Later
By Corinne JackerMolly's husband, Malachai, has recently died. Their daughters, Kate and Laurie, have gathered at the family home to help their mother through this difficult time. They become more and more worried by their mother's erratic and forgetful behavior. At this moment, Molly is sitting outside on the front porch in the dark.
MOLLY
There's no privacy in that house. A person can be more alone out here, in the full light of the moon, than in the darkest room in there. What's a person to do? Malachai gone and I can't stop my thoughts. Or my - needing. I won't ever be alone. He's here. Still. When we'd buried him, I washed the walls, and the floors, scrubbed and waxed. And all the linens, but he's still all the way through everything.
Malachai, Malachai... foolish name for a man in this day and age. I can still smell him. It won't go away. I think, maybe, it's gotten to be a part of me. I raise my hand, and I sniff at the flesh, and it's him! You think, if the things are gone, then the memories have to be. I threw out the sheet. The one that was on his bed when he died. Just as it was, soiled, stinking, I put it in a plastic bag, and then I put the plastic bag into another plastic bag, and then I put the plastic bag into another plastic bag, and then the whole mess into a thick green trash bag, and then into the garbage.
Damn him! I have to come out here to sleep. Memories. Always the same, over and over. And I'm not safe, even here, by the sea. The cry in the night. And I didn't want to wake up. You drank too much again, I thought. All right, clean up your own mess this time. But then, he was sick. Really sick... why can't I bury this part, deep in the sand, out of me. Him being sick, and touching me again, so gently, as if he really was ashamed, and saying it wasn't the drink, it was something else, something funny, and wouldn't I hold his hand. I took his hand, but not easily. And I said, you'll never learn, will you, Mal? You should take the aspirin before you go to bed. And have a glass of milk before you start the drinking... I should have known. He never asked me to take his hand like that, like a boy.
When it was good, it was a different thing entirely... The time he got out of the shower and strutted around with no towel, singing the Liebestod at the top of his lungs because the girls were at camp and I was the only one to hear it. And I came in with his hot toddy, and the whole bathroom was steamy, and the wet grew on my skin like mold. And he made me sing with him - I can't carry a tune or even make it through Happy Birthday to You, but I sang that duet. The steam fogged up my glasses. And when I took them off, there was his face, bigger than life, his mouth open, close enough to bite me. Back off, I said, my eyes are crossing. And he did, he nipped at my nose like a little puppy, and turned his back... He had the most remarkable back. So slender, with a dark brown birthmark spotched over the left side, like a pool of bitter chocolate. Well, he's in the ground. I won't see it again.
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