“Wake up, Cliff. Come inside,” she said with urgency.” You’ll freeze out here.”
She leaned over his body and tried patting life back into his cheeks then his hands. After struggling to her feet, she tugged at his hand, the flesh rigid and unyielding, his skin the texture of a rubber glove. She leaned in close, pulled his head to her chest. “No, Cliff !”
Grabbing the back of his chair, she tried pulling it toward the house until Cliff’s body shifted, the weight of it taking the chair over, dumping him in the snow.
“No, no, no, no.”
Michelle grabbed Cliff’s jacket by the shoulders to move him toward the cabin, get him inside, into the warmth, unable to look at him still bent into a queer sitting position. She thought of a hot bath, soaking his body to thaw it, denying the injury to his head, as if heat alone could restore him to life. She threw open the door, then ran to the bathroom and turned on the faucet in the tub, then hurried back to Cliff. She tried prying his arms away from his body, but his limbs were stiff, and she had to lean back trying to find traction on the slippery deck.
“We’ll get you in a hot bath, then wrap you in blankets until the ambulance comes.”
The ambulance. Michelle hadn’t called yet. She ran back inside and grabbed for the phone, knocking it from the table. It lay silent on the floor and for a moment Michelle thought maybe it was dead, until the dial tone began its low and steady drone, a sound Michelle had always found annoying. 911. She’d never had to dial those three numbers before. How many people had occasion in their life to dial 911? Was this an emergency? Or had the emergency already passed? She wasn’t sure if those three numbers would even work in a small town. Maybe it only worked in large cities. A man answered.
She would not allow herself to mention the wound in Cliff’s head or the glassy sheen to his eyes, the unbending limbs. “Send an ambulance. Please.”
The man asked questions, wanted to know what was wrong, if she was in danger, her name, the address. Michelle rattled off answers, could hear herself speaking, uncertain of the words. Her attention went to Cliff’s body outside the glass doors, the side of his face lying in snow, his knees bent oddly, his hand still clutching the pistol to his lap. She had to put her eyes somewhere and looked down at her own feet. Her slippers were gone, probably buried under the snow outside, even though she didn’t remember losing them. Her toes were bright red, the tingle of numbness slowly burning away. The bottom of her nightgown was wet and caked with snow, beginning to melt and drip onto the floor.
Then there was the smell of freshly brewed coffee. That was the worst trick of all. Cliff always measured the grounds the night before, filled the reservoir with water, then set the timer so he could wake up to the sweet aroma of Irish cream. The fragrance had given her no reason to believe anything was wrong, that Cliff was gone, or worse. And the gunshot. Why had she not heard the gunshot? But she had. She remembered now, the loud bang in the night that shook her from sleep. She had opened her eyes and waited to hear it again, as she had on other nights when awakened by what seemed a loud noise or someone speaking her name in a dream. But there had been no other sound, and she’d fallen back asleep.
“Is your husband dead?”
Michelle looked out toward Cliff’s body, the unmoving reality of it. If that wasn’t him lying there in the snow, then where was he? Out walking in the woods? Sitting in his office back in Atlanta? Buying cars at auction?
“Ma’am? Are you there?”
They will want to know whose gun it is, Michelle thought. How did Cliff find it? Had he gone through her purse or had she left it out for him to find? If she hadn’t taken it from the store, this would never have happened.
“I’ve dispatched the police, ma’am. And an ambulance. They should be there soon if the road is passable.”
Michelle did not recall saying goodbye or hanging up the phone. She heard water spilling onto the bathroom floor and figured the toilet was overflowing again. But it was the bathtub. She sat on the edge of the tub and twisted the nozzles off, water welling up over the edge, soaking her gown. No amount of warmth would help Cliff now, she realized. She reached down and pulled up the stopper to release the water, then sat until the last of it swept down the drain.
On her way back to the deck, she pulled the comforter from the couch to cover Cliff’s body, the one she always wrapped herself in to watch a DVD or read a book. She brushed the hair from Cliff’s forehead and tried to ease his eyelids shut. They would not close. She pulled the blanket up over his face and held the fringed edge between her fingers. Icicles hung from the railing like Christmas decorations. She sat down in the snow next to Cliff’s body and watched them drip, the sun burning high above the mountains.
Chapter 23
Claire looked awfully good sleeping on the couch when Pink got up to use the bathroom. He had half a mind to wake her for sex, until the phone rang.
“I can’t get off the mountain because of the snow,” his mother said. “I need Lulu’s ashes.”
“Can’t it wait, Mama? Snow looks awful deep here too.”
“You have four-wheel drive, Pink. And I need them for tonight. Now, please go, and don’t give me a hard time, okay?”
Even though Pink didn’t feel like driving into Emerson’s, he was glad to get out of the house before Isabelle woke. He knew she would still be angry from the night before when he and Claire came back so late.
He pulled on his pants and shirt then paused at the couch a moment to peak under the blanket at Claire’s breasts then her hips and pubic hair. Claire always slept in the nude, and even though it was too early to run the sweeper, Pink knew Isabelle had taken her sleeping pills and would certainly remain comatose through a quickie. Claire barely stirred when he tweaked her nipple, except to grimace and push his hand away.
He sat on the chair and tied his shoes. He wasn’t really in the mood anyway. Besides, he was still a little upset with her from the night before. They had agreed on a story, but as soon as Isabelle questioned Claire about Pink being at her house, Claire said he came over to get something.
“Soup,” Claire had told Isabelle. “Pink said you couldn’t keep anything down, and the stores were all closed. Anyway, Kenny didn’t believe a word of it and told us both to get out.”
Pink knew Isabelle would never believe a story as stupid as that because he hadn’t even spoken to her the night before to know how she was feeling, and he could tell by the look on her face she was more upset than ever. After Isabelle went to bed, Pink had crept back into the living room and asked Claire why she hadn’t stuck to the story they had agreed upon, the one where she called him because Kenny came home drunk and threw her out of the house.
“That was a dumb story, Pink,” Claire had said. “Besides, you expected Kenny to believe that stupid soup story, why shouldn’t Isabelle?”