I told her I would be downstairs if she needed anything.
“Joseph ...”
“Yes, Ms. Spielmann?”
She didn’t respond; she was already asleep. She had never used my Christian name before, and I stayed there for some time, watching over her.
16
In the end I went. What choice did I have? I was afraid of what Eric would say to the police, and Alma’s vehemence, however puzzling, was irrefutable. I had to trust that she was right, that I was being paranoid, and that if I wasn’t, Eric would not be so stupid as to act now. One seldom truly believes that the worst will happen.
Before I left I apologized again.
She winked forgiveness. “Friends must be honest with each other, mustn’t they?”
I told her I would call her once I touched down.
“Do not concern yourself with me,” she said. “Put me out of your mind.”
“You know I won’t be able to do that.”
“Do your best, Mr. Geist. Enjoy yourself. As the saying goes, we have only one life to live.”
FATHER FRED was at the baggage claim to greet me.
“Welcome home,” he said.
In the years since I had last seen him he had fallen straight into middle age: his face seamed, his eyebrows the color of Spanish moss. We embraced, and through his coat I felt bone.
“I was going to take a taxi.”
“Your mother told me. That’s why I’m here.”
I’d forgotten what a crazy driver he was. We hit the interstate going ninety, giving us three quarters of an hour to talk. I asked after the church, after people close to him. When we got around to discussing the memorial, he employed his usual tact, never a bad word, although it was clear my mother had run him ragged.
“It’s a blessing,” he said, “if for no other reason than it’s brought you back. I was afraid I wouldn’t get to see you before I left.”
“So,” I said. “California.”
He nodded.
“What’s in California.”
“This time next year, a lovely Catholic school near Santa Barbara will be in need of a principal. I’ll be doing some teaching, too. They have an olive grove on the grounds. I went for a visit, and I’m pleased to report that the climate reminded me of Rome.”
“... sounds wonderful.”
“Joseph,” he drawled, “you never were much of a liar.”
Whatever ill will I’d felt upon getting the news from my mother had long since dissipated, certainly after I’d come through the revolving door to find him waiting for me. My urge to fix him in place was selfish, not to mention futile, and I wanted very much to be happy for him. I worked to muster more enthusiasm. “It won’t be the same without you,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s impossible for a clergyman to overstate his own insignificance.”
“And Mater Dei?”
“Father Martin’s taking over. You’ve met him, I assume.”
The other priest had freckles and blunted critical thinking skills. “Once or twice.”
“He’s extremely popular, as I’m sure you’re aware. Almost every parish around here has been going downhill over the last five years. Ours is one of the few exceptions, and he gets all the credit for that. He has a background in computers. He made us a website, if you can believe it. I have an e-mail address now.”
“I didn’t know. I would have written.”
“I’ve always had a phone.”
“Mea culpa.”
“At any rate, I’m very comfortable leaving the community in his hands. For all intents and purposes, it’s already in them. What the Church needs now is new blood, people who can restore some of the trust that’s been lost. I’ve had many good years here, and now things have changed. All part of His plan. I know you don’t think there is a plan, but someday you’ll see.”
“You think?”
“I do. But either way, I believe God appreciates the fact that you’ve given Him a good deal of thought.” He smiled, flicked on his turn signal. “Even if you came out wrong in the end.”
As we left the interstate and headed along Riverfront, a light rain began to fall. We came to the place where my brother drove off the road, and Father Fred pulled over and cut the engine. Wet shadows streaked the interior of the car.
“I come here to reflect sometimes,” he said.
“It’s not very scenic.”
“No. But it helps me remember.”
I said nothing.
“I’ll miss this place,” he said.
“I never have,” I said.
“You will.” He started the car. “Someday.”
THE MEMORIAL TOOK PLACE that afternoon in the church social hall. The aforementioned photo of Chris sat out on a stand near the entrance. Taken his freshman year of high school, it captured him in all his fresh-faced glory. There was a guestbook. I sat toward the front, where I wouldn’t have to talk to people as they entered.
The turnout was much larger than I’d expected, close to forty, wives and children accompanying men my brother had grown up with. Father Fred spoke first, warmly recalling Chris’s service. Then came the school friends, telling stories about the teenager they remembered and the good times they’d had—stories intended to be funny but that for the most part came across as elegies to adolescence. As per my mother’s description, everyone had changed, few for the better. Tommy Snell was indeed as bald as his father; so was Kevin Connar, plus he had a gut the size and shape of a compost heap. I overheard someone whisper that he was gettin the gastric bypass.
My mother’s friend Rita Green recited a selection from Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young.” I was impressed by this until I realized that Father Fred had chosen the readings. She then presented, on behalf of the ladies’ sewing circle, a check in support of Children’s Hospital, and a wall hanging of a lighthouse, which, she explained, symbolized the presence of lost loved ones in our lives.
I glanced at my father. He, too, had aged. No longer the ox-like tyrant of my memory, but loose, soft, inert. He’d barely spoken to me since I’d gotten home, barely spoken at all. I wondered what he made of the people standing before him, evoking his dead son, singing of what had been and what would never be. If he heard an indictment, he did not show it. Sometimes I envied him: his was an unexamined life, and therefore a more peaceful one than I could ever have.
The ceremony ended, and I told my mother I’d see her back at the house. I asked Father Fred to drive me to the cemetery, where I could pay my respects in private, with words of my own, or in silence if I so chose.
STANDING IN THE KITCHEN, my ear plugged to block out the noise of the reception, I phoned Alma several times that evening. Nobody ever answered, and each time I returned to the living room feeling incrementally more tense. By nine o’clock a handful of people remained, circling the crudites and a skinned-over bowl of onion dip. Tommy Snell did his best to engage me in a conversation about insoles. I told him it was good to see him and again made my way to the phone, sitting down alone at the breakfast table and trying to think of what I could possibly do for her from this far away. Most likely she wasn’t picking up because she was in the throes of an attack—which, while upsetting to imagine, was far better than the alternative. I considered calling Drew, asking him to drop by. But she didn’t know him, and moreover, if she was resting, she wouldn’t answer the door any more than the phone.
“I’ll be seeing you.”
Father Fred was in the doorway, one hand up.
As I walked him out, we passed through the living room—empty now except for my mother, who was stacking paper plates and stuff ing them into a trash bag. Father Fred kissed her on the cheek.
“It was a beautiful ceremony,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for suggesting it,” he said.
She smiled tremulously. “I never do stop thinking about him.”
“That’s all right,”
Father Fred said. “You think as much as you want.
The katydids had begun their nightly riot. Father Fred regretted that a morning meeting kept him from driving me to the airport. I thanked him and wished him luck.
“I have e-mail now,” he said. “No excuses.”
I watched him peel out, debating whether I ought to try Alma one last time. It was close to ten P.M., eleven in Cambridge. I had left my parents’ number with her—all but irrelevant if anything had gone seriously wrong. I told myself I was getting lathered up over nothing, and had just begun to believe it when a crash from inside the house brought me hurrying up the front walk.
My mother was standing in the center of the living room. Her face was dry, and the only way to tell she was crying was by looking at her stomach, which convulsed as she watched my father try to tip over the china cabinet. He’d had greater success with a glass end table, which now consisted of a circular faux-brass frame and a sea of shards. The cabinet didn’t give in quite so easily. A good eight feet tall and loaded down with plates, it would raise up a few inches before my father lost his grip and the whole thing slammed back down, narrowly missing his toes. That this was such a tiresome and involved process spoke to the passage of time; in his prime, he would have already dealt with the cabinet and moved on to something else. Now, though, he was sweating, bent over and putting his back into it, grunting swinishly.
And laughing. He was laughing like a maniac. That wicked sense of humor of his was intimately connected to his physical vitality. Both had attenuated with age, and watching him heave and oink and giggle, I realized what it was he was trying to achieve: resurrection through an act of destruction.
“Dad,” I said.
He ignored me. My mother looked at me beseechingly, though I did not know whether she wanted me to go on or to shut up.
“Dad. Stop it.”
He grunted, slipped, almost fell, steadied himself, began again to push.
I took him by the arm; he flung my hand away and turned on me, smiling cockeyed, stink rising off him in great brown waves.
“Joey,” my mother said.
“Go to bed,” I said.
“Let’s dance,” my father said.
He pitched forward into my arms. The smell was even worse from up close.
“Oh, how we danced,” he sang.
I tried to hold him still.
“Dance, you little shitbird.”
“I’m not little,” I said.
“Oh God,” my mother said. Her hands were curled at her mouth.
“ ‘Let’s twist again. Like we did last summer.”’
“Come on. Upstairs.”
“Oh my God.”
“‘... like we did last yeeeaaar.”’
“Move it,” I said, wrestling with him.
“I’m not done,” my father said.
“You’re done, all right.”
“Shitbird.”
Though I had been taller than him for years, this was the first real-world application of our strength differential. He had no choice but to stumble along with me as I walked him to the stairs.
“I’m gonna kick your ass,” he said to me.
“All right,” I said.
“Think you can lip off to me.”
I pinned his arms to his sides as we toddled down the hall.
“Goddammit. Let me go.”
“Almost there.”
“Let me the fuck go.”
We reached the base of the stairs. I released him and he fell down, moaning and holding his head.
“I can’t carry you up the stairs,” I said.
He stopped moaning, looked at me, grinned. “I know.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but it unnerved and insulted me, and I felt my neck growing hot. “Do what you want,” I said. “I don’t care.”
“You look like my father,” he said.
I’d never met my paternal grandfather—never seen him, not even a picture—so I could not vouch for the truth of this statement. I braced myself for what came next. A secret of some sort, a key piece of family history that would, if not justify, at least explain how it was we had all come to this point.
“He was a piece of shit,” said my father.
I turned my back on him and walked away.
My mother was on her knees in the living room, picking glass out of the carpet, her hands spotted with blood. I told her I was leaving.
“Your flight’s not till morning,” she said.
I shrugged.
“You’re going to sleep at the airport?”
“I guess so.”
Silence.
“What about me?” she asked.
I looked at her. “I can’t answer that.”
She made a broken noise, then went back to work.
I ordered a cab, gathered my things, and left without saying goodbye.
I BOARDED the first leg of my flight sore from sleeping in a hard plastic chair. There were no working pay phones in the terminal, though I did manage to call Alma’s house during my layover in Cincinnati. No one answered. While dialing Drew’s number, I heard the boarding announcement for my second flight and had to hang up.
Normally I would have taken the T, but I felt antsy enough to spring for a second cab. Down through the Ted Williams, along Storrow, under the irrelevant graffito bemoaning the Curse. What would happen to Sox fans now that they had nothing to complain about, the driver asked.
“They’ll think of somethin to complain about,” he said. “People always do.”
In no mood to chat, I overtipped him, taking the front steps in a single bound, calling her name as I entered.
Silence.
Her bedroom door was closed. I resisted the urge to knock by telling myself that if I needed to see her, it was mainly for my own gratification. To distract myself I did laundry. On my way back through the kitchen, I stopped to cut myself a piece of Sachertorte; finding it close to stale, all the whipped cream gone, I made a note to go out and get fresh supplies. I rinsed my plate, dried it. It seemed impossible that only twenty minutes had elapsed since I’d gotten home. I waited until the wash was done, then transferred my clothes to the dryer and went out for a walk, returning ninety minutes later with groceries in hand, utterly beside myself. I dropped the bags in the entry hall and went upstairs. I knocked. Silence. I knocked again, turned the handle. Her room was pitch black and the shades down and the air rank and I saw her bent shape in the bed, touched by a sliver of hallway light. She was lying oddly, one arm propped up by the pillow and jutting like a mast or a branch, her face angled away so that she showed me the back of her head, strands of white silk limp and dry and I knew that it was all wrong and I ran in, barking my shin against the bedframe, an injury I did not notice until later that night, or I should say rather the next morning, when I would see that I had gashed the flesh wide open. That was all later. Now I turned her over. Her nightgown was scaled with dried vomit and her lips parted as though she was breathing but she was not and I found her wrist and then said to myself call an ambulance, you are not equipped to make decisions. I called the ambulance. I sat on the floor, holding her hand, and though my mind became aware of the approaching siren and the ringing bell I could not stand or move, and believe it or not they broke down the front door, two nice young men in blue uniforms who sent me downstairs while they confirmed what I already knew to be true.
My dear Joseph,
I apologize for the trouble I will have no doubt caused you. To spare you any additional burden, I have sent a letter to my attorney, who shall make all the necessary arrangements.
For your amusement, herewith a copy of my thesis. It is of no value whatsoever except perhaps as a jeu d’esprit. Read it with a kind eye.
Know that what I do, I do freely. You above all ought to understand.
With everlasting fondness,
Alma
17
I can’t say, like people sometimes do, that what happened next was a blur. The opposit
e: time slowed way way way down, every second stretched out like taffy, and thus my memory of the ensuing hours is sharp, painfully so. Perhaps that’s what “it was all a blur” really means, for I have a hard time going back to that night without feeling overloaded, as though my brain cannot handle the amount of information packed into a single frame and wants to capitulate and shut down. Clarity requires the ability to filter out extraneous information. When I think back on the first part of that night, I see not a smooth series of events but thousands upon thousands of jump cuts: an amoebic smudge on the living-room table, the interval of the ambulance’s lights’ pulse, the jerk of the minute hand on the mantel clock whenever time, officially, advanced. I see the house empty and then instantly full of people. I hear myself spoken to, asked questions, told to relax, told to be patient, juggled from room to room. Cell phones ringing. Croaky three A.M. laughter. The startling blue of a flashbulb. Water in a cup, in my hand, down my dry throat. My leg, bleeding; do I need to go to the hospital? No, thank you.
Eventually I landed in the library, in one of the easy chairs, sitting across from a uniformed patrolman—a disorienting sight, as I had grown accustomed to seeing Alma in that very spot. He said nothing and I said nothing and we sat there like a couple of gargoyles until the library door opened and a man with a beagleish face appeared. He took one step into the room before reacting visibly to its contents.
“Jesus Maria,” he said, goggling. Then, remembering himself, he cleared his throat and told the patrolman he’d take it from here.
“Detective Zitelli,” he said, sitting down. “I understand you’re pretty shaken up.”
I said nothing.
“You don’t want to go to the hospital?”
I shook my head.
“What about your leg.”
I looked down at the bloodstain.
“Looks bad,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
He studied me. “All right,” he said, flipping open his notebook. “Let’s begin at the beginning.”
The Executor Page 15