The Twenty-Year Death

by Ariel S. Winter

  Just when I was at the next-to-last landing, the front door opened, and out came Mary O’Brien and behind her Connie, both of them with their heads down, looking for the first step. I wanted to go up to meet them, but I had had enough, so I waited for them to come down. Mary saw me first, from about halfway down the top set of stairs. She caught herself up, and said, “Oh.”

  Connie looked up, but the light was too poor to see her expression, her black features like a shadowed mask.

  Mary started down again. “Mr. Rosenkrantz, you gave me such a start.” She picked her way down to the landing. “What are you doing here so late?”

  I could have asked the same of her, but she was his fiancée, and she had Connie with her, no doubt as a chaperone, and hadn’t it been such a tough day and all, with the will being read, and Joe becoming a millionaire. He must have needed the company to bolster his strength. “Thought I’d see Joe. Didn’t realize it had gotten so late.”

  Her face took on a pinched look. She probably smelled the alcohol, but I tell you, I really was fine, only I guess she didn’t know that. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I was very much hoping to get a chance to talk to you.”

  “Well, here I am.” I nodded to Connie, who said, “Mr. Rosenkrantz,” and I said, “Shem, please.”

  “Joe was very upset,” Mary said. “I mean at the—earlier. Before. He didn’t...oh, you do know what I’m trying to say, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Sure. It’s awfully nice of you to say even if it isn’t true.”

  “Oh, but it is. I mean, well, ask Connie. That’s the only reason we’re here so late. This has all been so hard on Joe. He needed me—us, somebody with him, I almost don’t like to leave him now. Miss Quinn was really all he had,” and realizing what she’d said, “I mean...of course he had you too—”

  “And you, and Aunt Alice, and Connie here, right Connie? And any number of other people, but sure, yeah, I know what you mean. Quinn was his mom, of course he’s upset. I’m here to take over for you guys. It’s my shift.” And I tried that dapper grin of mine, but it was probably sloppy, I was feeling a little green.

  “Oh, but, I don’t think now is the right time. I mean...”

  “Mary,” I said, “Can I call you Mary? You’re doing a lot of oh-but-ing and I-mean-ing. Take a breath and just relax. If Joe’s not up to my visit tonight, for any reason, sure, that’s okay. I’m disappointed, but it’s okay. Right?”

  She took a deep breath, and when she let it out her face looked lighter. It really did. “Joe said you were so unreasonable, and really...” She turned and looked at Connie. “Connie, could you go down. I’ll be right there.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Connie said, and stepped around her, but to me she hazarded a look and said, “Miss Alice was quite disappointed you didn’t make it to tea.”

  “Well, Aunt Alice can add it to the list of ways I’ve disappointed her,” I said.

  Connie cringed, and really I didn’t have to be so tough with her. She was just doing her job. Sometimes it was hard to remember that, it was so much like she was a member of the family, even if she was a Negro. And how awkward must that be for her, family yet not family, employee and confidante?

  “Listen, Connie, I’m sorry, but you know—” I started, but the light in the front room went out just then, and we were plunged into a deeper darkness. I looked up at the windows to see if Joseph was standing there watching us. I couldn’t tell, but I figured he probably was. We all paused while our eyes got used to the dark.

  Then Connie said, “I’ll be sure to send her your regards, Mr. Rosenkrantz.” She started down the steps, leaning even more heavily on the railing than I had, dropping one foot onto the step below her, and then limping the rest of her weight after it.

  Mary and I watched her for a moment, and when she was nearly to the next landing, Mary turned to me. “Mr. Rosenkrantz...” I had to resist making the wisecrack, ‘Call me Dad,’ but she was trying so hard, it wouldn’t have been fair to her. “I know you and Joseph have had a hard time in the past.”

  “A hard time’s hardly saying it. Last time we saw each other he took a swing at me, and that was his high school graduation.”

  “Yes. Oh.” He hadn’t told her that one.

  “Look, Mary, I appreciate what you’re trying to say. It was stupid of me to come up here. I’ve been sober for months up until today.”

  She gave a start at that.

  “I guess this whole thing with Quinn is getting to all of us, and I...” I felt like I was maybe going to cry. I didn’t, you understand, but I felt like I might.

  She nearly put her hand out to comfort me, but thought better of it. “Maybe we can meet tomorrow,” she said. “I meant to call on you at your hotel earlier, but somehow the day has slipped past. I’ve never been here this late, and if Connie weren’t with me, my parents would have had the police out. They probably have anyway. You’re...we’re all tired. Can I call on you tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  “I just think it would be best if we spoke tomorrow. Things aren’t so simple.”

  “Of course, of course. A pretty girl like you? You can call on me anytime you want.”

  She looked down and I knew I’d spoiled it with that comment about her being pretty. She was trying, but she’d no doubt heard all of Joe’s stories about my sleeping around—never mind that Quinn did too—and here I sound like I’m trying to pick her up. “Any time after breakfast, let’s say. At the hotel. We can get a cup of coffee in the hotel café.”

  I was starting to sweat heavily then. The cloying heat and alcohol were getting to me and I felt as though I were going to be sick. It didn’t help knowing Joe might be up there watching me talk to her.

  “Yes, I’d like that,” she said, and ventured a look at me, and then she sighed in relief and even smiled, and pretty wasn’t really strong enough for what she was. Like I’d said before, Joe was a lucky man.

  “After you,” I said, and held my hand out to the steps in invitation. She went down before me, and I looked back up at the looming house again, but it was still impossible to know if Joe was at one of those windows. All of the other lights in the house were still on.

  At the bottom of the steps, I was breathing heavily and the sweat was making me irritable, so I just said, “Ladies,” and turned south on foot before they could offer me a ride or inquire after my health. Wouldn’t that have been rich?

  I made it to the end of the block, and I turned in, and was immediately sick on the foot of a tree. The heaves were strong enough to make my sides sore. Tears pushed out of my closed eyes. I pressed my forehead against the bark of the tree, both hands bracing me on either side, but it was only later that I felt the pain of the sharp bark cutting into me. I heaved again and the taste of alcohol and acid burned the back of my nose, and I felt chill even as the sweat poured off of me. I heaved and I heaved. A part of me marveled at the volume, but soon there was nothing coming up, and the sour smell of my vomit was sickening in its own right. I brought my forearm up, and leaned my head against that on the tree. The sweat soaked into my sleeve. I was lightheaded and I shivered as a pang went down my sides. I shivered again. And then I seemed to be finished. There was the taste in my mouth, but nothing was rebelling any longer.

  I pushed myself up, and wiped my mouth with my handkerchief. Great job, I thought. A really classy guy. What would Montgomery think if he saw me now? It’s not enough I owe money all over the country and depend on the whims of a hard-boiled whore, I’ve got to drink myself sick a block from Joe’s house when I’ve got the crazy idea about making it up. Yeah, I was nothing but a poor bastard, like I said before, and I deserved everything I got, but don’t let me catch you saying it.

  Once I felt sure on my feet, I stepped into the near-black street, crossing to the other side. There, a recessed footlight in a brick retaining wall revealed the vomit on the toes of my shoes. I stopped, pulled out my already soiled handkerchief and, leaning against the wall, lifted
one foot, wiped it off, and then the other. When I was done, I threw the handkerchief into the gutter, and started south towards the less residential part of the city near the university where I’d be able to find a cab.

  The lights came first, and then the lawns ended, and there was a five-story apartment house visible across University Avenue. If I looked straight down St. Peter’s Street, I could see the lights of the skyscrapers all the way downtown. The roads were empty, and the traffic light went through its pattern needlessly as, still shaky, I crossed University into George Village. Quinn and I used to hang around George Village to be with people our own age, and she knew some men at the university. Not much had changed in the intervening years. The row homes hidden by overgrown trees looked broken down and abused, which they were, rented short-term to college men who took the job of being college men very seriously.

  When I got to the block where the George Village Pub was, I still hadn’t run into a cab. I was starting to feel a bit hungry, my stomach now empty after my little spell. I pushed into the stale smoke of the bar, and was comforted to find that I didn’t look too out of place. The students were away for the summer, so the only people in the bar that night were some loud and coarse citybillies and a few grad students trying to keep their heads down. I ordered a Gin Rickey. The bartender sighed and took his time getting to the hard stuff. In a place like that the only kind of orders they get are draught and the bartender gets lazy. But he made me the drink.

  With the first swallow, I felt calmer. I pushed the whole pathetic incident, the talk with Mary, the puking, pushed it all away, and my mind turned to the play Montgomery and I had been working on that evening. And just like the old days, the thought of having to write more tomorrow clenched my heart in a vise. I didn’t want to; I couldn’t; the burn of vomit in the back of my throat made my stomach turn; I’d just tell Montgomery to forget it, I was too busy.

  Then all of a sudden, something clicked: the Furies in our little play could die, be killed themselves, that is. The vise relaxed, and I took another drink. It’s like that sometimes. An idea at the end of the night hits, and you feel, at least I’ve got somewhere to start tomorrow. Well, I felt good about that idea, less anxious about the next day, and after two more drinks, I started to think about visiting Joe again. The idea of my hotel room didn’t strike me as any more appealing now. If he threw me out or took a swing at me, it’d still be better than the hotel.

  I thought about another drink, patted my pockets for a little cash, but of course I didn’t have any, so I went out back where the bathrooms were. I pushed my way through a door marked “Exit,” and found myself in the alley behind the bar. I ran as fast as my aching body would let me back up to the next block, and when I came out in the street, I walked one block east to Caroline Street in order to make my way back to University.

  6.

  Nothing had changed in the hour since I’d been turned away. The little sprint from the bar had me sweating worse than before, and I was angry, no, irritable, eager to get in where it was air-conditioned at least. I pressed on the buzzer when I got to the top of the stairs and took off my jacket. I mopped my forehead, my face, the back of my neck with the sleeves of my shirt. The whole idea of being there in the middle of the night struck me as crazy again. How could I expect that he would open the door? I mean, I probably could have walked right in, they never used to lock their doors in that neighborhood, but that wouldn’t do. I pressed the buzzer again, figuring just the last time, and the door swung open immediately. He must have been standing right on the other side.

  “What do you want?” he said. He was still dressed, but his collar was unbuttoned and he wasn’t wearing a tie.

  “Joe, I—” I hadn’t thought of what I was going to say to him if he did answer. “Can I come in?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Can’t I just come in?”

  “What do you want?” He was sneering, but he hadn’t closed the door.

  “To talk,” I spat out. “To talk. Come on, Joe, we should be friends. We should...now, you know—if we’re all that’s left... Can’t I just come in?”

  He took a step back, and I thought he was going to slam the door, I really did. And oh, if he had... Well I wouldn’t be where I am now, would I? But he took a step back and said, “Do what you want.” And walked away from the door, leaving it open.

  I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I hadn’t been in that house since I don’t know when. They’d pulled up the Persian rug that used to be in the front hall, revealing the black-and-white chessboard tiles. The grandfather clock was also gone, replaced by a wall-mounted brass starburst with no digits and a long pendulum. Joe had gone into the further room to the right, the dining room, where he stood at a glass-topped brass refreshment cart. He was pouring a brandy. There was a glass on the dining room table with melting ice and an amber residue in it already, so at first I thought he was making me a drink, but he brought the glass to his own lips. It was then that it hit me he was drunk too, drunker even than I was.

  “Joe, what can I do to make it up with you?” I said, the table between us.

  “You can’t.”

  “Well can you at least tell me what it is I’m supposed to have done? How can I try to explain myself, if I don’t even know what it is I have to explain?”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself. I know already. I was here, remember? I was the one who had to watch Mom suffer. You were off with, who is it now? Are you and Chloë still married even? I can’t remember. Not that it would matter to you.”

  “You just wait until you’re married,” I said, angry now myself. Somehow the air conditioner wasn’t doing its job. “You don’t know.”

  “I know I would never do to Mary what you did to Mom.”

  “You think I planned it? I didn’t plan it.”

  “But you did it.”

  “Come on. What is this? You’re twenty-one—”

  “Twenty-two.”

  I wished I hadn’t gotten that wrong. But I went on, “Right, twenty-two. You’re just a kid. You’ll learn that when you’re older—”

  “I am older.” His glass shook in his hands. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “No, you’re not a kid. I don’t mean to say you’re a kid. I mean things just look different when...” I took a breath. “You know I wasn’t the only one being unfaithful. Your mother was there right along with me.”

  His lips were quaking despite his efforts to maintain control. “You would speak on the dead.”

  I lost it for a moment then. “Listen, you—Just shut up and listen. All of this, this crap you’re on about, it all happened before you were born, so what do you know about it anyway? You weren’t there!”

  He raised his voice too. “And you weren’t here for the last twenty-two years, so what do you know about it! Mom was... she never...she was...you had Chloë Rose, not that she was enough for you either, but Mom just had, she only had...” He brought the glass to his lips and it was shaking.

  I steadied myself on the back of one of the chairs. “Joe, what’s this really all about? This is all ancient history. Let’s forget all of that. I’m here now to try and make it different.”

  He took another drink from his glass. The ice clinked. There was nothing left in the glass to drink.

  “You know, I met a guy today, about your age. And he, well, he just about thinks I’m the greatest thing on two legs, and I thought, why couldn’t my boy feel that way? Why couldn’t Joe feel that way? And I thought, sure he could. There’s no reason he couldn’t.”

  He took another drink from his empty glass, his lip still trembling and his hand unsteady.

  “I’m not all bad,” I said.

  “What you did to Mom—”

  “Oh stop it,” I spat. “You don’t know a damn thing about it. You don’t know how often she’d be out and I’d be in one hotel or another all by myself, or even worse, when she would come back to the room with someone and it didn’t even
matter I was there. Don’t go on about how Quinn was some kind of martyr. She kept me on the hook for alimony and child support the whole time too, even though I couldn’t pay it and she didn’t need it. She wanted me to know she could send me to jail any time she wanted.”

  “Of course it’s about the money with you. That’s why you’re really here.”

  “Damn it, Joe. You say you’re grown up, but you’re acting like a brat.”

  “Tell me you don’t want the money. Tell me that you weren’t drinking yourself dumb today after you got nothing in that will.”

  “Forget the damn money. This isn’t about the money. What do I have to say to prove it to you? Your mother cared more about the money than I ever did.”

  “Mom suffered. She, you don’t know...she wasted away. Her body, it just, it fell off her somehow. She lost a lot of her hair.” There were tears falling down his cheeks, but he hadn’t given in to them. He wasn’t all-out crying just yet. He swallowed and shut it down. “I had to face that alone, just like always. I had to help her to the bathroom. I had to sit in the hospital waiting for it. It was me. And her life was just, it, she wasn’t, it could have been so much more. I could have done more.” This last line came out in a squeak, and he shook his head.

  “Joe...”

  He shook his head more, and he turned and walked through the swinging door back to the kitchen. He’d been all over the place, I had cheated on Quinn, I wanted her money, I didn’t know what her death was like. It didn’t matter what I said, he was poisoned against me, and in his eyes, there was nothing I could do right. But still I followed him.

  He was at the sink with his back to me, but I could tell he was crying. “Joe?”

  No response.

  “I loved your mother. I—”

  He spun around and flung the glass at me. It went wide and hit the wall, spraying melted ice water in a splatter along the paint. The glass broke neatly in two.

  We both waited, shocked by the violence. Joe cried and fought crying at the same time, which only contorted his face worse than if he’d let go. I tried to count to ten, which I’d never done before, but I was with a girl for a little while who did it all the time and swore it worked. I couldn’t make it all the way to ten, but when I spoke, I felt steady and I didn’t yell.