poisonous minority, however, are rumormongers who believe anything
about me that they hear-and who embellish all gossip with the
self-righteousness of spectators at a Salem witch trial.
If these two young men were of the latter type, they must have been
disappointed to see that I looked remarkably normal. No grave-pale
face. No blood-red eyes. No fangs. I wasn’t even having a snack of
spiders and worms. How boring of me.
The wheels on the gurney creaked as the orderlies departed with the
body. Even after the door swung shut, I could hear the receding
squeak-squeak-squeak.
Alone in the room, by candlelight, I took Dad’s overnight bag from the
narrow closet. It held only the clothes that he had been wearing when
he’d checked into the hospital for the last time.
The top nightstand drawer contained his watch, his wallet, and four
paperback books. I put them in the suitcase.
I pocketed the butane lighter but left the candles behind. I never
wanted to smell bayberry again. The scent now had intolerable
associations for me.
Because I gathered up Dad’s few belongings with such efficiency, I felt
that I was admirably in control of myself.
In fact, the loss of him had left me numb. Snuffing the candles by
pinching the flames between thumb and forefinger, I didn’t feel the
heat or smell the charred wicks.
When I stepped into the corridor with the suitcase, a nurse switched
off the overhead fluorescents once more. I walked directly to the
stairs that I had climbed earlier.
Elevators were of no use to me because their ceiling lights couldn’t be
turned off independently of their lift mechanisms. During the brief
ride down from the third floor, my sunscreen lotion would be sufficient
protection; however, I wasn’t prepared to risk getting stuck between
floors for an extended period.
Without remembering to put on my sunglasses, I quickly descended the
dimly lighted concrete stairs-and to my surprise, I didn’t stop at the
ground floor. Driven by a compulsion that I didn’t immediately
understand, moving faster than before, the suitcase thumping against my
leg, I continued to the basement, where they had taken my father.
The numbness in my heart became a chill. Spiraling outward from that
icy throb, a series of shudders worked through me.
Abruptly I was overcome by the conviction that I’d relinquished my
father’s body without fulfilling some solemn duty, although I was not
able to think what it was that I ought to have done.
My heart was pounding so hard that I could hear it-like the drumbeat of
an approaching funeral cortege but in double time.
My throat swelled half shut, and I could swallow my suddenly sour
saliva only with effort.
At the bottom of the stairwell was a steel fire door under a red
emergency-exit sign. In some confusion, I halted and hesitated with
one hand on the push bar.
Then I remembered the obli ation that I had almost failed to meet.
Ever the romantic, Dad had wanted to be cremated with his favorite
photograph of my mother, and he had charged me with making sure that it
was sent with him to the mortuary.
The photo was in his wallet. The wallet was in the suitcase that I
carried.
Impulsively I pushed open the door and stepped into a basement
hallway.
The concrete walls were painted glossy white. From ilvery parabolic
diffusers overhead, torrents of fluorescent light splashed the
corridor.
I should have reeled backward across the threshold or, at least,
searched for the light switch. Instead, I hurried recklessly forward,
letting the heavy door sigh shut behind me, keeping my head down,
counting on the sunscreen and my cap visor to protect my face.
my left hand into a jacket pocket. My right hand was clenched around
the handle of the suitcase, exposed.
The amount of light bombarding me during a race along a hundred-foot
corridor would not be sufficient, in itself, to trigger a raging skin
cancer or tumors of the eyes. I was acutely aware, however, that the
damage sustained by the DNA in my skin cells was cumulative because my
body could not repair it. A measured minute of exposure each day for