Among the Dead

by Michael Tolkin

  ‘Take my room tonight,’ said Frank.

  His mother asked him why.

  ‘Do I have to explain?’

  ‘But you were sick, Frank. Everyone gets sick.’

  His mother was silent, and he could hear her mumble or whisper something to his father. His father probably wanted to accept the offer of the clean room.

  ‘We’ll get you a doctor,’ said his mother. So Leon was thinking of Frank’s health, not his own comfort? So they were being parents now?

  His father came to the door. ‘Frank?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed about this.’

  ‘Thanks for saying that.’

  ‘It’s not food poisoning, is it?’

  I can say it now, thought Frank. Easily. I can say, ‘No, Dad, I’m scared shitless by what’s going to happen when you know that I wrote the letter.’ But he said, ‘No.’

  ‘It’s everything.’

  Frank said it was.

  ‘We’ll stay in this room. It’s really not bad. Did you clean up in there?’

  ‘I tried to. I think you need fresh towels, though.’

  ‘I’ll call.’

  ‘What will you say?’

  ‘Nothing, I don’t have to explain myself to those assholes.’ This was Lowell’s voice too. So his father wasn’t a complete loser. Why didn’t I learn those lessons? Frank asked himself. What did Lowell see that I didn’t, why does Lowell love them more than I do? Look at what they’re doing for me now, the love, the care.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Frank.

  ‘I told you not to be,’ said his father.

  ‘I’m sorry for everything,’ said Frank, and he meant, everything that’s going to happen.

  ‘We love you,’ said his mother.

  ‘For now,’ he said.

  ‘The key,’ said his mother. It was in his wet pants. He gave it to her, opening the door just wide enough for his hand, and then closed it. He sat on the edge of the tub and waited for his mother to bring him clean underpants.

  8

  Family

  When he was dressed, he went back to his room. A man and woman were in the hall, next to the elevators, arguing. They were both dressed expensively, his suit was dark grey, and she wore blue, and a white shirt with ruffles at the neck. They were probably in their late twenties, and they were angry with each other.

  ‘This is my floor,’ said the man. ‘I got here first.’

  ‘You can’t claim it, you don’t own it,’ said the woman.

  ‘I hate to cite precedence, because I’m sure you don’t understand the concept, but there’s a long-established principle of finders, keepers here.’

  ‘It isn’t finders, keepers, that’s not it at all. It’s more like the claims of imperialism.’

  Then they saw Frank, and they stopped talking.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ Frank asked.

  ‘No,’ said the woman.

  ‘Have you made a choice yet?’ said the man.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Frank.

  The elevator came. The woman said, ‘We have an agreement, you know, not to fight for the same one. You can check it.’

  The man seemed to know what she was talking about, and they both got into the elevator.

  Frank wasn’t sure if he understood what he had seen, but it would have been something to discuss with his wife. She liked to hear abstract anecdotes from the world, and try to complete someone’s story with only a fragment, a glimpse.

  Back in his room the message light on the phone was blinking. There were two messages from his brother, one from Bettina Welch, and another dozen left by reporters, including two from Ron Godfrey.

  While he looked at the messages, the phone rang. It was Lowell.

  ‘Mom and Dad said you were sick. They asked me to find you a doctor.’

  ‘I’m OK now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘All systems go.’

  ‘Yeah, all systems go over the rug,’ said Lowell, and he laughed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I think everything just got to me.’

  ‘Everything’s just getting to you.’ Lowell sounded a little bit drunk. This astonished Frank and then left him feeling lonelier than ever. His brother, after all, had not lost his own family, and with a few days passed already, Lowell was slipping back into the general drift of life. Lowell could afford to take an evening off from managing Frank, and like the camp counsellor who makes fun of the weakest boys in the bunkhouse, after they’ve gone to bed, Lowell needed the release.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Frank, hoping that his brother would hear something sullen in his voice. ‘Everything just gets to me.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Lowell, not coddling him any more. He meant not just now, but always. What was he drinking? Beer or champagne. Lowell likes champagne. ‘So should I get the doctor for you?’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Frank said he was sure.

  ‘Fine then,’ said Lowell. ‘Tomorrow they’ve got that memorial thing, and then we’ll go back to LA.’

  So they said goodnight to each other, and then Frank called Ron Godfrey, who thanked him for returning the call. He asked Frank if he was ready to say anything.

  ‘About what?’ asked Frank.

  ‘About surviving the crash.’

  ‘But I didn’t survive the crash,’ said Frank. ‘Nobody did.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Godfrey. ‘I was just wondering how you felt when you first saw your name on the list of the dead.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ said Frank. In print, how would that look? ‘I still can’t.’

  ‘Are you suing the airline?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Frank.

  ‘Do you know which suit you’re joining?’

  ‘I didn’t know I had a choice.’

  ‘There’s a few different lawyers, or law firms, trying to pull together as many people as possible for suits.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Frank.

  ‘Well, it’s early still,’ said Godfrey. He didn’t seem to have many more questions. ‘You were at the airport?’

  ‘Yes, I was waiting for the next flight.’

  ‘What time was the next flight leaving?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘And I understand you were held up in traffic’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You took a cab?’

  ‘Yes.’ He lied, but why let the world know he was in a limousine, why stimulate envy from strangers?

  ‘On your way from work?’

  ‘From lunch, from a business lunch.’

  ‘And you called from the restaurant to say you’d be late?’

  ‘No, from the car.’

  ‘There was a phone in the cab?’

  ‘I meant we had to pull into a gas station. I called from the gas station.’

  ‘How far from the airport was that?’ asked Godfrey.

  ‘A few miles.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of the street?’

  ‘Mr Godfrey, don’t you think you have enough information?’ They will uncover all of my lies, thought Frank.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Gale.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘For now, yes. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘And you have my sympathy. I – my – my mother was killed in a car crash when I was in high school. I was supposed to be in the car with her, she’d picked me up from school after we’d finished putting the high-school newspaper to bed, but I had a fight with her, and I swore at her, and she told me to walk home.’

  ‘So you know how I feel.’

  ‘A little.’

  Frank wanted to ask him if he knew so much, why was he bothering him with these questions, but he didn’t.

  Godfrey was gone, and then Frank called Bettina Welch. And then. And then. And then. Ever since the crash, nothing but loose moments tied together b
y time. He had no family any more, the thing that kept time away from him, love, even the faltering love of his three-year-old daughter. Now he had nothing but time, since all of his responsibilities had died.

  ‘Bettina, it’s Frank Gale.’

  ‘Yes, Frank, how are you?’

  ‘I’m hanging in there.’

  ‘I’m sure, I’m sure. Frank, I was just calling to remind you of the memorial service tomorrow morning. The buses will be here, or you can take a cab, or your brother can drive you, or you can rent a car from one of the local rental agencies, and I have lists down here in the crisis centre.’

  ‘Thank you, Bettina. Will there be coffins there?’

  ‘Oh, Frank. No. No, this is not a funeral. This is a memorial service. So we can begin the healing. But there will be a funeral. By the way, most of the bodies have been identified.’

  ‘That seems pretty quick.’

  ‘Those guys are working around the clock. And the robots, of course.’

  ‘And then I go down to the morgue?’

  ‘Or you can send your brother.’

  ‘And then we can go back to Los Angeles.’

  ‘You can go back to Los Angeles any time. You didn’t have to come here.’

  So quickly, life boiled away everyone’s intense compassion, their respect for him.

  He said goodbye to her. How many people had he said goodbye to since the plane crashed?

  He called his parents’ room and asked his mother if she had a number for Anna’s sisters.

  ‘You don’t have to call them now,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’ll be here in the morning. They’re coming down. No one expects you to be a good host now, Frank.’

  This was odd from her, he thought she would have liked him to call them, but she was thinking, he was sure, of the crap on her rug, and she wanted him to rest, to protect himself, and probably her, as well, from the possibility that he would erupt in other ways, again.

  ‘They want to stay at the house,’ said his mother.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They want to help you get everything together.’ This was such a bland thought. What did that mean, get everything together? Everyone would have their own cycle that began with grief and awe and ended in irritation. He would have to deal with the two sisters’ need to start at the beginning. And then Anna’s parents. He needed a publicist, not for the press, but for all these relations, someone paid to talk to them, to explain his behaviour.

  Was he still related to Anna’s family? If Anna had died but Madeleine survived, there would still have been some kind of genetic connection, through the little girl, but now? What held them together but an obligation to remember? And if I want to forget?

  Anna’s sisters were Barbara and Andrea. Barbara was three years older, Andrea five years younger. Their parents, Peter and Margot Klauber, lived in Philadelphia, where Peter was a real estate attorney. Barbara was a lawyer in Boston, Andrea managed a bookstore in Seattle. It was not a close family. There were cousins, mostly centred around Philadelphia, and most of them on Peter’s side of the family. Margot’s family, the Van Raaltes, were Dutch Jews, and only Margot’s parents had escaped Amsterdam before the war. Everyone else was dead. The Klaubers were a more refined family than the Gales, and this was something that had attracted Frank to Anna, something he thought of as European, cultured, complicated. Anna, for her part, was at first delighted by the mercantile Gales. There was a kind of vulgar Jew that Anna always pointed out to Frank, someone in his late forties, or older, even into his seventies, with a creased, pendulous face, and long earlobes, and an open shirt, and gold chains. She would find them in crowds, in other cars at stop-lights, and on beach vacations. Frank asked her once if she wanted him to wear a gold chain, and she said he needed to put on weight to look right. She had meant, he knew, the kind of weight that came from a Bacchic, orgiastic need for more. She didn’t want a fat man who was stuffing the lonely child within. A concept taken from psychology. And she wanted him to be fat only if he was rich, and rich in the right way. Money he had stolen himself, not money his father or brother had stolen. And she might have been disappointed that the Gales were finally not vulgar enough, not oriental enough. So her marriage to Frank did not insult her mother and father and provoke their contempt for her, for her conscious degradation of their bloodline, a hatred for her that might have challenged Anna to complete the break with them and choose a path for her own life that needed neither their approval nor disapproval. This was a subject to which she returned often, her family’s sense of its own importance, the family curse. In the first years of their marriage, Frank listened sympathetically to Anna’s minute dissections of her family’s morbidity. Was it the discovery of Mary Sifka that poisoned his interest in his wife’s family? He came to hate the calls from Anna’s parents, because after she talked to them, chatting pleasantly, she would hang up the phone and swear she would never talk to them again. He told himself that Mary Sifka would never make such a promise unless she meant to keep it, but that she would never, at this age, give her parents, or give anyone but especially her parents, the authority Anna had given hers. And since meeting Mary, he had stopped complaining about his own parents to Anna, although his feelings for them hardly changed. He just didn’t want to do anything that would make him sound like Anna, so full of blame.

  Still, though neither of them really loved their own families, or each other’s, they could not afford, emotionally, to tell the other that they were bored with each other’s tired feelings. Mexico might have changed this. Since the crash he had not allowed himself, or had the time, to think beyond the first fantasy of Anna’s discovery of the letter. Even while writing the letter, he imagined nothing beyond the first conversation with her in the room when he returned from his walk on the beach with Madeleine. But if the letter worked, if Anna had forgiven him and fucked him deeply -to make another baby! – then for the next week they would have felt a closeness that perhaps they had never felt with each other, for each other. Anything would have been possible after a few days. They could have said, Now let us tell each other every thought we have ever had. All the worst thoughts. About ourselves, about each other. What we want in life. What we want in bed, now.

  What a way to seduce. What a name for a perfume, the Truth. What are you wearing? The Truth.

  And then, where else could this orgy of truth have led them? To freedom, to holy edification. This might have been the great project for both of them, a new mission for their lives, launched by ten loving days in Mexico. Let go of the past. Burn the past. Burn all the baggage. The purge of the mother and father. Finally to let go of all that. And if this sounded like something that a celebrity couple would confess to in a magazine, well, so what? Wouldn’t you like to be so free? He could have told her everything about his feelings at work, about Lowell, about his disappointments, the failure of his career as a record producer, but to really tell her how he felt about it, how awful it was. Or would she be reminded by this that there was something in life for which he wasn’t quite good enough? Successes she could have shared. Parties to which she would never be invited. Would she prefer not to think about this? Well, but isn’t that what they were testing? That they could trust each other not to use these secrets as weapons. To let go of it all, let go of failure and frustration. Let go of ambition and expectation.

  And what would she have said to him? What if they fell in love with each other for a few days, and continued to confess, and explore, but reached a moment in which one of them said something harsh, or more painful than even the rules of trust and honesty could contain? For example: I don’t really love you. Or: I always wanted to be with someone more beautiful. What if one of them said something that had been hidden for a long time, and that the relief of this revelation was short-circuited by the truth’s imperative to act on this feeling, and that the only action capable of sustaining that relief was divorce? For example: I want a husband who works for himself,
not his brother. Or: I want a man who knows languages, and can explain the world to me. Or: Life is too short, and all of this honesty is a device to leave us in a deep embrace with our fates, and I want another fate.

  What if he had not missed the plane, and the plane had not crashed? When he talked to her on the car-phone, she was mad at him, but she was still getting on the plane. He had consoled himself with this, because she could have cancelled the trip, but then Madeleine would have been confused and disappointed. So was she continuing ahead only for their daughter? As the plane went down, was she thinking with bitterness that if she had acted for herself, and not for the daughter she had with this worm, then she would have been alive, and on her way to a lawyer, to settle the case and be free, finally?

  And if the plane had not crashed, and Frank had gone to Mexico and met them, what would that have been like? Gone to Mexico knowing that Anna had read the letter. He would have called from the lobby when he checked in. They would have been expecting him. Yes, Senor Gale, we’re sorry you missed your flight. We’ve taken very good care of your wife and daughter. The little girl, she’s so bright. Would you like your complimentary margarita? He would. And always the same routine: without salt, no ice. Or ice, yes, but no salt. No, make that with salt too, and lots of ice. Thank you. Then to the house phone. Hello, Anna. Or, not even that. I’m here. Well, I made it. Hi. Anna.

  Then with the bellboy to the room. Or would he have needed a bellboy, since all the luggage had gone with Anna? No bags, just a toy bought for Madeleine at the airport store. Under his arm. The bellboy doesn’t need to show him the way to the room. Yes, he does. I’m too tired, too scared. I need the company. So the bellboy walks with me. He speaks a little English. He knows I missed my flight. He shows me the door. Who knocks? I do. I give him a few dollars, too much, but I need someone to like me now.

  So I knock. Madeleine, in the background, shrieks out, ‘Daddy!’ Anna opens the door. I stand there, don’t cross the threshold until invited. Don’t meet her eyes, look down, think of contrition. I say I’m sorry. That’s all. I don’t come in. She has to invite me in. I say nothing. I wait for her to talk. This is a strategy that will either work or end the marriage now. Either she will let me in, and with that invitation forgive me, or she will see through the device, and make me go back to Los Angeles, now. A minute while she studies me. I do not look her in the eyes. She can see me clearly now.