in public—she had to pause a moment until her vision cleared. Then she spotted the black-painted “266” over a building entrance and knew this was the place, the address to which she had mailed so many long and loving letters. The place where her daughter had died.
Opal had gotten the news over the telephone, from a woman police detective. She barely believed it then, and these few days hadn’t brought much more acceptance. She could have believed that Terry had been mugged or even murdered, but not that she had killed herself. Still, even over the phone, the woman had been quite convincing. There had been no break-in, she said, there were no signs of a struggle, and there were the carefully taped rejection notices, signposts to suicide. Last, there had been the “choice of modes,” as the woman put it. Apparently, women under forty chose hanging more frequently than any other suicide method. Opal wondered, for a moment, what the preferred method for women over forty was. But she shook that thought from her head. It was cynical and mean-spirited, and Opal tried to be neither. She simply wanted to be a good and loving person, a good and loving mother, but it seemed that was out of the question now.
Opal squared her shoulders and walked down the three steps leading to the just-below-street-level entrance to the building. In New York real estate it was called a “semibasement”—Terry had once written that to Opal—but it seemed basement enough to drop the semi altogether. Opal thought. She went through her handbag and took out the case she had carefully secreted in the side pocket. The police had sent Opal her daughter’s keys and requested that she collect not only Terry’s body, which had been held at the Center Street morgue, but also her personal effects.
Opal had trouble with the key to the building’s front door. The lock seemed loose, as if a million keys had jiggled it, but she finally got the key to fit properly and the door gave under the weight of her shoulder. Dank air met her—there was no lobby or foyer, just the dark hallway that led past one door, on to the metal-tipped stairs upward, and then finally to the door of Terry’s apartment in the back. Opal had just managed to get the second key into the second lock and was pulling the door open when a man’s voice stopped her.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing? And who the hell are you?”
Opal straightened herself to her full height of almost five feet. In the dimness she could just make out his stooped shape. “I am Opal O’Neal, and I am here to get my daughter’s things.”
The man paused for a moment, as if he was thinking about whether or not to be embarrassed, then deciding not to be. “Well, all right,” he said grudgingly. As if he had anything to say about it at all. Opal merely nodded her head curtly, stepped into the last home her daughter had ever known, and closed the door behind her.
It was a sad room. Swiftly, Opal took in the battered table, the daybed, the single squat, overstuffed chair. Somehow, when she had visited Terry, it hadn’t seemed so grim. Why hadn’t she noticed? Had the bright presence of her daughter obscured the lurking darkness? Although it was a sunny, cold day outside, the room was murky as a cave. The dark blue was a bad color. Opal fumbled for the lightswitch, and the harsh overhead chandelier flicked on. She couldn’t keep her eyes from flicking upward to the place where Terry had chosen to tie the noose. Quickly she looked away. By now the undertaker had picked up Terry’s body from the morgue. Tomorrow Terry would be cremated, and the following day Opal would bring her ashes back home to Bloomington. Their home. A town where streets had names, not numbers. The town she never should have let Terry leave.
Opal opened her large purse and took out the canvas zipper bag she had folded within it. She went to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Inside were half a dozen pairs of white underpants, a single pair of unopened panty hose, a few nightgowns, and two brassieres. There was also a diaphragm in its plastic case. Opal blushed when she thought of the police searching through her daughter’s private things. But Opal wasn’t a prude. She knew that Terry had had a lover—at least one—and she had not disapproved. She may be a fifty-four-year-old librarian from Indiana, but Opal thought of herself as a modern woman. In fact, she was only against marriage, not lovers. In her experience, men seemed to turn bad only after another man performed the ring ritual over them. She shook her head, scooped up the drawer contents, and opened the next drawer down.
Opal knew that her daughter had spent the last decade working on her novel. She had encouraged and supported Terry while she worked. And Terry had even shared bits of it with her. Not much, and always diffidently. But it had shown her that Terry knew men, and the writing had been good, very good. Opal was not an indulgent reader. Years at the library, and at home in the evenings reading Flaubert, Turgenev, Austen, Forster, and the other greats had given Opal an informed and exquisite taste. She knew that Terry shared that taste and, moreover, had the creative wellspring to do more with it than Opal ever had. Terry had been her own harshest critic and most merciless editor. But on those few occasions when she had shared sections of the book with Opal, Opal had seen how brilliant it was.
Yet the police told her that there were no manuscripts, no papers of any kind found. Only the burnt offerings in the fireplace. Opal simply couldn’t believe that. A mother might kill herself, but she would never kill her child. Or Terry wouldn’t have. Opal knew the manuscript was here. They’d simply overlooked it.
But at first all she saw in the drawer were neatly folded clothes—a few sweaters, two old shirts. Then, underneath them, she glimpsed a cigar box. Not big enough for a manuscript, but perhaps … Opal’s heart began to beat faster. Terry had been scribbling since she was a toddler. She wrote about everything. Terry’s whole life had been dedicated to writing, and Opal’s to preparing her and helping her to write. Surely Terry wouldn’t go without leaving some explanation, some clue, to help Opal through this. The box looked just like the one Terry had kept letters in back in high school. Opal knew that the box was waiting for her.
She carefully lifted out the brightly colored box and wedged her thumbnail under the lid, flicking it open. Inside there was nothing but a collection of pencil stubs, markers, and the kind of click-top ballpoint pens that had the name of various businesses on their sides. Opal bit her thin lower lip and threw the box in the trash. She put the sweaters and blouses into in her canvas bag. Terry was—had been—a big girl; Opal couldn’t wear these things, but somebody could. Neither of them had approved of waste.
One drawer left. Something had to be there. Slowly, Opal opened it. But all it held was a few pair of neatly folded corduroy slacks and a Columbia sweatshirt. Opal remembered Terry wearing it on her last visit to Bloomington, and her eyes filmed over again. Fighting back the tears, she emptied the contents of the drawer into her bag.
Next she went into the tiny bathroom. Terry had never been one to fix herself up much—she took after Opal in that respect—but even Opal was surprised by how little there was. A toothbrush and a plastic cup, toothpaste, a stack of neatly folded washcloths, a bar of soap, and a hairbrush were all the objects laid on the sink and shelf. Opal cast all but the hairbrush into the trash and looked carefully at the brush before she put it in her canvas bag: Terry’s hairs were wrapped around the bristles. Was that all of herself that Terry was leaving behind? Opal opened the medicine cabinet, but it was stocked as sparely and impersonally as a hotel’s. A can of Band-Aids, a deodorant bar, cheap hand cream, tampons, aspirin, and a plastic tube of petroleum jelly sat primly on the little glass shelves. Opal shook her head and didn’t have the heart to clean any further. She’d leave that for the next tenant.
She walked out of the bathroom, past the fireplace and over to the single closet. Even with the light on it was difficult to see into it, but Opal didn’t need to see much to know how little there was inside. A worn London Fog raincoat (which Opal had given Terry for Christmas six or seven years before), a brown cloth coat that Opal did not remember, and a few skirts hung there beside a broom and a small upright vacuum cleaner. On the shelf above, two blankets and a pillow were arranged neatly. There was Terry’s computer, which the police told her had
