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He handed her a card.
“This is a forensic cleaning service. You’ll want to get in touch with them.”
He handed her another card.
“Contact me if you think of anything else. Anything that might be important, anything you forgot to tell us. We’re nearly done here. Is there anything else we can do?”
“Could you—could you tell my father-in-law? What happened? We’re not on speaking terms. I can give you his information.”
“Of course. Of course we can do that.”
When they left she stared at the blood. It was crackled, had dried like the Utah deserts of her childhood. She called the cleaning company. An abrupt woman told her they weren’t taking on new clients. No one was. Too much risk, too much infection.
Over the next three days she cleaned up the blood herself. Before landing on the floor, her husband’s head had hit the old table that functioned as their kitchen island. The blood bleached out of the table easily. The floor was more difficult. Blood had dripped between the old boards and was quickly discovered by tiny, nibbling ants. After wiping and scraping, she was left with an irregular stain soaked into the porous pine. She brought out the orbital sander, obliterating ants and creating wood dust filled with aerosolized blood.
She called her father and told him the version of the story she’d invented for the children.
“What a thing!” he said. “I always liked him. You want me to come out there?”
Of course she did, but she knew her father well enough to pause, let him finish the thought.
“Though I suppose I can’t, can I? Risk getting on a plane or driving that far through a surge and all. Plus, it’s against the rules, isn’t it? Though if you want to come home…”
Again, she stayed silent.
“Well, that’d be just as bad, wouldn’t it? You three having to get out here during all this. And then quarantine and everything. And you know I don’t have the space.”
It was exactly what she’d expected, had learned to expect, from her father. Even so his apathy, the sting of his indifference, forced her eyes closed.
Don’t cry.
“We’ll stay here, Dad. I just wanted to let you know.”
An exhale of relief through the phone. “All right then, okay! Well, you keep in touch.”
“I wish Grandma was still alive.” Her voice welled with a sob. “It would be good to talk to her, you know?”
Her father was silent. She heard him shifting the phone.
“Yeah. Well. Huh. Anyways, I love you, and I’m real sorry.” He hung up.
After sanding, the pine went back to its natural pale yellow. Only the gaps between the floorboards showed bloodstain. She carefully brushed on polyurethane, coat after coat. It dried cleanly.
If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never know it was there.
With the blood gone, her husband turned to ash, box stored in the corner of his closet, there was nothing left to do.
She didn’t change her sheets. Didn’t touch her husband’s pillow. Sometimes she lay open eyed, staring at the indentation where he’d laid his head.
What shall you do now? What shall you ever do?
She allowed the children into the kitchen again. She logged them on to remote school. Shuttled them to and from their half days. Theirvoices were hard to make out, sounded submerged. As they watched television, she’d nuzzle their skin, kiss their bellies. Holding her children in the blare of the television, in its blue light, was the only time it was easy for her to fall asleep.
“He didn’t suffer,” she told the ones who called, trying to make it true. “It was quick. No, we can’t have a funeral now. Maybe a memorial later? I’ll let you know. No, there’s nothing you can do. Thank you, thank you for thinking of us.”
Within a month the sympathy tap was exhausted and the calls stopped. Until the article about her husband came out, of course, but that was different. The people who contacted her then had an eagerness, a thrill in their voices at their proximity to death. Their nearness to even the tiniest hint of fame.
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