The Last Romantics(69)

Noni had been propped up in bed with pillows, wearing a yellow bathrobe, hair frizzed and crazy around her head. For one hallucinatory moment, she’d looked like a sad, oversize Easter chick.

“You can’t blame all of Florida for Joe,” I told her.

“Well, what then?” Noni had answered. “Tell me, who can I blame?”

“Sometimes there’s no one.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I loved him, too,” I said.

“Ha! Everyone loved him,” Noni had replied. “Everyone. Look where that got him.”

“I’ll do it,” Renee said now. In one swipe she ripped down the tape with a raw tearing sound, and then she balled it up and threw it onto the floor. “Key?” she said, turning to Caroline.

I watched as first Renee, then Caroline disappeared into the apartment. Now that I was here, in the city of Miami, inside Joe’s building that strained like a silver rocket above the wide and busy Collins Avenue, I didn’t want to see where Joe had lived. I only wanted to see Joe. I closed my eyes and imagined him: exiting the elevator, fishing for his keys, walking through this door. Again and again and again. Two years of bringing home groceries, girlfriends, DVDs, furniture, magazines, mail. Pizza deliveries, Thai food from the place we’d seen on the corner. Tall Joe, golden Joe, in suit and tie, his oxfords on the marble, gripping the brown leather case he used for work. Joe in running shoes and nylon shorts, the kind he wore in high school for baseball practice. Joe returning late from a work event or a party. Maybe he’d had too much to drink. Maybe he was unsteady on his feet. Joe stumbling, Joe falling.

“Fiona, what are you doing?” Caroline stood in the doorway.

I stayed where I was. I did not move forward.

“Come on,” she said with force. I recognized this voice: it was the one Caroline used on her children. Irritated and firm, capable of shifting swiftly to anger.

Normally I would have bristled at Caroline’s command, but now I was grateful for it. Step inside Joe’s world. Do it. Do it now. You will never have the chance again.

*

The smell was pervasive. A closed-in, moldy, sickly kind of smell. Not strictly of organic decay but more general: mess and inattention, grime and dust and forgotten food.

Hazy sun streamed through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors that lined the far wall of the apartment. For a moment I saw nothing but then began to make out individual items: the cardboard boxes against the wall, full garbage bags tied with yellow twists, dirty dishes, cast-off clothing. Sofa cushions on the floor. One green beer bottle balanced precariously atop a Frisbee on the corner of a coffee table. I saw neither of my sisters.

“Renee?” I called. “Where are you?”

“Here,” came a small voice.

Renee was sitting on the floor a few feet in front of me, her back against a long, low, black couch that had melted into the darkness of my vision. Now I saw her. I saw everything.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. I sank down beside Renee. “Joe.”

“I didn’t realize,” said Renee.

Tentatively Caroline was making her way across the cluttered floor. She removed a pile of books and unopened mail from the couch and sat down. “What happened?” she said. I could tell from her voice that she was crying; we had all been crying so much this past week that it seemed unremarkable. Neither Renee nor I moved to comfort her.

“I can’t believe he lived this way,” said Renee. “Ever since the Pause I can’t stand mess.”

Caroline nodded.

“I loved the Pause,” I said.

“I hated the Pause,” Renee answered.

Caroline tilted her head. “Well, there was Nathan.”

“I wonder if Noni ever thinks about it,” I said.

“Nope. No way,” answered Renee. “Once it was over for Noni, it was over.” She picked up a beer bottle and began peeling back its label. “Do you remember Dad’s funeral? Remember Joe with the fireplace poker?”

“Of course I remember,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Caroline. “And do you remember how we hugged him? We surrounded him. He almost fell over.” She smiled. “Remember that?”

*

The next day we returned to Joe’s apartment with cleaning supplies and a roll of large black garbage bags. We fanned out, each of us intent on a separate corner. Renee went first to the balcony’s glass doors and pushed them fully open, letting the sea air and the distant thrum of traffic and crashing waves work their way into the apartment. Sixteen stories below, the precarious body of a surfer bobbled atop a gray wave. Renee closed her eyes and counted to ten. Then she started on the pizza boxes.

Caroline declared that she’d focus on the kitchen. This was the cleanest room in the apartment though also the worst, because on these tiles, this floor, Joe had fallen. Tentatively she entered, expecting a taped silhouette on the floor or a roped-off area like she’d seen on TV. But there was nothing to suggest tragedy. Sunlight streamed through the large windows, bright and insistent, glancing off the black floors and black countertops and silver appliances. It looks like a showroom in here, Caroline thought, not like a kitchen where anyone had ever prepared a meal or worried over bills.

Her sandals made a soft sucking noise as she moved about the room, wiping, sorting, tossing. The fridge contained one desiccated lime, brown and shrunken, and a large bottle of gin. On the counter lay a tall pile of catalogs. Caroline picked one off the top: Hammacher Schlemmer. A heated massage chair, remote-control attack helicopters, noise-canceling earphones. What would Joe have wanted in here? And what should she buy Nathan for his birthday? Or for Louis—the helicopters? At twelve, was he too old for toys like this?