“Who is it!” her mother’s electronic voice interrupted.
“Me!” Carla shouted. The buzzing started immediately. She pushed the door open and held it, turning her head back to Max. He was still near her. His pale blue eyes watched her lips; they watched with nervous greed.
He wants me, she realized. It hadn’t occurred to her before and it was quite a surprise. So much of a surprise that she didn’t know what to think about it.
“Don’t talk about my husband,” is what she said.
“I’m sorry.” Max backed away, banging into the front door, opening it enough to let in a cutting ribbon of cold air.
“I’m angry at him. That’s why.”
“Oh,” Max said. He was still focused on her mouth. What was he so shy about? Did he think wanting her was a sin? But he wasn’t a believer.
Is he scared of me? she wondered and laughed out loud at the thought. “Don’t look so scared,” she said.
“I’m not scared of anything,” he said in that calm tone he had when he said something that was impossible.
“You’re scared to kiss me,” she argued gently.
“No, I’m not,” he said in that matter-of-fact voice. “I just don’t want to offend you.”
Carla held the inner door open. Max held the outer open. She looked into his pale blue eyes and then at his white cheeks. He seemed to be such a kind man that he was hardly real at all. Maybe he was actually sent by God. He had done all those good things, saved all those people, he had come to her and soothed her and yet he took no credit.
“Do you believe in God?” she asked. “I mean for real. You don’t think there’s anything?”
“There are lots of things. I just don’t believe any of them are God.”
That’s what a true angel would say, she decided. It’s just how God would do his works and test her faith. Not that she thought him supernatural. She believed Max was a real person, but glowing with goodness like an angel. She liked him. More than that—at that moment she understood she could easily fall in love with him. But she felt if she encouraged him to make love to her that would be a sin and destroy her.
“You’re right,” she said, testing him. “I don’t want to be kissed. I don’t want you to do anything—but—but I want to go with you the next time you go for a drive.”
He was not offended. He smiled with his lips shut. He was as sweet and brave as an angel. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Carla,” he said.
18
Max found Debby in her black tights, sweaty and beautiful, seated in a chair near their bed, a wing chair that was usually draped with her clothes, but rarely sat in. He stopped a few feet into the room and readied himself to tell her. He hadn’t said hello.
Nor did she. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, as if it were a warning.
“I took Carla Fransisca for a drive.”
Debby smiled, a private look of amusement. “Again?” she said. “How’s she doing?” The edges of her hair were sleek and dark from perspiration. So were the tops of her tights. The fabric seemed to cling even tighter for it, a new skin for her tall lean body. In the black fabric she was a lovely panther.
“I’m in love with her.” He had hurried home, chased by this feeling. Keeping it secret even for the ride uptown had felt corrupting.
Debby sighed. She reached for a towel that Max hadn’t noticed before, lying on the floor beside the chair. As she stretched for it she groaned. She hooked it with a few fingers, flipped it up, caught it with her arm and stood. All in a single movement, a graceful talented movement.
She was a living work of art—that was what he had fallen in love with. He had been wrong. It was unfair to her.
“You’re in love with her?” Debby asked, more as a wondering repetition than a protest.
“Yes. Nothing’s going on. But I’m definitely in love with her and I didn’t want to lie about it.” He knew he sounded idiotic. And mean. “I’m sorry. Not that I’m in love with her, but that I have to hurt you.”
“I don’t think I can live with this much longer, Max.” She was upset. Her face showed only a little tightening, but that apparent calm meant the wound was deep and fresh. She walked toward the bathroom door and said loudly as she sought its refuge: “It’s too crazy.” She shut the door hard as if she had made a final decision.
She was right: her response was how the world ought to work. If he didn’t love Debby then living with her was crazy.
And Jonah?
Max had come straight to the bedroom on entering his apartment. He hadn’t glanced down the hall to check if Jonah was home. Would he be at this hour on a Wednesday? Was today after-school computer? It used to be that Max knew where and what his son was doing at all times.
Going into the living room Max heard the overture of one of his son’s favorite video games playing faintly from the hallway leading to his son’s room. Should he tell him that he wanted to divorce his mother? He was afraid of that, more afraid than he had felt of anything since the crash. Yet keeping it secret might be impossible. Could he spend time with Jonah and not reveal it somehow?
But Max wanted to see Jonah no matter how awkward or risky. Get him to take a walk over to the computer store and see their new games; or maybe to the bookstore to buy him a science fiction novel; or throw a football in Riverside Park, fighting the wind and broken glass.
Max had reached Jonah’s door when Kenny, Jonah’s closest friend at school, came out and nearly ran him over.
“Hi, Mr. Klein,” he said as he went past. There was a black stripe of ink running down his cheek, as if he were a scholarly Apache warrior. “I need a drink before we fight the Meka Turtle.”
From his room Jonah called out: “The dreaded Disguised Meka Turtle.”
“Hi, Jonah,” Max said, looking in. Jonah was sitting only a foot or so from the small television in his room, a set used more for video games than watching programs.
“Hi, Dad,” Jonah said fast and melodiously, as if he were a bird chirping. “Mom’s in the shower. She said to tell you he’ll be here at four.”
“Who?” Max said, wondering at his child’s sudden competence with the world, its errands and relationships.
“Byron,” Jonah said.
“He’s coming here?”
“She said you were expecting him.” Jonah made a helpless hands-up-toward-the-sky gesture—a miniature of one of his mother’s mannerisms. “I don’t know. Anyway that’s the message.”
Jonah was a three-quarter-scale man, freed of Max, and yet always bound to him. Max’s heart ached for him. What will he get out of my survival that my father’s death robbed me of? he thought. Nothing but what living parents bring—harassment, and soon, disillusionment.
“I forgot about it,” Max said. “I don’t want to see him,” he added, almost calling it out to Jonah.
Jonah studied the frozen image on his television screen—a video game paused. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t blame you.”
“I’d rather do something with you,” Max said, painfully aware of how self-conscious he sounded, perhaps even dishonest to Jonah’s ears, although Max was telling the truth.
“It’s okay,” Jonah said casually. “I’m busy.”
Kenny returned, brushing past Max in a hurry, carrying two glasses of seltzer, spilling them a little. “Magic elixir to kill the Turtle,” Kenny said.
Jonah took one of the glasses and sipped it, watching his father. “Dad…?” he asked after a swallow. He gestured at Max, his mouth open wide, almost pleading.
“What?”
“Do you want something else? We’re playing here. Do you want to watch?”
“Do you want me to watch?” Max asked, feeling as simple as a child.
“I don’t care,” Jonah said.
“Makes me nervous,” Kenny said in a low but audible tone.
“Okay,” Max agreed and left. He returned to the living room and listened to hear if Debby’s shower was still running. It was. They w
ould have to discuss living arrangements. Carla didn’t want him anyway, so why should he move out unless Debby really couldn’t stand him being around? They could maintain the illusion for Jonah, like the joke about the Jewish couple who suffer through sixty-five years of loveless marriage before consulting a divorce lawyer because they wanted to wait until the children were dead.
But if I’m not afraid of death, why should I fear my son’s pain?
The intercom buzzed. The doorman told him Byron was coming up; the front door bell rang a moment later. Byron bustled in with a large portfolio made of handsome black leather, an item so expensive and fine that Max would never have had the nerve to buy it for himself.
“I brought my new design for a shopping mall and a school. They’re really good, I think, and you know what? I think they’re more like your stuff.” Byron had walked into the living room. He knelt beside the large square coffee table (too awkward for the space. Max had told Debby, but she insisted) and was unzipping the case. “I don’t mean they look like your buildings. I mean they could really get built.”
“Why don’t you ask your father to build them?” Max wasn’t sarcastic—he believed Byron’s father had the necessary resources and vanity.
“He doesn’t like my new stuff,” Byron was matter-of-fact. “Well, he sort of likes the school.” Byron let go of the top of the portfolio, allowing its spine to break open, spreading the contents across the entire surface of the table. He lifted one of his computer printouts from the scattered mess. “He says he doesn’t approve of malls. Here’s the school. It’s a high school. This is my really cool idea—” Byron spread himself over the drawing to reach a far corner of it.
“But your father could build them, couldn’t he?” Max went over to the windows, the new single-pane windows that the co-op had put in. They had not been refitted with anything like the seamlessness of Manny’s work. Carla had told Max she was angry at her husband but she was also loyal to him. That was sad for Max and yet in spite of what he should feel about a rival he was struck again by Manny’s skill and meticulousness. Manny had done all that work on their apartment by himself, Carla told Max while they were driving on the Newport Mall’s elevated parking lot. As she explained that Manny had taught himself those skills to be promoted to handyman, Max noticed the vibrations of the mall’s concrete, fairly severe vibrations that were due to shoddy engineering.
Byron explicated his sketches at length, his words blurring together in his excitement. Max seated himself on the windowsill and distanced himself from the boy’s blueprints and his speech. He thought about Manny’s workmanship in Little Italy and resented Byron, resented this child who was being indulged to blow up his ideas into grandiose and useless monuments to himself, who was being encouraged to learn quickly and carelessly and who might very well one day design a famous building—like the Hancock in Boston, a huge sleek building with windows that fell out by the dozens.
“You’re a child,” Max interrupted the boy’s lecture.
Byron paused. His arms were spread, his towhead bowed. He lifted it slowly. The hair had been recently cut in a shape that neatly framed his eager face. He looked up at Max, his high cheeks shining. “I know I’m a child.” He bobbed his chin, irritated, as if daring Max to continue this dangerous line of thought.
“It’s ridiculous for you to draw these things without having any idea of the engineering, of the practical problems involved.”
Byron nodded, his lips squashed together in a disgusted frown. He pushed himself off the coffee table, sliding on his belly. The drawing of the mall slid off with him onto the floor. Byron settled on his knees. He held his head in his hands and shook it sorrowfully. “Not this,” Byron said. “You’re not going to do this.”
“Yes. This. Whatever this is. It’s no trick to draw a picture and say here’s a high school, here’s a mall. Buildings aren’t hard to imagine or draw—what’s hard is to get someone to build them and then make sure they actually stand, to make them not only look good but also make sense so that people can use them. And will want to use them.” Max had propelled himself off the windowsill. He paced away from Byron and considered leaving the room. He was upset and angry at the child. He was close to saying too much. Yet he turned back to see if he had had an effect.
Byron got to his feet. He was self-possessed. “I’ve heard you say that it’s people who screw up buildings,” he said in a clear ringing voice. He looked pleased at catching the master in a contradiction.
Max got on his haunches to be level with the boy, speak to him face-to-face. “The things I say, the things anyone says about their work, are never really true. The troubles I have in my work are too involved with what I can’t do and what the world won’t let me that I can’t speak of them honestly. But I can tell you that it’s the practical problems that make architecture a great art form. Buildings have to work. A painting doesn’t have to support a hundred people dancing. A sculpture doesn’t have to have running water and toilets. Look at your idea of a swimming pool—” Max pointed to a drawing that had fallen halfway off the coffee table. “It’s neat to put it on the top floor and cover it with glass windows—only an ordinary floor wouldn’t support the weight and it would cost too much to have the extra support and the heating in winter would cost too much and the glass itself would cost too much. Anyone can imagine beautiful things. That isn’t talent. Talent is making beautiful things work. You don’t know how to make them work. And you’re not interested in finding out. You just want to show off. You just want adults to say—isn’t he bright? Isn’t he talented? And the reason you want that is because your father doesn’t know any other way of loving you except by believing that you’re talented. He’s scared he won’t love you if you’re ordinary and so you’re scared to be ordinary.” Max knew he had said too much. He clenched his hands and swallowed, trying to hold himself in, to stop the flow of hurtful talk.
However, Byron wasn’t hurt. He didn’t back away. He moved closer to Max while he listened to the lecture. His high cheeks seemed to lift his mouth into a grin. His thin eyebrows rose up and merged with the edges of his haircut. When Max finished, Byron nodded to himself as if he had come to a conclusion. “You’re jealous of me,” he said mildly.
“Jealous of you?” Max rocked back on his heels and tilted too far to the right. He put out a hand to steady himself. The pantomime of being off balance was a good reflection of how he felt. Max assumed Byron meant that Max was jealous Byron had a rich father. “Jealous of what?” he asked to be sure.
“That I’m so good at it and I’m just a kid.” Byron gestured to his drawings. One of them had slid too far off the coffee table; it began a slow and noisy descent to the floor. They both watched it drop without making a move.
After the paper had settled, Max said softly and gently: “You’re not good. You’re precocious. Maybe someday you will be good, but right now you’re simply doing something ordinary at an early age.”
“You’re jealous,” Byron nodded his head up and down, grinning. “Yes, you are.”
“Listen to me.” Max took him by his narrow shoulders. The firm grip stilled Byron. His eyes were alarmed; they stared into Max’s, their usual conviction flickering. “You’re very bright and I’m sure you’ll be successful and your father loves you. You don’t have to pretend to be grown-up. You don’t have to do great grown-up things for your father to love you.”
Byron shrugged Max’s hands off. He swaggered away, skidding onto his knees and sliding to the fallen drawings. He picked them up carelessly and shoved them into the portfolio. “My dad,” he said as if it were of no consequence, “is a wimp.”
Max assumed he had misheard. “What did you say?” he asked. He was still on his haunches, an adult cut in half. He stood up; suddenly, he had to be tall.
Byron was done with his sloppy cleaning. He flipped the portfolio together and zipped it up recklessly. The zipper buzzed shut. “He’s a wimp.” Byron faced Max. “He’s even scared of my mom.”
Max slapped the boy. His hand was already back at his side before Max was conscious of the action. He had hit Byron hard. The child’s head remained turned to the side where the blow had pushed it. White ghosts of Max’s fingers still burned on the clean new skin.
“My God,” Max mumbled.
Byron’s face gradually pivoted back toward Max. His eyes were awash with tears and yet they looked fearlessly inward at something ugly. Byron’s mouth trembled but made no sound.
Max shivered. He was cold.
The sun came across his jaw, bobbing through the plane’s windows. He glanced at Jeff and made a decision—I’m going to sit with that abandoned child so he will not die an orphan. Max saw the look on Jeff’s face as he left him. Jeff’s eyes were startled and frightened. He mouthed something at Max, a plea…
Max understood his partner’s last look—Jeff wanted me to stay with him. He needed me.
Byron was gone. He heard wailing.
Debby was shouting: “Max! What’s going on?”
She came out of the bedroom with her hair wet, wearing only a towel. Max shook himself, like a dog drying off, to wake up from the memory.
He had forgotten exactly who he was or where he was or what time in earth’s history he was living in. His first real thought was that he was living on the Upper West Side and that his apartment needed to be painted. Then he noticed Byron by the front door. From the angle he had of the foyer, Max could only see Byron’s legs. He moved until he had a full view. Byron was spread on the floor, leaning his head against the door, clutching his portfolio and sobbing. Debby came beside Max muttering or mumbling something—Max didn’t pay attention. He smelled fragrant shampoo.
Max and Debby approached the weeping child together. She talked while they moved, saying things to both Max and Byron. Her eyes looked scared. Max was curious whether the marks from his slap would still be on Byron’s face.
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