Fearless

by Rafael Yglesias

  She did go out. She went to church regularly and prayed for Bubble’s soul. Not to the church of her girlhood, Saint Anthony’s, but to Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, just across the street from her apartment on Mulberry. She told Manny she preferred the shorter walk, but what she really preferred was the older stone building and the glimpse of its ancient graveyard, a patch of elegant grass and smoothed headstones protected from the dirty city. And she became fond of the small, gray-faced priest who led the daily masses. Monsignor O’Boyle moved with extreme slowness, not bending his knees or elbows, like a robot. But his wide face trembled all the time, the lines and loose skin as floppy and wrinkled as a bulldog’s. His watery light blue eyes were sad and trusting. She liked him so much she even went to confession.

  Monsignor O’Boyle pitied her. After he heard the story of the crash, no sin she admitted increased her penance from more than a token Hail Mary. Not since she was a little girl had she gone that often. She went almost every day, sitting at the back of the old church, watching Monsignor O’Boyle conduct the mass in his slow motions, his pale face then as still as stone, his gestures a copy of the day before. What was once boring soothed her. Carla believed she had found a routine she could follow for the rest of her life: going to church, telling her sins to Monsignor O’Boyle, and taking care of the soul of her beloved son.

  As soon as she agreed to attend the group therapy session this safe world became dangerous. For more than a month she had been doing the household shopping, challenging herself to get over her fear of the outside. It wasn’t far to go, just down the block to the stores on her street. But the day after saying yes to Perlman, a kid on a motorcycle came roaring around the corner. He drove his huge bike right up onto the sidewalk and whizzed at Carla. She had to fling herself against a car to avoid being hit. She was so shaken she needed a neighbor to help her home. After that she refused to go out without an escort. Even to church. And yet going to church also turned out not to be safe anymore.

  On the Sunday before the group meeting, Monsignor O’Boyle’s right foot skidded as he turned from the altar. He had to lean on the altar boy to prevent a fall. Carla gasped. Her best girlfriend, Ginny, was with her. Manny had to cover for one of the doormen that day and he arranged for Ginny to come in and visit. Ginny now lived in Staten Island with her three kids and a fat husband whom everybody suspected was in the Mafia because he never worked and yet he got richer every year.

  “What is it?” Ginny grabbed Carla’s hand. Monsignor O’Boyle had regained his balance, let go of the boy, and resumed the ritual. He lifted the blood of Christ in the air. Didn’t matter. Carla was terrified that the priest would fall again. She couldn’t watch him. She was convinced he was about to topple and crack his head on the stone floor. She imagined the watery blue eyes staring lifelessly into the dark of the ceiling, his skinny old body crumpled and twisted on the strip of red carpet.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized to Ginny. A pair of old widows shot them dirty looks for talking. “I got to go,” she said and despite the rude noise and the sacrilege, she left in the middle of Monsignor O’Boyle’s ghostly ceremony. She was trembling when they got outside.

  “You cold, hon?” Ginny asked. It was November and very cold that day. There were white streaks in the gutter where the freezing wind had drained its black blood. “It was cold in there. I forgot how cold that fucking Old Saint Pat’s is.” Ginny was pious and went to church even during her druggy teenage years, but she always cursed when she talked about Old St. Pat’s.

  “He missed a step,” Carla tried to explain. “He almost fell.”

  “Yeah, he drank too much of the blood of Christ,” Ginny said.

  Carla didn’t explain to her friend why the priest’s misstep terrified her. Ginny would be disgusted by her nutty cowardice. She was sure that Monsignor O’Boyle would have died if he had fallen. She couldn’t get rid of the picture of him killed: eyes swollen and unmoving; the look of the dead on the plane. She shivered all the way home. Ginny brewed a burning-hot cup of espresso. Carla gulped it down and yet still trembled.

  They sat in the kitchen and talked. That was awkward. Carla felt Ginny wanted to tell stories about her kids. She would start to, then become self-conscious and change subjects.

  “Talk about your kids,” Carla finally said.

  “I don’t want to talk about them. What for? I’m so glad to have a day off. They make me crazy.”

  But she was lying and that made it worse. “The kids with John today?” Carla prompted her.

  “John? You crazy? Take care of his beloved children? Nah—they’re with John’s mother.”

  “They get along with her?”

  “You kidding? They love her. Not like my mother. She worries about her furniture. I say to her, ‘They’re your grandchildren. Enjoy them. You’re going to be dead soon. What do you want to be surrounded by in your last years? Your beautiful grandchildren or clean upholstery?’ You know what she said?”

  “Clean upholstery,” Carla answered.

  Ginny threw her head back and laughed. “You’re right.”

  “Your mama loves her furniture,” Carla said. “Sometimes she’d look at your pop eating—you know how sloppy he was? Sometimes she’d look at him like she wanted to put a Hefty bag under him, tie it up and put him out with the night’s garbage.”

  Ginny roared. She laughed easily and often. She was happy. She had always been a plump, short girl with chubby arms and legs, strong but not fat. Childbirth hadn’t enlarged her and yet Ginny looked stronger. Her biceps bulged like a workman’s. Maybe she carried both kids all day. Outside the cathedral Carla had put her arm through Ginny’s. The muscles were strong ropes, like Manny’s, the arms of people who worked hard.

  “Your kids must keep you running around.”

  Ginny made a whooshing noise. “All day. No stopping. Noise all the time. I’m exhausted.” But she wasn’t. She sat on the edge of the metal chair, ready to answer any request, happy to be needed.

  Carla felt glad for a moment. She hadn’t wanted to think about Ginny’s children before, but her girlfriend’s obvious pleasure in life made Carla feel a little easier about her own loss—simply because it meant there was happiness somewhere. Carla decided to ask the question about Ginny’s life that she had always been too scared to ask. She had to know urgently—it was the danger to Ginny’s light heartedness: “Is John in the Mafia?”

  “I hope so,” Ginny answered without hesitation. “I don’t want to be married to a free-lancer.”

  “You’re funny,” Carla said, unable to laugh, but knowing that if she weren’t so numb she would.

  “I’m funny? You’re the funny one, Carly. Remember when you used to do imitations? Remember at my big brother’s wedding you made me laugh so hard I had to go to the bathroom?”

  Carla used to do imitations of the nuns at school and the tough boys strutting their stuff at San Gennaro. From Ginny’s memory she received an image of herself the way she used to be before the crash: mischievous and fun and…not scared. “I didn’t have a care in the world,” she said wonderingly and stared into her friend’s eyes.

  Tears filled them. Ginny said, “Oh hon,” with a sob. She lurched out of the kitchen chair awkwardly to hug Carla. “I’m sorry,” she squeezed Carla with her strong arms. “I’m so sorry, hon.”

  Carla didn’t feel bad. She patted her friend’s back comfortingly. “I didn’t have a care,” she mumbled, thinking about the words, the trick in the switch of meaning: “I was careless,” she said and held her breath waiting for Ginny’s reaction to her confession. But Ginny didn’t hear Carla. Her strong friend was crying too hard.

  Manny drove her to the group meeting of survivors. He parked his illegitimate father’s car in the Sheraton’s lot. It was full. He shut off the engine. Carla glanced at the people gathered by the double glass doors to the lobby. She didn’t recognize anyone. There were many people and they appeared comfortable with each other. She saw a man and a woman coming
from opposite sides of the parking lot embrace without even bothering to say hello.

  “I can’t go,” she mumbled. Her head drooped and she stared into her lap. She had dressed up for Dr. Perlman’s group session. She wore the blue-and-white-print dress she had bought for her mother’s wedding. Ginny had taken her to the beauty parlor and insisted Carla let them shape her wild black hair. With it restrained, and wearing a dress, Carla felt young and little. She was as timid with the group as a new kid on the first day of school.

  Come on, Carla, she told herself. It’ll help you. She couldn’t answer the encouragement.

  “Babe, I’ll go in with you.” Manny rubbed her arm. “We drove all the way here. Just go in for a little bit. See what it’s like.”

  Actually it hadn’t been a long drive. The hotel—Manny said they were supposed to go to a meeting room—was on the other side of the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City. Carla wished it had taken longer. “I can’t,” she said. Her fingers slid on her palms—they were wet with fear.

  “I ain’t going back home, Carly.” Manny’s tone was hard. “We’ll sit in this fucking car forever. I don’t give a shit. You can’t go on like this. It’s been four months! You don’t do anything. We don’t fuck anymore—”

  “We do too,” Carla complained.

  “That’s not the real thing. You lay there staring at me like a fish.” Manny leaned his head on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” he groaned. “Go!” He shouted into the gap of the wheel. “I can’t help you. Your mother can’t help you. The priests can’t help you. You gotta fucking go.” He shut his eyes against tears and closed his mouth to stop the flow of anger.

  She was alone. She had never, ever, been so alone. That was the truth. She pulled at the door handle and it sagged heavily out and away, swaying low until it scraped the pavement. She heard the traffic of slow-moving cars edging toward the tunnel. Put your feet out, she told herself. She slung one, heavy and lifeless, onto the concrete.

  Manny’s hand landed on her shoulder, weighing her down. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “No you’re not,” she answered fast and that propelled her the rest of the way out of the car. The world seemed to rock under her feet. The black pavement, the one-story hotel, the metal awning that covered the other survivors who had come, was flying, spinning under her high heels.

  Manny’s voice sounded behind her. He had gotten out of the car and come around to her side. “I’ll take you in, babe,” he said gently.

  She ran toward the awning. Not to escape her husband’s escort. She had to get off the orbiting surface; find walls that would keep her in, safe from nothingness.

  She ran past a woman holding a clipboard and brushed against a young black man dressed in a suit and wearing sunglasses.

  “Excuse me,” the young black man said in a loud voice.

  “Excuse me,” the woman with the checklist also said, leaning toward Carla. “Are you in Dr. Perlman’s group?”

  Carla stumbled on a step as she tried to answer and stop and turn all at once. The young black man steadied her and answered: “Yes she is.”

  Carla looked at him. His face was a mask, the coffee-colored skin, like his dark sunglasses, an impenetrable opaque surface, giving no hint of whether he was nervously pale or blushing from agitation or haggard from lack of sleep. His hair was a thin helmet. In his elegant charcoal suit he looked as tall and sheer as a skyscraper. He kept Carla balanced with only a light grasp of her elbow. “I remember you from the hangar,” he explained. “I think about you a lot. Did they find your baby?”

  “Honey!” a light-skinned black woman appeared from behind him. She pulled at his sleeve, “Don’t blurt it out.” She added to Carla, “He’s sorry. He has nightmares about you—not about you—but about whether your child is safe.”

  She had no idea who they were or how they knew about her. What had they seen? Did they know she couldn’t get the seat belt to work? Did they see her run away from the smoke?

  The black man bent his tall stiff body toward her. His voice was soft, but deep. It vibrated in her chest. “It was your baby that didn’t make it?” he asked Carla.

  “Honey,” his wife said and pulled at his arm. “He’s having trouble…you know, sleeping and such. Making the trip was hard. Very hard,” she mumbled.

  The black man stiffened. “We didn’t bring our baby girl this time,” he said, loud, announcing the fact over the heads of the gathering.

  Manny scurried in between Carla and the black couple. He looked short and nervous beside the taller, still man. “Here you are,” he said and took her hand possessively, the way a parent takes a child’s to keep it from getting lost.

  “Hello, everybody,” a voice said from behind Carla. The crowd turned to look at its source. A broad-shouldered redheaded man was on the top step, holding open one of the glass doors. “I’m Bill Perlman. I’m glad you all came, but standing right here we’re blocking things. So let’s proceed to the conference room. Just go through the lobby to the back. There’s a sign showing the way.”

  “Do I check them off here?” the woman with the clipboard asked.

  “Wait until later,” Perlman said.

  Carla wanted to leave. She was at the head of the crowd and couldn’t retreat, but she didn’t want to walk forward into the lobby either. She had been upset by just one encounter with another survivor. What did the black man mean they didn’t bring their baby girl this time? Was she killed on the plane? No—no babies died. Bubble was the youngest victim. Was he joking? Or angry? Or crazy? Maybe the only survivors who had come were the crazy ones, the ones who couldn’t get over it, like her. She couldn’t stand a roomful of herself.

  “Come on, babe, let’s go in,” Manny urged, pulling her.

  Even if she kept her mouth shut—and she sure planned on keeping her mouth shut—others might say things about her, the way the black couple had. They might ask her questions or tell stories about her. “I’ll go in,” she said to Manny. The crowd pushed at her back. “But alone,” she added.

  “Hi,” Bill Perlman leaned down to her. “You’re Carla?”

  “Hello, Doctor,” Manny said. They knew each other?

  Although Perlman smiled at Manny, he addressed the whole group. “I’d prefer it if only survivors came in today. Your spouse is welcome if you feel you need them, but if you can come in alone, that’s even better.” He lowered his voice to say to Carla, “So why don’t you come in with me?” Perlman offered his hand.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Manny said.

  She took Perlman’s hand. His fair skin was covered with freckles: light brown spots on a pink background. She thought him ugly. In an oversized, clownish friendly way—but he was still ugly. Perlman kept hold of her hand as they walked into the lobby and down the hallway to the conference room. He swung it back and forth gently, as if they were skipping into a playground. “Come by car?” was his only question. He nodded at her answer.

  The room wasn’t as big as she expected and it appeared unfurnished despite the presence of more than fifty folding chairs, the majority still unopened and propped against the rear wall. There were no tables, no lamps, only the chairs, arranged not in neat rows facing in one direction, but haphazardly, at odd angles, sometimes in opposition, sometimes side by side. Apparently thoughtless hotel employees had simply set up a few chairs without rhyme or reason and dumped the rest. Other than the same blue carpet that was in the lobby there was nothing to distinguish it from a storeroom. Carla looked at Perlman, expecting him to be angry.

  “Let’s arrange these in a circle if we can,” Perlman said mildly to the woman with the clipboard. “If you want you can sit next to me,” he said to Carla. He tapped the black man who had spoken to Carla on the shoulder. “Can I deputize you to help me with the chairs?” He gestured at two more men. “And you gentlemen? Let’s get them in a circle, even if we have to make them two rows deep.”

  Soon almost everybody was busy clanking the chairs as they tried to mana
ge the unfolding and placement. Someone had the idea to space them so that the second row was centered on the gaps of the first, allowing better sight lines. While people moved about there were hellos and hugs of recognition. Many of them seemed to know each other. Carla didn’t. She was disturbed by this until she remembered that the others had been together in the hospital, treated in the emergency rooms and released to be housed in motels, or kept in semiprivate rooms, wandering in and out, talking in the hall, smoking cigarettes in the lounge, sipping coffee in the cafeteria. She was the only one who had been given a private room; she couldn’t have walked out even if she had felt like seeing anyone, and no survivors visited her. Why should they? They had all become friends that first horrible night while she was drugged and alone.

  She didn’t accept Perlman’s offer to sit beside him. She took a chair in the second row at the back toward the corner and watched the friendly survivors. To her they were happy. Not hurt by the accident; they had been softened. On the plane they had moved with the stiff protected motions of strangers; in this room they brushed shoulders easily and smiled at each other with their eyes, like tipsy cousins at a wedding. For what seemed to be a long time the room buzzed from dozens of conflicting conversations. Carla stayed silent and looked through the turned heads at Perlman. After delegating the work of setting up, he had taken a seat, folded his hands in his lap and watched. He noticed that Carla had her eyes on him and gestured for her to come beside him. Carla shook her head. She tensed up, ready to run for the door if he came her way. Instead he smiled. He didn’t interrupt all the conversations. He waited. Gradually people fell silent, suppressing others, until Anally only one person was still talking.