. They popped a bottle of champagne. Floyd was all wrapped up in one of those big white towels she had, remember those?”
Paul moved the car smoothly onto Van Ness.
“Bea raised the bottle and said, To Floyd! A dog who never met a skunk he didn’t like. She took a big glug and passed it to Troy who said something else funny about Floyd. They got pretty wasted.”
“You were spying,” Cece said. “Rude.”
“I was just frozen. I haven’t even gotten to the good part. Want to hear it?”
“Would she mind you sharing it?” In the thick silence following Liana’s sharp question, she realized that her tone had been unseemly for one who’d declined to speak directly of, or to, her only sibling for the past two decades. Apparently her children remained upset by this choice, even though she’d assured them it was by mutual agreement.
“I don’t think she’d mind,” Alvis said. “She loved a good story.” He paused. “Besides, she’s dead, Mom.”
Liana flinched and Paul said, “Hey!” and Gregory stayed silent and Cece stared pointedly out the window on her side and Alvis sighed. “I’m sorry. But what harm can come of telling about Floyd’s funeral?”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing, OK?” Liana gazed out the gap of windshield visible between Paul and Gregory’s shoulders. Fog, lovely fog, softening the edges of everything, calming the city’s blocky profile. They were approaching the Embarcadero now.
“OK.” Alvis flashed Cece a look over Liana’s head that Liana felt sure involved a raised eyebrow. “Bea drained the bottle and said, To Floyd! A dog who liked to watch us fuck.”
The car slowed as Paul stopped for a red light. Gregory tightened the lid of his coffee mug. Poor guy.
“Yikes. What happened next?”
Alvis shrugged. “I left.”
“That’s the good part of the story?”
“I was pretty scandalized at the time. Nothing against anyone here, but I don’t want to think about any of us making love. It’s just—off-putting. It took all my courage to go back the next day and helped her dig the hole for Floyd.”
“Maybe they fell in love all over again?” Cece had always preferred happy endings for her bedtime stories.
Liana wasn’t sure if Beatrice had remained happy with their mutual agreement to end contact. This morning, Liana wasn’t sure if she, herself, had. She’d buried that ugliness deep: Bea, red, flushed, slightly tipsy, telling her their father would have never ever. Even Liana’s therapist had said it wouldn’t be healthy to stay in touch, given Bea’s denial. Since the tradition of summer visits to Beatrice had been established by then, she’d seen no reason to sully her children’s relationship with their Aunt. No reason to complicate their memories now.
“I have no idea if they were secret lovers,” Alvis said.
Liana willed the light to change. “Is Troy still with his child bride, that girl he left Bea for in the first place?”
Cece answered. “It’s been fifteen years. I don’t think she qualifies as a child bride anymore.”
Paul turned left on the green, toward the water.
“I never heard Aunt Bea talk about anyone else,” Alvis said.
“Their divorce seeded a lot of her later poetry, though, right?” Gregory asked.
“Every cloud, silver lining, etcetera,” Liana said.
“Or maybe the clouds cleared and she got to be a great poet and have a great love life.”
“Seems like they’d had a good love life,” Alvis murmured.
“Please,” Liana said.
The car tires squeaked against the curb as Paul parked.
“I don’t think she was lonely,” Cece said.
“Good for her,” Gregory said.
Alvis unbuckled. “I think being great at something like poetry means you don’t have time for much else.”
Paul pulled the emergency brake all the way up and the car gave a little lurch.
“She was good at what she did, but great?” Liana’s hip ached from sitting askew in the middle. She moved more slowly than she’d like.
“Mom!” Cece’s voice pitched half a note higher. “She won some major awards. Praised everywhere, sold as many copies of her last book as any other living poets besides Billy Collins and Mary Oliver. How could you not know this?”
“Because I was busy making a lovely home for you and Alvis.”
“Here we go.” Cece shoved her door open and got out but then turned and thrust her head back into the car. “We’re not home anymore, Mom. We haven’t been for years.”
Paul offered Liana his hand, saying quietly, “Let it go, let it go.” She levered herself from the backseat with his help. They set off toward the pier behind their children and Gregory, footsteps echoing off the Exploratorium’s gray hulk. This touristy part of the city was swept clean, kept tidy; even on Christmas Day the hodgepodge of detritus that crowds left in their wake was absent, save what looked like a discarded t-shirt next to the museum’s café entrance. Though that small lump stirred, shifted, stood and, in motion, became, clearly, a rat.
“It must have rabies,” Cece murmured. “It’s chasing its own tail.” In the shadow of the cafe’s outdoor tables, wired together against thieves, the rat circled itself, grasping fruitlessly at its hairless appendage, coiling around and around.
“No point in risking a bite.” Gregory steered their party away from it.
But the rat remained equidistant, spiraling as if tethered to them.
“Where’s a BB gun when you need one?” Paul said.
Cece squealed, “It’s lunging at us!”
The rat had stopped circling and was darting toward them, in short bursts, then stopping and swaying.
“Hey! Hey!” A man’s voice startled them. “You stay away from my friend there! That’s my friend, my only friend in the world. Leroy.” He wore an army surplus coat and camo pants, boots laced up to mid-shin.
“The rat is your friend?” said Cece, quickest to find speech.
The man walked toward them. “I know he looks like a rat, but that’s my friend Leroy.” He was close enough now for them to see his unshaven jaw, the fraying laces of his boots, the oily shine of his hair. “He came back as a rat. You know, we all got animal spirits.” He squinted at Liana, his forehead crumpling into deep grooves. “Lady, lady, lady, you got something wrong with your eyeballs?” The man tilted to his left. Drunk or injured? Paul and Gregory flanked her and Cece; Alvis stood slightly in front of them all. Good men, she thought, how ridiculously and pleasantly gallant they are.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Liana said. The ground blurred in front of her.
The rat stood on its hind legs, apparently calmed by the man’s presence. “Come on, Leroy.” The man’s voice softened and he crouched to the ground. He fumbled in a pocket and withdrew a tattered Flamin’ Hot! Cheetos package, so worn it didn’t crinkle. He extended his palm with a bright orange Cheeto in it.
The rat’s whiskers quivered and it lowered itself to all fours, scampering to the man, sitting on its haunches, taking the morsel and nibbling it from nimble paws. It clambered up the man’s arm and disappeared under his coat collar. He said, “There now, all’s right with the world.”
“Sure,” Paul agreed.
The man stood. “What you all down here for?”
“We’ve got business with the ocean,” Liana said.
“I’ll leave you to it. Ocean’s an oversized gathering of the sorrows.” He shuddered. “I avoid it as much as possible.”
“Hard to do in San Francisco,” Paul said.
“Yeah.” The man grinned, his teeth amber-spotted. “But my sister lives here. Where else am I gonna go? Family. Merry Christmas.” He saluted.
“Merry Christmas,” they chorused, as if they knew him, as if they hadn’t been nervous, as if the whole thing had been a welcomed exchange with a long-lost friend. The man ambled away, shrinking to blur, to particle, to emptiness.
* * *
The water sloshed against the pilings. They lined up along the mooring ropes. Liana held the box.
“To Beatrice,” Alvis said. “A woman who lived too short a span.”
“To our own messed-up family,” Cece said, and leaned gently into Liana, close to forgiveness.
Gregory said he wished he’d known her. Paul said, “A sister-in-law like no other,” and wrapped his arm around Liana.
Liana opened the box, knelt, and tipped the cremains into the water. The few bigger bits sank immediately, but most of it clung to the surface. The swell of the water turned the ashes from a circle to an oval and then the edges feathered off into smaller, self-contained oblongs and swirls.
They watched and watched, and in the moments it took Beatrice to dissolve, the wind of the flying-by, flooding, fucked-up world shifted and the sun burned off some of the fog and at the end of the dissolving moments, there was another one.
And another one.
And another one after that.
Lesley has worked in regional planning, founded a land trust, raised two sons, and helped establish a cohousing community. Her fiction has been recognized by Glimmer Train and Zoetrope, and published in the Leon Literary Review, the Little Patuxent Review, Narrative, and the Western Humanities Review.