She told him, just as she had told Brillstein, only this time she had no tears, no unhappiness about it. Manny stayed in his crouch while listening, his hands hidden, his head down. He peered out at her from under the hood of his dull black hair. He was like a cornered animal deciding whether to believe the voice coaxing him to come out from his hiding place.
At first Manny said nothing when she was done. He looked away from her and down at the floor. When Manny did talk he was hoarse. “He crashed the car to prove that to you?”
“I was out of my mind,” she said.
“And now?”
“And now…” she ate another french fry. She could feel the grains of salt, there was so much of it. She sipped the sweet soda. “And now I’m not,” she said at last.
Carla didn’t get to see Max. Brillstein told her that the doctors had decided to let Max’s skull be, at least for now. They were optimistic, despite his high fever. He was still in intensive care and couldn’t be visited.
“Is his wife here?” Carla asked.
Brillstein said she was; and added that she had asked him to make sure she didn’t meet Carla.
“Why’s that?” Manny said. “She thinks it’s Carly’s fault?”
Brillstein didn’t look Manny in the eye. “No, no, no, no,” he said so fast the nos were hummed. “She’s upset and frightened—she wants to be alone. She doesn’t want to see anybody.”
Carla knew from the lawyer’s manner that Max’s wife must have told him about Max’s crazy avowal of love.
She hates me, Carla thought, and understood.
“Let’s go home,” she said to Manny. She felt tired all of a sudden. Although her body didn’t hurt, she sensed that it would soon.
“One thing,” Brillstein said. He cleared his throat and looked down. He had put the flats of his hands together, the fingertips prayerfully touching his mouth. After a moment of communion he raised his eyes to look at her decisively. He parted his hands. “Don’t talk about—you know, what we discussed—about your worries in terms of the accident. Don’t talk about any of that with anyone else. Just for the moment. Talking with your priest is all right. But not with friends. Just for the next few days. I need to think about it.”
“It’ll hurt the case,” Manny said in a grave voice. “We won’t talk about it.”
Carla had expected this. She was on her feet, ready to go. She sipped the last of her Pepsi. The back of her neck felt loose and tired. She had to get home and lie down. She wanted to see her mother. She wanted to apologize for yelling yesterday when she was cleaning up Bubble’s room.
“I’d better get you home,” Manny said. He took her elbow.
“Wait,” she said and gathered herself. “I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to hear any speeches. I don’t care about the money. I don’t care what happens. I’m telling the truth. To anyone I feel like.”
For a moment Brillstein was eager to answer. His eyes opened as wide as they could. They were still small but they sparkled. He even went so far as to part his lips to talk—but then he squeezed them together, rolled them between his teeth, and made his mouth lipless.
Manny backed a step away from Carla. He shifted to face her completely. He had his arms low and out at his sides, setting the weight of his thick body onto his thighs, like a sumo wrestler ready to absorb a blow. “Are you crazy, woman?”
“No, Manny.” Carla took a breath and it became a yawn. She was so tired. “I’m not fighting you about it. I’m not fighting with anybody. But nothing will change my mind.”
“Don’t worry,” Brillstein said anxiously to Manny. He leaned forward and touched Manny’s left arm gingerly, careful as he tried to soothe the beast. “I don’t think it matters. Let me work with it for a few days.”
“No!” Manny shouted. Brillstein blanched. His hands went up immediately as if Manny were pointing a gun at him. Manny stamped his right foot. It had never occurred to Carla before, but her husband resembled a bull, with his thick body, glowering eyes, and that tight helmet of black hair covering a ramming head. He had no horns—but otherwise he was a bull. “No,” he repeated in a deep tone. He sounded very Spanish. “They killed my son. They were responsible.” He pointed to Carla. “Not her!”
“Take me home, Manny.” Carla walked slowly to the door. She wondered where Max’s wife was waiting. Was there a different waiting room? Or was she allowed into intensive care?
Brillstein tried to soothe Manny with words: “Of course they’re responsible. They’re going to pay. Don’t worry.”
“They have to pay.” Manny’s voice sounded at least an octave lower than was normal.
“Take me home,” Carla said again. This time Manny came.
In the parking lot, as they got into his father’s car, Manny said, “Don’t worry. I’m going to drive slow.”
“Drive the way you want,” she told him honestly. “I don’t care.” On the way home she fell asleep.
The car’s tires hummed on a metal bridge, rumbling underneath her dream. She walked into a white room dressed in a red T-shirt, very bright red and very long. It covered her knees.
Bubble was at her left breast, feeding. He looked up at her thoughtfully while his mouth worked. She felt him pull the sustenance out of her chest, on a string from her heart.
He blinked his eyes.
He was no longer a newborn. Now he stood a few feet away, a toddler. He bent his knees, his chubby legs wrinkling, and laughed hard, showing a mouth of tiny white teeth.
What’s so funny? she tried to ask, but no words came out. She was frustrated.
They were outside, on a lawn that rolled down and away, disappearing into sky, a pale sky, almost white. Bubble came up close, his face as big as the world. She felt his breath on her neck.
“I’m going bed,” he said.
He ran away from her—too quickly—until a man’s hand stopped him. Bubble took the hand. It belonged to Max. He smiled back at her.
“I’ll get him home safe,” Max said.
Everything was going to be all right, she knew. She tried to tell Max she understood but her mouth still couldn’t make sound.
Max led Bubble away. Bubble was pleased to be with him. Hand in hand they walked off the green earth into pale sky.
20
After nine days in the hospital Max’s head still ached—at least dully—all the time. And he felt dizzy if he walked more than a few steps. He couldn’t see that well either. Everything in his room seemed to have been covered in cellophane and out his window the world looked foggy even when the sun shined. They said his vision would clear up; but he was worried.
When he first regained consciousness, in the dimmed agony he could feel through the fever, drugs, and mental confusion, he regretted what he had done. Later in the week, though, when Carla came to see him, he didn’t. She had recovered herself. Her eyes were bright and her thin body had energy, almost too much energy. Her darting movements—from the side of his bed to the tray to get him something—made his head hurt. She talked nonstop, too, about how she had finished packing Bubble’s room, giving the stuff away to the Church, how she had visited his grave with her mother and afterwards they had kissed and made up for all their crazy arguments of the last six months. “Poor Mama,” Carla said. “I sent her home to be with her new husband. She’s had no time to be with him. I can’t believe how patient she was with me.”
Max enjoyed the lively talk of her awakening—as long as she kept still. When others visited their speeches hurt even if they did keep still, because he had to remember things. It seemed that to remember used the bruised part of his brain; listening to Carla’s present life required a section that had gone unscathed. The painless present, he called it, and discouraged visits from the past, especially his former office staff, his friends, his mother and sister, Debby’s relatives and even Debby herself.
Debby was furious with him, anyway, and probably didn’t want to stay much longer than her daily hour-long visits. She made no recri
minations the first few days until Max had stabilized. On the fourth day she sent Jonah to the waiting room with his grandfather. She settled by the window—her back erect, her eyes as alert as a cat waiting for prey—and made a speech. Her long face was composed, her profile backlit by the gray winter light. He couldn’t see her features distinctly at that distance. The fuzziness acted as a flattering camera lens—she looked as young as when they first met.
“I’ve had a long talk with Bill Perlman.”
“Another one?” Max said.
Debby ignored him. “He told me to stop treating you with kid gloves. I’ve been scared to just say what I—”
“Say what you want,” Max said. It would be a relief to hear her anger. Let the worst happen: it wasn’t as terrible as he once thought.
Debby cleared her throat. “I know you think there’s nothing wrong with you since the plane crash. But there is something wrong. Terribly wrong. You don’t seem to want to live anymore. At least not with me. And you don’t want to do any of the things that we used to do together. You don’t want to work, you don’t want to make love, you don’t want to…be with me. You don’t even want to go to the movies with me. You can’t even bear to sit in the dark next to me doing nothing…” She dropped her head. It was an elegant movement: only her chin and face fell; her long neck remained straight. She was a grief-stricken swan. “Jonah feels you don’t want to be with him.”
Max’s nose had been broken in the crash. It was an afterthought for the doctors and a secondary pain for Max. Yet the bridge of his nose throbbed from time to time and it did then. He wondered if the pulsing signified his body was healing. The doctors hadn’t done much for his broken nose: a tape, running across from one cheek to the other, held what there was in place.
“Of course something is terribly wrong,” Max said in a moment, once the throbbing stopped.
“Why won’t you see your shrink? Or any shrink. You can’t tell me you’re happy. You used to go to a shrink when you were happy. Why don’t you go now when you really need help?”
“I needed help to be happy,” Max said. “I don’t need help to feel sad.”
Debby twisted violently in her chair and banged the hospital’s metal radiator cover with her foot—it was a sharp stunning movement for someone usually deliberate and graceful. “Damn it, Max! What the fuck are you talking about?” she turned toward him as she rose from the chair. He wasn’t sure, but she seemed to have tears in her eyes. “You tried to kill yourself! How the fuck can you say you don’t need help.”
Of course she was right to be furious: he had given up his end of the bargain, thrown out the contract of their relationship. Why couldn’t she see that she didn’t love him, she loved the faker who pretended to care only about her happiness? He had wanted to be her savior, the compensation for the art she had lost. But really he was a transitional object, a teddy husband, a comfort, not a joy. “I guess—I guess—” he began but he had to stop because of a blinding pain that came across the top of his skull and radiated down to his nose. He actually saw white stars float across the room. He shut his eyes and waited for the pain to pass. He said finally, “I guess you won’t believe me, but I didn’t try to kill myself. I have no intention of dying.”
Debby was back in the chair. He hadn’t seen her move there. She was folded over, her head draped down below her knees. He envied her ability to make art instantly with her body. An art without compromise. “You did it for her,” she said in a mumble to the floor.
“It just came to me. I knew what had to be done. I knew it with Byron also. We all lived through death together and I seem to know how they should live. It’s the first time in my life,” and he discovered he was crying, “that I feel talented.”
His nose stung from the tears. He shut his eyes and swallowed tears. He was floating on the bed. He tried to remember sitting in the plane waiting for the crash, but it wasn’t there. His head hurt instead.
“How did you help Byron?” he heard Debby ask. “By hitting him?”
“No,” Max said and didn’t elaborate. He knew that to her everything he did was crazy. To her, his real self—which he had finally revealed to her—was frightening and mad. He had dimly felt that was the case all along in their marriage; but he had wanted her love and admiration so much that he was willing to live in hiding. “Ask Jonah to come in, okay?”
“Why?” she was on her feet, moving soundlessly and gracefully across the room. He guessed she was pacing; her fluid walk had no tension, however.
He couldn’t face eternity living a lie. He couldn’t die a shadow man.
“What are you going to say to him?” Debby insisted, wandering all the way to the open doorway of the bathroom. “I don’t want you scaring him.”
This made Max angry. He knew she was off balance and not to be held accountable; and yet what right did she have to control what he might say to his son? Concussion or no, Max was still shrewd; he didn’t show his annoyance. He said softly, “First you say I don’t want to spend time with him and then you don’t want me to spend time with him.”
Debby nodded to herself. She turned to the wall and leaned her head against it. “Damn,” she said quietly.
“You can stay and listen,” Max offered. “It’s not a big deal—I just want to talk to him for a minute.”
“What about my question?” she turned back, put her hands behind her, springing off the wall. She rocked on her toes and then back on her heels until she fell against the wall, only to repeat the process with another shove of her hands. It was a girlish and pretty nervousness. “Are you going to talk to a therapist? You know, your lawyer says—” she stopped herself, both the talking and the bouncing off the wall.
“What does Brillstein say?” Max prompted. He thought he knew.
“Answer my question first. Will you talk to somebody?”
“Let’s get divorced. Then you don’t have to concern yourself with whether I’m crazy or not.”
“Why don’t you trust me?” Debby said. Her hands went out in spasm, without grace. “What have I done to you that you don’t trust me?”
“I trust you,” Max lied. It was a necessary lie, perhaps even a truthful lie, but it was the kind of untruth he had given up and it hurt—actually hurt: his head throbbed—to resort to it. Yet he had to. He was in danger from her; and probably from others who believed they loved him. She had almost revealed the jeopardy and instead revealed her guilt. Max tried to sound harmless: “Bring Jonah in for a moment and you’ll see.” At least he wouldn’t have to tell any lies to his son.
While she was gone he checked the small personal phone book Debby had brought him to see if Brillstein’s number was written down. It was. He had to squint to see the numbers clearly.
Jonah came in reluctantly, made even more nervous by an official summons. Earlier he had fidgeted in a chair, averting his eyes from Max’s still bruised face. This time Jonah clung to his mother’s side, head tilted, looking at some point in between the floor and his father.
“Jonah…” Max reached for him with his left hand.
Debby urged him forward. Jonah abruptly rushed to Max and took the offered hand. He bowed his head, staring at the sheets.
As his hand swallowed the small one Max noticed Jonah’s nails were dirty. He squeezed the limp fingers and said, “Did you think I wanted to die?”
Jonah shook his head no and gulped; he didn’t speak; to Max that was a yes.
“I don’t.” Max raised the enclosed hand and shook it. “Look at me.”
Jonah’s face came up. Max was momentarily silenced by their calm and naive concentration. Jonah’s two light brown eyes (the same shade as his mother’s) watched and waited for his history to begin.
“I don’t just happen to be your father,” Max said. “I want to be your father.” Jonah’s eyes stayed open and focused on Max, although water brimmed at the lower lids. “That means I don’t want to die. You can’t lose me because I don’t want to be lost.” He let go of the
small hand.
Jonah stayed his ground, looking fully at his father’s swollen face. The child’s tearful eyes dried up; and after a moment, along with their blank and vulnerable attentiveness, there was a glint of armor.
Max’s mother was next to come with a grievance. He had known she was angry at him from the brevity of her earlier visits. Moments after Debby and Jonah left (they must have coordinated these attacks) his mother entered and dragged the plastic visitor’s chair over to the left side of his bed. She sat down with a firm drop as if she planned to stay for a while. He was glad she had come so close to him; he could see her well from there. “Max,” she said energetically and patted his hand, “everyone says I shouldn’t bring this up. Your sister especially—that’s why I’m here alone. But I think maybe there are a few things a mother knows about her children that even the experts don’t.” There it was again—the hint of discussions with psychologists about his condition. Was it Perlman and Mayer, or just one of them, or others he didn’t know? He wanted to phone Brillstein urgently. He was sure he could see through the lawyer to whatever was their secret plan.
“Really?” Max answered. “When I was a teenager it always seemed to me mothers were the easiest people to fool. Freddy, Andy, Barry and me, we could come in stoned out of our minds, tell you we hadn’t gotten enough sleep and you’d buy it.”
She squinted at him, annoyed. After a moment she slapped his hand. “Don’t be a wise guy,” she said.
“You were fooled because you wanted to be fooled, Mom. I didn’t mean you were gullible.”
“We didn’t know about drugs, that’s all. It never occurred to us. If you had had extra money I’d have known you were a thief. If you had had bruises I’d have known you were in a gang. If you had thrown up your breakfast, I’d have known you were drinking. I could smell the cigarettes on your clothes. But bloodshot eyes? I thought you’d been up all night listening to rock music.”
Fearless Page 31