Timing and Space

Previously on Six Feet Under: The Chenowiths renewed their vows as heavily disdainful Brenda rolled her eyes and a heavily medicated Billy swooned from sentimentality; Rico's weekends now include cleaning out dead people's houses; David and Keith are having marital difficulties and need to make friends; Claire deflowered Russell; Ruth became infatuated with Arthur and his linens; Nate fantasized that Brenda stalked him, kissed him, then killed herself; Nate told Lisa he went for a drink with Brenda; Lisa correctly called Nate on his not wanting to actually be married to her (and can you blame him?); Nate tried talking dirty to Lisa, inspiring a nationwide vow of chastity from unsuspecting HBO viewers.

Are we all caught up now? Good.

The episode finally begins, and the first thing we see is Brenda with her head in her hands. After briefly running down the possibilities -- and there are so many, knowing Brenda and her family as we do -- and playing with the idea of Brenda as the DGDJ, I settle back to watch Brenda, who's just fidgeting and watching something else. The camera swoops so we see a left hand sporting both a wedding ring and a medical monitor, and two medical personnel doing non-hectic things out in the hall. A piano begins tinkling, and then the camera switches to Zhora, who's looking considerably the worse for wear, fidgeting a lot like Brenda as she looks down at the bed. She leans forward to take the hand and press it against her face as we see Bernie -- eyes closed, oxygen tube snaking under his nose -- breathing slowly and shallowly. The camera switches angles yet again until the screen is filled with: Bern up close, silhouetted so we can watch his chest rise and fall; Zhora, who looks beyond grief; and in the background, watching them as she sits huddled by the window, Brenda. Bern draws his last breath, and the camera switches to the foot of his bed, where Billy abruptly turns around. He sits there, staring off into space.

Brenda, meanwhile, is fiddling with a floral arrangement and reading a card. She puts it down to stare at Bern for a moment before looking away. Within seconds, Billy mimics her actions.

Bernard Asa Chenowith, 1939-2003, your services are no longer needed on this show. Thank you for giving the three remaining Chenowiths a new reason to go loopy on other people.

When the camera fades back up again, Nate is rocking Maya, pressing her head tightly against his chest so she doesn't get a good look at her genetic source material and develop pre-toddler depression. Lisa is nattering about how the pediatrician's number is by the phone, the teething biscuits are on the counter, and she's left seven bottles' worth of breast milk in assorted places. All that fenugreek must be paying off. Nate comments that Lisa should be proud, and she tells him, "I kind of am. I'm sore, but I'm proud. Are you totally sure you guys are going to be okay?" Nate assures her that he's not going to do something stupid -- hell, he really can't, since Lisa's effectively stripped all the fun, dangerous stuff from his life -- and tells her, "Have fun. Go to your cooking...zoo." Way to share your wife's interests, Nate. Lisa corrects him, but it bounces right off him. Nate tells Lisa to go have a good time with Dana because "you've earned it," and Lisa's off.

False start! She stops at the door and moans, "I feel guilty leaving her with you all day." She shouldn't. Nate clearly doesn't suffer from the same emotional burden. Nate urges her out the door, but Lisa just stands there for a moment, looking at the two other people in the room. Nate asks sullenly, "What?" and Lisa says, "You never really thought you'd have a wife and a kid, did you?" Nate ducks the question with, "I never thought I'd be a funeral director either." This is probably not the reassurance Lisa was seeking; you'd think that even Nate, who is not the Fisher family brain trust, would have picked up on her voracious need for affirmation by this point in their time together. Fortunately, Maya has a well-timed gurgle, and Lisa heads out the door by telling Nate she loves him. He's all, "And we love you."

Oh, Nate. If you keep lying like that, you'll stunt the baby's growth. If that's not an old wives' tale, let's make it one now. I'm thirty, I'm married -- that should qualify me for spreading these sorts of crackpot domestic theories, yes?

After Lisa leaves, Nate has a meeting of the minds with Maya, brainstorming their day: "We could fill some things up, dump 'em out. Maybe later we can poop. Whaddya say?" I say that postpartum depression and/or psychosis is a lot more understandable if this is what stay-at-home moms have to look forward to during the day. Maya's keeping her plans a secret.

Meanwhile, Ruth is attending a bargain-basement rave, if by "bargain basement" you mean "Arthur's room" and by "rave" you mean "fractal art set to really tedious MIDIs." She's exclaiming over Arthur's musical talents -- yes, we're witnessing Arthur's magnum opus -- and Arthur tells her he didn't exactly write it himself. Ruth coos, "You are so multifaceted!" Arthur's all self-deprecating with, "It's just a theme by Debussy, but I've developed it somewhat, put a drum beat underneath it just for fun. It's nothing much." Ruth is unconvinced. There's a few more rounds of unctuous flattery on Ruth's part and embarrassed ducking on Arthur's, and then she asks, "Where's the button to make it play again? I love that little tune -- it's so haunting." Arthur tells Ruth he needs to get going, and she blurts out, "So soon?" Oh, Ruth. Get another job. Get a hobby. Get a dye job like Anne Bancroft's in The Graduate so you at least pull off the seduction-of-a-younger-man thing with some panache.

Anyway, Arthur tells her he's going for a run, and Ruth practically sings, "I didn't know you ran, Arthur!" Arthur tells her, in a manner not unlike a ninth-grader struggling to deliver Willy Loman's lines in a class reading of Death of a Salesman, "Well. I haven't, actually. But I thought I ought to give it a try. I seemed to have gained some weight lately." Ruth protests that Arthur looks fine, then mows over his cue that she should leave by babbling, "People and their weight nowadays -- it's such a strange fascination! I see you all the time around the house and you just look fine -- just fine!" There's the barest awkward pause before Arthur says thanks. Ruth realizes she should leave, but as she turns to go, she pivots back around again and worms Arthur's running trail out of him: he'll be going to Pan Pacific park. After Ruth finally leaves (she goes out on, "Thank you for sharing your music with me, Arthur. It's very rhythmic"), Arthur's able to get a moment's privacy so he can contemplate the spill of his love handles over his tighty-whiteys as his composition plays in the background. I half expect Ruth to charge back through the door and carry on the Fisher women's tradition of deflowering men under that roof, but -- thank God -- no such thing happens.

Instead, we get Nate reading the paper in the Fisher kitchen and saying, "Fuck." Maybe Nate finally tore his eyes away from the funnies and checked out the news the rest of us were getting. Or maybe that's just his reaction to reading about the death of the man who would have been his father-in-law. Within moments, he's calling Lisa at her food zoo and telling her that Brenda's father died and "I was wondering if it'd be okay with you if I went to" -- Claire interrupts, slurping loudly on a straw (insert your own image of Aaron pining to come back as that straw in his life) -- "I was wondering if it'd be okay with you if I went to his funeral?" As if we didn't have enough proof of how screwed up Nate and Lisa's relationship is, he now has to ask permission before going to Bern's funeral? Is he aware that even half-functional adults don't require their partners to slog through that kind of hogwash? Nate tries to sway the argument with, "It's just, she was there with me when my father died." He does not add, "And I mean with me. In a closet." In a rare moment of non-psychosis, Lisa urges Nate to go to the funeral, and adds, "So you'll leave Maya with your mom?" Nate's just so giddy to be let off the leash, he's all, "I'll figure something out!" Lisa passes on some instructions with regards to Maya's digestive tract (verily, the Fisher family has gastrointestinal issues), and Nate, still riding high on his permission to go to a funeral, replies with, "I love you." Lisa loves him too. He asks if she's having fun, and she replies, "Not yet," before hanging up. You know, I remember when we first met Lisa in Seattle; she seemed kind of dopey with her longstanding crush on Nate, but still reasonably capable of enjoying herself. And now, she is just the black hole of fun, with a gravitational vortex capable of sucking (and sucking, and sucking) everything enjoyable out of any situation.

And now, Ruth reaches a new low as she stalks Arthur during the course of his run. Then again, what lonely forty- or fifty-something woman wouldn't be driven mad by someone shuffling along in a knees-locked gait, big black shoes and pajama-like sweats flapping in the breeze? Anyway, Ruth's gone all creepy: she crouches in the bushes as Arthur huffs and puffs past her. She does have a new hat, probably purchased for anonymity.

Nate's headed over to Casa de Rico, where Vanessa answers the door brightly, Augusto on her hip, and says, "It's so cool you're leaving the baby here for a while." Nate walks into the living room, and he's all, "What's that smell?" Vanessa explains that she tried to make rice pudding, but the milk was all weird; I'm going to assume that by "weird," she meant "bad." Nate's discomfort only increases as he finally walks into the living room. Julio's planted in front of the television, and the contents of the local Toys 'R' Us are scattered all over the floor. Nate looks around with the parental misgivings only someone whose kid is not yet mobile and making messes can have, and Vanessa hurriedly explains, "It's a mess. I was just starting to clean when you called. Two kids, you know? It's so hard to keep up." Nate lies, "I can imagine." Vanessa looks up with a wide, fake smile and says, "I don't think you can. I know it seems like having two kids would be twice as hard, but it's like three, four times as much to do." Or, as a friend of mine put it, more kids aren't linear; they're quadratic. Vanessa unwittingly gives him a shout-out with, "I don't know how that is, you know, the math, but somehow it all adds up." Nate's clearly horrified by the prospect of leaving his daughter with a woman who talks about how hard it is to keep up with two kids of her own. Vanessa keeps on talking: "You're lucky you just have one. And Lisa's such a good mom, I bet she does everything right." I bet that anvil whistling to the ground behind Vanessa portends something awful happening to or around Julio or Augusto later this season. Nate feebly answers, "She's, uh, good. Yeah." Vanessa, who's still wearing a Joker-like grin on her face, says, "Because I get so tired sometimes, I could almost cry." Then, perhaps sensing that this is something she shouldn't be telling Nate, Vanessa changes the topic to children's television, sighing for Barney, "Things were so much simpler then." As she goes to put some of the toys away, Nate looks around the living room, and it's evident he's not going to be dropping off Maya.