May We Be Forgiven

own the place and telling me how they can’t get “an angle on things.” And before they go, wanting me to pat them on the head and say, “You’re a good kid,” for nothing, for no reason. There is about them a kind of casual entitlement, the sort of thing that when I was growing up would have gotten you a lecture for bad attitude and a week of detention.
    In all the years, I’ve never failed to show up, have only twice had to reschedule a class, once for a root canal and the other a gallbladder attack.
    I call the university, I call my department, I call the secretary of the Dean of the school to which I am affiliated—voice mail everywhere. I cannot find a real person to talk to. What will happen if I don’t show up, how long will they sit there? I phone the security office. “This is Professor Silver. I have an emergency.”
    “Do you need a paramedic?”
    “I am already in the hospital, but I am supposed to teach a class in two minutes; could someone go and put a note on the door telling the students that I have canceled?”
    “One of our men, an officer?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s not what we do.”
    I try another tactic. “But of course it’s exactly what you do. If no one shows up, if no one of authority takes charge, there could be rioting. This is a course on politics, and you know what that means—radical ideas are loosened, the students feel empowered, mark my words.”
    “What should the note say?”
    “Professor Silver has had a family emergency and will not be in class. He is sorry and will make it up to you.”
    “All right, then, and what building and room?”
    “Can you look it up for me? I never pay attention to the names and numbers.”
    “Hold,” he says. “Silver, there is no class today. You’re in the School of Arts and Sciences, your people are on vacation. Party on the beach …”
    “Oh,” I say. “I forgot. I simply forgot. Thank you.”
    I had a life. I was doing something.

    I meet the lawyer later at the house. He arrives in one car, his men in another. They carry heavy cases and remind me of exterminators.
    “Top of the stairs on the right,” I say, sending them up.
    “What the fuck happened here?”
    “What do you mean, what happened?”
    “The place is a mess.”
    “You told me not to touch anything,” I yell up the stairs.
    “It fucking stinks.”
    Tessie follows me up. Halfway, the smell hits me.
    “Fucking shit,” the lawyer says.
    The dog looks guilty.
    Tessie, home alone, did a kind of clean and purge: she licked Jane’s blood off the floor, made bloody pink tracks across the floor, and then had diarrhea on the bed.
    Tessie looks at me as if to say, “It’s been crazy around here. Something had to happen.”
    “S’okay, girl,” I say, going downstairs and getting a box of Hefty bags. The dog has done me a favor. Whatever evidence might have remained on the sheets has been obliterated. I stuff the sheets into two Heftys, open the windows, and fire off a can of Lysol.
    The trash has been taken out. The lawyer and his men are leaving. “The situation is less than satisfactory,” one of the men says to another as they make their exit.
    “No shit, Sherlock.”
    I stand in the kitchen, obsessing about the sheets: Is in the garbage good enough? Would it arouse suspicion if I took them to the dump? What would happen if I tried to burn them? Would it send shit smoke signals for miles?
    I dial Speedy Mattress Service. “How quickly can I get a new mattress?”
    “Where’s it going?”
    “To 64 Sycamore.”
    “And what are you looking for? Do you have something specific in mind: Serta, Simmons, plush, pillow-top?”
    “I’m open to suggestions, it’s got to be a king, soft but not too soft, firm but not too firm, something just right.”
    “You’re looking at twenty-eight hundred—that’s mattress and box spring.”
    “Seems high?”
    “I can do twenty-six fifty delivered, and if you buy our mattress cover you get a ten-year guarantee. It’s usually one twenty-five, but I can give it to you for a hundy.”
    “And will you take away the old one?”
    “Yes.”
    “Even if it has stains?”
    “They all have stains.”
    “When?”
    “Hold on.”
    I dig Jane’s credit card out of my pocket.
    “Between six and ten tonight.”

    I get a bucket of hot water, scrub brush, roll of paper towels, Mr. Clean, Comet, a bottle of vinegar, and Jane’s latex gloves from Thanksgiving. I weep as I pull the gloves on.
    I am on my hands and