Among the Dead

by Michael Tolkin

  The End

  Julia Abarbanel was waiting for them on the front porch at Frank’s house. As he walked up the steps with his family, his brother said, ‘They don’t know yet. They don’t know what you’ve done.’

  Julia was older than he had remembered, and more tired. He looked for something in her face that could excite him the way her voice had on the phone. He thought she looked disappointed in him, too, but he didn’t know, and knew that he couldn’t know, if she was disappointed because he had aged poorly over the last year, or if the past week’s miseries had corroded his face, or if she knew how weirdly he had behaved and now looked upon him as a stranger.

  ‘Your mother gave me the key so I could clean up.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Frank.

  ‘I picked up some things at the dry cleaner. And I also bought some storage boxes, for when you want to pack things away.’

  ‘Madeleine’s toys, Anna’s dresses?’

  ‘We could give the toys to charity. I’d like a doll.’

  ‘Take whatever you want.’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. I don’t mean I want to talk about taking things, I just meant, it was something I wanted to remember the baby by. To have a doll. You know, to hold it, so I could think about her.’

  In the house Lowell made a few calls, and soon fifty people were there, cousins, friends, with trays of food and bottles of scotch. Potato salads and raw vegetables, and sliced meats from a delicatessen, and bottles of mineral water and juice-flavoured sodas. Someone came with a fifty-cup coffee percolator and a carton of Styrofoam cups.

  Anna’s parents arrived from Philadelphia with her sisters. When they came through the front door, the house, after so much activity and conversation, and the noises of children too young to understand that this was not a normal party, and the chatter of children old enough to understand that this was about death but too young to know better than to rehash the issue of the plane crash with Frank, became quiet. Someone said, ‘The Klaubers are here.’

  Peter and Margot came in with Andrea and Barbara. This is another one of those moments, thought Frank, that everyone here will use as coin for a long time, an anecdote that their friends will hear more than once, the entrance of the other side of the family. The crowd had been in the house for an hour before the Klaubers arrived and had made of the wake something festive. Now the handshakes between the men, and then the deep hugs, and the tears, reminded everyone that this was better than a party, because this was about something real.

  ‘I want to see the baby’s room,’ said Margot.

  Ethel took her hand and they walked up the stairs. Frank followed.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Peter.

  Leon offered him a drink, and they went to the bar. On the way, others extended hands, hugs.

  In the baby’s room the grandmothers picked up the dolls, opened the drawers, took out the clothing, and wept. ‘There is no God,’ said Margot, ‘there is no God.’

  Frank wanted to tell her that he had heard this before, but what would that have proved?

  ‘My baby, my baby,’ said Ethel, holding a black-and-white teddy bear in her arms. She kissed it.

  ‘Her name is Panda,’ said Frank.

  ‘Panda,’ said Margot. ‘I’d like to hold Panda.’

  Frank saw that Ethel was afraid that Margot, once she held Panda, would never let go. Both women wanted the doll, wanted to keep it. Well, it’s mine to give away, he thought.

  Julia knocked on the inside of the door. ‘There’s a phone call for you, Frank.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A woman, a friend.’

  ‘Did you ask her name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Just answer the phone.’

  He went to his bedroom and told Julia to hang up once he was on the line. He said, ‘Hello’, and Mary said hello back. The line clicked, and they were alone, or at least their voices were.

  ‘We’re in the car. We’ve been driving around. It’s the only way to stay ahead of the press. How come your name isn’t in this yet?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They have to know.’

  ‘I think they’re just waiting.’

  ‘My husband wants to talk to you.’

  Then he came on the line. ‘Frank?’

  ‘Yes?’ Frank had forgotten his name. He felt stupid, but didn’t want to ask. Ifs normal, isn’t it? he thought. I’m under terrible stress.

  ‘You fucked my wife, Frank.’

  ‘I didn’t force her.’

  ‘No. But you fucked her.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘You can’t say anything. It’s over. It’s all over. Everything has been revealed.’

  Frank said, ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means what you think it means. Everything has been revealed.’

  He hung up. Frank left the bedroom and went to Madeleine’s door, but the room was empty. Panda was on the bed.

  He walked down the stairs. The television was on in the kitchen, with the sound off. There was a picture of the crash, and then a picture of Mary Sifka, and then a picture of Frank. The photographer had used a long lens, and you couldn’t tell from the picture where Frank had been, but he knew, by what he was wearing and his look of dismay, that this was the picture taken in the hotel lobby after his run from the crisis centre. He turned off the television, because he didn’t want to know anything else.

  His mother told him to turn it back on.

  ‘I can’t look at this any more,’ said Frank.

  ‘That’s not your decision to make, is it?’ asked Margot Klauber.

  ‘It’s my house,’ said Frank.

  ‘You can’t expect to go on living here,’ said his father. ‘You have no one to take care of you.’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ said Frank. He said this to everyone in the room and, turning to them in supplication, he wanted to make them an audience, or a jury, but he felt the weakness of his performance, or was it his argument?

  ‘And my brother says he doesn’t even want to work with me any more,’ said Frank. ‘And what did I do? I didn’t do anything.’

  The front door opened, and Mary Sifka came in with her husband. He had black hair and a black close-trimmed beard. The beard surprised Frank, and then he wondered if part of his allure, when Mary had found him alluring, was his smooth skin. He looked at Stewart Sifka’s beard and touched his own cheek, trying to remember what Stewart’s wife’s hand felt like when she was tender to him.

  ‘You fucked my wife!’ cried her husband.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,’ said Frank, trying to be terribly polite, hoping that if he maintained his grace, his friends and family in the room would vote for him in the contest for sympathy.

  ‘You don’t need it.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Frank. ‘It’s Stewart.’ And then he remembered the names of the women from San Diego, those names he’d forgotten in the bar. ‘Kelly and Chris.’

  ‘What?’ asked Stewart.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Frank. ‘I was just remembering some names.’

  ‘I’m sorry about everything that’s happened,’ said Lowell. I don’t know what we can do now.’

  ‘Do you know what you’ve done to me? I’m famous now,’ said Mary Sifka. ‘I never wanted to be famous, I never asked to be famous. I made a mistake. You know that all I ever wanted in life was to live my life quietly. I don’t want this. I love my husband. He understands. He could have forgiven me, but how can we go on now? We’ve been branded.’

  As Mary spoke, Frank remembered why he loved her. He thought that everyone watching her, as they compared her to Anna, to his dead wife, could see what was so spectacular about this woman who compelled Frank to break a commandment. She was a little younger than Anna, but not so much prettier, maybe a bit taller, although her haircut seemed cheap, a permanent that was growing out, and his wife’s hair had be
en famous in the family for its thickness and lustre. But here was Mary, standing in his living room without taking the obligatory and understandable glance around the room to see the house she could never have visited during the affair, unless the wife was out of town.

  ‘I’ll still forgive you, you know that,’ said Stewart.

  ‘You say that now, but everywhere we go people are going to recognize me now. And all of our friends, and our families, they know all about this. My life is ruined.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ said Frank’s mother. ‘It’s only over if you want it to be over.’

  ‘That’s right,’ someone said. Frank didn’t recognize the voice, and he looked behind him. It could have been any one of four men, but none of them looked to him, they were waiting for Stewart or Mary to speak. They didn’t care about Frank any more. Frank’s attention withdrew from the room as a new reverie pulled him into its spell. If he took Mary’s side, perhaps he could prove that logically, the only person in the world with whom she could share a life was him.

  ‘Maybe this will bring you together,’ said Frank’s father.

  ‘That’s an awful lot of death to heal a marriage,’ said Stewart. ‘I don’t know that the price of anyone’s happiness, let alone ours, should be so high. How can we repay that kind of sacrifice?’

  The startling nobility of this little speech illuminated the room. Frank knew what everyone in the room was thinking: that this woman, Mary Sifka, for whatever reasons she had been drawn to Frank, was lucky to have such a fine, fine husband. Somehow Stewart Sifka’s automatically gracious words, spoken so quietly, without hesitation, and delivered for the precious benefit of everyone in the room, although his eyes calmly shifted their focus from Leon to Ethel to Lowell, so none would feel favoured or excluded, restored to all the Gales, the Klaubers, the Abarbanels, the cousins, the friends, the old and the young, a sense of the possibility that the terrible sacrifice of all those lives would indeed have a meaning. Could anyone not deny their soul’s recuperation as Stewart’s simple truths gave them the blazing torch of courage, whose hot beam they could now barely point at the mistakes to which we are all entitled and which we have all committed, errors of judgement clouded by the murkiness of damaged character? Everyone is forgiven, thought Frank. Everyone but me.

  ‘Maybe you should stay here,’ said Lowell, ‘until all this blows over.’

  ‘That’s a gracious offer,’ said Stewart, ‘but I don’t think we can really accept it.’

  ‘You must,’ said Lowell. ‘After all, the press only knows what Mary looks like, they don’t know you. And it’s better to hide out here than in a room at an Embassy Suites. You must be our guests.’

  ‘Frank will stay with us,’ said Ethel. ‘When the press knows he’s not here, they’ll have no reason to watch the door. No one will bother you. And you can have time, together. And that’s what you need.’

  Frank looked to Julia Abarbanel to find something in her eyes, some hint of disapproval for the coup that had robbed him of his palace.

  ‘I think it’s a good idea,’ said Julia. ‘Everyone needs to cool off.’

  Leon offered Stewart a drink, and then Mary. Frank was sure that Stewart would ask for water, but he wanted vodka on the rocks, and he asked for it with some relief. Mary followed her husband’s choice. Perhaps this was a signal she shared with him – the call for hard liquor was the beginning of sex, rough sex. He thought they must be ready for some hard love-making, because they seemed so secure with each other, and in spite of their agony, wasn’t Mary glowing?

  Mary sat down. ‘This is a beautiful house,’ she said. There was a photograph in a silver frame on the mantel, Anna and Madeleine in the snow. Frank had taken it in Aspen. The week had been a disaster. Anna had hired a babysitter through an agency, but she was too young, and Anna did not trust her. After the second day, Anna let her go, and then demanded of Frank that they take turns coming down from the mountains and playing with the baby, who was one and a half. It would be impossible for the two of them to ski together. Frank told Anna that he had seen little to complain about in the babysitter, but he knew that he was only trying to get her on the slopes with him, so they could ride the chair lifts together and ski together. He would not admit to her what he knew, which was that Anna was right about the sitter, who had been cold and nervous with the child, and that Madeleine had had good reason to cry in her arms. So every time it was Frank’s turn to get off the mountain and take Madeleine for a few hours, he pouted, he refused to smile, or he came down half an hour after the agreed time. Looking at the happy woman and happy child in the picture, Frank remembered how Anna had struggled to put aside her rage at him for his resentment at the hobbled day.

  Julia volunteered to help the Sifkas make their bed and to show them around the kitchen. ‘And there’ll be plenty of leftovers from all this,’ she said, sweeping her hands over the trays of cheese and meat and salad and bread and cake that all of Anna’s friends had brought to share with each other.

  ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ said Frank.

  That’s not really your decision,’ said Lowell.

  ‘It’s really more of an opinion,’ said Frank. He heard Julia say something under her breath. ‘What?’ he asked, although he knew that if she answered, he would only feel worse.

  ‘I said, “I can’t believe it.” ‘

  ‘We should go,’ said Leon, and he put his hand on Frank’s shoulder. The touch, so frighteningly unfamiliar, so old, so full of authority, brought Frank to tears.

  He followed his parents to the door. No one looked at him. Already his cousins and friends were collecting dishes, glasses, napkins, and cups from around the room. Anna’s father was in the kitchen, putting plastic wrap on the fruit salad.

  Stewart stood up and offered his hand to Leon. The contact between them, the look that passed, was martial, full of an unspoken knowledge that only men can share. Frank recognized pieces of the code, but could not break it. Behind them, Mary’s head was turned away, she was talking to Julia, who nodded her head a few times, and glanced over at Frank in a way that told Frank that Mary was telling her side of the story of the affair.

  Frank’s mother opened the door and let him go through first. He turned to look inside, just as Stewart asked Lowell a question.

  ‘Lowell, have you settled on a lawyer?’

  ‘Yes, we have, and I’m sure we made the right decision,’ said Lowell.

  ‘So who will it be, Dessick or Berberian?’

  Before Frank could hear what his brother said, their mother closed the door, and the sound of the lock clicking into place destroyed the answer. And then he heard Stewart say, ‘An excellent choice, Lowell. That’s what I would have done. He’s a good man.’

  Frank hovered at the door, hoping to hear more, but his father called to him. He fell in step behind him, and they walked to their car, parked on the street.

  ‘How did your car get here?’ asked Frank.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ said his father.

  Frank couldn’t say. He tried something else. ‘Julia looks good, doesn’t she? Well, maybe she looks a little tired, but don’t we all?’

  Neither of them answered. They drove to Wilshire Boulevard, and to the condominium.

  Frank coughed a few times in the elevator, just to be heard.

  ‘You should have some herbal tea,’ said his mother.

  ‘I think I’d like a drink,’ he said, happy, finally, for a conversation.

  ‘No,’ said Ethel, ‘herbal tea.’

  As the elevator rose, Frank wanted to yell at them, he wanted to curse his mother and his father for being born, he wanted to soak the curtains of their bedroom in lighter fluid and then burn the fucking place, he wanted to push his mother and his father into the rooftop swimming pool and hold their heads under water with a steel garden rake, he wanted to pull the doors of the refrigerator off its hinges and smear the food over the living room walls, and wait a few days for the mayonnaise to rot, so t
hat the manager of the building, when he responded to the neighbours’ complaints about odd smells, would vomit from the stench when he used his pass key to open the door, he wanted to skilfully crack each of the apartment’s windows with a brass candlestick and force big sheets of glass to the street, to decapitate mailmen and Guatemalan nannies pushing strollers filled with the infant sons and daughters of Brentwood orthodontists, he wanted to clog the toilets with dirty underwear and run the bathtubs until the overflow soaked through to the apartment downstairs, he wanted to stab his feet with cuticle scissors and then turn the burners on the stove to high and stand on a stepladder and push his feet into the flames, he wanted to do all of this, but he asked himself, Yes, so, where will the profit be?

  And so he said goodnight to his mother and father. I have some shopping for you to do in the morning,’ his mother said. ‘The list is by the phone in the kitchen.’

  Frank said nothing. He went down the hall to the guest room. There was a single bed against one wall, a desk and bookcase. Everything came from his old bedroom at the mansion in Bel Air. There were the books he’d read in high school, photographs of Frank and Lowell at summer camp. There was his old baseball glove, and the first reading lamp he’d had as a child, part of a set of cowboy furniture. The lamp was a covered wagon with a bulb inside. There was a little carved man holding the reins of a team of carved horses. Frank undressed and got into bed, thinking that he should go to the bathroom because he needed to pee, but he decided he could ignore the pain in his bladder, and hold it in until morning.

  He turned off the cowboy light, and looked at the darkness, saw nothing, and fell asleep listening to the muffled sound of the television in his parents’ room, as they watched the news.

  That night he had this dream:

  He is standing in the middle of a dirt road, in the mountains. There are two lines of people on either side of the road. Dessick is at the head of one line, Berberian is at the head of the other.

  ‘What is this?’ asks Frank.

  ‘We gave you a chance,’ says Berberian. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t take it.’