Big Silence

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Marvin and Lisa have an eleven o’clock flight,” said Bess. “I said we would drive them.”

  “Can we go?” asked Barry, looking not at his mother but his grandfather.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” said Lieberman. “You can sleep in the car on the way back if your grandmother says okay.”

  “Okay,” Bess said, passing the food.

  Lieberman noticed that Marvin Alexander’s dark hand touched Lisa’s from time to time and Lieberman’s daughter smiled when it did. From time to time she touched his shoulder. Alexander was the best-dressed man at the table. This was a holy weekly dinner and he planned to respect it. Not for the first time, Lieberman wondered what this doctor who spoke Hebrew and knew the classics saw in his moody but brilliant daughter. It was a puzzle Abe would never solve.

  In contrast to Dr. Marvin Alexander, Maish was an indifferent shlump. He wore a wrinkled white shirt and no tie and a jacket that was beginning to show signs not only of decay but impending doom.

  “Basketball practice starts next week at the JCC,” said Barry. “Just found out today. Grandpa, I told them you’d coach again.”

  “Maish, you gonna help again this year?” Abe asked.

  Maish shrugged noncommittally. Abe was sure his brother would help. He might be able to scorn God for a while, but the lure of that basketball, which he handled like a magic floating ball when he was younger, would be too much to resist. Maish knew the rankings of all the college teams. Maish knew the stats and standings of every NBA team and even the women’s league. He had worried about Michael Jordan’s threats to retire and hoped Kobe Bryant wouldn’t burn out young. He searched nearly in vain for a Jewish player.

  Sad to say, Barry had not inherited his grandfather’s or his granduncle’s ability on the court, but he had inherited their heart and no sense of fear. He was of average height, but he was one of the top rebounders in his age bracket.

  “Bar Mitzvah,” Bess reminded all present.

  “I’ve got it down,” said Barry. “English, Hebrew, the Torah reading, my speech. Rabbi Wass says I’ve got it down.”

  “We’ll be back for the Bar Mitzvah,” said Marvin.

  “You gonna convert, Marvin?” Barry asked, cutting into an extremely tender piece of chicken.

  “I don’t think so, Barry,” he said. “Methodist, Methodist is my belief. I’m a Methodist till I die. Till old grim death comes knocking at my door, I’ll be eating Methodist pie.”

  “If you eat too much pie, it clogs your arteries and you die of heart disease,” said Melisa. “That’s a heart problem. More people die of heart problems in the United States than anything else, twenty-two percent.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Marvin, who, Lieberman was sure, as a pathologist, could tell the child more about failed and diseased hearts than she could ever learn from the library.

  The dinner went well, right down to the rice pudding dessert, which was low cal and low fat. Lieberman’s stomach had not fully recovered from his lunch with El Perro, but it had come back enough to enjoy the meal that had been placed in front of him tonight.

  “We have to go,” Bess said, checking her watch.

  “Maish and I will clean up,” Yetta volunteered.

  Maish said nothing.

  “A word with Maish while Marvin and Lisa get their bags,” said Abe.

  Bess and Yetta began to clear immediately. All the men and Barry removed their kepuhs and placed them on top of each other on the table. Maish and Abe moved into the living room.

  “I saw him, Aziz,” said Maish.

  “And?”

  “I’m cured,” Maish said flatly.

  “You’re a very funny man.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  The two brothers, a study in contrasts, stood whispering near the front door. The fat bulldog and the lean bloodhound.

  “Maish.”

  “He’s all right,” he said reluctantly. “He likes you.”

  “That’s nice,” said Abe. “Well?”

  “I thought I had been punished by God for no reason,” said Maish. “He has had it even worse. His wife, child … and he endures. My problem isn’t that I lost my belief in God. It’s that I believe and I don’t like him. If I could just lose my faith … but I can’t. I’ve tried. It’s driving me nuts, Avrum.”

  “That’s why you’re seeing a shrink,” whispered Abe.

  “That’s why I’m seeing a shrink,” Maish agreed. “I got another appointment Wednesday.”

  “So it helped?”

  “Long run, who knows?” said the man who had once been known as Nothing-Bothers Maish. “We’ll see.”

  “Maish,” called Yetta. “You gonna help, you gonna talk?”

  “I’m gonna help,” Maish called, and then to Abe in a whisper, “We’ll see.”

  Maish wandered back to the dining room as Lisa and Marvin came down the stairs with their luggage. There wasn’t much.

  “We’ve got a few minutes to help,” said Bess.

  “Leave, go go, gey avek, avek gagaingan,” said Yetta, the thinnest person in the room who was carrying a pile of plates like a waitress. “Maish and I are professionals, remember. Lisa, good-bye. Dr. Alexander, a pleasure to see you again. We’ll see you for the Bar Mitzvah.”

  Yetta disappeared into the kitchen.

  Maish shook Marvin Alexander’s hand and said good-bye to Lisa, taking her hand. Lisa had never liked hugs and kisses, tears and secrets, but she suffered her favorite uncle to take her hand and she didn’t pull it away.

  The kids were ready and Melisa was carrying her teddy bear.

  Five minutes later they were stuffed into Bess’s car. She drove. Abe sat stoically next to her. In the backseat, Lisa sat by the window, Barry sat in the middle, Marvin by the other window with Melisa in his lap. The two suitcases were in the trunk.

  The drive was only half an hour. The timing was nearly perfect. There was another half hour till the flight to Los Angeles, and they had boarding passes.

  Lieberman had placed an official police business sign on Bess’s sun visor two years ago. She had argued that it was an abuse of his position. He had argued that he occasionally used her car for official business. Bess had reluctantly agreed. At first she had resisted using it when she couldn’t find a parking space, but gradually, and only for an emergency, she had pulled down the visor and parked illegally. Now they pulled up directly in front of the arrival gate near baggage claim and dropped the visor.

  They went up the escalator and directly to the gate. Abe carried Marvin’s trifold carry-on and Marvin carried the sleeping Melisa. They did not move quickly. Barry carried his mother’s cloth suitcase and Lisa carried a tote bag. They had hurried to the gate. Bess had led the way.

  By the time they got to the checkin desk, an attendant was already calling for boarding.

  Marvin reached under the sleeping child to shake Abe’s hand. Then he handed Melisa to Lieberman. Her dark, wavy hair brushed his face and smelled of something sweet.

  “Be patient with Lisa if you can,” said Lieberman. “God knows, I’ve tried.”

  “I will, Abraham,” Marvin said, gently moving strands of Melisa’s hair from her grandfather’s face.

  Lisa actually hugged her son and mother and came over to kiss the sleeping child who clutched her bear. Melisa believed in the tooth fairy. Melisa believed her teddy bear had a touch of life. Melisa believed her mother would come back to Chicago and everyone would live happily ever after. Melisa was asleep.

  “For you,” Lisa said, putting an envelope in her father’s pocket.

  She was very serious, probably a good sign.

  The couple waved, promised to call the next day, and waved again as they boarded. Lisa and Marvin got looks of curiosity and guarded or masked disapproval, but it was a new generation and many people simply noted the mixed-race couple and went about their own business. Lieberman, however, was an observer. It was his job to observe. Life had been hard for his daughter. She had made it
hard and was making it harder.

  Lieberman shifted the child. He was short, thin, and surprisingly strong, but he had a long way back to the car with the full fifty pounds of his granddaughter.

  Bess and Barry led the way, talking, with Lieberman slightly behind.

  When they got to the car, Barry opened the back door and Lieberman put his granddaughter inside, snapping the sleeping girl into her seat belt as she made a little grunt, clutched her bear, and slept. Barry climbed over her, buckled in, and closed his eyes.

  The police car in front of them had not been there when they parked. As Bess pushed up the visor bearing the OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS sign, two uniformed officers, one carrying a big bag, moved to the police car and climbed in. Lieberman thought he recognized the older of the two, but he couldn’t remember his name, at least not at the moment.

  He wondered briefly what they were doing, but there were always calls to the airport. The bulging bag was a curiosity, but not enough to give Lieberman more than a few seconds of thought. He filed the event deep in his memory.

  Half an hour later the children were home in bed and Bess said, “Look at the job Yetta and Maish did. Perfect. I’m worried about your brother, Abe.”

  “I’m working on it,” he said. “I got him to see a shrink today.”

  “Thank God.”

  They moved to the bedroom, turned on the lights, and began to undress. Then Lieberman remembered the envelope his daughter had handed him.

  “Ida Katzman doesn’t want a tribute,” Bess said.

  “It’s her decision,” Abe said, standing in his shorts and socks, the chain with the key to the drawer where he kept his gun and holster around his neck.

  “She deserves it and the temple needs the money for the religious school,” she said, carefully stepping out of her dress.

  Abe watched. It always delighted him that his wife had the svelte figure of a model, though her breasts, which pleased him mightily, were too large for a model.

  “You wanna?” he asked.

  “It’s late, Abe, and as irresistible as you look standing there in shorts and socks, I think I’ll suggest that we get up early and see what develops. Let’s just hold each other. I could use it.”

  “You’ve got it,” he said, opening the envelope.

  “Abe,” Bess said, moving toward the small bathroom off the bedroom. “I think you could talk Ida into it. I think you could do it if you took over as chairman of the dinner.”

  Lieberman paused before he removed the note in the envelope. Bess was going to get him again. Heading the building committee fund drive had been a nightmare. Organizing a huge dinner would be as bad, maybe worse. He knew Irving Hammel wanted the job, but it was up to Bess to appoint whomever she wanted, and if she didn’t pick someone Ida would find acceptable, there would be no testimonial. Lieberman envisioned arguments, arrangements, committee meetings, caterers, finding a hotel, collecting checks. He hated it, but he knew that it was no use resisting. He would lose. Better to accept gracefully and get as much help as he could, provided he could talk Ida into allowing the temple to do it.

  “To save us both a lot of time, trouble, and anguish,” Abe said, unfolding the note from his daughter. “And to make my wife grateful, I’ll talk to Ida.”

  Bess returned to the bedroom with a smile, wearing a black lacy thing.

  He read the note. It was to both of them and very short. He handed it to Bess, took off his socks, and stood with them in his hand as she read:

  MOM AND DAD, THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING. LOVE, YOUR DAUGHTER LISA.

  “ ‘Mom and Dad,’ ” Bess said. “Not Bess and Abe.”

  “We’re making progress,” said Lieberman, moving to the bathroom to put his dirty socks and shirt in the laundry hamper and hang up his pants and jacket so he could put them in the closet.

  “Thanks,” she writes. “Twice.”

  “I think Marvin Alexander is the best thing that ever happened to her,” said Lieberman.

  “ ‘Your daughter,’ she writes,” said Bess. “Not just Lisa.”

  Abe was back in the bedroom, skinny, nude except for the chain and key around his neck. The gray hairs on his chest were curly and abundant. His mustache was trimmed, his teeth cleaned, and his face freshly and electrically shaved.

  “Maybe I’m not that tired,” Bess said, looking at him with a smile.

  “Ah, that, my dear, is the promise of a consummation devoutly to be wished,” he said.

  He knew he would be up in a few hours with the curse of insomnia and thoughts about Ida Katzman and what had happened to Mickey Gornitz. He would hope. He would pray that Mickey’s son, Matthew, turned up and soon.

  Bess had put down the note and crawled into bed under the covers. Lieberman turned off all but one small light and joined her. The one light had been an impulse gift. It was brass, the figure of a nearly nude nymph holding a curved bar that led to a light and chain under a pink flower-shaped glass shade. It was ugly. It was beautiful. It probably belonged in a nineteenth-century bordello. Lieberman had fallen in love with it at first sight, and Bess had accepted the gift with curiosity and respect for the impulse.

  Abe reached for his wife and she reached back under the cool blanket.

  Bill Hanrahan had avoided going home. He was almost at the point where the memories were too much for him. The house had once been rich with memories, good and bad, but the memories of his life. Now all he wanted to do was sell it and find someplace fresh and clean for himself and Iris. Iris. He would have to talk to her, tell her they had made a mistake, that they would have to honor his agreement with her father and Woo. Woo and Lieberman were right. Bill had been suicidal, hadn’t yet dealt with his guilt and fears.

  He had spent the evening with Father Parker. Whiz had done little of the talking in the coffeehouse on Argyle in Little Viet Nam. Parker had worn a black knit turtleneck shirt and his black zipper jacket. Hanrahan was still in his work clothes — jacket, slacks, button-down shirt. He had taken off his tie.

  “So,” Hanrahan had said when the place was almost empty and should have been closed and would have been had the owner not been a member of Father Parker’s congregation and felt that he and his family owed the priest much for having taken them into his care when they had arrived in Chicago ten years ago after a decade of internment in Borneo. The family that owned the coffeehouse would have stayed up all night for Father Parker, and they nearly did.

  “Can I get a little religious on you for a minute or two, Bill?” Parker had asked, eyeing his cup of tea, which had just been refilled by the proprietor.

  “It can’t hurt,” said Hanrahan.

  “Our Lord kept his word and won the devotion and belief of millions of people for two thousand years. If you like, I’ll talk to Woo.”

  “He’s not a Catholic,” said Bill.

  “The possibility still exists for us to carry on a conversation,” the priest said.

  “Not necessary,” Hanrahan said. “I’ll keep my word. Hard part’s gonna be telling Iris.”

  “Want my help?”

  “Maybe,” said Bill.

  “Let me know. Hardrock Hanrahan, I’m going to take a chance and say something you may have trouble dealing with. You’re afraid to go home, aren’t you?”

  “Since Michael left I … yes, I guess, but I can live with the fear.”

  “You mean you think you deserve it?”

  “Could be,” Hanrahan agreed, finishing his coffee. He had switched to decaf almost an hour earlier.

  “You can stay with me tonight,” Parker said. “Lots of room, but —”

  “Sometime I’ll have to go home. Might as well be tonight. Let’s go.”

  “You’re all right?” asked the priest.

  “All right for now,” said Hanrahan. “Father, I had a dream last night. Gornitz’s ex-wife and Frankie Kraylaw were at the foot of my bed. I thought I was awake, could have sworn it. She had no face, just one filmy eye. He was a walking pain of bl
eeding shotgun wounds. They just stood facing me, saying nothing. The door opened behind them and more people started to come in. I didn’t want to see them. A cop can’t live with such nightmares, Sam. I woke up. I don’t want that dream again.”

  “Who would?” asked the priest. “So your nightmares are part of the reason you want the marriage to take place soon and why you want out of the house.”

  “Part of the reason. Most of it,” agreed Hanrahan.

  “And guilt.”

  “For sure.”

  “Move out of the house tonight,” said Parker. “Find an apartment while you try to sell it. Stay at the rectory tonight or go to a hotel. There’s no shame in it, Bill.”

  “But will the ghosts follow me?” Hanrahan asked.

  “Possibly,” said Parker, “but I think they’re haunting the house where you keep your memories.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I think I do,” Parker said with a smile. “It’s late, William, and I’ve got a lot to do in the morning, which is right now. Let’s go. The people keeping this place open for us need some sleep too.”

  Hanrahan nodded and rose. The man who had served them came out instantly and started to clean up.

  “Sure you finished, Father?” asked the man.

  “I’m sure. Thanks, Nguyen.”

  “You are always welcome,” said the man who stood thin, short, and erect before them.

  Parker didn’t go through the formality of trying to pay. He knew the man wouldn’t take his money and was more than pleased to serve the priest.

  Hanrahan drove home.

  On the way, driving down Ashland Avenue, a Mazda wove north almost leaving its lane. The driver came close enough to Hanrahan that the detective could see his face in the headlights. The man looked familiar. Bill Hanrahan could have driven up and down the streets trying to find him, but it was likely to be hopeless. Besides, he knew that he would just be stalling, convincing himself that he was doing his job when he was really trying to avoid going home.

  Hanrahan drove to his house determined to live with his ghosts, at least for one more night. What he truly dreaded was facing Iris.