The Accidental Detective

HAPTER T HREE
    Gwen was spared funerals as a child and accepted this practice, as she ac
cepted so many of her parents’ practices, as the inarguably right thing to do. Certainly, it has not occurred to her to bring Annabelle to Go-Go’s visitation, and she is shocked to see how many young children are here. More disturbing, they are gathered around the open casket, inspecting Go-Go with a respectful but palpable excitement.
A dead person! This is what a dead person looks like!
In the face of their bravery, how can Gwen not come forward and look as well?
    A dead person this may well be, but it is not the boy she remembers and not only because he is thirty years older than the Go-Go who lives in her memory. This person is too still, his features too composed. Go-Go was never still.
    “Gwen.” Doris Halloran holds her hands tightly, peers into her face, as if nearsighted. “Pretty little Gwen. You look wonderful.”
    She does? She doesn’t feel as if she looks wonderful. True, she is thin. She has no appetite as of late. But she is pretty sure that the lack of food has made her face gaunt, her hair dull and dry. Then again, maybe it’s all relative. She looks better than Go-Go, for example. And better than Mrs. Halloran, whose face is white and puffy in a way that cannot be explained by mere grieving. Her eyes are like little raisins deep in an uncooked loaf, her mouth ringed by wrinkles.
    “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Halloran. My father would be here, but he broke his hip. I’m staying with him while he recuperates.”
    “What happened?”
    “Slipped on those steps. They’ve always been a hazard.”
    Mrs. Halloran does not let go of Gwen’s hands. Pressing, squeezing. It is a little painful, while Mrs. Halloran’s breath—it isn’t bad, exactly, but old, reminiscent of mothballs and dimly lit rooms.
    “So many accidents,” she murmurs.
    “Yes. It’s a shame about Go—” Gwen stops herself, remembering Sean’s reaction to his brother’s nickname. “Gordon.”
    “Oh.” She seems jolted. “Yes, I suppose that was an accident, too.”
Supposes?
Gwen assumed that Doris Halloran, always the super Catholic, wouldn’t even contemplate the possibility of suicide. Doris lets go of Gwen’s hand abruptly, so abruptly that her body registers the end of the pain as a deepening of the sensation. It’s as if phantom hands still gripped hers, squeezing, intent on hurting her.
    “I know it’s a cliché,” Gwen says, “but it throws the world out of whack when a parent loses a child, at any age.”
    “Well, I lost a few, you know.” She lowers her voice. “Miscarriages. Three. Actually four, although that one was so early it barely counted.”
    Gwen probably did know this in the vague, indifferent way that children intuit things about the grown-ups in their lives, but this revelation suddenly connects a series of mysterious events—Mrs. Halloran “sleeping” a lot, Mr. Halloran yelling at the boys for making noise, a grandmother who came for a visit that wasn’t at all like the grandparent visits Gwen knew. (No meals out, no trips to the toy store.)
    “Do you have children. Gwen?”
    “Yes, a little girl. Annabelle. She’s five.”
    “I’m sorry,” she says.
    “Sorry?” Did she think it was a shame to have girls? Or does she know that Annabelle is not Gwen’s biological child? The senior Hallorans were never open-minded people, they would probably call her daughter a Chink or something worse. Gwen’s color rose, she is on the verge of saying that Mrs. Halloran hasn’t done so well herself, that only one of her boys is worth anything. But where are Sean and, come to think of it, Tim?
    Doris is suddenly contrite. “I didn’t mean—I’m taking something. The doctor gave me pills. And I feel like things get mixed up, my sentences come out in the wrong order or I say what people say to me. No, it’s good you have a little girl. I’m happy for you. But daughters are hard. Secretive. I was sad I didn’t have one, but then happy. Then again, daughters stay with you. Sons leave. Does that make sense?”
    “Yes.” No.
    Mrs. Halloran grabs her hands again. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
    “At the funeral? Of course.”
    “And at the house, after. Not everyone is invited, but we want you there. You’re like family, even if it’s been years. It’s funny, I s’pose you come back to see your father all the time, yet I never see you. Even when Gordon moved back home, you