Free Backstab by Elaine Viets Page A

live without him. But sometimes I wanted to be by myself and sleep alone in my bed. Not often, but I could do it if I wasn’t married and had a place of my own.
    Lyle said I was afraid. That wasn’t the reason. I couldn’t say the marriage vows. Love and honor didn’t bother me. I’d stand by Lyle in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer. It was those other five words that got me: “Till death do us part.” When you had my parents, they have special meaning.
    “Stay with me,” he said, kissing my forehead and my eyelids.
    “Not tonight,” I said, kissing him back. His beard was nicely scratchy and the blond hair on the back of his neck was soft and fine. Part of me wanted to stay. But even as I kissed him I said, “I need to be alone.”
    I’m kind of funny that way. When I’m really upset, I like to be alone. I don’t like to be touched. I knew that Lyle would try to hold me and love me and he never understands why I freeze up and don’t want to be touched when things go bad. He won’t say so, but I think it hurts him. I don’t mean for it to. So I stay at my place. It’s not really my place. I live there, but it’s my grandparents’ apartment. They died twelve years ago, within a few months of each other. I haven’t changed anything.
    One of my friends, who is now a decorator in New York, told me their place was a perfect example of Midwest kitsch and ought to be in a museum. I guess that’s one way to look at it. I like it because I liked their good, ordinary life. So I kept the beige Naugahyde recliner, the picture of Christ with the eyes that follow you hanging over the Magnavox console TV, the davenport with the flowered slipcover, and my grandfather’s bowling trophies. The bathroom has plaster fish blowing three gold bubbles. The kitchen still has the same gas refrigerator with the glass icebox dishes, a gray Formica-and-chrome kitchen set, and my grandmother’s Aunt Jemima doll with the Sunbeam toaster under her skirt.
    To me, it’s home. The only change I made wasto set up my computer and laser printer on the dining room table. But I left on the table pads, to protect the finish. I also killed Grandma’s African violets. It was an accident, of course. I forgot to water them when I was with Lyle for two weeks. I was secretly glad when the whole brass cartful died. There’s something squishy and hairy about African violets. Grandma’s other plants survived, but then philodendrons are the closest thing in nature to plastic.
    Lyle put his arms around me, but he could feel me stiffen. Death makes some people feel sexy. They have this mad urge to make love. Not me. I wanted to be left alone. I put my plate in the dishwasher, found my purse, and kissed Lyle one last time. “Please stay,” he said, but this time his kiss was cooler as if he already knew my answer. I didn’t even have to think about it. “Not tonight.” I said. “I need to be alone.” Lyle didn’t press me, and I appreciated his tact.
    After I got home from Lyle’s, I stretched out in the beige recliner, pulled my grandmother’s brown-and-yellow knitted afghan over me for comfort, as I do sometimes when I have to make a hard phone call, and then I got up the courage to call Ralph. I didn’t want him to hear about Burt on the evening news. Ralph was a big fan of Burt’s. In fact, he was the one who first introduced me to Burt’s Bar. If he was working in the area, he always ate there. Ralph was shocked by the news. I knew how upset he was because he started wheezing and had to use his inhalerwhile we talked on the phone. We made a date to meet at the wake.
    The next day, I checked the
City Gazette
for the funeral notices. Burt would be laid out Monday and Tuesday and buried Wednesday at noon from St. Philomena Catholic Church, a lovely old nineteenth-century city church that looked like a small cathedral.
    St. Louis Catholic funerals go on forever. Lyle, who grew up in the North, thinks they are barbaric and