Byron’s parents, whom Max decided without any evidence other than their sloppy preppie clothes and their diffident manners were rich, weren’t embarrassed by their son’s emotional behavior. Nor were they emotional. What they said expressed thanks, but it was pronounced with a cool sophisticated manner.
“I guess there’s no way to express how grateful we are,” Peter Hummel commented after his son’s account was finished.
“I really didn’t do all that,” Max answered gently, ashamed to contradict Byron.
“Yes, you did,” Byron insisted. “I would have been fried if you hadn’t gotten me out. I watched. It got all burned up. A fireman said there were people still alive in there they couldn’t get out.”
“Oh, that could be true,” Max said.
“God,” Debby mumbled. She covered her face with her hands and sighed loudly. She quickly uncovered and looked at Max with shining wet eyes.
“I don’t know if talking about the danger helps make anyone feel better,” Peter said to his son.
“I think he needs to talk it out,” Diane said to her husband. She turned to Debby. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t seem scared,” Jonah said to Byron. He mumbled this comment to his knees. They undulated as he restlessly kicked his legs out and back.
“What?” Byron asked. His parents also glanced at Jonah inquisitively. Evidently only Max had heard his son’s statement. Max understood its origin. He had explained to Jonah that Byron was coming over because he was still frightened from the crash and his parents believed seeing Max would help. Max thought it was a good question. He wondered also—Byron seemed happy to him.
“Nothing,” Jonah mumbled, embarrassed to have everyone’s attention. He lowered his head more, hair coming down over his light brown eyes, covering their curiosity.
“What did you say?” Byron asked. He had an energetic body. He was beside Jonah on the couch. He twisted all the way around to ask, one hand touching Jonah’s thigh to prompt him.
“It was a good question, Jonah,” Max urged him. “Ask it.”
“I—” Jonah waved his hand and stammered, “I—don’t want to. Forget it.”
“He said, ‘You don’t seem scared,’ ” Max revealed his son’s remark. He wouldn’t have before the change. He was always supportive of his little boy, even of his weaknesses.
“Max…” Debby warned softly.
Byron blinked at Max for a moment and then said in a plain simple tone, the excitement gone, “I’m not scared when I’m with you.”
Diane appeared moved. Until then Max had thought her self-possession beyond upset. Her deep tan and shiny black hair, gathered into a demure bun, seemed to make her inscrutable and coldhearted. But he noticed her sharp chin pucker inward. She ducked her head slightly and shaded her eyes with one hand. Was she crying?
Byron’s father continued to be cool, although polite. “He’s been very upset,” he commented to Max. “You seem to make him feel safe.”
“I’m sure that’s temporary,” Debby said.
Byron and his parents looked at her. Max didn’t know whether she meant she hoped it would go away soon, or if she was consoling Byron’s father for losing his natural role toward his son.
“He also saved a baby,” Byron said to Debby, obviously concluding that she didn’t realize what a paragon she had married. “I told the mommy who you were,” he added to Max.
“Yes, that’s right,” Peter said. “Just before we called you, a woman called us, evidently the mother?” he asked Byron.
“Yeah! She’s the one you gave the baby to,” he said to Max, excited.
“You saw that? I thought you were with the Red Cross by then,” Max argued. He was worried by this child’s determination to reshape what they had experienced into something that couldn’t fit into his own memory.
“I was watching you from the ambulance!” Byron explained. He turned to Jonah to tell him this amazing fact: “Your Dad just walked out of the airport.”
“Um,” Peter signaled he had something important to say, “the mother, her name is Paula Pavod—I think that’s how you pronounce it—said she knew that you had also rescued Byron and so she was calling us in case we knew who you were. We gave her your name, or rather Byron did—I hope you don’t mind.”
And so, because of Paula Pavod and other survivors, by the next morning Max was considered to be a hero—and not merely the savior of Byron and the Pavod baby. He was also supposed to have played pied piper to another twenty or so passengers lost in the burning plane. Max found out that he was a public figure at seven-thirty in the morning on his way out to put Jonah on his bus to day camp. The doorman showed Max a New York Post that credited him with saving four children, an elderly woman, and a flight attendant. Max was surprised that the Post had assembled all these accounts of his rescue efforts without speaking to him. But the Daily News explained the lack of contact with its headline, GOOD SAMARITAN SAVES TOTS AND DISAPPEARS, again shown to him by the doorman. Max stopped inside the outer doors, reading the News to find out where the press thought he was. Jonah poked him in the side.
“Dad! Look who’s here.”
From their position they could see the Eighty-fourth Street corner. There a mob had gathered, at the center of which were two television crews interviewing, of all people, Byron.
Byron and his diffident father had been waylaid as they got out of a cab intending to visit Max again. The boy’s insomnia had continued even after last night’s get-together; he had refused to attend his day camp (a different one from Jonah’s, thank goodness) unless he saw Max first. Byron’s father had tried to call ahead but Debby had taken the phone off the hook before going to bed and he couldn’t get through.
Max was immediately sucked into being interviewed with an eager Byron by his side. And so he had his revelation that Jeff deserved to die while denying his own heroics. Besides, his revelation wasn’t irrelevant to Kaku’s questions; in fact, she provoked his silent verdict. She asked Max his reason for switching his seat to be with Byron, and that emphasized to him why his decision on Jeff’s fate was so important. Max had deserted his dead partner. He knew he was ashamed of his desertion because he had concealed it from Nan. That hadn’t been difficult; she didn’t ask about how Jeff died, presumably too upset to hear details. And now Nan would learn it from the tabloids, find out in big black type that her husband’s best friend had left him to die alone. This false life Max had returned to, this ghostly existence that he inhabited only in form and not in substance, was overcrowded with people, errands and moral ambiguities. While he said to the reporters, “No, I didn’t pull an old woman out from between seats. No, I didn’t rescue a brother and sister who were buried underneath dead bodies. No, I didn’t pull the baby out of a burning seat. No, I didn’t show the way out for dozens of people. No, I didn’t leap into flames to save Byron,” while he fended off their accusations of heroism he sagged at the dreary list of chores ahead: he had to go to the office; he had to call Nutty Nick; he had to get Jonah on the camp bus.
In fact, the bus had come and, atypically, was waiting patiently. Jonah’s campers peered in awe at the mob of cameras and celebrity television reporters. A friend called and waved to Jonah.
“Dad!” Jonah interrupted another of Kaku’s hostile questions. She was still convinced that Max wasn’t giving her everything. “Dad, can I get on my bus?”
Max bent over to give his boy a hug goodbye; he was immediately pushed back by his son’s hand. He escorted Jonah to the bus. The mob of reporters (led by Kaku) and gawkers inched along with them. He waved goodbye and felt he was alone, more alone than ever, more alone even than when he had showered in the Sheraton and understood that Jeff was gone and his life was forever changed. Once the bus drove off, the reporters crowded him again. He backed away a few feet. They moved after him in a carnivorous movement, a hungry herd. Max felt hot and he couldn’t breathe. His legs wanted to go. He abruptly turned the other way on West End and broke into a full run,
ignoring the shouts from abandoned reporters and forgetting as well that he had promised Debby he would have a leisurely breakfast with her.
He remembered five blocks later. He saw a phone booth on Riverside and ran to it.
“Hello.” Debby was angry, prepared to hang up.
“Hi, it’s me.”
Her tone changed: anger to relief. “Where are you?”
“There’s a mob—I’m not kidding you—a mob of reporters downstairs—”
“Oh, the phone has been ringing nonstop. I tried to call my mother and it started. Really. I can’t even begin to dial. They say you saved all these people. Is that true? Why aren’t you telling me these things? You just say you got this boy out—”
“It’s not true. I did carry a baby out. But he was right next to me. Not—I don’t know—buried in the flames or whatever the hell they’re saying—” he sighed. The gray plastic receiver smelled of sauerkraut, a peculiar odor for eight in the morning.
“Max.” Debby had the irritation back in her tone. “Where are you?”
“Uh, I’m on Riverside Drive.”
“Max.” She said his name as if making a statement about his character, with a note of finality. “Come home.”
Last night they had lain together after Jonah went to sleep. They made love in slow motion. Her orgasm was as gentle and suppressed as a child sobbing into a pillow. Max, although he was fully erect and felt each detail of the pleasure of being inside her, couldn’t climax. He was embarrassed and annoyed. Debby pulled at him to continue but when he did it was she who was again moved into passion and release, this time bucking and moaning with joy. They stayed joined for a time in the dark, lying still while Max waited—for what he didn’t know.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He pulled out: stiff, alive, and unsatisfied.
“I’m frigid,” he said.
She held his penis and kissed him. “What can I do?” she said.
He laughed.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I want you to save me,” he said.
But she didn’t know from what or how and he didn’t either. She got sadder and sadder as she asked questions that sounded straight out of a self-help book or from a therapist’s mouth. It seemed to Max as if his being alive made his wife sad. He tried to convince himself she was unhappy at the thought he had almost died, but he didn’t succeed. She was disappointed in him. She had been disappointed in him for years. He didn’t know why. Probably because he was her life, or a great part of it, and that life, the life of a thwarted artist, was a letdown. But what did these distinctions matter? The end was the same: she would be better off with him dead; then his absence, not his presence, would be what made her sad.
Think of Nan. She had never shown anything but annoyance or disdain for Jeff and yet last night, as his widow, she had been magnificent in her love.
“He was my big boy, my crazy boy,” she mumbled in Max’s ear. “We were just kids when I married him and we fucked it up,” she choked, her warm breasts palpitating against Max, her strong hands digging into his back. Nan cried on Max’s shoulder but the passion of her grief reminded him more of lovemaking than of sorrow.
These were dangerous ideas and he didn’t want to have them.
“No, I can’t face those reporters,” Max told the phone. “They’re asking me crazy stuff. I stand there saying I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, like I’m a criminal.”
“It’s disgusting. I’ll call the police and they’ll get rid of them.”
Max laughed. Well, she was trying to help him, anyway, even if she wanted to turn the job over to others. That tilted his head back and he caught sight of the West Side Highway and beyond it, the edge of park on the river. He could get near to the water there. He thought he remembered there was a wall or a low fence or something that would bar him from actually touching it, but he could get very close. “I’ll call you later,” he said.
“Max!” her voice caught him from escaping.
“What? ”
“I want you to come home.”
“Not now.” This wasn’t a conversation with his wife; he was arguing with his widowed mom, expecting him to leave the stickball game early to relieve her loneliness.
“Fine. You don’t want to see me, that’s—” she made some sort of noise and then resumed with studied calm: “I want you to call Dr. Mayer.”
She referred to his shrink in so formal a way because she didn’t know him and they rarely discussed him. Bill Mayer was quite old now, semi-retired. Max was thirteen when his mother first made an appointment with the psychiatrist, concerned about the effect on Max of his father’s sudden death. Throughout his adolescence, whenever Max failed to be the A-student, the compassionate son, the loving brother, his mother would call Dr. Mayer. In fact, for several years Max’s therapy was largely consumed by discussions with Dr. Mayer about his mother’s use of it as a kind of punishment. Eventually Mayer went so far as to talk directly to his mother, suggesting that she leave it up to Max whether he continued therapy. Didn’t do a bit of good; one sulking look from Max and Mom would ask if she should schedule an extra session.
Debby had never invoked the good doctor, however. Threatening Max with mental health was a first for his wife.
“Fuck you,” Max said mildly and hung up. That was the end of that relationship. Who needs marriage anyway? Max decided. What was it but a way to personify life’s inadequacies?
He crossed Riverside Drive. Something honked at him. A jogger brushed past and cursed. The West Side Highway hummed with traffic. Burning meat blew down the avenue from some restaurant or vendor. He was going to the river no matter what.
“Hey—you got change, man?”
That was a teenager. A dark-skinned, sluggish, threatening teenager, with a slight Spanish accent. His hand was slung at his side, the palm up, but close to his hip and easily made into a fist.
“No,” Max said and kept on, going for the wall that separated Riverside Park from the highway.
“Where the fuck you going?” the teenager called after him.
Max hopped the wall, a car buzzed past, and he landed in the warm air of its wake. A white van in the middle lane honked and swung to the other lane nervously.
A blue Chevy was heading at Max now, slowing, but still on the move and honking at him.
The van passed in the center. Max stepped there. A yellow truck was next. It didn’t honk or slow. The driver kept coming.
Max let a black BMW go by and got out of the truck’s way, running to the divider just ahead of another black car. He got up on the low wall and perched, three lanes of northbound traffic behind, three lanes of southbound ahead. Some cars swerved into the other lane at the sight of him. There was confusion and worry in the movements of some drivers; others ignored him and sped inches from his position. He was nearly blown back onto the other road by the passing blast of air. One driver threw a cigarette at him and yelled: “Get the fuck off there, asshole!”
There was power in his legs, although they trembled on the divider. He could see details with magnified clarity. There were dried drops of black tar on the near lane, in a long dribble on the bleached concrete. There was a safety pin two lanes over, the top half smashed flat into the pavement. There was a fanned and blackened copy of TV Guide squashed at the far curb, inches from the small strip of grass between the highway and the Hudson, the mighty Hudson, a flowing gray mass slinking beside the bucking cars with a snake’s menace.
The traffic was dense southbound. He had to wait for a break; when it came he had only a few seconds to clear the road. A trio of cars was coming fast: a brown van in the slow lane, a taxi with its hood loose in the middle, and a baby-blue Mercedes in the far lane. Max jumped onto the road and ran across their bows. He knew if he stumbled he was dead. He knew the Mercedes in the far lane might be going too fast for him. He would soon reach the water or be killed.
He dived and rolled onto the patch of grass. He heard
another curse from a passing car. He felt a breeze of gritty exhaust. A beer can crumpled under his right knee. He smelled the river. Max got up. The grass grew unevenly down to the low cement breaker. Masses of cigarette butts were lined against it as if they had died trying to make the ascent.
He looked across the water and was happy again. He had forgotten this freedom in his breathing, this strength in his legs, the openness in his head, welcoming the world without any unhappy thoughts to bar the way. He had forgotten this freedom since coming home last night; once again his sinuses were clear of the fear of death. He would dive in the Hudson and swim away from the city. Why not?
“Okay, man,” said the teenager from behind him. “How about now? You got change now?”
Max turned back toward the city. The skinny teenager had followed him across the highway. They were together on the narrow strip of grass, segregated by the road from Riverside Park. The hand was out, away from his body this time, again open to receive money, not begging, but demanding.
Max was disgusted. “Aren’t you going to tell me what you need it for?”
The hand retreated, moving to the pocket of his sagging dungarees. The teenager looked hot and unhealthy, dressed in long pants on a summer day, skinny ribs showing below a tight tank top. “What?” he said, squinting past Max.
Was there an accomplice behind him? Max wondered. Teenagers did their evil in groups: rape or mugging, they needed support from like spirits. Grown-ups killed alone. Max looked back. There was nothing but a lane of patchy grass curving with the river. Max turned to the kid. Sweat streaked down the teenager’s sideburns, flattening the kinky hairs. “I don’t have any,” Max said honestly. “I just came downstairs to—”
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