Byron lifted his head from the door. He looked at Debby. He paused his sobbing and shouted: “I wanna go home!” There were no marks, only tears.
“Okay. Max will take you home,” Debby said soothingly.
“He’s angry,” Byron said and sobbed again.
“You take him home,” Max said to Debby. Even he was shocked and frightened by the cold fury in his voice. “I don’t want to have anything to do with him.”
Carla was downstairs waiting for him the next day. She smiled at the sight of his black Saab, bleached gray in spots by cold and dirt. Her eyes were lively and her hair was organized somehow—although still looking wild, black and lustrous. She likes me, Max thought and felt as proud as a teenage lover.
“So where are we going?” she said, bustling in, her down coat swishing. She pulled the door shut with a bang and grabbed the seat belt, pulling it across her chest in a hurry. Today, all of her movements had energy.
A dark-skinned man came out of her building, walked up to the curb, rested one foot on a fire hydrant and stared at Max. He was short and broad; his hair was a dulled black, straight and slicked back as if it were a skintight cap. He wore a gray uniform with a name sewn in script over his breast pocket. He didn’t have a coat in the freezing air and he didn’t shiver or blanch. He was still and ominous.
“Who’s that?” Max said although he knew.
Carla had to look; she didn’t know he was there. She had been concentrated on fastening the seat belt. She glanced up and frowned a little. She said in a disparaging tone: “That’s Manny.” She finished buckling herself in and said: “So where to?”
Max returned the stare of her sentinel husband. He wondered: Will I have to fight him to get her?
He drove to the Staten Island ferry.
“Is this safe?” she asked with a sly smile as they were being guided in to park their car in the ferry’s wide belly.
“No,” Max said, not smiling. “It’s had accidents. I think there are more boating accidents than with any other kind of vehicle.” He reached the spot where the attendants wanted him to park. He shut off the engine.
“I can’t swim,” Carla said. She wasn’t smiling anymore but she didn’t sound scared.
“I’d like to make this ferry sound especially dangerous, but it isn’t. I wanted to show you the dockyard on Staten Island where old ships are hauled to be scrapped for junk. Besides, we’ll get a good view of the city on the ride.” Max opened his door.
“I know that. My girlfriend lives on Staten Island,” Carla said and for a moment seemed not to be willing to move.
“Do you want to visit her?”
“No,” Carla laughed. She opened her door. “She’d ask me a million questions about you later and that would drive me crazy.”
They got out. The other passengers were heading for the enclosed deck. Max took Carla’s arm—he could feel her fragile elbow inside the down of her coat—to the open area at the back of the parked cars so they could see Manhattan retreat as the ferry moved into open water.
A gust of wind blew across them. His face felt paralyzed by the cold.
“We’re gonna freeze to death,” Carla said but she didn’t make a move to go inside.
Max had spent all night alone in a hotel waiting to be with Carla, expecting that she would make him feel happy. He had spent the night alone in a hotel because when Debby returned from taking Byron home, they had a fight and Max had walked out.
Debby had come in, stood at the closet and told Max right away, “His mother was very angry. I think you’re going to be hearing from them.”
Max didn’t answer. He studied his wife to see if the mean truth he had told her had left a mark on her face. She was composed.
“I want you to call somebody,” she said, turning her back on him to hang up the dramatic black cape she wore for a winter coat. She was angry. Everything about her posture and face and tone of voice told him that, but, as had been true since the crash, she was unnaturally holding it in, holding it like a position on the barre. “It doesn’t have to be your psychiatrist,” she said to the closet and then faced Max again. “Maybe you should call Bill Perlman.”
“Bill? You call him Bill?”
“I told you,” she had to swallow to contain her exasperation. “I’ve seen him a few times. He’s helpful to talk to. But it doesn’t have to be him. It can be your mother. Or maybe a friend. You haven’t spoken to Larry or Paul—”
“They’re not real friends.”
“Then who is?” Debby insisted.
Jeff. Jeff was the answer. He was the person Max would have talked to.
“You’re getting worse,” Debby said.
“I talked to somebody,” Max said.
“Who?” Debby asked. Curiosity wrinkled her high forehead.
“You,” Max said. He reached past her and took his coat from the closet. He held it in front of him and looked at her, asking her to give him a reason not to go.
She tried to hold her calm pose. “I can’t help you,” she said but the words were churned up and suddenly she lost her grip on the barre. She yelled: “You tell me you’re in love with a woman you just met! What am I supposed to say to that!” She seemed relieved for a moment and then sagged into despair. “I don’t know what you want from me,” she added in a low note of resignation.
“I’m going to a hotel,” Max said. “Just for tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon.”
He had checked into the Carlyle. He had fantasized spending the night there since his youth when he learned that it was JFK’s favorite hotel in New York. Later on he read that Kennedy put Jackie in one suite and had his mistress in the adjoining room. That fact didn’t make him less curious.
Max asked for and got a room four floors down from the famous suites in the tower. It was a disappointment. Although the elegant room wasn’t pompous like the Plaza, it wasn’t the good old days either. It had the modern luxury of a video recorder and a CD player. The desk told him a fax machine could be sent up if needed. All that made Max think of business, of what travel had become in the modern world.
He hardly slept, dozing off near dawn and yet waking early. He spent most of the tedious night staring out his window at lights in nearby buildings that stared back at him. All night he waited anxiously to meet Carla.
But he wasn’t happy now that he was with Carla.
They leaned against the rail of the ferry and watched the city first grow bigger and wider as they pulled out into the water. Gradually the huge buildings shrank against the widening water and sky, their tops narrowing into needles lost in the clouds, their foundations revealed as resting on only a thin sliver of support. Manhattan was merely a wafer floating on the steel water. The massive works of the city seemed to be a carefully drawn miniature at the bottom of a huge canvas. He felt himself shrink.
“It is beautiful,” she said wonderingly, as if she had never seen the skyline before.
Max looked at her face, her young skin even tighter as it clenched against the freezing wind. He didn’t have her really. Any more than he had anything. Maybe he was dead after all.
“I had a fight with my wife,” he told her.
“Oh yeah?” Carla smiled. She turned away from the open water. “I had a fight with Manny.” She shivered and squinted at the wind’s force.
“You’re too cold,” Max said. They went inside, bought coffees, and sat on a bench. The hot coffees were in thin Styrofoam cups; holding them hurt. Max burned his tongue on the first sip.
“What did you fight with your wife about?” Carla asked. She was hunched over her coffee, bracing the cup between her knees, warming her hands with its steam.
“I told her I’m in love with you.”
Carla sat up straight and turned to look at him full in the face. Her circular eyebrows raised; up there they made an even rounder shape. “You’re crazy.”
“That’s what she thinks.”
“Well, she’s right. Jesus,” Carla turned away and
shook her head.
“It’s what I feel. I’m not going to lie about what I feel.”
“There are some things you’re supposed to lie about,” Carla said energetically, looking at him again. “You gotta stop doing that to people.”
“You want me to start lying to you?” Max argued. “You want me to tell you you’re safe when you go out? You want me to tell you Bubble’s up there looking down at us wearing little wings?”
She slapped his arm with the back of her right hand. “Shut up,” she said casually and shook her head again. “I’m talking about them.” She smiled slyly. “The living.” She nodded at the window, at the water and sloppy landscape of Staten Island. “They can’t take it. You have to give the rest of them a break. I’m as crazy as you are—you can’t go by me.”
“What did you fight with Manny about?” Max edged closer to her until he felt her coat against him, up and down his side. He noticed her ear—it was little and had the ideal shape of a prototype.
“I told him after my mother left I was going to sleep in Bubble’s room. I went in there and started to pack things up. They had kept everything in his room the way it was because they were afraid I would go crazy if they changed anything. And I’m glad they left it so I could do it. I went in yesterday after I saw you and I started packing his little things. I was crying like crazy. But I didn’t mind crying and I was getting it done. My mother goes and hides in the kitchen. She was yelling at me from there. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Then Manny comes in and tells me to stop. I told him to leave me alone, to leave me alone for good. He said it was your fault. He said you were a bad influence.” She laughed mirthlessly for a moment. “A bad influence. You know, like I’m a teenager and he’s my pop. ‘You’re running around with the wrong crowd,’ ” she imitated a deep, rough-voiced man.
Max smiled. He felt sorry for Manny. Manny had had a wife and a son when he put them on that plane and now both were lost to him. “I am a bad influence from his point of view,” Max said.
“He’s got no right to talk about who’s bad.” She darkened. Her high cheeks and deep-set eyes seemed to become shields; behind them, still visible to Max, she thought something black.
Max was quiet. Staten Island’s dock, a dull brown nest, limited their view. He felt better, vindicated in his feelings toward her. He could say the worst to her and she accepted him. The uneasy feeling he had moments ago—that he had been mistaken about Carla—was gone. “Let’s get in the car,” he said.
This time, when Carla strapped herself in she did it slowly and sadly. “I’m gonna tell you something nobody knows,” she said quietly as they drove off the ferry. Max had studied a map at the Carlyle. He turned right aiming to stay along the water if he could, hoping to find the famous shipyard. He wasn’t sure if the street allowed a view. “Just before the crash,” Carla continued. “Do you remember? We could see the runway. It looked like we were gonna be okay?” Her voice was tremulous, as if she were weeping in her throat. Her eyes were dry. She said shakily, “I let go of Bubble.”
Max had never heard a voice in so much pain. He stopped the car immediately, right after a curve. He parked beside a white seawall, tall enough to block the view of the harbor. He shut off the engine and faced her. Carla was staring ahead, through the windshield. Her hands and arms were out forming a circle, holding something invisible in her lap.
“Do you remember? Or am I crazy? Wasn’t it safe? Didn’t it look like we were gonna make it?” She stared through the windshield, focused on nothing. Her questions could have been spoken to anyone, to God or her dead child.
Max answered. “Yes. Everyone thought it was going to be okay. I read in the papers that even the pilot thought we were going to make it.” But I knew, Max thought. I knew otherwise.
“Then didn’t the wheels hit the ground? Didn’t you think we had landed?” She was urgent, scared he might contradict her.
“Yes.” Max undid his seat belt and shifted to be closer to her. She didn’t turn in his direction—he was near to the smooth skin around her lips, to her full pouting mouth. He felt sorry for her and he wanted to make love to her. He agreed softly, “Everything—for one second—seemed okay.”
“I—” she announced herself loudly and then her lips trembled.
“You…?” Max whispered encouragingly to her transfixed profile.
“I had Bubble in my lap. I had crossed my arms over him like a seat belt, I had the fingers crossed—like this—” she locked her hands together in a fist, like a child praying, the skin turning white and the nails red from the pressure. “And I let go to clap,” she did it now, tears coming to her eyes, although her voice was enraged. “I clapped.” She released the fingers, put the tips together gently—demure pats, polite applause. “Then we hit and I lost him. My hands were open. There was nothing holding on to him.” She whispered in horror, “I was safe in my belt and he wasn’t.” Tears were flooding her eyes but she wasn’t sobbing. She stared ahead at her memory.
“I see,” Max said. “So it was your fault.”
She snapped her head toward him. He had her full attention. The tears stopped. Carla’s mouth sagged open; her eyes were wild and scared. She opened her lips in a mute plea.
“It wasn’t that the accident killed your baby,” Max said into her horrified look. “You did it.”
“I wasn’t holding him!” she whispered, terrified, as if the words damned her.
“You killed your baby,” Max continued, fascinated by the inexorable, inarguable logic of her guilt.
“His seat belt didn’t work—I was supposed to hold him—did they tell you that?”
“Yes, my lawyer told me about your seat belt. He’s your lawyer too and he told me about your case.”
“I didn’t tell him the truth. I didn’t tell him I let go.” Carla’s head got erect. Her deep-set eyes stared out at Max, scared. “Manny wants all this money and I have to talk in court.”
“I understand,” Max said. “You’re a liar also.” She not only had killed her child, she was going to collect for it, compounding neglect with greed.
“I’m very weak,” she said and her body no longer fought against her terror. She dropped her head and shut her eyes. She locked her fingers together, pressed the double fist against her lips and whispered furiously, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She repeated the prayer over and over without pause, until the words came so fast and quiet that they were no better than the frightened moans of a child.
“Carla,” Max said. He touched her shoulder and shook it gently to rouse her.
She was oblivious. She keened in the seat, her seat belt swishing along with the whispering words of terror and longing: “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
He tried again, shaking her shoulder more vigorously. “Carla. Stop. It’s not your fault.”
She didn’t react to his touch or his voice. She rocked and prayed, her eyes fixed on her clenched hands, her head bowed as if ready for a blow.
Max’s mouth went dry. His tongue felt enormous, stuck, blocking him from speaking. She was lost. He had destroyed her.
What an arrogant meddling fool. He felt contempt and rage at himself. She had no defenses against his fanciful ideas. She wasn’t ambivalent about the child she had lost. She loved her baby. Her pathos wasn’t diluted by ironies or insights. To feel such a loss was unimaginable to him.
No it wasn’t. Losing Jonah would hurt him that much. And no psychobabble on earth or television could convince Max that it hadn’t been his fault. The universe had given him a son to protect and any accident was his responsibility.
He had done wrong. How could he fix it? What could he do with Carla? How c
ould he explain this to her husband and mother? What did it mean about him that he could so casually harm someone, someone he claimed to love?
Max couldn’t speak with his tongue so thick. The heated air of the car was too hot for his nostrils to absorb the oxygen.
Carla’s dreadful prayer hurt his ears: “Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Max thought it so natural for her to pray to another mother, to a perfect mother.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God—”
Max opened his door and got out. The cold cleared his eyes of pain. Carla didn’t react to his departure.
“—pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Max shut the car door on her.
The hour of our death—the words infected his brain. The hour of our death. Had it come at last? What was Max connected to if he had driven this woman—the only person he had been able to feel comfortable with in all these months—into madness?
Max went to the trunk and opened it. Folded neatly in the corner beside the red plastic box of emergency tools was a plaid blanket. They used to cover Jonah with it when he was little. Max smelled the fabric. He imagined he smelled the sweet dank odor of a child.
The hour of our death. Were they dead anyway? What was the difference?
Max lifted the emergency tool box. The jumper cables inside were so thick the top didn’t close completely. Max felt the weight of the box in his hands, judging whether it was enough. Too light. He looked around and saw—near the base of the seawall, amidst a broken bottle, a squashed beer can, and a destroyed transistor radio—two partially broken bricks.
He emptied the plastic box of the jumper cables, gloves, tire gauge, the can of pressurized air, black electrical tape and other sundries. He carried the red box over to the bricks and put them in. They fit perfectly and gave it a good weight, in Max’s judgment, close enough to what would be needed.
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