by Steven Gould
The scene changed to an exterior view of the aircraft, zooming in on the door as somebody kicked out the yellow inflatable emergency slide. Then somebody was pushed from the door, almost ejected, to fall onto the chute sideways. They slid down and ended up sprawled on the concrete.
It was Mom.
She picked herself up with difficulty and limped as she walked away from the plane. The case was apparently heavy and she tried to shift it to her other hand, but the handcuff wouldn’t let her, so she held it with both hands on the handle, hanging to one side and bumping her knee as she walked.
The scene shifted back to Linda Matthews, in her hospital bed.
“All three of the terrorists were looking out the window. The leader had this box in his hand. I thought it was a radio. It had an antenna, anyway. He pushed a button on it.”
The scene shifted back to the tarmac and Mom, now several hundred feet away from the aircraft. An airport jeep in the foreground had just started moving forward to pick her up when the suitcase blew up in a blast of fire and smoke.
Mom was blown several feet away and ended up in a heap, like a pile of bloody rags, one arm flung out to the side, one arm missing. Just before the camera cut back to the news anchor, there was a voice in the background, probably the cameraman’s, saying, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
The news anchor continued, a grim expression on her face. “Shortly after the bloody death of Mary Niles, Cypriot authorities delivered a fueled 727 to the terrorists. Herding the fourteen American passengers and crewmen ahead of them, they boarded the plane and flew to Algeria. Once in Algeria, negotiations with a joint team of Algerian, PLO, and Saudi representatives continued for fifteen hours. At the end of this time, the hostages were released and the terrorists were taken from the airport under army escort.”
The camera changed to a different angle on the anchor. She said, “In the European Community today, talks between...”
I turned the TV off with the remote control.
“I can’t stand to sit in the middle or at the window.”
I let the remote control drop through limp fingers. I guess she couldn’t teleport—I wish she could. I wish I’d been there. I should have been there!
Well, you got your aisle seat, Mom.
In the corner of the apartment I came back to myself, seated on the floor, wedged between the end of the couch and a bookshelf. There was a book on the floor, with half the pages torn out and crumpled, individually, into tightly packed balls. My hand was in the process of tearing out yet another page when I realized what I was doing.
Mom...
I looked at the book, Pudd’nhead Wilson, from the Twain collection Mom gave me. I felt terrible. Dad tore up books. I didn’t want to be like Dad. I threw the book across the living room and pulled myself up on the couch armrest. I felt like there should be tears and there weren’t any.
It didn’t happen. It was fever. It was delirium.
I turned on the evening news and the camera footage was there again, on ABC. I turned the TV off quickly, before the explosion.
Millie... Millie has to help me.
It was too much for one person to stand. Too much to stand alone. I walked out of the apartment and around the corner, intending to make her listen to me, to tell her about Mom, but I paused at the corner, uncertain.
Two different images—the explosion and Millie’s face as she told me to go away and never bother her again—those images flipped back and forth in my mind, jostling for my attention, struggling against each other, sometimes merging to stab twice as deep.
The exterior of the apartment was red brick. I leaned against it, the brick cold and rough against my face. The wind was cold, out of the north, the sky clear with tiny, cold stars, like pieces of flint, like shards of broken glass.
There were footsteps on the walk and I turned, hunched over in the shadow of the hedge that lined the walk. A man passed by without seeing me, heading down the walk toward Millie’s building. He passed into the direct glare of the streetlight and I saw his face.
It was Mark, Millie’s old boyfriend, the man I’d jumped a hundred miles and left on the observation deck of Will Rogers World Airport.
Has he come to bother Millie again?
I could be a hero again, wait until he started bothering Millie, then jump him to Brooklyn, to Minnesota, far away, where he wouldn’t bother her. Would she listen to me then?
Mark knocked firmly on her door. I jumped to the side of her walkway, behind an evergreen bush that was chest high. My hands flexed and unflexed, anxious to have something to grab, something to hit at. I thought of the walkway at Battery Park, of the railing between land and cold, cold water.
How easy just to jump him to the edge....
The door opened and I gathered myself to jump, to grab, to hurt. I listened carefully, waiting for the angry words to come, but though I heard Millie’s voice, there was no anger, no outrage in it.
“Ah, Mark. Thanks for coming,” she said.
The door swung wide, Mark stepped inside, and the door shut. The door shut. The door shut.
Oh, God! I felt like a fool, like an idiot. I flinched away, jumped back to my apartment several hundred feet away. Oh, God! I saw my antibiotics on the counter and, by reflex, glanced at my watch. It was time to take another pill and put the eardrops in. I leaned against the counter for a moment, my eyes shut tight, thinking, Where are the tears? Where are the goddamned tears?
The cap on the antibiotics was childproof, requiring more of my attention to open it than I felt like giving. I finally managed the lid and tried to swallow a pill dry. It stuck in my throat, like a piece of bone, like a stiff and stale piece of bread. I pulled open the nearest cabinet and revealed the dishes, the wonderful handmade dishes. The glasses were at the other end of the cabinet and I couldn’t be bothered.
I took a large mug, filled it with water from the tap, and washed the pill farther down my throat, but not far enough. It seemed stuck still, at the bottom of my esophagus, uncomfortable and unpalatable. I filled the mug again, angry at the pill, angry at Millie, angry at Mark, angry at myself.
The second cup of water pushed the pill on down and I set the mug on the edge of the sink, carelessly. It toppled over and fell, handle first. The handle snapped with a noise like a dry stick broken between one’s hands.
God damn it all to hell!
I picked up the two fragments and started to piece them together, but it seemed so pointless. I threw the cup back into the sink with great force and it shattered, the noise both startling and pleasing me, a piece of the ceramic flying past my ear to hit the refrigerator.
I picked another mug out of the cabinet and threw it even harder.
The tears came then, great racking sobs that didn’t stop until long after I’d smashed every dish in the set.
Chapter 11
Leo Silverstein told me over the phone that it would be a closed coffin, and it was.
I arrived an hour early, jumping to the airport and taking the airport car service. It was Walt Steiger’s station wagon but the driver was younger. “Where’s Walt,” I’d asked. “He’s got a funeral” was the answer.
Inside the Calloway-Jones Funeral Parlor a grave-faced man with white hair and a dark suit glided up to me quietly and asked my relation to the deceased.
“I’m her son.”
“Ah, you’d be Mr. David Rice? Mr. Silverstein told us to expect you. I am Mr. Jones. Through here, please.”
He led the way through a pair of double doors to a churchlike room with stained-glass windows. Her coffin was at the front of the room, on the right. A man stood facing it, his head bowed, his back to us. When he heard us enter he took out a tissue and blew his nose before turning around. I’d never seen him before.
He looked blankly at us for a moment, then turned his attention to me. He took a step forward and said tentatively, “Davy...?”
I nodded. I didn’t like looking at him particularly. The pain on his face made me want t
o run and hide. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t remember your name.”
“We’ve never met. My name is Lionel Bispeck.”
“Oh! You’re Mom’s, er, boyfriend.” I felt like a fool calling a forty-five-year-old man a “boyfriend.”
He turned suddenly and blew his nose. “Sorry. Oh, Christ, I’m out of tissues.”
“Here,” I said, groping inside my jacket. I pulled out a new, extra-large linen handkerchief. “I brought four.” I needed them for the lingering symptoms of my bout of near-pneumonia, as well as for the tears.
Mr. Jones cleared his throat and said, “When you are ready to sit, these first two rows are for family.” He pointed at the first two pews nearest the coffin. There were neat white placards on the end which said FOR THE IMMEDIATE FAMILY.
“I think I’m the only family there is, Mr. Jones.”
He raised his eyebrows. “A Mr. Carl Rice phoned and asked for the time and place of the ceremony.”
I swallowed. “Oh. I didn’t expect my father to attend.” I’ll kill him! “In any case,” I said, “my mother divorced him several years ago and he is not family.”
Mr. Jones looked pained. “If he should make his identity known to me, I will try and seat him elsewhere, but it’s not something we have control over.”
“I understand, Mr. Jones. Does Leo Silverstein know that my father is coming?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Not unless your father phones Mr. Silverstein directly.”
“Do you expect Mr. Silverstein?”
“Definitely.”
“When he comes, would you tell him about my father?”
“Certainly.” He glided away, a white-topped shadow, oozing propriety.
I shuddered.
The pain on Lionel Bispeck’s face was gone, replaced by anger.
“Ah... you know about my father.”
He nodded, started to say something, then just shook his head angrily.
“Well, you better come sit with me.”
He hesitated. “It’s not right.”
“No,” I agreed. “He has no business here.”
“No, I mean for me to sit up front.”
I looked at the ceiling. “Did you love her?” I asked, exasperated.
“Yes.”
“Then come sit down. Do you think she wouldn’t have wanted those who loved her to sit together? Besides, if Dad shows up, I’ll need all the support I can get.”
“Oh. All right.” He almost smiled then.
“What?”
He shrugged as he sat down. “You’re a lot like her. She used to bully me into doing all sorts of reasonable things.”
I set my mouth. “Bully? You don’t know the meaning of the word. You haven’t met Dad yet.”
The almost smile died. “No... I’d like to beat his face in!”
I nodded. “Maybe you don’t need to meet him after all. But he’s an angel compared to terrorists.”
“Oh, fuck!” Lionel was twisting the handkerchief between clenched fists. “I thought I was a pacifist. I was a conscientious objector during Vietnam, but I’d gladly pull the trigger if I could get those bastards in my hands.” He pounded his knees, then let out a deep breath. “I don’t see that much difference, though, between them and your father. Terrorism always targets the innocent.”
I took a deep breath, then another, the room swimming. I wanted to kill them myself. The rage sickened me, made my stomach hurt and heart race.
“Easy,” I said, more to myself than Lionel. “Calm down.”
He blew his nose again. “Sorry.”
“Quit apologizing, dammit! You didn’t do anything wrong.” I remembered Millie saying the same thing to me and I had to turn my head away, struggle with the tears. I took out another of the new linen handkerchiefs.
Leo Silverstein came in then. I introduced him to Lionel.
“Could I talk to you a minute, David?” He led the way over to an alcove with coat hooks at the back of the room.
“Is it about Dad?”
“Oh. No—I don’t know what to do about your father. I’d like to get him arrested but the chief witness is...”
“Dead. She’s dead. Okay, what is it?”
“Before you called yesterday, I tried to get hold of you at your New York number.”
“How’d you get that number?”
“When you gave me that letter for your mother, I phoned her. She asked me to open it and read it to her.”
“Oh. What about it?”
“A New York police operator answered your phone. They asked where you were. I told them about the funeral.”
Great. I shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Okay. Anything else?”
He stared at me. “Why do they want to talk to you?”
“That’s not your concern.” I started to walk away, but he grabbed my arm.
“Wait a minute. It is my concern. I’m the executor of your mother’s estate. You’re a beneficiary.”
Estate. Dead people have estates. Mom was dead. That’s the thing about it—I was constantly forgetting that she was dead. My mind was trying to protect me, but it kept coming back. Oh, Mom... why are you always leaving me? The image from the TV played in my head again. I stared at Silverstein.
He dropped my arm like it was red hot and stepped back.
“Anything else?” I repeated.
“The press is outside, television and newspaper. Mr. Jones is keeping the cameramen out, but he can’t keep the reporters from coming in and watching. If they try for any interviews in here, though, he’ll have them escorted out by the police.”
“The police are here?”
“Just the usual—two off-duty motorcycle cops to escort the procession. They’re keeping an eye on the press, though.”
“Oh. Thank you, Mr. Silverstein,” I said. “You’ve been a great help. I’m sorry I keep snapping at you.”
He shrugged uncomfortably.
More people were coming in. Walt Steiger, the taxi driver, clapped his hand on my shoulder for a moment, then went and sat in the back. Mrs. Johnson, the lady who lived in Granddad’s house, came up, expressed sympathy, and introduced her husband before taking a pew in the back.
Leo Silverstein came back after a while. He had a man with him wearing a dark suit.
“David, this is Mr. Anderson, from the State Department.”
I stood slowly and shook his hand. “I want to thank you, Mr. Anderson, for having her body shipped home.”
“No thanks are needed. It’s my job, but the deceased are usually tourists who’ve had a heart attack or a car accident. It don’t like my job very much, when it involves violence.”
I nodded slowly.
He continued. “This isn’t the time, but if you have any questions, here’s my card.”
I thanked him again and he went away.
Lionel stirred on the seat beside me. “Christ, there’s Sylvia and Roberta and... it’s the whole office.” He waved his arm.
A group of women who had just entered saw him and walked quietly up the side aisle. They hunched over in that strange protective posture that people take when they talk in church or to the bereaved. Lionel introduced them.
“This is Sylvia and Roberta and Jane and Patricia and Bonnie. They’re the staff of the Fly-Away Travel Agency. Sylvia was your mother’s boss. Patricia and Bonnie were on flight 932.”
They ranged in age from almost elderly to Millie’s age. Comfortably fat to thin.
I shook hands with all of them, soaking up their sympathy and grief like a sponge. “It was very good of you to come from so far.”
Sylvia muttered something about travel agents and cheap airfare.
“Look,” I said, “could you sit up here with us? They gave the family two whole pews and I’d just as soon not be all alone up here.”
That was agreeable. They filled in the rest of the first pew and sat quietly, eyes straying about the room but always returning to and dwelling on the coffin.
Their presen
ce comforted me, made me feel less alone, less small. The six years Mom spent away from me seemed less wasted. She’d made these people care for her, love her.
At ten minutes before the hour, ten minutes before the ceremony was to start, I saw sergeants Baker and Washburn enter the back of the room and stand there, scanning the crowd. They were dressed appropriately, in suits of dark brown with sober ties.
I looked back at the front, away from them. My face felt curiously still and, looking at Mom’s coffin, I could feel some vast, violent emotion bubbling right below the surface.
At five minutes before the hour, Dad came in. Mr. Jones met him at the door and asked him to sign the register. Dad scribbled in the book. Mr. Jones led him up the center aisle and tried to steer him into an empty pew.
Dad said something and Mr. Jones shook his head, still pointing at the pew. Dad stepped around Mr. Jones and walked up the center aisle. Mr. Jones looked past him at me and spread his hands, helplessly.
I stood up and stepped out from my seat. Lionel started to get up and I shook my head at him, a tight smile on my face. Dad stopped dead when he saw me, his face paling. I beckoned to him and then walked to the double doors by the coffin, the ones that led out to the hearse. I opened the door and went through, Dad following slowly. As soon as I was outside, I turned left, away from the small cluster of reporters at the front of the building, away from the two attendants leaning against the hearse.
As soon as I turned the corner and was screened from anybody’s sight, I acquired a jump site, then walked ten feet farther and turned around.
Dad came around the corner slowly, suspiciously. It was cool outside, slightly cloudy, but he was sweating copiously. He stopped about five feet away from me.
I stared at him, silent. My stomach was churning and I remembered things... bad things. He was wearing a Western suit, cowboy boots, and a string tie. The jacket parted and I could see his rodeo buckle.
“Damn your eyes! Say something!” His voice was loud and nervous. A breeze brought the smell of nervous sweat and alcohol to me.
I didn’t move. Just stared at him, remembering again the night I stood over him with the heavy bottle.