What I Loved

eyes, because he thought that he might die in the night. After Mark stole your money, he'd sit up late and drink whiskey instead of coming to bed. I'd find him dozing on the sofa at three o'clock in the morning with the television still on. I'd pull off his shoes and his pants and cover him up out there or I'd get him into our bed." She glanced at the floor for a moment. "He was in bad shape, gloomy all the time. He talked about his father a lot. He talked about Dan's illness and how he had tried to help him, but nothing had worked. He started thinking about the child we never had together. Sometimes he said we should adopt a baby, but then he said it was too risky. He'd tried to be a good father, but he must have done it all wrong. When it was really bad, he would quote every mean sentence anybody had ever written about him. He had never seemed to care much about that stuff before, but it added up, Leo. Reviewers roughed him up pretty bad. Their spite seemed to come from the fact that there were other people who were so fanatically devoted to his work, but he forgot all the good things that had happened to him." Violet stared across the room and stroked her arm again. "Except me. He never forgot me. I would whisper in his ear, 'Come to bed now,' and he would put his hands on my face and kiss me. He was usually still a little drunk, and he'd say, 'My darling. I love you so much,' and other mushy things. The last few months were better. He seemed happy with the kids and his videotapes. I really thought the filming would keep him alive." Violet turned her head to the wall. "Every day it gets a little harder for me to go home. I just want to stay here and be with him."
    Violet took the pack of Camels out of Bill's shirt pocket. She lit a cigarette, and as she shook out the match, she said. "I'm going to have one more today." She blew a long stream of smoke out of her mouth. After that, we didn't speak to each other for at least a minute. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the room seemed brighter. I studied the tubes of oil paints on the floor.
    Violet broke the silence. "There's something I want you to hear. It's on the answering machine. I listened to it the same day I found the clothes." Violet walked to the desk and pressed the button on the machine several times. A girl's voice said, "M&M knows they killed me." That was all.
    For a second, I heard Bernie's voice begin another message, then Violet turned off the machine. "Bill heard it the day he died. The light wasn't blinking. He must have listened to the messages when he came in."
    "But it's nonsense."
    Violet nodded. "I know, but I think it's the same girl who called me that night about Giles. He couldn't have known that, because he didn't talk to her." She looked up at me and put her hand on mine. "They call Mark M&M, did you know that?"
    "Yes."
    Violet began to squeeze the top of my hand. She gripped it hard and I could feel her shaking.
    "Oh, Violet," I said.
    My voice seemed to break her. Her lips quivered, her knees buckled, and she fell into me. I put my arms around her as she grabbed me around my waist and pressed her cheek against my neck. I removed the baseball cap and kissed her head once, just once. While I held her shuddering body and listened to her sobs, I smelled Bill—cigarettes, turpentine, and sawdust.
    In Mark, mourning looked like deflation. His body reminded me of a squashed, airless tire that needed pumping up. He seemed unable to raise his chin or lift his hand without tremendous effort. When he wasn't working at his job as a clerk in a local bookstore, he was lying on the sofa wired to his Walkman or wandering sluggishly from one room to another, eating crackers from the box or gnawing at a Twinkie. He nibbled, munched, and gobbled all day and throughout the evening, leaving a trail of cellophane, plastic, and cardboard behind him. Dinner held little interest for him. He would pick at the meal and then leave most of the food on his plate. Violet never said a word to Mark about his eating habits. I guess she had decided that if Mark wanted to chew his way through the loss of his father, she wasn't going to stop him.
    Despite the fact that Violet didn't eat much dinner either, sharing the evening meal became a habit that lasted well into the following year. Preparing food was an important ritual that defined the day for all three of us. I bought the food and did most of the cooking. Violet chopped the vegetables, and Mark managed to