In the middle of the wake, the Murphys adjourned for lunch. Appearing—as they had at other moments—an ordinary middle-class family, if extended now, asymmetrical, still handsome and poised. Well dressed, as if for a performance? They took up two tables at the restaurant—white cloth napkins, chrysanthemums—a self-possessed Nora settled with the kids at one end. Even Josie appeared normal. Or especially? Sara ordered like a normal woman. Should she—should any of them—have appeared sadder? Yet this was one thing they felt sure of: how to order lunch. For an hour the world became, again, knowable. Soup or no soup? Bread or no bread? (Yes for Theo, now distance running; no for Katy, on a diet; others equivocal.) A small bubble of time within the larger bubble into which they’d tumbled. They drank tea and coffee and milk and juice: they ate.
Then they returned to the funeral parlor. James was still there, waiting, it seemed—his physical presence, the fact that he hadn’t left, an unexpected relief. He’d been laid out in a midnight-blue suit and silk tie, his eyes closed—as they might be, Sara thought, on a commuter train. The mild surprise that he did not sit or speak repeated itself; nonetheless here was a family gathering—the cluster of chairs occupied by Murphys—and here was James.
Like the other Murphys, she had begun to adapt to her father’s appearance—the stubbornly closed eyes, the distinguished suit, the mistake of the casket. He had, at least, appeared. The trouble—as Sara came to call it—materialized when the wake ended and she could no longer see him. As if all events until then—the ICU with its bleating machines, the calls, the arrangements—had been edgy, eccentric theater. Then for her his body—James himself—became purely conceptual. The terms flipped; an air lock broke; the world emptied. And then a kind of numbing? James had been so very still, then gone, and Sara numb—should it surprise?—in Sara’s zombie-mourner state, a little confusion about who was dead? (And why would burial seem a mutual abandonment?)
What could she say to the others? Are you a little dead? This arrangement seems criminal. Worth trying Delia, if she could find more palatable language. Delia, she knew, would make an effort, if only to keep Sara company. But it seemed that for each of them, a different James had died. After the burial, Josie and Theo visited with Murphy cousins; Delia collected her kids; Tim and Katy ferried out-of-town relatives to yet another dinner; Nora withdrew. Like Katy and Theo, Nora seemed both present and elsewhere—had the balance just tipped to elsewhere? More likely they’d remained the same. Are you a little dead? Sara herself was obtuse. For an extended moment, her father had been present. Then the moment ended. Now his absence seemed to collide with a shifting unnamed vacancy she’d thought she’d outgrown.
Calm days, at first, following the funeral—say it was the calm of shock. Or of distraction: Theo in town, staying with Nora, smaller gatherings with Murphy cousins. Every day Sara spoke to Delia and Katy; almost as often she talked with Josie, twice met her for dinner. Then daily life resumed; it always resumes, whether one is ready or not.
The chronic insomnia recurred. Whenever she could, Sara slept. On Saturdays, she began walking again, revisiting places she’d gone with James. As if she were waiting. As if he would call; as if he would appear in Concord, or in Marblehead. During the week, Cambridge seemed to imitate the Cambridge she lived in; normal routines seemed like imitation life.
And there were dreams, with and without James, often of the house. A dream, say, of opening a door to discover she’s found the Blue Rock kitchen, Nora pouring tea, Delia lacing running shoes, Katy sifting mail. She walks upstairs alone and finds the hall is full of animals. A huge tabby sprawls in the bathtub. An enormous dog, heavily muscled, fur a bristly white, naps halfway down the hall to Nora’s room. Sara’s room is as she left it, but now the dog’s awake, growling and barking beyond the door frame. She shuts the door, but it’s badly cut, off by several inches, and the dog shoves his snout and one heavy paw underneath. At some point she is sweating and shouting. No one intervenes. At some point she wakes up.
Or the dream in which her voice mail has filled with messages: they must be from her father. But he can hardly speak. She hears only thick syllables—is that him? He sounds awful—then obscure pop songs spliced together. It’s a code, isn’t it? He’s played the songs because he can’t speak. But the puzzle’s too difficult, she’s not clever enough—she keeps trying, going back to the sad thick syllables, the quoted pop songs, discerning less and less.
And over those strange weeks, yet more insomnia: it seemed as if a kind of chasm had opened, and with it the confusion of absences she could not unmix. She tried to reach Nora, who texted back Sending love. Let’s talk soon. So often Sara couldn’t find her—it was terrible not to find her. Where had she gone? (Could she be lost?) And James was gone—dead—but what did that mean? Last seen in a midnight-blue suit; last seen unspeaking. The box in the ground explained nothing. Body, suit, box: more sleight of hand, more theater. James was a person: a person had to be somewhere.