She began to prod me in her letters: ". . . You have to see some men. . . . You should get a job. . . . You should take a trip. . . ." She never suggested going back to New York though. She knew better.

Sam's school year ended at the very end of May, and I sat with her at breakfast one morning, thinking that it had been five months since Chris had died. In a way, it seemed as though Sam and I had lived that way forever, and in another way, it seemed as though he had walked through the room that morning. I was keeping it that way, keeping Chris alive, to keep myself alive, to hang on.

It was lonely, but not the kind of lonely that I had suffered through in New York when I'd gone back. That had been a fierce, biting, rolling kind of thing; it was full of worry and alternatives, and constant frustration, though I may not have seen it that way at the time. It was a time full of anger. But the spring after Chris's death had no anger to it, nothing in common with those days, except for the fact that I was alone. There was an irrevocability to it, a quiet acceptance. My ship lay at anchor and I had nowhere to go. There was nowhere I wanted to go, except where I was. I was painting more, reading a lot, and becoming increasingly introspective. It was like becoming a nun. It was also a little bit like a dark tunnel; I was pa.s.sing through it, and when I got to the end of it . . . if I got to the end of it . . . then I'd see.

Sam was due to visit her father in June, and I was thinking of going up to the mountains around Lake Tahoe, just to get away a little, but I hesitated. I was happy at home, with Chris's things all around me. Happy sleeping in his bed, happy in his sweaters and workshirts. I had finally married Chris. But I had married a dead man, and was drifting along with him. I was almost as dead as he.

"Sam, the doorbell. Be a big girl and answer it for me. I'm upstairs, but ask who it is first," and then Tom Bardi was racing up the stairs, two at a time, and he burst into the room.

"Peg is coming!"

"When?"

"Tomorrow." He was grinning from ear to ear.

"She is? Are you sure? How do you know?" It seemed funny that I wouldn't have heard anything about it.

"She just called me," and he looked irritated with me for doubting it. As though I could make it not true by my questions.

I hadn't heard anything, other than the vague hint in her last letter. That's funny.

"She's coming in tomorrow morning. Early. I'm going to pick her up." I was tempted to ask if I could go too. After all I had known Peg all my life, and here was a stranger going out to get her. But I didn't say anything. Maybe Peg would like it better this way. She had called him, not me.

The phone rang then, and it was Peg.

"I'm coming out tomorrow."

"I know."

"Oh."

"Tom's standing right here."

"Say hi for me. Can I stay with you again?" And all my suspicions went down the drain. Or almost.

"Sure. I'd love it. How long do you think you'll be here?"

"Week, maybe two, maybe three. I'll see. I've got three, but really should go see Mother on the way back."

"Great. Tom said he'd pick you up. Why don't you come over afterward? Or . . . just see how it goes. See you tomorrow. Peg, I can't wait!" We said good-bye and hung up.

"Did she want to talk to me?"

"She had to run. She'll be here tomorrow, Tom." He looked like a little boy, that same look Chris had had, the same look Samantha got.

Then Tom clattered back down the stairs and vanished, and the next time I saw him he was at my front door, standing behind Peg, and he looked as though he had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Peg threw herself into my arms, and we laughed and squealed and hugged, and Sam got into the act. It was a genuine homecoming.

"Welcome back. We've missed you."

"Well, I see the place hasn't changed. Boy, it's nice to be back." Tom took her things up to Sam's room and reappeared. We had lunch together, and sat around for a while, and then they went out for a walk and said they'd go to a movie. I went to bed early and didn't hear Peg come in.

Next morning she came down to breakfast, and she had that serious look on her face that meant she was going "to talk to me." Mother Peg. Lecture time. I braced myself with a cup of coffee and a grin. I really had missed Peg.

"Gillian." She sounded very firm.

"Yes, Peg? Or should I call you 'Margaret?' You sound like a Margaret this morning," but she didn't smile back.

"Where's Sam?"

"Out with some friends. Why?"

"Because I want to talk to you, and I don't want Sam to hear this. Gill, when I said that the place looked the same yesterday, I didn't know how true that was. Jesus, Gill, his stuff is still all over the place, his papers, his clothes, his shirts, his toothbrush. What the f.u.c.k are you trying to do to yourself? You're twenty-nine years old. He's dead. You're not. I bet you haven't even touched his studio. Have you? Well, have you?" Christ, she had hit low. It was true, but how could she understand? How could she begin to understand? Peg had a warm heart and a full life of her own making, but she'd never been married, never had children, never lost the man she loved, or his child. She couldn't understand.

"Peg, you don't understand."

"I do understand. I understand much better than you think, much better than you do even. I see it better than you do. And Tom says it too. He says you wear his clothes, talk about him as though he were still here. You don't do anything, you don't go out. Jesus, Gill, it's G.o.ddam creepy."

"It is not creepy. It's how I want to live. And you make it sound as though I go around in drag in his clothes, G.o.ddammit. Get off my f.u.c.king back, will you?" I was getting mad because I didn't like the truth of what she was saying. She had no right.

"I have no right to talk to you like this . . . except I do. Because I love you, Gill. I can't stand to see you doing this to yourself. You've done some crazy things and I've always stood by you. You came back to New York, to have his baby, and I didn't say anything because I thought maybe you were right. I wouldn't have done it, but I could at least understand it. But this . . . this is different, this is sick. Please see that, oh please, Gill, see what you're doing to yourself . . . and to Sam. What the h.e.l.l do you think this is doing to her?" And again I knew it was true, and I wound up to fight back, without looking up at Peg.

When at last I did look up, I saw that she was crying. For me, and for Samantha, and maybe even for Chris.

When I saw her crying, tears welled in my own eyes, and I laid my head down on the table, and cried, all those months of peace and adjustment, blown to h.e.l.l in ten minutes. Because I had never adjusted. I had known peace because I had lived in a dream, and had never come face to face with the truth. Maybe I could have faced losing Chris if I had had the baby, but when I lost the baby there was nothing left. Nothing real. So I created my own dream world, and hung on to Chris. In those ten minutes the whole sh.e.l.l I had built around myself cracked wide open, and I sat there naked and raw, and bleeding, exposed to all the things I had hidden from in all those months, exposed to the truth. Chris was dead.

Peg let me sit there and cry it out, moving quietly around the kitchen. Just once she put her hand on my shoulder and said, "I'm sorry, Gill," and I managed to choke out, "Don't be." Because she was right, and she was right to say it. I had been wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong, and I had been doing something awful to Samantha in the bargain.

"Peg, will you help me?"

"How, baby?"

"Help me go through his stuff."

She nodded. "When?"

"Now."

"Now?"

"Now. If I don't do it now, maybe I'll never do it. Maybe then I'd just live forever in this spider web I've spun for myself."

"Okay. Let's go," and for hours we sat there and sorted and made piles and divided up. It was just as though we had done it the day after the funeral; it wouldn't have made any difference. The pain was all there. Intact.

I made a small pile for Mrs. Matthews of things I thought she'd want to have. And another small pile for Jane. And I kept a few things out for myself, things I wasn't ready to give up, things that were Chris. But this time I put them in a box. I'd have them; I didn't have to hold them and smell them every night. I'd just know they were there.

The rest of the stuff we put in big piles in the downstairs closet, ready to go to Goodwill.

At the end of the day I thought Sam might be coming home, so we stopped. There was nothing left to do on the first two floors anyway. We'd cleaned it out.

"Tomorrow, the studio."

"You want Tom to help?"

"Yes."

The next day the three of us went through the place, dividing and sorting. I gave a lot of things to Tom; they were the tools of his trade and he could use them. We worked like demons through the day, and at 6:07 P.M. the studio was no more. The earthly goods of Christopher Caldwell Matthews had been divided up and disposed of. End of an era.

41.

After Peg's second week with me I was beginning to wonder. She made no mention of leaving, and I didn't want to bring it up and make her think I was pushing her out. She was spending a lot of time with Tom, and I wasn't seeing too much of her, but she looked happy, and San Francisco seemed to agree with her.

Sam and I were enjoying our last days together before she went off to be with her father for a month. And I was thinking about getting a job. As usual, Peg's visit had had an effect.

I was mulling over the want ads one morning when Peg came in and stood in the doorway with that "I've got to talk to you" look again.

"Come on, stop looking so official. Come and sit down. And don't give me h.e.l.l about anything. I've been a good girl. I'm even looking at the want ads in the paper."

"Christ . . . do I look like that?" and she laughed.

"Yes you do. What's up?"

"Well . . . Tom and I are getting married," and she sat there, looking as though she were holding her breath.

"Peg! . . . Wow!" I jumped up and hugged her. "When?"

"Tomorrow."

"Do you have a license?" The same words I had asked Chris not so very long ago.

"Yes."

"Well, for chrissake! Couldn't you have said something?"

"I didn't know. Honest, Gill, I wasn't sure. I had this feeling after I went back to New York, but I never heard from Tom and I didn't know if he felt it too . . . and . . . oh s.h.i.t."

"Jesus, Peg, I can't believe it. Fairy tales do exist . . . for some people," and we both looked away, both of us knowing that her dream had started with my nightmare.

Tom rang the doorbell then and I kissed him and said, "Congratulations!" and he blushed furiously.

"She told you?"

"Told me what?" and he blushed even more, while Peg and I burst into whoops.

"She's putting you on, love. I told her." He looked relieved.

Thomas Hugo Bardi and Margaret Allison Richards were married the next day, at City Hall, along with what looked like all the same funny old people who had been there the day Chris and I had gone down for our license, which I still have.

Samantha and I stood by to watch the whole thing happen, along with a friend of Tom's, and we all went out to lunch in Sausalito after that.

After lunch, Tom picked up Peg's things at my house and they went off to his place for their honeymoon. After they left, I couldn't help thinking what a far cry it was from the little girl dreams we had all had in school. Peg had always sworn she'd elope with a professional cowboy or something of the sort. But none of our dreams had looked very much like this. Better this way, I thought. She has a better chance. They're going to be okay. I wondered if Peg's mother knew yet. The formidable Mrs. Richards who was as unlike Peg as mustard is to caviar. She was going to have a few things to say.

By noon the next day they were back at my place for lunch, chatting with Sam, sitting at my kitchen table as though they had been married for the last seven years.

"What are you going to do about your stuff in New York?"

"Oh one of the girls at the office said she'd pack it up and send it. I don't really have a whole lot. And she can keep some of it, she's taking over my apartment," which reminded me that the lease on Chris's house was up next month, and I had to sign the renewal paper. "They were really nice at the office though. They said they figured that something like this would come up sooner or later. And they offered me a job in the Oakland buying office as a wedding present."

"You're going to commute?"

"For that price, you better believe it!"

"What'd your mother say? I forgot to ask you the other day."

"Nothing I'd care to repeat, but she'll get over it."

We sat around talking about nothing much for a while, and I thought about how nice it was to see them together. But it made me miss Chris again. It was all so closely linked. It was painful to see them, though I would never have admitted it to Peg. But I think she knew.

"Gillian?"

"Yes?"

"Why don't you go on a trip or something? And you know, I was thinking, it might do you good to move into a smaller place."

"Hey, now wait a minute, Peg. Cool it. I cleaned out my house, and followed all your advice, but don't let it go to your head. It stops there. You just cool it. Why don't you start picking on Tom, henpeck him a little, show him how a wife behaves."

"Now don't go getting all huffy. I mean it. At least you could go on a trip. You don't have a job yet, and Sam will be gone. Why don't you go to Hawaii, or something?"

"Because I don't like Hawaii. Richard and I went there before Sam was born an`d it rained the whole G.o.ddam time."

"Well, go someplace else then."

"I'll think about it," but I really didn't mean it. Cleaning out the house was one thing, leaving it was another.

Tom and Peg got up to leave, and they said they'd be back sometime tomorrow or the next day.

"Listen, you guys, you're on your honeymoon. You don't have to baby-sit with me."

"No. We just like the coffee," that from Tom, who patted my shoulder again as they left. I think they felt they had to take care of me. It was a nice thing to do. Maybe they felt they owed me a debt for bringing them together. Whatever it was, it was nice to have them around, they were nice to watch, but they kept giving me this lonely feeling as I'd watch them leave or look at each other in a funny way or hold hands when they didn't think I was looking. Chris had been gone a long time.