The spot was on a curve. The policeman had called it “a blind curve,” had said it in a way as if to abdicate it of any responsibility. The policeman had seemed like a schoolboy, fresh-faced and awkward. So awkward, in fact, that Olivia had comforted him, placed her arms around his trembling shoulders, brought him a glass of water, told him she was sorry. Sorry that he had the terrible job of showing up at the little purple beach house that she and David had bought and telling her that her husband had been hit by a car on Route 1A and was dead.
Olivia stood in the spot where it had happened and made herself think about all the details she had tried to forget over the past nine months. How she had made a big pot of coffee so they could take some in a thermos for the ride back to New York. How she had sat at the small green patio table with its wavy opaque glass top and looked out the window and wondered if she was pregnant. She’d let herself think of names for their baby, writing different combinations on a scrap of paper, the way in fifth grade she had written her name in various forms with Paul McCartney’s: Olivia Bertolucci McCartney, Olivia McCartney, Mrs. Paul McCartney. She had sat and written names at the table, sipping Tanzanian peaberry coffee, the sunlight streaming through the window and bouncing off the glass tabletop almost playfully.
She had imagined many things as the morning stretched on and David did not return from his run. That he went to the good bakery for fresh croissants. That he had stopped to help someone who needed help. But she had not imagined even once that he was dead. They were too happy; life was going too right for them for something that bad to happen. He was, she’d thought fleetingly, hurt perhaps. She’d thought of twisted ankles or a wrenched back. She’d wondered if she should drive down the road to see if he needed help. But something kept her at home, at that table. So that when the too-young policeman appeared at their door, Olivia was smiling and ready to give him what he needed.
Now, standing here sweating in David’s blue-and-gold Berkeley T-shirt, remembering these things hurt, but not in the doubling-over, all-consuming way they had at first. Everyone around her—even Winnie, even Rex—used euphemisms, cloaked language. They said in hushed tones that David had passed away, that he was gone. Didn’t they know, Olivia thought as she began to work her way along the route, to move past the spot, didn’t they know that verbs were harmless? To say the word died did not hurt her. Nouns were the part of speech that hurt. When she tried to speak his name out loud, she strangled on the syllables. When she dreamed of him saying her name, she woke up crying. When she had to say the word husband, she always choked.
Even now, jogging away from where Amanda’s late-model Honda Civic had hit him, Olivia could not say his name. She had taken to calling him “Pal.” It sounded sassy. It sounded like something a tough broad might say. They had loved old Barbara Stanwyck movies, and Olivia could imagine Barbara calling a guy “Pal.” Even a dead guy.
“Pal,” Olivia said out loud, into the early-morning June air, “this sucks.”
She put on her Walkman, tuned to the local NPR station and “Morning Edition,” and continued her run. In the distance, the ocean sparkled in the sunlight. Olivia moved slowly toward it. Slowly was how she did everything these days. Hadn’t it taken her all this time to come back here and close up the house? She had met only half the orders for her hats since Labor Day, even though CNN and Winnie kept reminding her that hats were back. Even though Winnie had fanagled a blurb about Olivia and her hats in an article in the big summer issue of You! called “Hats Off to You!”
Olivia rounded each curve carefully, as if a blue Honda Civic driven by a college student might appear at any moment, “Morning Edition” fading in and out. Then, in a burst of strong reception, a reporter’s voice shot through Olivia’s headphones. The reporter was talking to a woman named Sheryl Lamont, whose husband had been tragically killed in a car accident the day after Labor Day last year, the very day Olivia’s own husband had died. This woman, Sheryl Lamont, was now pregnant with her dead husband’s child; she’d had the good sense to have his sperm removed and frozen for later use.
Olivia stopped jogging and leaned against the stone wall. Pink beach roses lined the other side of the wall. Bees hovered nearby.
“I knew,” Sheryl Lamont was saying in a slow drawl, “that I was not ready right then, when he died like that, to handle a pregnancy, a little baby, all by myself. But as time passed and I grew stronger, I knew it was time to realize our dream of having a little Duane Junior.”