day, and by night I would have to wear sunglasses to spare myself the
sting of oncoming headlights. Cops tend to frown on night driving with
shades, no matter how cool You look.
The full moon had risen.
I like the moon. It illuminates without scorching. It burnishes what
is beautiful and grams concealment to what is not.
At the broad crown of the hill, the blacktop looped back on itself to
form a spacious turnaround with a small grassy circle at its center.
In the circle was a cast-concrete reproduction of Michelangelo’s
Madona.
The body of the dead Christ, cradled on his mother’s lap, was luminous
with reflected moonlight. The Virgin also glowed faintly.
In sunshine, this crude replica must surely look unspeakably tacky.
Faced with terrible loss, however, most mourners find comfort in
assurances of universal design and meaning, even when as clumsily
expressed as in this reproduction. One thing I love about people is
their ability to be lifted so high by the smallest drafts of hope.
I stopped under the portico of the funeral home, hesitating because I
couldn’t assess the danger into which I was about to leap.
The massive two-story Georgian house-red brick with white wood
trim-would have been the loveliest house in town, were the town not
Moonlight Bay. A spaceship from another galaxy, perched here, would
have looked no more alien to our coastline than did Kirk’s handsome
pile. This house needed elms, not pepper trees, drear heavens rather
than the clear skies of California, and periodic lashings with rains
far colder than those that would drench it here.
The second floor, where Sandy lived, was dark.
The viewing rooms were on the ground floor. Through beveled, leaded
panes that flanked the front door, I saw a weak light at the back of
the house.
I rang the bell.
A man entered the far end of the hallway and approached the door.
Although he was only a silhouette, I recognized Sandy Kirk by his easy
walk. He moved with a grace that enhanced his good looks.
He reached the foyer and switched on both the interior lights and the
porch lights. When he opened the door, he seemed surprised to see me
squinting at him from under the bill of my cap.
“Christopher?”
“Evening, Mr. Kirk.”
“I’m so very sorry about your father. He was a wonderful man.”
“Yes. Yes, he was.”
“We’ve already collected him from the hospital. We’re treating him
just like family, Christopher, with the utmost respect-You can be sure
of that. I took his course in twentieth-century poetry at Ashdon. Did
You know that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“From him I learned to love Eliot and Pound. Auden and Plath. Beckett
and Ashbery. Robert Bly. Yeats. All of them.
Couldn’t tolerate poetry when I started the course-couldn’t live
without it by the end.”
“Wallace Stevens. Donald justice. Louise Ghick. They were his
personal favorites.”
Sandy smiled and nodded. Then: “Oh, excuse me, I forgot.”
Out of consideration for my condition, he extinguished both the foyer
and porch lights.
Standing on the dark threshold, he said, “This must be terrible for
You, but at least he isn’t suffering anymore.”
Sandy’s eyes were green, but in the pale landscape lighting, they
looked as smooth-black as certain beetles’ shells.
Studying his eyes, I said, “Could I see him?”
“What-your father?”
“I didn’t turn the sheet back from his face before they took him out of
his room. Didn’t have the heart for it, didn’t think I needed to. Now
. . . I’d really like just one last look.”
Sandy Kirk’s eyes were like a placid night sea. Below the unremarkable
surface were great teeming depths.
His voice remained that of a compassionate courtier to the bereaved.
“Oh, Christopher I’m sorry, but the process has begun.”
“You’ve already put him in the furnace?”
Having grown up in a business conducted with a richness of euphemisms,
Sandy winced at my bluntness. “The deceased is in the cremator,
yes.”
“Wasn’t that terribly quick?”
“In our work, there’s no wisdom in delay. If only I’d known You were
coming . . .
I wondered if his beetle-shell eyes would be able to meet mine so
boldly if there had been enough light for me to see their true green