He imagines, instead, the day of the funeral. After services at Riverside Church, they will drive from Manhattan to Brooklyn, past the street where Ebbets Field used to be, past the New Lots and East New York sections, toward Queens, to the Cypress Hills Cemetery. Aaron’s father grew up in East New York, is buried in the Machpelah cemetery nearby, on the other side of the Ridgewood reservoir.
Aaron reaches over and touches Carl’s hair. Carl sleeps soundly. Carl has his books of magic tricks with him in his backpack. Carl intends to be a professional magician someday and he reads all the books he can, has begun to give shows for his friends, at school, at parties. The night before, while they were packing, Carl said that he was glad Aaron had never become famous, because if he were, the way Susan and Nicky and Lucius said he could have been, as an athlete or a civil rights leader, then he would have to have been away from home a lot while they were growing up.
By the time they reach southern Connecticut and cross over, along the Merritt Parkway, just past Stamford, onto the Hutchinson River Parkway and into New York State, Aaron knows what he will do after they go to the funeral home. This is doubtless what he had planned to do—sensed he would do, from the first—though he did need Nicky to edge him toward the decision. He will drive from Manhattan into Brooklyn. He imagines Gail’s parents still living in the same house. He will get out of his car with Carl and Larry and go up to the front door. He will knock. Ellen will open the door. He will say, “Hello, Ellen—it’s David Voloshin.” She will start to move toward him, but before her fingertips can read his face, he will tell her that his boys are with him. He will give her their names. Then, as if she is in her garden reaching for flowers, she will put out her hands and, in order to know them, touch the faces of his two sons.
And if she is not there? He smiles. If she is there or if she is not there, he will go back. And if he goes back things will begin to happen that he has yet to imagine. If she is there or if she is not there, he will get in the car with his boys and they will drive along Bedford Avenue and turn right onto Martense Street. He will take his boys to his old neighborhood and show them his street and his house and the courtyards and the alleyways. He can see the four small rooms of his apartment, can see himself walking through them with his boys, room by room. The rooms are clean and white and empty, freshly painted and full of pale morning light—the way they might have been, he thinks, before his life began.
Before My Life Began Page 53