6

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

VIVIEN, 1919

The Western Union man stood on Vivien’s doorstep. She could see him there, waiting.

He banged on the door again.

“Western Union,” he said in a voice that let Vivien know he had said those words too many times in his life.

“Yes,” she called to him. “I’m on my way.”

She smoothed her skirt and patted her hair in place, primping as if for a date. Ridiculous, she thought, taking a deep breath and finally moving toward the door.

“Telegram,” the man said.

Vivien nodded, but didn’t hold out her hand to take it from him. He was sweating in his rough brown wool jacket with a WU pin on its collar.

“For Vivien Lowe,” he said impatiently, shaking the telegram at her.

When this didn’t seem to do the trick, he added, “From Denver, Colorado.”

“Thank you,” Vivien managed.

She accepted the telegram, but did not open it or go back inside. Instead, she stood and watched him straighten the bicycle he had leaned against the house, jump on it, and ride off down the street. A young man in a black suit passed the Western Union man, his head dropped, his eyes on the street.

“Watch it!” the Western Union man shouted, swerving.

But the young man did not look up. He kept moving steadily down the street. When he reached Vivien’s door, he stopped and checked a piece of wrinkled paper clutched in his hands. Then he raised his eyes, not seeming to notice that Vivien stood there, and checked the number above the door.

She immediately recognized the grief on his face. The flat eyes rimmed in red. The face blotchy from tears.

“Are you the obituary writer?” the man asked in a voice hoarse from crying.

“Vivien Lowe,” Vivien said, extending her hand.

But the man did not offer his. He took a step back, and opened his arms wide as if to indicate the size, the enormity of what had brought him to Vivien’s door.

“They’re dead,” he said. “Both of them.”

Vivien walked over to him, taking his arm and gently guiding him toward her. Grief paralyzed you. She knew this. It prevented you from getting out of bed, from moving at all. It prevented you from even taking a few steps forward.

“You found your way here,” she told him softly. “That is quite an accomplishment.”

He let her bring him inside. He let her slide his heavy black coat from him and lead him to the sofa. With her fingertips on his shoulders, Vivien gently pushed him down so that he was sitting.

“Both of them,” he said again.

Vivien sat in the chair across from him. His hands, folded as if in prayer, were creased with dark red. Blood, she realized, swallowing hard.

“Who, darling?” she asked. “Who has died?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he tried to speak.

“It’s all right,” Vivien said, patting his knee. “I’m going to make you some hot tea. And some toast. I bet you haven’t eaten anything in hours.”

He shook his head, as if the very idea of eating was impossible to comprehend.

“You sit right here,” Vivien said.

She poured him a glass of water for his dry throat, and placed it in his hands. When he didn’t take a sip, she wrapped her hands around his and lifted the glass to his cracked lips. The man began to drink, greedily, water spilling down his stubbled chin and onto his white shirt, which Vivien saw also had dark rust spots splattered across it. He finished the water and held out the glass for more. Three times Vivien refilled it for him.

After the last glass, the man stood, clutching his stomach.

“I’m going to be sick,” he said.

Vivien brought him into the bathroom, holding his damp head while he vomited into the toilet.

“There, there,” she said as he retched.

Finally, he collapsed onto the floor, pressing his body against the wall. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and long legs. His dark blond curls were flattened with sweat, and he gave off the iron smell of blood.

He looked up at her, shaking his head as he spoke.

“Everything seemed to be going fine,” he said, his voice filled with disbelief. “She was doing fine.”

Vivien kneeled beside him.

“Who?” she asked.

“My Jane.” Saying the name out loud made him choke on it. “And our daughter.” His eyes shined with tears. “We were going to name her Hazel. Hazel Jane.”

The grief-stricken want to hear the names of those they’ve lost. To not say the name out loud denies that person’s existence. People seeking to comfort mourners often err this way. They lower their eyes at the sound of the dead’s name. They refuse to utter it themselves.

“But you have,” Vivien said, beginning to understand what had happened. “You have named her Hazel. She’s Hazel Jane.”

“Hazel Jane,” he said softly.

Vivien stood and opened the small cabinet above the sink. She took out some baking soda and some lavender water.

“You’ll freshen up now,” she said. “I’ll make your tea and toast while you freshen up.”

He got awkwardly to his feet.

“Then we’ll sit down and talk and I will write something beautiful for Jane and Hazel,” Vivien said.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome . . . ?”

“Benjamin.”

“Benjamin,” Vivien repeated.

As Vivien sliced two pieces of sourdough bread from the loaf, Emily Dickinson, that strange reclusive poet from Massachusetts, came to her. She had read both of her collections, Poems and Poems: Second Series, and been struck by the simplicity and power of the writing. That combination seemed to speak to the grief of the young man in her parlor too.

The teakettle whistled and Vivien poured the boiling water over the tea leaves waiting in the cup.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me, Vivien thought.

No, that one wasn’t quite right. It didn’t capture the permanence of this double loss. Wife and infant daughter. Gone.

The smell of toasted bread filled the room. Perhaps the most comforting smell in the world, Vivien believed. It soothed the sick and the grieving equally, this simple nourishment. Vivien removed the toast from the small slot beside the oven, and spread it thickly with sweet butter. She cut each slice into four triangles, and arranged them all on a pale blue plate. She considered adding a ramekin of marmalade. Lotte had sent her home on Sunday with jars of Meyer lemon and orange marmalade. More than one person could ever eat. Vivien took a jar from the shelf, the pale orange jelly thick with rinds.

But then she changed her mind. Simple toast with butter. A cup of tea. That was what was needed here. She returned the marmalade to the shelf, placed the cup and the plate on a tray, and went back into the parlor.

Benjamin sat on the sofa, hunched forward, his face buried in his hands. She saw that he had scrubbed most of the blood from them. Even so, some remained beneath the fingernails.

“Here,” Vivien said.

Slowly, he lifted his face and looked at her with an expression of utter disbelief.

“Tell me about Jane,” Vivien said, holding the tea out to him.

He took the cup, but put it right back down.

“She’s beautiful,” he said. “You’ve never seen a more beautiful girl.”

Vivien waited.

“And healthy,” he said, his eyes growing wild with disbelief again. “Never sick! During the Spanish influenza, she nursed me and her parents and never got sick herself.”

“There’s no explanation for what happens,” Vivien said. “Or why.”

Benjamin picked up a piece of toast and carefully tore it into tiny bits.

“Nine months,” he said. “And fine. Just fine. Never even had morning sickness.”

He picked up another piece and tore that one too.

“I’ve never seen so much blood,” he said. “I was in France, at Somme, and I’ve never seen so much blood.”

Vivien watched him start on a third piece.

“I saw the life go out of her eyes. One minute she was looking at me, scared, you know? Puzzled. And then she was gone. I saw her go.” He said this last with something like amazement.

Was there ultimately some relief in witnessing death? Vivien wondered. If she had been with David that day, if she had watched him die, today her life would be different. Wouldn’t it?

“The baby,” he was saying, “came out with the cord around her neck. She never took one breath. Not one. The midwife whisked her away so Jane didn’t see. And then the bleeding wouldn’t stop. We couldn’t stop it,” he said. “How can that be? We win wars and we stop flooding and . . . and we can’t stop a twenty-two-year-old girl from bleeding to death? We can’t save her baby?”

All but Death, can be Adjusted, Vivien thought. The perfect Dickinson poem for Jane and Hazel’s obituary.

Dynasties repaired — Systems — settled in their Sockets — Citadels — dissolved . . .

“Don’t worry, Benjamin. I will write them a beautiful obituary,” Vivien said.

After Benjamin Harwood left, Vivien sat at the small cherrywood desk looking out over the street. She filled her pen with ink, and took a sheet of heavy vellum paper from the single drawer. Lotte teased her about her reluctance to invest in a typewriter. But Vivien had tried to use one and only grew frustrated by the way the keys kept sticking.

A few months ago, Lotte had shown Vivien the new one she’d bought. “Look, darling,” Lotte had said, demonstrating, “This shift key makes it all so easy.”

“But why go to all the trouble of learning this when I can simply write on a piece of paper?”

Lotte shook her head. “You are stuck in the nineteenth century, Viv.”

“I’m not,” Vivien insisted, knowing that perhaps Lotte was right.

Sighing, Vivien stared at the blank paper in front of her now. How to capture a life that never had a chance to blossom? Or one cut so abruptly short? Benjamin Harwood had sat in her parlor for most of the afternoon, talking about his Jane. Vivien resisted the urge to take him into her arms and comfort him. His grief was palpable, like a living thing in the room with them. Listening to him, Vivien felt in some way he was articulating her loss too.

She put the pen down.

The telegram. What had she done with the telegram?

Benjamin’s appearance at her door had completely undone her. She’d had the telegram in her hand when he arrived. Vivien began to search for it, carefully at first, but then more frantically. How could she have been so careless with something so important?

It wasn’t in the kitchen or the bathroom. She looked under the sofa and the chair and the table in the parlor. She went outside to see if it was on the doorstep, or if it had blown into the street. But it seemed to have vanished completely.

Back inside, Vivien opened drawers, knowing that of course she wouldn’t find the telegram there. She turned her pockets inside out, and lifted the corners of the rug.

In her heart she believed that the man in Denver was David. Perhaps she would just go, now, to the train station and buy a ticket to Denver. To hell with the telegram. After so much time, she didn’t need anything but to find him and take him home.

Trembling, Vivien collapsed onto the sofa. She could almost feel his lips on hers that long-ago April morning when he left her in bed. How many times had she imagined his journey away from her, as if it held a clue to his fate? He had walked down the street, turned the corner, and either hopped on the trolley or continued on foot to Market Street. If he’d gone by trolley, then he would have been in his office when the earthquake hit. His partner would have already been there, waiting for him and their meeting. But Duncan had died that morning, crushed by the collapse of the building. They’d found his body there, buried. Vivien had no one to ask if David had ever arrived. She imagined him dazed, wounded, wandering from the rubble. Wandering all the way to Denver, perhaps.

Something caught her eye, peeking out from beneath the tray of tea and toast. A white edge of paper. Vivien pushed the tray away so hard that the half-full cup of tea toppled and spilled. There was the telegram, waiting to be found.

Her hands still trembled, with relief now, as she ripped it open.

ROOM NUMBER WORN AWAY. STOP. MAN HAS SCAR ON FOREHEAD INDICATING HEAD INJURY. STOP. IN GOOD HEALTH EXCEPT SEVERE AMNESIA. STOP. EYES BLUE. STOP. HAIR GRAY. STOP. HEIGHT 6’1”. STOP. COME TO DENVER IMMEDIATELY TO POSSIBLY CONFIRM IDENTITY. STOP.

Vivien read it once, twice. A third time. Yes, David’s hair would have grayed after all this time and trauma. But she could see his blue eyes still. She could remember gazing up the length of him to meet those blue eyes with her own. The possibility that this man in Denver was David now seemed even more likely.

She needed to go there as soon as possible. Immediately, the telegram said. This would require packing. Purchasing a ticket. Finishing the obituaries for Benjamin Harwood’s wife and newborn daughter. It would require taking a train for several days, getting off in Denver, Colorado, and walking into a hospital to reclaim her life. Finally.

Vivien stayed up until well after midnight composing the obituaries. She knew that her words comforted people in grief. It was a responsibility she took seriously. Even those people who believed that David had died on April 18, 1906, still did not know what to say to Vivien. Grief made people awkward. It made them afraid and hesitant. But an obituary writer could not be awkward or tentative. An obituary writer had to be assertive and honest, kind and insightful.

She included the Dickinson in Jane’s. She wrote about how as a young woman Jane had nursed her own parents and future husband when they had the Spanish influenza; how she held Benjamin in her arms at night when nightmares about the war woke him and he trembled, remembering; how her cheeks flushed in the sun; how she liked to knit on cold nights, the yarn tumbling from her lap like a waterfall.

But to write for Hazel, who never got a chance to see the world or to know her father’s love, the way it felt to be in her mother’s arms, was more difficult. Vivien stood, her neck and shoulders tight from having sat so long bent over the paper. A light rain had begun to fall; she could smell it in the air. David used to love the smell of spring rain. He would wake her if the rain came late at night, as it had now, and make her get dressed to stand in it with him.

She would stand in it now, Vivien decided. She made a cup of chamomile tea, spooned some honey into it, and brought it outside. The rain was so light it was almost mist, dampening her nightgown and hair. Her hair would curl from the moisture, and thinking this she lifted her hand to smooth it. She should have put on slippers before she went out. But she hadn’t, so she stood barefoot, sipping her tea, watching the clouds moving across the dark sky. A crescent moon could just be seen through a circle of rain. That’s our moon, David had said that first night at the Majestic Hotel. Vivien had gone to look out the window, and he had joined her there, standing behind her with his arms around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder, both of them still naked, sore from a night of making love. He had pointed to the sliver of moon and said, That’s our moon. Whenever you see it, you will always think of me.

Was it a sign? Vivien wondered. A sign that the man in Denver was indeed David? She knew what Lotte would say. There are no signs or omens. A moon is just the moon. Practical Lotte. Did she ever stand outside barefoot in the rain and stare at the moon? Probably not, Vivien thought, smiling at the idea. Even as girls together Lotte had been the one to worry about danger, the one to take care of them both. She wouldn’t have followed David into that restaurant that day, or agreed to go to the Majestic Hotel with him for the night.

Vivien went back inside, catching a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror as she passed. Yes, her hair had wound into moist curls, as she expected. Rubbing it dry with a tea towel, words from Shakespeare’s The Tempest came to her: We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Oh, Vivien thought, letting the towel fall as she walked quickly back to the desk and picked up her pen. That was perfect for little Hazel.

The rain fell harder as she wrote about the dreams Benjamin and Jane had for Hazel. She wrote the story that Benjamin had told her about how they each wrote a hope they had for their child on a slip of paper every morning, and then sent the papers into the wind when Jane’s labor began. Where are those hopes and dreams now? Vivien wrote. The quote from The Tempest followed this story naturally. Vivien read the obituary over again. It was a good one. An obituary that honored Hazel and her parents.

The next morning, Vivien dressed in her good navy blue suit. She pinned the cameo David had bought her in Italy to the collar and wore her short-brimmed straw hat with the navy velvet band around it. This was an outfit for taking charge, for going to the train station and buying a ticket to Denver.

Walking down Main Street, the sun hot on her cheeks, Vivien felt alive. The air smelled of dust and horses and sweet flowers. All around her, people moved through their day, oblivious to her. Yet she seemed to belong among them, a feeling she did not usually have. When she heard someone call her name, Vivien turned expectantly and found Lotte hurrying toward her with Pamela by the hand.

It was so unusual to see Lotte and Pamela off the ranch that for an instant, Vivien didn’t respond. But when they reached her, and Pamela wrapped her thin arms around Vivien’s knees, Vivien brought her friend into a hug.

“What a surprise,” she said. “You should have let me know you were coming.”

“Well, if you ever get a telephone, I might just do that,” Lotte said.

Although she was smiling, she had small worry lines around her eyes and mouth.

“Vivvie,” Pamela said, her voice hoarse, “can we come to your house? And have a tea party?”

Pamela loved sipping tea out of one of Vivien’s china teacups, and eating tiny cucumber sandwiches with lots of butter and the special lavender shortbread Vivien made just for her.

“No tea parties for you today,” Lotte said to Pamela.

“Next time, darling,” Vivien told her.

“Where are you going?” Lotte asked. “All dressed up like that.”

Without answering, Vivien unclasped her purse and handed Lotte the telegram.

“I have to go to Denver,” Vivien said. “Surely you see that.”

Lotte shook her head. “It reeks of a wild-goose chase. A key. Blue eyes.”

“And six feet one,” Vivien said, pointing to the telegram. “With a scar on his head.”

“Gray hair,” Lotte said.

“It’s been a dozen years!” Vivien said, unable to hide her frustration.

“I know, Viv. I am sorry but—”

“But the key,” Vivien said softly.

“Mama,” Pamela said, leaning into her mother. “I’m getting so tired.”

Vivien frowned. “You haven’t even told me what you two are doing in town.”

“The doctor,” Lotte said, twisting a strand of Pamela’s fine hair in her fingers. “This one has had a fever and a terrible cough—”

As if on cue, Pamela gave a phlegmy cough.

“Almost a week now,” Lotte added.

“I shouldn’t keep you then,” Vivien said. “You need to get her home into bed with a good eucalyptus oil rubdown.”

Lotte gave a little laugh. “I suppose I should hang an onion by her bed too?”

“Don’t tease me,” Vivien said, pretending to be wounded.

“Do you know what I heard?” Lotte said. She lifted Pamela up and held her, the girl’s head on her shoulders.

Vivien saw that Pamela had dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks did look gaunt.

“Poor Pammy,” Vivien murmured.

“I’ve heard that there’s a blue mold in Europe that might someday cure all kinds of diseases.”

“Blue mold?” Vivien said, laughing.

“You laugh,” Lotte said, “but I believe scientists are capable of taking anything, even mold, and figuring out a scientific use for it.”

While Vivien had lost herself in novels and poetry, Lotte had spent her time gazing under microscopes and doing scientific experiments.

Pamela gave a little moan, and Lotte’s face grew worried.

“I think we will head back,” Lotte said.

The two women hugged, and Vivien could feel a new heat emanating from Pamela.

“Go now,” Vivien said.

Lotte hesitated, as if she wanted to say something more.

“Let me know if you do go to Denver,” she said finally.

“I wish you could come with me,” Vivien admitted.

“You know I would if I could, Viv,” she said. Again she seemed to hesitate, but this time she indeed set off, Pamela still in her arms.

Vivien watched Lotte walk down the street. Before she turned the corner, her friend lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave.

The sight of San Francisco, her beautiful city, broke Vivien’s heart. How well she knew these streets, the hills she and Lotte used to roller-skate down as children, the North Beach corner where they would go for Italian ice. Vivien always got lemon, enjoying the way it made her mouth pucker, the tartness both painful and pleasant at the same time. Lotte liked the sweet fruity ones, strawberry or peach. If she closed her eyes, her own personal map of the city appeared on the back of her lids. The house where she lived so briefly as a child with her parents before they died, just a day apart, from the Russian flu when she was a child.

Of that house, and that couple, Vivien only had the blurriest memories: a swing tied to a tree branch in the yard, being lifted by her father’s strong hands, the rustle of her mother’s skirts, a Douglas fir so tall that Vivien had to crane her neck to see all the way to the top, where a foil star perched. Her mother had hand-sewn an entire wardrobe of clothes for a doll Vivien had named Melody. She vaguely remembered sitting on a rug in a parlor with her mother, carefully dressing Melody in her new clothes. The doll’s porcelain face and soft blond hair remained clearer to Vivien than the face of her mother.

But of course Melody had been with her longer. When Vivien’s aunt took her to live with her in the big house in Pacific Heights, Vivien first dressed Melody in the forest green coat with the black buttons her mother had made just a few weeks earlier. Even as a teenager, Vivien had kept Melody on a shelf in her bedroom, a reminder of some elusive time she could not quite recall. Standing here now on Market Street, Vivien clearly saw that room where she grew up. The high four-poster bed with the hand-tatted bedcovers and pillows; the tall windows that opened out onto the city; the fainting chair covered in pale gold silk where Vivien would sit, a blanket over her lap, and read on rainy afternoons.

Her city.

Vivien opened her eyes to see that she was standing almost exactly where she first met David on the day she bought the ridiculous blue hat. There, just ahead, was the restaurant where he took her. Vivien watched as a streetcar came to a stop, its doors heaving open. She should run to catch it, but the weight of her trunk combined with the weight of her memories kept her in place, unable to move forward.

She did not like being here. She did not like seeing the ghost of her own self everywhere she looked. But the train to Denver left in the morning, requiring that Vivien spend the night in the city. All these years, she had avoided coming back. After those weeks of searching for David in the rubble, at hospitals, on the streets, she had taken Lotte up on her offer to stay in Napa with her and Robert for a while, until she felt stronger. A while had turned into months, and those months into years. Oh, she’d left the vineyard that summer, and moved into her apartment.

At first she would sit by the window and watch the world pass in front of her. People who walked with purpose, who seemed to have somewhere to go. Mothers pushing prams, adjusting their babies’ blankets, beaming down at them or fretting over them. Boys on bicycles. Couples holding hands. An entire population of people who continued living their lives even though Vivien’s had come to such a sudden halt. They seemed audacious to her, those people with plans and appointments and futures. How could they parade in front of her? How could the world, in fact, keep spinning?

One day, a man knocked on her door. Short and squat, dressed in a bright red jacket, he stood nervously twirling a straw hat in his hands.

“Is this the newspaper office?” he asked her.

Vivien shook her head. She wasn’t even sure where the newspaper office was in town. By this time it was late autumn, but she only ventured into the grocer’s and the pharmacy, the places where she could get necessities and then return home.

“Could you please direct me to the obituary writer?” the man said as if he really did stand on the doorstep of the newspaper office.

“This is a private home,” Vivien said. “I’m sorry.”

She began to close the door, but the man stopped her.

“I need the obituary writer. It’s for my wife.”

At the word wife his voice cracked. Eventually, Vivien grew accustomed to that, the way a word, a name, could break a grieving person. But that day, she felt embarrassed by the man’s emotion. She recognized herself in that instant, remembering how often she’d cried as she repeated David’s name to Lotte. At times, those two syllables seemed to carry all of her grief.

“But I’m just a woman who lives here,” Vivien said.

“My wife,” the man continued, “is a baker. She came from Austria-Hungary as a teenager. Her family moved to Chicago where her father worked in the stockyards. Disgusting work, for a man who once owned his own haberdashery shop right in downtown Budapest. Her mother took in sewing, and she would stay up all night working in the dim light, beading wedding dresses, hemming gowns, making layettes for babies. My wife, my Gyöngyi, just a girl, but she baked pastries and sold them on the streets, to bring home extra money so her mother didn’t have to work so hard. Eszterházy torta and rétes and krémes. Do you know Rákóczi túrós? Cottage cheese cake? No? My Gyöngyi made this better than anyone. Better than the finest bakers in Budapest.”

As the man talked, Vivien realized that he was the first person since she had left San Francisco who understood grief. Despite all of the hugs and words of comfort, unless you have suffered loss you cannot understand the depth of it, the seemingly bottomless pit of despair that goes with grief. But this man in the bright red jacket and straw hat, he knew. He understood.

Vivien took his arm and brought him inside. She sat him down on her sofa and she made him a cup of tea. He talked, and Vivien listened.

Eventually, he stood. By then dusk had fallen. But Vivien did not light a lamp for fear of interrupting him.

He said, “Gyöngyi means pearl. Did you know this? No? A pearl is hidden in an oyster. Do you know, Miss Obituary Writer, how pearls get made?”

“No,” Vivien admitted, “I don’t.”

“When a piece of grit or sand or shell gets trapped inside, the oyster, it has to protect itself from this irritation. So it creates a liquid around the particle, which eventually, over time, becomes a pearl.”

Alone, Vivien sat at her small desk and wrote about this woman, this stranger. She described the pastries she baked, the flakiness of her crusts, the smoothness of her creams, how she perfectly balanced fruit and nuts and sugar in her strudels. Vivien took the final line of the obituary from Keats. “Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl!”

In the morning, she walked into town and found the newspaper office that the man could not find the day before. She explained her mission, handing the obituary to a skinny man with a big Adam’s apple.

“But this ain’t an obit, ma’am,” he said. “It don’t say when she was born. It don’t say how she died. And it don’t have much in between those two momentous occurrences neither.”

Vivien thought of David, of all the things she missed about him, the things she thought about when she yearned for him. The little word game they played. Delicious, she had said that last morning. And he had answered, Intoxicating. She missed his scrambled eggs. Such a simple thing, but on lazy mornings she would wake up to him bringing her breakfast on a tray. He added a bit of cream and sugar to the eggs, which made them light and sweet. He always had two pieces of sourdough bread, toasted and buttered and half a grapefruit that he’d already cut the small wedges for her so she could pick them up with her fork. She missed how when they stood together, her head reached his shoulder in the exact spot where she would rest it later that night in bed.

“This obituary,” Vivien said firmly, “has every important fact about the deceased. This is the obituary her husband wants.”

She didn’t know for certain that this last point was true, but she believed that when he read it, he would agree.

The man scowled. “What’s this business about pearls sleeping?”

But Vivien was done with this newspaperman. She instructed him to run it that very afternoon, and then she stepped outside where, for the first time in the six months since David had disappeared in the earthquake, she finally could take a breath without it hurting to still be alive.

Perhaps it was foolish of her, but Vivien booked a room for the night at the Hotel Majestic. She arrived in front of it on Sutter Street, and stared up for what felt like a very long time at its distinctive bay windows, trying to guess which room was number 208. Finally, she gave up, remembering that she had not paused to admire the view that night she and David spent here. Vivien lifted the handle of her trunk and dragged it to the entrance.

A bellhop hurried to take her trunk for her, and Vivien followed the man inside the elegant lobby. Everything seemed both familiar and foreign. How caught up in David she had been that long-ago night! All she could think of was touching him, and having him touch her. The check-in had seemed interminable. The slow ride up the elevator eternal. Had they even bothered to turn on the lights when the key finally opened the door and a bed awaited them? It seemed to Vivien now that their clothes came off right at the door, as soon as they stepped inside.

“Is room 208 available?” she asked the man at the desk.

“208,” he said, turning to the row of cubbies behind him that held keys.

Vivien’s eyes followed his finger as it danced across the row of second-floor room keys.

“208,” he said, his finger stopping abruptly.

He removed the large key hanging from a golden rope.

But when he held it out to Vivien, she found herself refusing it.

“No,” she said, “I’ve made a mistake. I’d rather stay in a different room.”

His face did not belie any frustration or confusion. “A different room then,” he said, replacing that key and handing her another one.

Vivien followed the bellhop who was moving her trunk into the elevator. Inside, she pressed her back against one wall, remembering how David had pressed his body against hers that night, perhaps in this very elevator. She closed her eyes, almost feeling his rough face against her own smooth neck.

“Ma’am?” the bellhop asked. “Are you going to faint?”

Vivien opened her eyes and shook her head. What was she thinking coming back here?

“You look like you saw a ghost,” the bellhop said. “We got one, you know. Up on four. He fills the bathtub with water and walks up and down the halls.”

He paused to measure the effect of his story.

“Some people,” Vivien said, “do believe in ghosts.”

“They say he’s harmless,” the bellhop said as the elevator came to a jerky halt. “But anyway, he doesn’t come down to the third floor.”

Vivien studied the bellhop’s earnest face. A ruddy complexion and the sort of nose that came from too much drinking, a road map of veins.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing a ghost,” Vivien said.

He looked startled, but she didn’t explain further. How could she? What was there to say?

The restaurant in the Hotel Majestic was surprisingly empty. Vivien was seated discreetly in the back corner. A woman dining alone always raised eyebrows. Quickly she scanned the large menu. Why, they served crab Louis salad, Vivien read, delighted. She and David used to go to the St. Francis Hotel just for their crab Louis. She hadn’t had it since she left the city. When the waiter came, she ordered one.

“Oh,” she said as he turned to leave, “and a glass of Chenin Blanc.”

“Yes, madame,” he said, gratuitously polite.

Vivien knew he found it odd, even disturbing, that she dared come into the dining room without a man, eat her dinner alone, and have the audacity to drink wine as well.

It had been a long time since she’d dressed up and sat in a fine restaurant like this, and she surprised herself when she realized that she missed it. The buttoning and smoothing and primping. The smell of powder and perfume. She missed David’s hand on her arm as they entered a restaurant, how he pulled out the chair for her and glided it back into place. The candlelight flickered, casting everyone in the room in a soft glow. Vivien watched the other people eating and drinking—couples with their heads bent close together, men smoking cigars and sipping brandy from crystal snifters. Her gaze settled on a man eating alone, like her, one sleeve of his jacket pinned up. He’d lost the arm in the war, no doubt. She thought briefly of all the obituaries she had written in those months, the Spanish influenza coming right on the heels of the war, the deaths adding up with terrible speed.

The waiter brought her wine, and right behind it came a cart with her dinner. He made a lavish show of tossing the sliced hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes, asparagus and cucumbers with the white crabmeat.

“Shall I add the dressing, madame?” the waiter asked, a small silver ladle poised over the bowl of orange dressing.

Vivien nodded.

“Bon appétit,” the waiter said officiously before he walked away.

Vivien picked up the heavy silver fork and took a bite of crab. The familiar taste brought with it a rush of memories so strong she had to put the fork back down and work hard to swallow. Alone in Napa, her days had taken on such a similarity that she had almost forgotten pleasures like these: good food, good wine, the murmur of conversations. But sitting here tonight, Vivien ached for all of it, and more. How she missed the companionship, the touch, of a man.

She got to her feet quickly, and laid some bills on the table. Before the waiter could make his way to her, Vivien had already hurried out. Was this how she was meant to spend her life? Alone, untouched, unheard? The thought was almost too much to bear. Would someone meeting her now even believe that she had once been like these people, carefree and pretty and loved?

In her room, Vivien unpinned her hair and began to brush it. She still brushed it for one hundred strokes, a habit she’d never given up. She washed her face, first with hot water, then with cold. Her aunt had taught her that this was the best way to keep the pores open and fresh. It had worked too; Vivien always had a clear complexion. Now of course there were small lines around her mouth and eyes, but still her skin was clear and with good color. She rubbed cold cream onto her face in a circular motion, then put all of her toiletries into their small bag and put the small bag back into her trunk. These simple rituals calmed her.

The sheets on the bed felt cool and luxurious. Vivien stretched out, plumping the pillows and trying to block out the memories. As soon as she closed her eyes, hoping to sleep, someone knocked on her door, loud and repeatedly.

“Go away,” she called.

But the knocking persisted.

She sat up.

Throwing back the bedclothes, Vivien got out of bed. The knocking was louder, almost frantic now.

“One minute!” she called.

She dug her robe out of her trunk and tied it hastily around her.

At her door, Vivien’s eyes rested on the Italian man from Napa. Sebastian, the one who followed her around the library and worked at Robert’s vineyard.

“Signora,” he said, his face filling with relief at the sight of her. “Oh, signora,” he said, his shoulders drooping with some motion she couldn’t quite make out.

His name was on the tip of her tongue, though she couldn’t recall it.

“Sebastian,” he said, all four syllables rolling from his tongue.

“What in the world . . . ?” Vivien began, unable to articulate her surprise and confusion.

“Mrs. Lotte, she say, ‘Find Vivien. Try Hotel Majestic.’”

“Lotte sent you?” Vivien said, even more confused.

“Mrs. Vivien,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “May I bother you for some water?”

“Yes, of course,” Vivien said, holding the door opened wider so he could enter her room.

Embarrassed in her nightclothes, her hair loose, Vivien bent her head as she poured him water from the pitcher by her bedside.

He sipped it, trying to calm himself.

“What is it?” she asked when she thought he was composed.

But at the sound of the question, he began to cry again.

“I don’t know how to say it,” he said.

“Just say it, that’s all,” Vivien said.

Sebastian looked at her, right into her eyes.

“The little girl,” he said.

“Pamela?”

He nodded. “Pamela, yes. Pamela is dead.”