by Colum McCann
It is, for an instant, as if she has dreamed them into being. That they have come to her, unasked, and then they have stolen away.
She lays the tray down on the table. The teapot slides and a little bubble of tea spurts out. The handbags are there and a single cigarette still burns in the ashtray.
It is then that she hears the voices, and she chides herself. Of course.
How silly of me. The bang of the back door and then the upper roof door in the wind. She must have left it open, they must have felt the breeze.
Down along the corridor. The shapes beyond the upper doorway. She climbs the final few steps, joins them on the roof, all of them leaning out over the wall, looking south. Nothing to see, of course, just a haze and the cupola at the top of the New York General Building.
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—No sign of him?
She knows of course that there could not be, even on the clearest of days, but it is nice to have the women turn to her in unison and shake their heads, no.
—We can try the radio, she says, sliding in behind them. It might be on a news report.
—Good idea, says Jacqueline.
—Oh, no, says Janet. I’d rather not.
—Me neither, says Marcia.
—Probably won’t be on the news.
—Not yet, anyway.
—I don’t think so.
They remain a moment, looking south, as if they might still be able to conjure him up.
—Coffee, ladies? A little tea?
—Lord, says Gloria with a wink, I thought you’d never ask.
—A nibble of something, yes.
—Calm our nerves?
—Yes, yes.
—Okay, Marcia?
—Downstairs?
—Mercy, yes. It’s hotter than a July bride up here.
The women guide Marcia back down the inside stairs, through the maid’s door, into the living room once more, with Janet on one arm, Jacqueline on the other, Gloria behind.
In the armchair ashtray, the cigarette has burned down to the quick, like a man about to break and fall. Claire puts it out. She watches as the women scrunch up tight on the sofa, arms around one another. Enough chairs? How could she have made such a mistake? Should she bring out the beanbag chair from Joshua’s room? Put it on the floor so that her body can spread itself out in his old impression?
This walking man, she can’t shake him. The bubble of discontent in her mind. She is being ungenerous, she knows, but she just can’t get rid of it. What if he hits somebody down below? She has heard that at night there are whole colonies of birds that fly into the World Trade Center buildings, their glass reflection. The bash and fall. Will the walker thump with them?
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Snap to. Enough.
Pull your mind together. Pick up all the feathers. Guide them gently back into the air.
—The bagels are in the bag there, Claire. And there’s doughnuts too.
—Lovely. Thanks.
The small niceties.
—Dearest Lord, look at those!
—Oh, my word.
—I’m fat enough.
—Oh, stop. I only wish I had your figure.
—Take it and run, says Gloria. Bet it spills over!
—No, no, you have a lovely figure. Fabulous.
—Come on!
—I must say, truly.
And a hush around the room for the little white lie. A pullback from the food. They glance at one another. An unfolding of seconds. A siren outside the window. The static broken and thoughts taking shape in their minds, like water in a pitcher.
—So, says Janet, reaching for a bagel. Not to be morbid or anything . . .
—Janet!
— . . . I don’t want to be morbid . . .
—Janet McIniff . . . !
— . . . but you think he fell?
—Ohmigod! Who gave you the sledgehammer?
—Sledgehammer? I just heard the siren and I—
—It’s okay, says Marcia. I’m okay. Really. Don’t worry about me.
—My God! says Jacqueline.
—I’m just asking.
—Really, no, says Marcia. I’m kinda wondering the same myself.
—Oh my God, says Jacqueline, the words stretched out now as if on elastic. I can’t believe you just said that.
Claire wishes now to be removed and off somewhere distant, some beach, some riverbank, some deep swell of happiness, some Joshua place, some little hidden moment, a touch of Solomon’s hand.
Sitting here, absent from them. Letting them close the circle.
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Maybe, yes, it’s just pure selfishness. They did not notice the mezu -
zah on the door, the painting of Solomon, didn’t mention a single thing about the apartment, just launched right in and began. They even walked up to the rooftop without asking. Maybe that’s just the way they do it, or maybe they’re blinded by the paintings, the silverware, the carpets. Surely there were other well- heeled boys packed off to war. Not all of them had flat feet. Maybe she should meet other women, more of her own. But more of her own what? Death, the greatest democracy of them all. The world’s oldest complaint. Happens to us all. Rich and poor. Fat and thin. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons. She feels a pang, a return. Dear Mother, this is just to say that I have arrived safely, the first began. And then at the end he was writing, Mama, this place is a nothing place, take all the places and give me nothing instead. Oh. Oh. Read all the letters of the world, love letters or hate letters or joy letters, and stack them up against the single one hundred and thirty-seven that my son wrote to me, place them end to end, Whitman and Wilde and Wittgen-stein and whoever else, it doesn’t matter—there’s no comparison. All the things he used to say! All the things he could remember! All that he put his finger upon!
That’s what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.
But no, not past, not him, not ever.
Forget the letters. Let our machines fight. You hear me? Let them go at it. Let them stare each other down the wires.
Leave the boys at home.
Leave my boy at home. Gloria’s too. And Marcia’s. Let him walk a tightrope if he wants. Let him become an angel. And Jacqueline’s. And Wilma’s. Not Wilma, no. There was never a Wilma. Janet. Probably a Wilma too. Maybe a thousand Wilmas all over the country.
Just give my boy back to me. That’s all I want. Give him back. Hand him over. Right now. Let him open the door and run past the mezuzah and let him clang down here at the piano. Repair all the pretty faces of the young. No cries, no shrieks, no bleats. Bring them back here now. Why shouldn’t all our sons be in the room all at once? Collapse all the bound-aries. Why shouldn’t they sit together? Berets on their knees. Their slight embarrassment. Their creased uniforms. You fought for our country, McCa_9781400063734_4p_02_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:33 PM Page 108
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why not celebrate on Park Avenue? Coffee or tea, boys? A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
All this talk of freedom. Nonsense, really. Freedom can’t be given, it must be received.
I will not take this jar of ashes.
Do you hear me?
This jar of ashes is not what my son is.
—What’s that now, Claire?
And it’s as if she is rising again from a daydream. She has been watching them, their moving mouths, their mobile faces, but not hearing anything they’ve been saying, some sort of argument about the walking man, about whether the tightrope was attached or not, and she had drifted from it. At
tached to what? His shoe? The helicopter? The sky? She folds and refolds her fingers into one another, hears the crack of them as they pull apart.
You need more calcium in your bones, the good doctor Tonnemann said. Calcium indeed. Drink more milk, your children won’t go missing.
—Are you okay, dear? says Gloria.
—Oh, I’m fine, she says, just a little daydreamy.
—I know the feeling.
—I get that way too sometimes, says Jacqueline.
—Me too, says Janet.
—First thing every morning, says Gloria, I start to dream. Can’t do it at night. I used to dream all the time. Now I can only dream in day-time.
—You should take something for it, says Janet.
Claire cannot recall what she has said—has she embarrassed them, said something silly, out of order? That comment from Janet, as if she should be on meds. Or was that aimed at Gloria? Here, take a hundred pills, it will cure your grief. No. She has never wanted that. She wants to break it like a fever. But what is it that she said? Something about the tightrope man? Did she say it aloud? That he was vulgar somehow?
Something about ashes? Or fashion? Or wires?
—What is it, Claire?
—I’m just thinking about that poor man, she says.
She wants to kick herself for saying it, for bringing him up again. Just when she felt that they could be getting away, that the morning could get McCa_9781400063734_4p_02_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:33 PM Page 109
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back on track again, that she could tell them about Joshua and how he used to come home from school and eat tomato sandwiches, his favorite, or how he never squeezed the toothpaste properly, or how he always put two socks into one shoe, or a playground story, or a piano riff, anything, just to give the morning its balance, but, no, she has shunted it sideways again and brought it back around.
—What man? says Gloria.
—Oh, the man who came here, she says suddenly.
—Who’s that?
She picks a bagel from the sunflower bowl. Looks up at the women.
She pauses a moment, slices through the thick bread, pulls the rest of the bagel apart with her fingers.
—You mean the tightrope man was here?
—No, no.
—What man, Claire?
She reaches across and pours tea. The steam rises. She forgot to put out the slices of lemon. Another failure.
—The man who told me.
—What man?
—The man who told you what, Claire?
—You know. That man.
And then a sort of deep understanding. She sees it in their faces. Quieter than rain. Quieter than leaves.
—Uh huhn, says Gloria.
And then a loosening over the faces of the others.
—Mine was Thursday.
—Mike Junior’s was Monday.
—My Clarence was Monday as well. Jason was Saturday. And Brandon was a Tuesday.
—I got a lousy telegram. Thirteen minutes past six. July twelfth. For Pete.
For Pete. For Pete’s sake.
They all fall in line and it feels right, it’s what she wants to say; she holds the bagel at her mouth but she will not eat; she has brought them back on track, they are returning to old mornings, together, they will not move from this, this is what she wants, and yes, they are comfortable, and even Gloria reaches out now for one of the doughtnuts, glazed and McCa_9781400063734_4p_02_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:33 PM Page 110
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white, and takes a small, polite nibble and nods at Claire, as if to say: Go ahead, tell us.
—We got the call from downstairs. Solomon and I. We were sitting having dinner. All the lights were off. He’s Jewish, you see . . .
Glad to get that one out of the way.
— . . . and he had candles everywhere. He’s not strict, but sometimes he likes little rituals. He calls me his little honeybee sometimes. It started from an argument when he called me a WASP. Can you believe that?
All of it coming out from her, like grateful air from her lungs. Smiles all around, befuddled, yet silence all the same.
—And I opened the door. It was a sergeant. He was very deferent. I mean, nice to me. I knew right away, just from the look on his face. Like one of those novelty masks. One of those cheap plastic ones. His face frozen inside it. Hard brown eyes and a broad mustache. I said, Come in.
And he took off his hat. One of those hairstyles, short, parted down the middle. A little shock of white along his scalp. He sat right there.
She nods over at Gloria and wishes she hadn’t said that, but there’s no taking it back.
Gloria wipes at the seat as if trying to get the stain of the man off. A little sliver of doughnut icing remains.
—Everything was so pure I thought I was standing in a painting.
—Yes, yes.
—He kept playing with his hat on his knee.
—Mine did too.
—Shh.
—And then he just said, Your son is passed, ma’am. And I was thinking, Passed? Passed where? What do you mean, Sergeant, he’s passed?
He didn’t tell me of any exam.
—Mercy.
—I was smiling at him. I couldn’t make my face do anything else.
—Well, I just flat- out wept, says Janet.
—Shh, says Jacqueline.
—I felt like there was rushing steam going up inside me, right up my spine. I could feel it hissing in my brain.
—Exactly.
—And then I just said, Yes. That’s all I said. Smiling still. The steam hissing and burning. I said, Yes, Sergeant. And thank you.
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—Mercy.
—He finished his tea.
All of them looking at their cups.
—And I brought him to the door. And that was it.
—Yes.
—And Solomon took him down in the elevator. And I’ve never told anyone that story. Afterward my face hurt, I smiled so much. Isn’t that terrible?
—No, no.
—Of course not.
—It feels like I’ve waited my whole life to tell that story.
—Oh, Claire.
—I just can’t believe that I smiled.
She knows that she has not told certain things about it, that the intercom had buzzed, that the doorman had stuttered, that the wait was a stunned one, that the sound of his knocking was like that against a coffin lid, that he took off his hat and said ma’am and then sir, and that they had said, Come in, come in, that the sergeant had never seen the like of the apartment before—it was obvious just from the way he looked at the furniture that he was nervous but thrilled too.
In another time he might have found it all glamorous, Park Avenue, fancy art, candles, rituals. She had watched him as he caught a mirror glance of himself, but he turned away from his own reflection and she might have even liked him then, the way he coughed into the hollow of his rounded hand, the gentleness of it. He held his hand at his mouth and he was like a magician about to pull out a sad scarf. He looked around, as if about to leave, as if there might be all sorts of exits, but she sat him down again. She went to the kitchen and brought a slice of fruitcake for him to eat. To ease the tension. He ate it with a little flick of guilt in his eyes. The little crumbs on the floor. She could hardly bring herself to vacuum them up afterward.
Solomon wanted to know what had happened. The sergeant said that he wasn’t at liberty, but Solomon pressed and said, None of us are at liberty, are we, really? I mean, when you think about it, Sergeant, none of us are free. And the hat went bouncing on the military knee again. Tell me, said Solomon, and there was a tremble in his voice then. Tell me or get out of my home.
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The sergeant coughed into a closed fist. A liar’s gesture. They were still collecting the details, the sergeant said, but Joshua had been at a café. Sitting inside. They had been warned, all the personnel, about the cafés. He was with a group of officers. They had been to a club the night before.
Must have been just blowing off steam. She couldn’t imagine that, but she didn’t say anything—her Joshua at a club? It was impossible, but she let it slide, yes, that was the word, slide. It was early morning, the sergeant said, Saigon time. Bright blue skies. Four grenades rolled in at their feet. He died a hero, the sergeant said. Solomon was the one who coughed at that.
You don’t die a fucking hero, man. She had never heard Solomon curse like that before, not to a stranger. The sergeant arranged his hat on his knee.
Like his leg might be the thing now that needed to tell the story. Glancing up at the prints above the couch. Miró, Miró, on the wall, who’s the dead-est of them all?
He pulled his breath in. His throat looked corrugated. I’m very sorry for your loss, he said again.
When he had gone, when the night was silent, they had stood there in the room, Solomon and Claire, looking at each other, and he had said they would not crack, which they hadn’t, which she wouldn’t, no, they wouldn’t blame each other, they wouldn’t grow bitter, they’d get through it, survive, they would not allow it to become a rift between them.
—And all the time I was just smiling, see.
—You poor thing.
—That’s awful.
—But it’s understandable, Claire, it really is.
—Do you think so?
—It’s okay. Really.
—I just smiled so much, she says.
—I smiled too, Claire.
—You did?
—That’s what you do, you keep back the tears, gospel.
And then she knows now what it is about the walking man. It strikes her deep and hard and shivery. It has nothing to do with angels or devils.
Nothing to do with art, or the reformed, or the intersection of a man with a vector, man beyond nature. None of that.
He was up there out of a sort of loneliness. What his mind was, what his body was: a sort of loneliness. With no thought at all for death.