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BAG OF BONES

Hodder & Stoughton

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted

material:

reserved. Used by permission. WARNER BROS. PUBLICATIONS U.S. INC., Miami, FL. 33014

'Don't Worry Baby' by Brian Wilson, Roger Christian, Jay Siegel, Philip Margo, Henry Medress,

PUBLICATIONS U.S. INC., Miami, FL. 33014

Keetey and Philip Sherrard Greek M. Seferiades 1972, 1976. Reprinted by permission of Princeton

University Press.

'Welcome to the Jungle' words and music by W. Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin', Duff McKagen &

rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Cherry Lane Music Company.

First published in Great Britain in 1998

by Hodder and Stoughton

AUTHOR'S NOTE

To an extent, this novel deals with the legal aspects of child custody in the State of

Maine. I asked for help in understanding this subject from my friend Warren Silver,

who is a fine attorney. Warren guided me carefully, and along the way he also told

me about a quaint old device called the Stenomask, which I immediately appropriated

for my own fell purposes. If I've made procedural mistakes in the story which follows,

blame me, not my legal resource. Warren also asked me--rather plaintively — if I

could maybe put a 'good' lawyer in my book. All I can say is that I did my best in that

regard.

Thanks to my son Owen for technical support in Woodstock, New York, and to my

friend (and fellow Rock Bottom Remainder) Ridley Pearson for technical support in

Ketchum, Idaho. Thanks to Pam Dorman for her sympathetic and perceptive reading

of the first draft. Thanks to Chuck Verrill for a monumental editing job--your personal

best, Chuck. Thanks to Susan Moldow, Nan Graham, Jack Roman s, and Carolyn

Reidy at Scribner for care and feeding. And thanks to Tabby, who was there for me

again when things got hard. I love you, hon.

S.K.

Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I;

I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and

noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel

so private as when I know you are here.

'Bartleby'

HERMAN MELVILLE

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .

As I stood there, hushed and still, I could swear that

the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed

as it had lived before.

Rebecca

DAPHNE DU MAURIER

Mars is heaven.

RAY BRADBURY

BAG OF BONES

CHAPTER ONE

On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the

Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription — this is stuff you

can buy over the counter these days, I believe. I'd finished my writing for the day and

offered to pick it up for her. She said thanks, but she wanted to get a piece of fish at

the supermarket next door anyway; two birds with one stone and all of that. She blew

a kiss at me off the palm of her hand and went out. The next time I saw her, she was

on TV. That's how you identify the dead here in Derry — no walking down a

subterranean corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent bars

overhead, no naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters; you just go into an

office marked private and look at a TV screen and say yep or nope.

The Rite Aid and the Shopwell are less than a mile from our house, in a little

neighborhood strip mall which also supports a video store, a used-book store named

Spread It Around (they do a very brisk business in my old paperbacks), a Radio

Shack, and a Fast Foto. It's on Up-Mile Hill, at the intersection of Witcham and

Jackson.

She parked in front of Blockbuster Video, went into the drugstore, and did business

with Mr. Joe Wyzer, who was the druggist in those days; he has since moved on to

the Rite Aid in Bangor. At the checkout she picked up one of those little chocolates

with marshmallow inside, this one in the shape of a mouse. I found it later, in her

purse. I unwrapped it and ate it myself, sitting at the kitchen table with the contents of

her red handbag spread out in front of me, and it was like taking Communion. When

it was gone except for the taste of chocolate on my tongue and in my throat, I burst

into tears. I sat there in the litter of her Kleenex and makeup and keys and half-

finished rolls of Certs and cried with my hands over my eyes, the way a kid cries.

The sinus inhaler was in a Rite Aid bag. It had cost twelve dollars and eighteen cents.

There was something else in the bag, too — an item which had cost twenty-two-fifty. I

looked at this other item for a long time, seeing it but not understanding it. I was

surprised, maybe even stunned, but the idea that Johanna Arlen Noonan might have

been leading another life, one I knew nothing about, never crossed my mind. Not

then.

Jo left the register, walked out into the bright, hammering sun again, swapping her

regular glasses for her prescription sunglasses as she did, and just as she stepped

from beneath the drugstore's slight overhang (I am imagining a little here, I suppose,

crossing over into the country of the novelist a little, but not by much; only by inches,

and you can trust me on that), there was that shrewish howl of locked tires on

pavement that means there's going to be either an accident or a very close call.

This time it happened — the sort of accident which happened at that stupid X-shaped

intersection at least once a week, it seemed. A 1989 Toyota was pulling out of the

shopping-center parking lot and turning left onto Jackson Street. Behind the wheel

was Mrs. Esther Easterling of Barrett's Orchards. She was accompanied by her

friend Mrs Irene Deorsey, also of Barrett's Orchards, who had shopped the video

store without finding anything she wanted to rent. Too much violence, Irene said.

Both women were cigarette widows. Esther could hardly have missed the orange

Public Works dump truck coming down the hill; although she denied this to the police,

to the newspaper, and to me when I talked to her some two months later, I think it

likely that she just forgot to look. As my own mother (another cigarette widow) used

to say, 'The two most common ailments of the elderly are arthritis and forgetfulness.

They can't be held responsible for neither.'

Driving the Public Works truck was William Fraker, of Old Cape. Mr. Fraker was

thirty-eight years old on the day of my wife's death, driving with his shirt off and

thinking how badly he wanted a cool shower and a cold beer, not necessarily in that

order. He and three other men had spent eight hours putting down asphalt patch out

on the Harris Avenue Extension near the airport, a hot job on a hot day, and Bill

Fraker said yeah, he might have been going a little too fast — maybe forty in a thirty-

mile-an-hour zone. He was eager to get back to the garage, sign off on the truck, and

get behind the wheel of his own F-150, which had air conditioning. Also, the dump

truck's brakes, while good enough to pass inspection, were a long way from tip-top

condition. Fraker hit them as soon as he saw the Toyota pull out in front of him (he hit

his horn, as well), but it was too late. He heard screaming tires — his own, and

Esther's as she belatedly realized her danger — and saw her face for just a moment.

'That was the worst part, somehow,' he told me as we sat on his porch, drinking

beers — it was October by then, and although the sun was warm on our faces, we

were both wearing sweaters. 'You know how high up you sit in one of those dump

trucks? ' I nodded. 'Well, she was looking up to see me — craning up, you'd say —

and the sun was full in her face. I could see how old she was. I remember thinking,

'Holy shit, she's gonna break like glass if I can't stop.' But old people are tough, more

often than not. They can surprise you. I mean, look at how it turned out, both those

old biddies still alive, and your wife . . . '

He stopped then, bright red color dashing into his cheeks, making him look like a boy

who has been laughed at in the schoolyard by girls who have noticed his fly is

unzipped. It was comical, but if I'd smiled, it only would have confused him.

'Mr. Noonan, I'm sorry. My mouth just sort of ran away with me.'

'It's all right,' I told him. 'I'm over the worst of it, anyway.' That was a lie, but it put us

back on track.

'Anyway,' he said, 'we hit. There was a loud bang, and a crumping sound when the

driver's side of the car caved in. Breaking glass, too. I was thrown against the wheel

hard enough so I couldn't draw a breath without it hurting for a week or more, and I

had a big bruise right here.' He drew an arc on his chest just below the collarbones. 'I

banged my head on the windshield hard enough to crack the glass, but all I got up

there was a little purple knob . . . no bleeding, not even a headache. My wife says

I've just got a naturally thick skull. I saw the woman driving the Toyota, Mrs.

Easterling, thrown across the console between the front bucket seats. Then we were

finally stopped, all tangled together in the middle of the street, and I got out to see

how bad they were. I tell you, I expected to find them both dead.'

Neither of them was dead, neither of them was even unconscious, although Mrs.

Easterling had three broken ribs and a dislocated hip. Mrs. Deorsey, who had been a

seat away from the impact, suffered a concussion when she rapped her head on her

window. That was all; she was 'treated and released at Home Hospital,' as the Derry

News always puts it in such cases.

My wife, the former Johanna Arlen of Malden, Massachusetts, saw it all from where

she stood outside the drugstore, with her purse slung over her shoulder and her

prescription bag in one hand. Like Bill Fraker, she must have thought the occupants

of the Toyota were either dead or seriously hurt. The sound of the collision had been

a hollow, authoritative bang which rolled through the hot afternoon air like a bowling

ball down an alley. The sound of breaking glass edged it like jagged lace. The two

vehicles were tangled violently together in the middle of Jackson Street, the dirty

orange truck looming over the pale-blue import like a bullying parent over a cowering

child.

Johanna began to sprint across the parking lot toward the street. Others were doing

the same all around her. One of them, Miss Jill Dunbarry, had been window-shopping

at Radio Shack when the accident occurred. She said she thought she remembered

running past Johanna — at least she was pretty sure she remembered someone in

yellow slacks — but she couldn't be sure. By then, Mrs. Easterling was screaming

that she was hurt, they were both hurt, wouldn't somebody help her and her friend

Irene.

Halfway across the parking lot, near a little cluster of newspaper dispensers, my wife

fell down. Her purse-strap stayed over her shoulder, but her prescription bag slipped

from her hand, and the sinus inhaler slid halfway out. The other item stayed put.

No one noticed her lying there by the newspaper dispensers; everyone was focused

on the tangled vehicles, the screaming women, the spreading puddle of water and

antifreeze from the Public Works truck's ruptured radiator. ('That's gas!' the clerk from

Fast Foto shouted to anyone who would listen. 'That's gas, watch out she don't blow,

fellas!') I suppose one or two of the would-be rescuers might have jumped right over

her, perhaps thinking she had fainted. To assume such a thing on a day when the

temperature was pushing ninety-five degrees would not have been unreasonable.

Roughly two dozen people from the shopping center clustered around the accident;

another four dozen or so came running over from Strawford Park, where a baseball

game had been going on. I imagine that all the things you would expect to hear in

such situations were said, many of them more than once. Milling around. Someone

reaching through the misshapen hole which had been the driver's-side window to pat

Esther's trembling old hand. People immediately giving way for Joe Wyzer; at such

moments anyone in a white coat automatically becomes the belle of the ball. In the

distance, the warble of an ambulance siren rising like shaky air over an incinerator.

All during this, lying unnoticed in the parking lot, was my wife with her purse still over

her shoulder (inside, still wrapped in foil, her uneaten chocolate-marshmallow mouse)

and her white prescription bag near one outstretched hand. It was Joe Wyzer,

hurrying back to the pharmacy to get a compression bandage for Irene Deorsey's

head, who spotted her. He recognized her even though she was lying face-down. He

recognized her by her red hair, white blouse, and yellow slacks. He recognized her

because he had waited on her not fifteen minutes before.

'Mrs. Noonan?' he asked, forgetting all about the compression bandage for the dazed

but apparently not too badly hurt Irene Deorsey. 'Mrs. Noonan, are you all right?'

Knowing already (or so I suspect; perhaps I am wrong) that she was not.

He turned her over. It took both hands to do it, and even then he had to work hard,

kneeling and pushing and lifting there in the parking lot with the heat baking down

from above and then bouncing back up from the asphalt. Dead people put on weight,

it seems to me; both in their flesh and in our minds, they put on weight.

There were red marks on her face. When I identified her I could see them clearly

even on the video monitor. I started to ask the assistant medical examiner what they

were, but then I knew. Late August, hot pavement, elementary, my dear Watson. My

wife died getting a sunburn.

Wyzer got up, saw that the ambulance had arrived, and ran toward it. He pushed his

way through the crowd and grabbed one of the attendants as he got out from behind

the wheel. 'There's a woman over there,' Wyzer said, pointing toward the parking lot.

'Guy, we've got two women right here, and a man as well,' the attendant said. He

tried to pull away, but Wyzer held on.

'Never mind them right now,' he said. 'They're basically okay. The woman over there

isn't.'

The woman over there was dead, and I'm pretty sure Joe Wyzer knew it . . . but he

had his priorities straight. Give him that. And he was convincing enough to get both

paramedics moving away from the tangle of truck and Toyota, in spite of Esther

Easterling's cries of pain and the rumbles of protest from the Greek chorus.

When they got to my wife, one of the paramedics was quick to confirm what Joe

Wyzer had already suspected. 'Holy shit,' the other one said. 'What happened to

her?'

'Heart, most likely,' the first one said. 'She got excited and it just blew out on her.'

But it wasn't her heart. The autopsy revealed a brain aneurysm which she might have

been living with, all unknown, for as long as five years. As she sprinted across the

parking lot toward the accident, that weak vessel in her cerebral cortex had blown like

a tire, drowning her control-centers in blood and killing her. Death had probably not

been instantaneous, the assistant medical examiner told me, but it had still come

swiftly enough . . . and she wouldn't have suffered. Just one big black nova, all

sensation and thought gone even before she hit the pavement.

'Can I help you in any way, Mr. Noonan?' the assistant ME asked, turning me gently

away from the still face and closed eyes on the video monitor. 'Do you have

questions? I'll answer them if I can.'

'Just one,' I said.

I told him what she'd purchased in the drugstore just before she died. Then I asked

my question.

The days leading up to the funeral and the funeral itself are dreamlike in my memory

— the clearest memory I have is of eating Jo's chocolate mouse and crying . . .

crying mostly, I think, because I knew how soon the taste of it would be gone. I had

one other crying fit a few days after we buried her, and I will tell you about that one

shortly.

I was glad for the arrival of Jo's family, and particularly for the arrival of her oldest

brother, Frank. It was Frank Arlen — fifty, red-cheeked, portly, and with a head of

lush dark hair — who organized the arrangements . . . who wound up actually

dickering with the funeral director.

'I can't believe you did that,' I said later, as we sat in a booth at Jack's Pub, drinking

beers.

'He was trying to stick it to you, Mikey,' he said. 'I hate guys like that.' He reached into

his back pocket, brought out a handkerchief, and wiped absently at his cheeks with it.

He hadn't broken down — none of the Arlens broke down, at least not when I was

with them — but Frank had leaked steadily all day; he looked like a man suffering

from severe conjunctivitis.

There had been six Arlen sibs in all, Jo the youngest and the only girl. She had been

the pet of her big brothers. I suspect that if I'd had anything to do with her death, the

five of them would have torn me apart with their bare hands. As it was, they formed a

protective shield around me instead, and that was good. I suppose I might have

muddled through without them, but I don't know how.

I was thirty-six, remember. You don't expect to have to bury your wife when you're

thirty-six and she herself is two years younger. Death was the last thing on our

minds.

'If a guy gets caught taking your stereo out of your car, they call it theft and put him in

jail,' Frank said. The Arlens had come from Massachusetts, and I could still hear

Malden in Frank's voice — caught was coowat, car was cah, call was caul. 'If the

same guy is trying to sell a grieving husband a three-thousand-dollar casket for forty-

five hundred dollars, they call it business and ask him to speak at the Rotary Club

luncheon. Greedy asshole, I fed him his lunch, didn't I?'

'Yes. You did.'

'You okay, Mikey?'

'I'm okay.'

'Sincerely okay?'

'How the fuck should I know?' I asked him, loud enough to turn some heads in a

nearby booth. And then: 'She was pregnant.'

His face grew very still. 'What?'

I struggled to keep my voice down. 'Pregnant. Six or seven weeks, according to the .

. . you know, the autopsy. Did you know? Did she tell you?'

'No! Christ, no!' But there was a funny look on his face, as if she had told him

something. 'I knew you were trying, of course . . . she said you had a low sperm

count and it might take a little while, but the doctor thought you guys'd probably . . .

sooner or later you'd probably . . . ' He trailed off, looking down at his hands. 'They

can tell that, huh? They check for that?'

'They can tell. As for checking, I don't know if they do it automatically or not. I asked.'

'Why?'

'She didn't just buy sinus medicine before she died. She also bought one of those

home pregnancy-testing kits.'

'You had no idea? No clue?'

I shook my head. He reached across the table and squeezed my shoulder. 'She

wanted to be sure, that's all. You know that, don't you?'

A refill on my sinus medicine and a piece of fish, she'd said. Looking like always. A

woman off to run a couple of errands. We had been trying to have a kid for eight

years, but she had looked just like always.

'Sure,' I said, patting Frank's hand. 'Sure, big guy. I know.'

It was the Arlens — led by Frank who handled Johanna's send off. As the writer of

the family, I was assigned the obituary. My brother came up from Virginia with my

mom and my aunt and was allowed to tend the guest-book at the viewings. My

mother — almost completely ga-ga at the age of sixty-six, although the doctors

refused to call it Alzheimer's — lived in Memphis with her sister, two years younger

and only slightly less wonky. They were in charge of cutting the cake and the pies at

the funeral reception.

Everything else was arranged by the Arlens, from the viewing hours to the

components of the funeral ceremony. Frank and Victor, the second-youngest brother,

spoke brief tributes. Jo's dad offered a prayer for his daughter's soul. And at the end,

Pete Breedlove, the boy who cut our grass in the summer and raked our yard in the

fall, brought everyone to tears by singing 'Blessed Assurance,' which Frank said had

been Jo's favorite hymn as a girl. How Frank found Pete and persuaded him to sing

at the funeral is something I never found out.

We got through it — the afternoon and evening viewings on Tuesday, the funeral

service on Wednesday morning, then the little pray-over at Fairlawn Cemetery. What

I remember most was thinking how hot it was, how lost I felt without having Jo to talk

to, and that I wished I had bought a new pair of shoes. Jo would have pestered me to

death about the ones I was wearing, if she had been there.

Later on I talked to my brother, Sid, told him we had to do something about our

mother and Aunt Francine before the two of them disappeared completely into the

Twilight Zone. They were too young for a nursing home; what did Sid advise?

He advised something, but I'll be damned if I know what it was. I agreed to it, I

remember that, but not what it was. Later that day, Siddy, our mom, and our aunt

climbed back into Siddy's rental car for the drive to Boston, where they would spend

the night and then grab the Southern Crescent the following day. My brother is happy

enough to chaperone the old folks, but he doesn't fly, even if the tickets are on me.

He claims there are no breakdown lanes in the sky if the engine quits.

Most of the Arlens left the next day. Once more it was dog-hot, the sun glaring out of

a white-haze sky and lying on everything like melted brass. They stood in front of our

house — which had become solely my house' by then — with three taxis lined up at

the curlakd9[(the mt)-7.3s, ig galooetshugghing the s ltater of oitebagns

andsalyinghe ir gtoobynes in touselfoggy Mrasachoustets cscenss.

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