She walked with him back into the living room, dissatisfied. He hadn’t told her enough. The others were gathered around Marta’s display of earrings, which she’d arranged on a cloth on the living-room floor. Only the grandmother was standing on the balcony now. The old woman looked exceedingly frail yet regal next to the iron railing. Annie, on the other hand, couldn’t get her thoughts straight. If Deborah wanted to take her life, Stephen would have had to assist her because Deborah couldn’t feed herself, at least according to what Stephen said. What would Edward say about that?
Bullshit. She could hear his deep voice as if he were standing beside her. Deborah loved life. Always saw the positive in situations.
Her ears started throbbing. Stephen admitted that he had helped kill his wife. Hadn’t he?
“How about that pálinka?” Bernardo said to Stephen, holding out his glass. “Love the stuff.”
“We are proud of our pálinka,” Agnes said, freeing the bottle from Stephen’s hand and pouring some into Bernardo’s and then Eileen’s empty glasses. “It is our Hungarian tradition of fruit brandy. Very strong to get drunk,” she said, smiling. “We have festivals celebrating our pálinka.”
Eileen was kneeling on the floor surveying the earrings, her tight green dress sliding up her thighs. Annie could see Eileen’s black underwear, but no one seemed to care, certainly Eileen didn’t.
“Please. Help yourself to some food, everyone,” Stephen said.
Will came over to Annie and traced his finger on her lips. “You okay?”
“Not really.” She whispered to him, “Do you think we can get everyone to leave soon?” She wanted to tell him that she had found a Vicodin tablet and that Stephen had just told her that his wife had killed herself and had asked Stephen to help her. Instead, she took Will’s hand and squeezed it.
Stephen stopped in front of her and Will. “Another sandwich?”
Will took one. “Appreciate it, Stephen.”
“I appreciate your wife,” Stephen said. “Annie, what do you think of Marta’s earrings? They suit you. Elegant but not too overdone.” Stephen spoke slowly, his voice drifting. “Marta is hoping to make connections with the American women here. Will told me you belong to the International Women’s Association.”
“Yes. I know a few women there.” Annie chewed on her sandwich, wanting to hide from Stephen’s ever-watchful eyes. He seemed to look through her and inside her. She didn’t know how to meet his gaze or what to think of him anymore. She needed time to process her thoughts. He just flat-out told her his wife wanted to take her own life and that he helped her. Everything Edward told her would be correct, except through this different lens, it changed Stephen’s intent. Didn’t doctors perform euthanasia every day with morphine? Not officially. But out of compassion for their suffering patients? She knew they did.
Disturbed, she walked over to Marta and crouched down to peruse the earring display. She agreed with Stephen, the earrings—long strands of glittering beads—were elegant and whimsical, not overstated.
“These are lovely,” Annie said to Marta. And she meant it. “I think the women at the IWA will love these. How much are you selling them for?”
“Twelve dollar,” Marta said to Annie.
“She means twenty,” Stephen said, moving closer. “Twenty and no change necessary. I’m her agent.”
“I’m buying ten pairs to bring home as gifts,” Eileen said. She pulled her hair back to show Annie her new earrings.
Bernardo came over and handed Marta two hundred-dollar bills. “American dollars okay?” he asked.
“Persze,” Olga said, taking the large bills from her granddaughter and turning them over to make sure they were legitimate.
“Hungarians love American dollars,” Stephen said. “The forint is pretty useless.”
“How shall I meet American womens?” Marta asked Annie.
Annie lifted a pair of white strands and carefully threaded the silver wires through her pierced ears. “What is your phone number, Marta?” Annie said. “I’ll call you.”
Marta looked at Stephen.
“I use Stephen’s phone and call you, yes?”
“Fine,” Annie said. “Stephen has our number.”
“Right here in my phone,” Stephen said, tapping his pocket. His throat was flushed, his gray-green eyes noticeably bloodshot in the low light.
Marta stood up and thanked Annie and Eileen for the sale. Stephen raised his arm. “This calls for some Unicum!” Stephen went back over to the table with their empty glasses and opened the bulb-shaped bottle.
“Very expensive,” Agnes said, coming over to Annie. “This is a most special drink for us.”
“You can’t get it anywhere else, only in Hungary,” Stephen said. He filled new glasses with the dark liqueur. “Come on, everyone. Bernardo, Eileen.”
Eileen reached for the glass of Unicum and lost her footing. Bernardo grabbed her and gave her a kiss, the two looking more glued together than ever. Annie decided she would never understand their combative relationship. She looked over at Agnes and wondered what she thought of this drunken collection of Americans. And Stephen? Was he pining for his dead wife? Relieved? Overjoyed? He certainly had moved on pretty quickly. But who was she to judge? What did she really know about his situation? What would she do if Will asked her to do the same if he were in Deborah’s situation? It was upsetting to contemplate and deepened her increasingly dour mood, and it was approaching ten o’clock. She wanted to leave.
A warm breeze from the balcony brought in a faint musty smell of the Duna, the current floating up from an underlayer of dirt and stones. Below, on the street, a car alarm went off, a long trill and then a series of different beeps, alarms, chirps, and sirenlike melodies echoing, repeating. Budapest’s night call, its nursery jingle: Watch out! Beware! Run away!
“We ought to be taking off soon,” Will said, tapping his watch.
“One more on the balcony!” Stephen said, holding up the bottle of Unicum and filling a tray full of shot glasses—passing them to Bernardo and Will, and offering one to Marta’s grandmother, who deferred, and went to sit in a chair by the table with the crystal glasses, clenching the two hundred-dollar bills in her fist. Annie wondered if the crystal glasses had been a wedding present.
“I’m cooked,” Eileen said, taking the shot glass from Stephen and smelling it. “This stuff makes you feel weird.”
“It’s hallucinatory,” Bernardo said.
“Think unique for Unicum,” Stephen said.
“No more for me. I’ve had too much,” Annie said. Her thoughts were swimming like a school of fish, taking reverse turns every time a new ripple of information passed through her brain. She couldn’t keep up with herself.
Marta gathered up the remaining earrings and put them in a cloth purse, then joined the rest of the group on the balcony.
“Last one,” Bernardo said, slurring his words, holding out his empty shot glass, “and we’ll call it a night.”
Thirty-three
Edward locked the door to Josef’s apartment and started toward the elevator, past the open stairway. A meager bulb lit the way. He stopped to listen. In the building of mostly older folks, he could hear the distant humming of televisions and radios through floors and ceilings. He headed down the hall, running his hand along the wall to help his balance, until he reached the elevator to take him down.
Outside, engulfed by the humid air, he waited by the panel of buzzers, the blazer he’d worn on the plane hanging loosely over his upper body, an unwelcome reminder that he’d lost more weight. He could feel his thirst returning in the back of his throat. He swallowed.
Come on. He looked down the street for the cab.
Now it was 9:52. Late for him. Typically, he would have changed into his pajamas by now, settled on the couch to read and nod off. Annie’s call gave him a surge of energy.
The taxi flicked its light. Edward raised his hand. His back stiff from arthritis, his eyes semiblind in the glare of
the headlights, he bent forward and eased into the back of the cab.
“You speak English?”
“Yes. Where do you go?”
Edward handed him Howard’s address, written on a piece of paper in block letters.
“You know where this is?”
The driver, a middle-age man, took the paper from him, nodding. “Persze. Near Duna.”
“Good. How much in American dollars?”
“Three dollars.”
“Get there quickly.” Edward handed him a ten-dollar bill.
The movement of the cab jostled Edward’s knees, his hips, and the memory of Deborah calling him the day before she died: Dad, please call me . . . Something in her voice not sounding right, but he didn’t pay it enough attention. Was it the drugs? Her MS making her slur her speech? She didn’t answer when he called back a few hours later. Why hadn’t he called her again? Anger? He was still too angry at her for marrying a creep.
He deserved this nightmare and dry-swallowed the poison of self-hate. There was the call from Howard the next morning, telling him he’d found Deborah gone, in her bed. He thought she was sleeping, he’d told Edward. “She’d been sleeping a lot in the past few days. We were planning to go to Nassau. Maybe it was too much for her,” Howard said.
“Don’t let anyone take her before I get there.” Edward hung up and was in the car, racing to Deborah’s, the pain exploding in his stomach, ready to strangle Van with his own hands.
When Edward walked in, he told the police he wanted an autopsy. But it wasn’t under his jurisdiction. Howard was her husband, her health care proxy. Howard refused.
“No autopsy. It’s not what Deborah wanted,” he said, showing the police and Edward the written DNR directive: do not resuscitate. “She was squeamish about that sort of thing,” Howard said. “She wanted to be cremated, her ashes buried—not the traditional Jewish way—but that is what she wanted. She didn’t want to take up space. It’s all here,” Howard said, shaking the papers.
Death by asphyxiation, multiple sclerosis. His daughter in ashes. Edward made a mess of it. He should have followed his instincts and insisted on the autopsy despite Deborah’s wishes, and Sylvia’s. Nan didn’t try to interfere.
In the backseat of the cab, Edward placed one hand in his lap, the other on the car door handle. Alongside the Duna, the cab stopped at a traffic light. All around him, the city was alive and thoroughly disinterested in Edward’s existence. Fifty years later, a piece of cloth, a priceless exchange in Austria after the war, and Josef Szabo’s name and number in a telephone directory in Stow, Massachusetts. It was too unbelievable to be true, but there it was: Josef Szabo living three towns away from Edward and Sylvia, Deborah and Nan. For how long? Decades. All those years.
“This is Edward Weiss, the American—”
“Yes. It’s you,” Josef had said. “Not a day I forget you and what you did for me. What can I do for you, Edward?”
“Do you still have your place in Budapest?”
Fifty years after a war.
“Yes. Of course. It needs a little fixing up, but everything works. Do you need it? A place to stay? It’s yours. It’s waiting for you.”
In the cab, driving along the river, his heart pummeled his ribs, demanding to be let out of its prison. Edward looked across a city glistening with lights, the old Chain Bridge draped in glitter, a sparkling white necklace. He was thirsty, his tongue pulling for liquid. He forced himself to swallow. It’s yours, Josef had said. After all those years.
After the funeral director came and took his daughter away, Edward returned home to Sylvia, who began her death spiral, eventually leaving him, then leaving this earth. He told Sylvia he wanted to call the police, insist on an investigation, but Sylvia told him to stop. Let her go in peace, Edward. Let her be. Now he was taking a cab to the cockroach who took his daughter’s life. He could never let it go.
Was he dreaming this?
The driver crossed Elizabeth Bridge. Edward watched a sightseeing ferry floating in the middle of the river, its oblong shape moving toward the docking station tethered to the bank. He spotted a fisherman smoking a cigarette under the bridge. Through the open windows, he breathed in a blossoming smell of river water and putrid car exhaust; the night’s moist heat throbbed in his ears. He would make it. He’d made it through the war.
And here they were. The building set back inside a courtyard as Annie described it. Edward put one foot on the cobbled surface and struggled to lift himself. The driver took his arm and helped him out.
“Thank you.”
Edward waited under the archway for the sound of the cab departing, like wind fading, and then came the silence. He took his first steps into the courtyard. He would make it. He looked down at his feet. Sylvia was always telling him, Slow down, Edward. Why do you rush so? What’s the hurry? His heart ached for Sylvia, her breasts warm and soft against his chest.
Life whipped by like a storm. Gone in an instant. His daughter. His wife. Everything.
He inched across the courtyard, familiar as the ones he crossed in the war. Shots banging into walls, stonework cracking. He was trapped in the open air, running for the rubble, calling on God. God help me, he had said then. God. He almost said it now in the quiet, late darkness. Not a sound in the night courtyard. He once told Nan waiting made you crazy. Battles knocked out crazy thoughts. She knew. Nan battled for her patients every day.
Inside the building, the heavy iron doors folded back and he stepped into a large cage of an elevator. Garbage in the entryway. Rotting odors to keep you away. But he wouldn’t stay away. When Nan told him that Howard had moved to Budapest, he knew he had to follow. He couldn’t let the killer go.
The cage ratcheted up, nicking the walls when it passed another floor. He leaned against the metal ribs to keep himself steady against thirst, against dizziness. The cage halted, settled in, and opened up.
Down the hallway to the end. On the right, facing the river, Annie said.
He moved along the wall, using it for support. The bulb cast a flickering light, the glare turning the walls yellow, scratching like sand in his eyes. He stopped midway, rubbing them to see. It had been days since he’d been out. Blood swelled in his head, his ears. He listened. Behind him, the cage started rattling its way down to the ground. He continued along the hall. Finally, he stood outside Howard’s door.
He put his hand on the door knob. The knob turned easily. He released it. This was the moment. Here. He almost wept. This wouldn’t do. He wiped his eyes and pulled the gun out of his pocket, unlocked the safety, and slipped it back into his pants. He turned the knob again and opened the door.
Thirty-four
Stephen stood with his back to the railing and raised his glass. “To this beautiful night, egészségünkre!”
“Eggs and shakes!” Bernardo said. “Stephen, thank you for your hospitality.”
They all raised their glasses of Unicum, Annie included, though her glass was empty.
“His name is Van Howard!” Edward’s deep voice penetrated the room. Annie pivoted. Stunned. What was he doing here? Edward appeared in the middle of the living room and not her imagination, walking toward them. He had combed his hair. He wore a light blazer and matching pants. He was moving toward the middle of the living room, toward the balcony, one hand in his pants pocket. And except for the sheen of sweat on his face, he almost looked like a different man.
“What the hell—how’d you get here?” Stephen said.
“That’s not important,” Edward said. “Though you didn’t make it easy to find you.”
“You kicked me out, remember?”
“Yes, regrettably, I do.”
Edward stopped to catch his breath and steady himself, surveying the group bunched together on the balcony. “My daughter is dead because of that man,” Edward said, raising his left arm toward Stephen. “Annie, I’m sorry. He let his gaze find her, his dark eyes scarred with pain. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”
“I don’t understand,” Stephen said. “Oh, wait. I see. The call to your babysitter, Annie?” Stephen bowed toward her, sweeping his hand in an arc toward Edward.
Annie froze, caught in her lie. She didn’t know what to say.
“Funny. You didn’t mention you knew my wife’s father,” Stephen said.
“Is that a problem?” Will said, taking Annie’s hand.
“She had no idea I was coming,” Edward said.
Annie could hear the dryness in Edward’s voice.
“Edward, are you all right?” Annie said. Once again, he became the tired, beaten old man she had grown to know in the past month.
“First-name basis. Interesting,” Stephen said.
“Van, come on,” Edward said, taking another step toward the balcony. “You know she knows me. You’ve been following her.”
“Edward, that’s a crazy thing to say. You don’t look well,” Stephen said, his voice fading. “Are you sick?”
“Too sick to wait any longer,” Edward said, his eyes catching Annie’s again as he approached the threshold of the balcony.
He was steps away from her. She wanted to link her arm in his and steady him, tell him to sit down, but she knew better. The gesture would agitate him.
“Wait for what?” Stephen said.
“The truth,” Edward said, his breath stuttering. “How you murdered my daughter.” He spat out the words, one at a time.
“Seems we’re interrupting something we don’t need to be a part of,” Bernardo said, attempting to take charge. He guided Eileen past Edward and headed toward the door.
“I told you he’s insane,” Stephen said to everyone and no one.
Edward kept his eyes on Stephen. “We’ll see about that.”
“We’re all leaving together,” Bernardo said from across the room. “Agnes, you ready to take us all home?”
For once Annie appreciated Bernardo’s skill at assessing a situation and his effort to control it by asking a perfectly reasonable question.
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