Fearless

by Rafael Yglesias

  “You gave him permission to act as your agent in changing the travel arrangements?”

  Max remembered Jeff’s anger at the check-in counter when Max wanted to delay and go on a different flight. He also remembered Jeff’s surprise when Max included the credit card insurance in his running total of the benefits Nan and Debby would receive. No, Max whispered to himself. He couldn’t believe his partner was that much of a loser. “What is it? What did Jeff do?”

  “Well, evidently Mr. Gordon got a different deal on the second reservations. He took a credit from American Express and paid in cash.”

  “Jeff made a cheaper deal on the tickets and pocketed the difference?”

  “Well, we don’t know that. He probably restored the money to the firm’s petty cash account or business checking account. Or intended to. It’s unfair to assume a petty theft. And it would have been petty. The refunded money was a couple hundred bucks.”

  “Not to Nan. To Nan it’s a half a million dollars. Our wives are beneficiaries on the credit cards. That idiot!” Jeff haunted him all right. He was still a burden to be carried.

  “I know,” Brillstein said, presumably referring to the information about who benefited. “That’s why I wanted to stress that what you say about the crash may be important.”

  Max felt something he hadn’t since the explosion: irritation at the mosquito bite of the morally confused world. He had been free of it since the crash. Max hadn’t measured the relief of its absence until now as he felt the itch of its return. Why was this choice imposed on him? He was so near to freedom.

  Brillstein had stopped his car under a huge sign that read: STOP HERE. A sleepy man approached filling out a claim ticket. Max looked around at the family mess of the Volvo and the lawyer’s nervous curious eyes, darting from him to the parking attendant, as if they were both potential threats. “Can you represent me and Nan in this?” Max asked. “Or do we have to get an airline lawyer?”

  “Look—if Nan Gordon weren’t a family friend—I mean, I’d love to—but it’s not my expertise—I’m sure I could do it, truth is, compared to malpractice it’s taking candy from niños,” Brillstein accepted the ticket from the attendant. “Probably about an hour,” he mumbled to him. “But Stoppard and Gray have got aviation liability down to a clean quick formula. They’ll package you all together, get reasonable settlements—I mean, they may not pay enough attention to each individual case—”

  “Shut up for a second,” Max said. Brillstein immediately made a great show of stilling himself. He put his hands together, pressed his lips tight, inclined his head a notch forward, disappearing what little there was of his chin into his neck—an attentive bird waiting to see if food would be offered him. They were in front of the elevator in the parking garage, only a minute away from the widow of Max’s best friend. Yes, Max had to admit, after all Jeff was his closest friend; a man he had spent at least forty hours a week with for over a decade; a true intimate, a man who trusted Max not to mind when he stole from him. “If I’m going to lie my head off, I don’t care for how noble a reason, I want my lawyer to know I’m lying—”

  Brillstein was again a dog shaking off his swim in the pond. “No, no, no, no,” he waved a hand at Max. “This is very bad talk. I haven’t heard this. A Range Rover roared past us just now and I didn’t hear what you said. You want me to handle your case? Great. I can do the job. We understand each other. We’re grown-ups. We know this is a game. We don’t have to sit side by side and read the instruction manual aloud together. Right?”

  “No.” The elevator arrived. Max blocked the inner rubber safety door to hold it open. “I don’t need you for that bullshit. I can get the fancy guys for that kind of advice. I don’t trust my abilities here. Okay? I’m not saying I’m too moral to lie, I’m saying I may not be good enough at it. If I hire you it’ll be because you will read the instruction manual out loud.” The elevator doors tried to close. They bumped Max’s hand and withdrew in horror.

  Brillstein let out a lot of air. He inflated first, cheeks puffing out like a blowfish, before releasing it all in a huge sigh of resignation. “You don’t work for ‘60 Minutes’ or the DA, do you?” Brillstein entered the elevator laughing at himself. “Just kidding. Just kidding. Come on,” he urged Max in. Max followed. The familiar interior—fake paneled wood, mirrored ceiling—brought Nan vividly to life as a dreaded obstacle. Brillstein spoke into an intercom to the lobby to announce where they were going. The doorman verified they were expected and then allowed the elevator up. They waited in silence until they were moving. “We’ll have to have all our conversations after rowing out into the middle of the Atlantic,” Brillstein said, “but that’s okay. Just kidding.” He put his hand out to Max, an offer. “It’s a deal.”

  Max shook the little hand. It fled quickly from his grasp. The lawyer had manipulated him, of course Max knew that, but he was a willing dupe. A man he could see through was always more reliable than a man he couldn’t.

  Max didn’t care for Nan’s looks. Her yellow hair, pleading blue eyes and tender pink skin, her puffy cheeks and rounded face resembled an old-fashioned doll’s, a vision of helplessness, stupidity and easy sexual prey. Actually, from what he knew about her through their limited social contact and from Jeff’s complicated explanations of their marital dissensions Max believed Nan to be sexually inaccessible, nervously smart, and helpless only in the sense of wanting help. Up until the birth of their second child Nan had worked as a writer for Newstime magazine. In the last two years she occasionally did free-lance pieces for women’s magazines but had basically become a talker: she talked about writing a book; she talked about organizing workshops, called Stopping Short, for nonworking mothers who used to have high-powered careers; and she talked about returning to full-time journalism.

  Her lack of income combined with the costs of raising their two boys in New York City had made Jeff hungrier and more frantic about money than ever. During the elevator ride, trying to make sense of Jeff’s petty theft, Max harkened back to his dead partner’s complaints. Jeff said, “We’re so in debt,” at least twice in any conversation on any subject. He worked it into any topic. Subject: The Berlin Wall is torn down. Jeff’s response: Remember how cheap things were in 1961?

  “You were eleven,” Max protested.

  “That’s why things were so cheap. All I needed to be happy was twenty five cents for a new Pinky if Fat Joey hit a home run.”

  Nan didn’t look helpless that day. She was distraught. She stood waiting at the elevator doors for them. Her straw hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her skin didn’t look pink. It was pale, almost translucent. She had pimples on her forehead, nose and cheeks that she hadn’t bothered to cover with makeup. She wasn’t made-up at all. That was also unusual. Her lips weren’t painted red. They looked thin. Her eyes were less prominent and she had a more authentic American look than ever, a rural woman abandoned to poverty and backbreaking labor. Only Nan was from New Jersey, had gone to Yale, didn’t know how to plant a flower and was lazy. Even though she claimed to be anxious all the time and insisted daily life was too much for her, she had a frantic competence and strength.

  Both were gone. Instead, she was eager and brave. Her pupils looked odd, big and uncertain. Max decided she was tranquilized. She stood right at the elevator doors when they opened, eagerly waiting, and yet she backed away as Max appeared and moved toward her. He realized Nan—the actual physical presence of Nan—was strange to him and that in the past he had often been cool to her, not because he truly believed Jeff’s version of their marriage, but because he couldn’t help but feel that as his wife she ought to make him more diligent, rather than provide excuses for his lassitude about work. Max avoided chatting with her on the phone or any friendly overtures she made at their rare social encounters. But this was not the time to withhold himself from her.

  Max opened his arms and said, “Nan, I’m sorry.”

  Beside him, Brillstein shrank away, hiding near the apartme
nt door. The lawyer spoke in a whisper to someone inside and then Max heard Jeff’s mother’s voice say, “Oh my God!” followed by weeping.

  Max reached Nan and embraced her. She was tall. About an inch taller than Max. She didn’t cry. He peeked at her profile and her eye was still clear. She wasn’t breathing. At least he couldn’t feel any inhalations. She was motionless in his arms. She had gained weight after the second child and her back felt soft and loose.

  “Breathe,” he whispered.

  She did and exhaled words: “I knew it,” she said quietly but in a steady tone. “I just knew it right away. Isn’t that crazy?”

  “He loved you,” Max said.

  “God, we’re stupid.”

  Max leaned away to look at her full in the face. Her big pupils swallowed Max’s reflection. “What do you mean?”

  “We lived like jerks, always nagging. We wasted it,” she said. That judgment broke her down. She sobbed and covered up. She bent over quickly, so fast that by the time Max hugged her he was hugging a human bundle, a falling human bundle. They sagged against the hallway and slid down together.

  Max said, “No, he loved you. You made him happy.” He kept on saying those sentences into her sobs: “You made him happy. He loved you.” Max remembered all the times his partner’s greyhound face had snarled: “Nan’s sucking the life out of me. I’ve got to leave her. I love the kids, but she’s killing me.” Yet Max believed what he told Nan wasn’t a lie. “He loved you,” he said again to Nan. “You made him happy.” That was the truth because Jeff couldn’t know any greater pleasure than to have someone to blame for all his dissatisfactions.

  Nan answered him through the tears. The sobbing made it hard to understand her words. Relatives had appeared in the hall, including Sam, her elder boy and Jonah’s friend. He was holding a portable video game in one hand. It drooped forgotten, still a part of him, the way a toddler might drag along a security blanket. His pink face, usually expressionless, was scrunched up in a frown that was the result of mixing fear with tears. Max nodded encouragingly at him. Sam mumbled a “Hi” and Max knew that Sam was another legacy from his dead partner he couldn’t refuse. Sam came over and leaned against his mother’s back.

  “He loved you,” Max repeated. “You made him happy,” he droned and then paused to hear what Nan was mumbling.

  He heard her this time. She said, “Shut up.”

  Max refused Brillstein’s offer of a ride and took a taxi home. It was after ten-thirty. As he entered his apartment Max heard the eighth inning of a Mets game playing on a radio in Jonah’s room. Max glanced down the hall but saw no light coming from his son’s door. He was probably still awake anyway. The living room was also dark. Max moved into it, heading for the kitchen. “Max…?” Debby called in a whisper from their bedroom. She came rushing out. She had on a long nightgown and reminded him of the romantic ghosts in old black-and-white movies: she glided to him in a blur of flowing white. She rushed into his arms and whispered, “I’m scared.”

  He pried her off gently, but with conviction. “I don’t have patience for that anymore.”

  Debby seemed genuinely puzzled. “Patience?”

  “I can’t make it all okay.”

  Again Debby seemed to make an unusual effort to restrain herself. She moved up on her toes as if he were too tall to see. “Max, what’s wrong? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I want you to know. Things are different. I can’t fix everything for you.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, and looked away toward the bright windows. They glowed from the streetlamps and the shimmer of the river. When she looked back her face had relaxed. There was anger in her voice, but it was real, not posturing. It was the thrilling truth. “You don’t fix everything for me,” she said.

  “I know,” Max agreed. “And I can’t try anymore. I’m hungry,” he added. He moved off to the kitchen, flipping on all its lights. He had removed the fluorescent fixtures and replaced them with halogen spots. It was elegant, but not a kitchen, he had to admit to himself. Kitchens should have the merciless glare of pragmatism. Food. He was so hungry he wanted to eat everything in the cabinets.

  “You want something?” he called to his wife, the beautiful ghost, standing in the doorway with confusion on her face. She watched him without answering. He started his feast alone.

  BURYING

  THE

  DEAD

  10

  Carla noticed a shadow waiting at the door of her small private room. She turned her head on the pillow, crinkling the stiff hospital linen, and there her husband stood, pale and silent and ominous, like a ghost come to accuse.

  Carla wanted to call to him, but she had no energy in her body. For hours she had watched the medical personnel come and go, tending to her numbed limbs. If they said anything about Bubble it was to say there was no news. Some spoke to her gently, some were annoyed. She had no voice to answer, anyway, no desire to be aware and talking.

  “Carla…?” Manny called in uncertainly.

  At the sound of his voice she cried. The tears first stung, then soothed her irritated eyes. A doctor had explained that the smoke from the plane was poisonous, and her eyes might burn for a few days.

  Manny entered. She was ashamed and afraid. She lowered her head, diminishing herself, prepared for whatever he might do, ready for a blow or an embrace.

  Manny adored his son. His passion for Bubble had surprised her. After all, he had agreed to have children with a shrug, and while she was pregnant he talked incessantly about how much it would cost to raise a child. He never seemed to look forward to becoming a father. Yet from the moment Manny held Bubble in his arms he was nuts about him. He bragged about Bubble’s size, his looks, his smarts, his boldness and his strength. When Bubble stripped off his clothes and paraded naked (pulling on his little cock, belly thrust forward, a cartoon of masculine pride) Manny beamed. He was unashamed and unafraid of his son’s self-love. The pleasure he showed at Bubble’s ability to wrest a toy from another tot embarrassed her. But the clearest proof of Manny’s great love was that anything Bubble asked for, his daddy bought. Immediately. Without giving consideration to the cost or whining about the expense. And if, after a few minutes, Bubble lost interest in the toy, Manny might frown, but that was all. “Anything for my boy,” he’d say.

  She had let his son die. How could he feel anything but hate for her?

  He approached her bed warily. He looked all around it, suspiciously, as if there might be someone hiding in ambush. “You okay?” His voice was husky and quiet. “A doctor told me you’re okay.”

  She nodded. She was okay, although her leg was broken in two places and the top of her hand had been badly burned. “You were lucky,” a nurse had said without irony. “Some of those people…” she added and didn’t finish. Carla knew. The longer she lay in that room the clearer the images from the crash. Gradually, things she had seen, things that her brain had refused to understand, were reseen in vivid horror. The body she had fallen on top of was only half a body. The man who yelled at her as she ran out was missing an arm.

  Was that what he yelled at her for? Did he want help looking for it? Horrible. It was horrible.

  Did he get out? She didn’t want to know. She wanted to forget.

  Manny kissed her on the cheek, the way you would a grandparent, and backed away a few feet from the bed. “I’m here,” he said grimly. “You hurting?” he nodded at her leg.

  She shook her head no. When was he going to ask about Bubble? Or tell? Did he know more than she?

  “The airline got me here as fast as they could.”

  She shut her eyes at the idea of that, of anyone she knew in an airplane. “Don’t!” she croaked in a panic at the thought.

  “Sorry,” Manny mumbled. “Anyway, they did it.” He bent down to be at her level, carefully raised his hand to her forehead and touched her delicately, like a priest’s blessing. “I love you, babe,” he mumbled.

  There was a scream in
side her. The drugs had buried it underneath her numb skin. She shut her eyes at her husband’s touch. She was back in the burning plane. The man missing an arm yelled at her for running. Inside, she screamed to chase it away.

  “Bubble…” she managed to get out, but she kept her eyes shut.

  “Okay,” Manny pressed his face against hers. She felt his arm over her chest, his voice at her ear. “I’m here.”

  She cried for a long time and was grateful Manny said nothing and did nothing. He waited. He was patient. That wasn’t like him. He was an active man who hated to sit still. When she stopped weeping, he moved to a yellow chair by the window and just sat, staring.

  They were quiet. It was night outside. She could only see the silhouettes of a few trees. There wasn’t much light, a little cast by other windows, but no city lights, no distant lit-up buildings. They were nowhere.

  After a while Manny said, “They gave you a private room.”

  She knew what he meant. Why? She wasn’t badly hurt. Maybe that was why.

  “Things are crowded out there,” he nodded toward the corridor.

  Why put me here alone? He was right. It meant something. She wished he would stop thinking so clearly.

  “I ought to call home and say you’re okay.”

  Everything he was thinking made good sense. Even the fact that he didn’t use the phone. It was over by a beige night table with some discarded extras from her bandage. How could he talk to anyone without knowing about Bubble?

  But really they did know about Bubble. That’s why Manny sat in the chair and did nothing.

  Eventually a nurse gave her another shot. She felt she didn’t need it for pain or any medical reason, but she allowed it. The drug didn’t raise her on a bed of pillows this time. Her ears got hot; her legs first felt thick and then were numb. The painful sight of Manny in the chair softened to a blur. Her eyes wanted to shut. She let them.