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fortune, along with all these other cheerful art objects." He gestured to indicate the artifacts jammed into
the study. "And someday, all this will be mine."
He started to laugh, but Walter's sudden look of horror cut him off.
The next week, another box arrived, heavily insured. Walter called Johanna and Andrew in and insisted
that Andrew open it.
"Ah! Another priceless artifact from the collection of Gomez and Morticia Addams?" Andrew inquired.
"Very funny," Walter said. "I think you'll be surprised."
Andrew tore off the top of the box. A polished ivory figure, only four inches tall, reclined on a thick bed
of cotton. The little man in flowing robes clutched a tiny cross to his chest, his face beatific. He was every
bit as well executed as the Lycaon figure had been, but the sight of this lovely little man gave Andrew a
feeling of well-being, as if he were sending out a special radiance. As Andrew lifted him out of the box,
the creamy ivory warmed in his hands.
"It's Saint Andrew," Walter said.
"He's exquisite," Johanna said. "Whoever made him must have gone blind doing it."
"I wanted him to watch over Andrew while he's at the seminary." Walter took the little saint and held him
up to the light. "He's so beautiful. I wanted you both to remember me when you look at this statue, not
by& the other one."
A wind of melancholy passed over Walter. "I wanted to give you something special," he said. "I have so
little to give you that is beautiful and good!"
Andrew sensed a depth of pain in Walter that he could neither understand nor comfort. "That's not true,"
Andrew said gently, "you've given me everything."
Only Johanna could vaguely comprehend Walter's sadness. She touched him lightly, knowing that
whatever was tormenting him was something that, for the first time, they couldn't share.
Three months later, on a clear, sunny afternoon while Johanna was out, Andrew came in from a class to
find his father's body lying on the floor of his study. He had shot himself through the heart with an antique
pistol. On the desk lay five of six specially cast silver bullets.
Through the days that followed, difficult days of quiet voices and softly closed doors that contrasted with
the brilliance of his mother's anguish and his own bitter confusion, Andrew could see only one thing
clearly: the calm expression of peace on his father's face as he lay on the study floor.
Years later, when there were things about his father that he couldn't quite remember, details of his
appearance and manner that tended to gather a slight haze from distance, only that particular look of
serenity shone like carved crystal touched by sunlight.
It was a look he hadn't seen since the night of Walter's party.
Chapter Five
Johanna knew she was spending too much time alone, locking herself away in the bedroom, but she was
helpless. It wasn't a good sign, but it was all that saved her.
If she came out, people started yammering at her, offering platitudes and advice, things that sounded like
gibberish to her, all containing the phrases "& for your own good& " and "Walter would have wanted& "
and "& start living again." She didn't take offense because it was all well meaning and most of the people
talking to her were dealing with their own grief. On the other hand, she couldn't listen to it anymore.
What no one could understand was that Johanna had lost half of herself. She and Walter together had
made something solid, the two parts bonding into a perfect whole. Now the structure of their lives had
disintegrated into nothing more substantial than crumpled paper.
Her daydreams, her memories of Walter, seemed much more real to her than the world outside the
bedroom door. She was retreating into time, molding it to fit her pleasure. Johanna could make it travel
backward, forward, stretch it out to fill her inconsolable nights, alter what was to what should have been.
She could even make the future. All it took, she was delighted to discover, was a good memory and a
rapidly expanding imagination. If she was willing to be not quite alive, Walter would be not quite dead.
She propped her feet on the needlepoint footstool. She had done the needlework herself, in Kenya,
when Walter was still with Leakey. Simply the sight of it triggered a whole series of memories. Everything
did, if she worked at it hard enough and fought off any distractions. She was beginning to discover the
perverse delights of letting her mind wander.
And people expected her to come downstairs and deal with death! Impossible. It was another kind of
reality entirely, one that couldn't coexist with the one she was so painfully, carefully building. Walter's
family, at first sympathetic, was getting nervous, but Johanna couldn't help that.
Now, all of sudden, there was this letter to deal with.
When she found it tucked in her bureau drawer under a pile of sweaters, she marveled at Walter's
ingenuity. If it had been found with Walter it would have been just a suicide note; police and the press
would have had the right to paw over it and speculate on Walter's most intimate thoughts. This way, the
contents would remain just as Walter intended: a private communication between the two of them. He
had known that Johanna would find it sooner or later, and the time factor hardly mattered now.
Johanna had been in no hurry to open it. At the time, she had been in a period of relative calm. She
wanted to wait until the intermittent wave of loss and loneliness came to another crest, when she needed
so badly to talk to Walter one more time. Then she would savor the letter slowly and recall a bit of the
comfort she had lost.
Now she pried open the envelope as gently as she could, careful not to tear it, and lifted out the many
densely written sheets. Taped to one of them was a small safe-deposit-box key.
At first, the letter was an apology for his suicide. Of course he would start with that. She started to cry
almost immediately. When he explained why he did it, she stopped crying and stared at the sheets in
horror, each one dropping into her lap like a pane of ice.
Only the end of the letter sounded logical to her. Please, never let Andrew know any of this, he had
written. It's odd, but I've always believed that as long as someone thinks of you with love, you're
never really dead.
I hate to end it this way, mainly because the people you leave behind always feel that you did it
because of something they did, something they didn't do, something they could have done
differently. You made me so happy, Jo. I wanted you to know that it wasn't you.
Oh, Jo& if only I had known, would I have married you? Would I have had a child, knowing that
he would inherit a curse that would shatter his life as completely as it shattered mine? You've been
my comfort, Jo, my joy, my safe refuge and my consolation. I always loved you too much to hurt
you, and now, without any control over it, I've had to cause you the ultimate pain, and only
because my suffering finally outweighed my conscience. It's my own fault, Jo, never yours. If I had
been honest with you, if I had been stronger, perhaps I could have told you. But I couldn't bear the
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