Pam of Babylon

by Suzanne Jenkins

  She changed out of her white sundress into black spandex shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt—her outfit of choice for cleaning sprees. She went from room to room, homemaking. At three she stopped for a bite to eat, just a piece of fruit and a cup of coffee. By five, she was finished. She showered, debating whether or not to put her nightgown on or get dressed and go out.

  An unexpected phone call from a nurse at St. Vincent’s Hospital made the decision for her. A man had had a heart attack on the train. And if that wasn’t bad enough, thugs had taken his wallet. The only thing left on him was his phone and she was the last person he had called. The nurse asked Sandra if she knew who he was hoping she could verify his identity.

  Once she caught her breath, she said she would be right there, not thinking of the consequences, not caring about being discovered. She dressed, pulled her wet hair into a ponytail, grabbed her purse, and ran out of the apartment.

  4

  By the time she got to the hospital, Jack had regained consciousness long enough to give them the name and phone number of his wife. Then he died.

  Sandra was not a drama queen. She was composed in the worst of circumstances; her father’s death was just such an example.

  Her mother had suffered with breast cancer for ten years. The first six or seven years were spent taking rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, and experimental drugs. Finally, she couldn’t take the punishment of the drugs and succumbed to the vileness of the disease. It spread to her bones first, causing agonizing pain and debilitation, and then it went to her brain. She was a dynamic, aggressive woman in her day but the brain tumor reduced her to a meek and passive mouse.

  She began to waste away, growing thinner as the days pasted until she was skeletal. And then her body began to die. Her strong heart continued to beat, her brain stem working to maintain her breathing and heart rate, while gradually her circulation shut down. First the tips of her toes turned black. Slowly, death worked its way up, her legs turning purple then blue. Finally, mercifully she died in her sleep.

  Sandra thought it would be a huge relief when she finally died. How wrong she was! The family was devastated. Sandra’s father couldn’t control his sadness. He cried uncontrollably for the first few days and was unable to get out of bed or get dressed, refusing to eat. She missed feeding her mother, tempting her with her favorite foods, plying her with sweets, anything to get her to eat. At the time it was the most frustrating experience she had often thinking, God, please take her. And now all she wanted was one more chance to feed her, to serve her in some way. Her mother. Gone.

  Preparing for the funeral was hell. Sandra knew her mother hated pomp and circumstance, but her sister Sylvia, was hell-bent on throwing the biggest party they could afford for their friends and family. Sylvia interviewed the priest; her mother would have hated a religious ceremony being a passionate atheist. She rented a banquet room at the Bentley in Bergen, an over decorated monstrosity of a place that reminded their mother of the Palace of Versailles. Now the final indignity was having the wake luncheon there. Sandra did what she could do to try to dissuade her sister from the plans, but it was hopeless. She prayed that something would happen to change Sylvia’s mind.

  The evening of the viewing was cold and windy. Sandra struggled to get her father up and dressed. He was still despondent, begging her to allow him to stay home.

  “Just tell everyone I am ill,” he said. “Mother would have hated all this fuss.”

  “I know Dad. But it will help us to go, to see it through. I miss her too. I don’t know how I am going to look at her.” In addition to the expensive funeral, Sylvia had also insisted on an open casket. Sandra thought of those black toes, that almost dead body. Maybe she should have insisted that Sylvia help with the caregiving. She may have had a different perspective if she had.

  Sandra pulled the car out of the garage and drove to the front of their building to pick him up. He stood under the awning, waiting. She was shocked at how frail he looked, bent over and shaking. He was only sixty-one years old yet he looked like he was ninety. She wondered if they should bypass the funeral, do as her father said and just stay home and pretend they were sick. Sylvia would never have allowed it; she would come and drag them out.

  The rain made the air in the tunnel stagnant and toxic. Of course, traffic was backed up, and they were forced to breath exhaust fumes and who knew what else. Coming out the other side, they pulled onto the turnpike and started heading north toward Bergen. Sandra would ask Sylvia if Dad could stay with her tonight; the trip back into the city would be too much for him.

  They got to the funeral home right on time. The parking lot was crowded with cars displaying New York State license plates. Sandra thought how ridiculous it was to have to come here for the viewing tonight, come back during rush hour the next morning for the funeral, drive upstate for the burial, and then back down for lunch. She got tired just thinking about it.

  She had dropped her dad off at the door and parked the car. Running to the door to avoid getting wet, she stepped in a puddle of icy-cold water, ruining her shoes and splashing dirty water up her legs. Could this get any worse? Sandra wondered.

  When she reached her dad, he was surrounded by sympathizers and was crying again. He had someone on either side of him, assisting him as he walked reluctantly into the building. He looked so old; Sandra was choking back tears herself.

  She excused herself to the helpful friend and took hold of her father’s arm. She wanted to be with him when they approached the casket. Sylvia was there already, glaring at them for being late, greeting guests as they lined up to view the body. Sandra wished there was a way they could avoid this public viewing, thinking it would be too emotional and too private a thing to share with all these people. But having seen the casket her father was propelling himself along, wanting to see his wife one last time.

  People stepped aside when they saw her husband of forty years being led by his daughter toward the casket. Sylvia came up to them and took his other arm so the three of them could see her together. Sandra gasped when she saw her mother. Sylvia had done well. Her mother looked much like she did before she got so sick, with chubby cheeks, perfect makeup, and her favorite suit. Sandra and her father were both relieved.

  Her father visibly relaxed as he stood and talked with their guests. Many people told him stories of what she meant to them or anecdotes of their experiences with her. It had a great effect on him. For the first time in five days, he smiled. Sandra took her sister’s arm and said, “Thank you, Sylvia, this is perfect.” Sylvia smiled back at her and said, “Told you so.”

  Sandra remembered the favor she wanted to ask Sylvia. “Would you take Dad home with you tonight?” she said. “I don’t think he can handle a trip back home and then here in the morning.”

  “That’s fine,” Sylvia said. “I’ll go get his coat.” Sandra turned to yet another friend, someone who had known the family since before the girls were born while Sylvia retrieved her father’s coat and helped him into it, the two of them saying good-bye to the lingerers. Sandra looked up in time to see her father, his eyes seeking her out, give a feeble wave and smile at her, mouth “so long,” and then drop to the floor. By the time she reached him, he was dead.

  Now, seeing death again, another man she loved she was numb, frozen in place. Told she could view the body if she wanted and remembering the peace seeing his wife’s body had brought her father, she said yes. He was so peaceful that he died on the spot. Perhaps that would happen for her too, because she truly did not know how she was going to go on. Let me die, too. The nurse took the young, distraught woman by the arm and led her into the room. If there had been any heroics to save his life, all evidence of it was gone now except for a thin, shiny pink snail trail of dried mucous in the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh, Jack,” she said. She took his cold hand in hers and bent down, putting it to her cheek. She felt the familiar texture of his skin with its wiry hairs on the back of his hand tickling the side of he
r face. But that was all. He was gone. She couldn’t help herself, couldn’t prevent the tears from coming. The nurse, compassionate and concerned, led her out of the room and toward a private office where she could be alone for a moment before returning home. As she was being lead, head down and weeping, another woman—attractive, middle-aged, worried—was being lead into the room by a nurse, but not before noticing the beautiful young woman who had just exited the same room crying. Jack’s wife had made good time.

  Seeing his body lying there with the sheet pulled up to his shoulders looking so normal, his hair neat and combed, his face shaven, Pam burst out, “Oh my God! He’s dead!” without thinking, not remembering that someone had told her on the phone that he was dead. Or had they? Didn’t they just say he had a heart attack? “He’s dead!” she repeated.

  The nurse said, “Yes, he’s dead. Right before he died, he awoke and gave us your phone number. You see, his wallet had been stolen on the train.”

  “Who was that woman who just came out of the room?” Pam asked, aggravated. “Did he tell you her number, too?” She knew she sounded like a tired child, querulous, whiny.

  The nurse, with years of experience in matters of death made the snap decision that taking Mrs. Smith to the same room where the “other woman” was recovering would not be wise. “Come in here with me, Mrs. Smith.” The nurse led her by the hand. Pam wasn’t pulling away, but she was reluctantly being lead. There might be a problem. As they were going into the room, Marie came running down the hall, having received the message when she came in from spying that Pam was on her the way to the hospital.

  “Pam, Pam, for God’s sake, what happened?” She grabbed her sister and they held each other, both sobbing until Pam could get words out. “Jack’s dead. He had a heart attack on the train and someone took his wallet. Another woman came to see Jack, too. No one will tell me how she knew to come to the hospital.” The nurse returned with a social worker. The woman, a Miss White, gently lead the two crying women into a small anteroom just off the nurses’ station. It was cluttered with papers and stacked cardboard boxes, but there was a desk and a chair. The nurse grabbed a chair from the nurses’ station and wheeled it in, directing the women to have a seat.

  “Who’s the other woman here?” Pam repeated. She understood how inappropriate this must seem. For God’s sake, my husband is lying dead in the next room, and all I seem to care about is this woman. But she had to know. She had to. Marie, stony silent, thought she knew but would sooner die herself than be the bearer of this tiding.

  “Mrs. Smith, when your husband was brought in, the only personal item he had was his cell phone so we called the last person he called. I’m sorry, but we aren’t allowed to divulge any more information than that,” she lied. She wasn’t sure what the rules were concerning mistresses. Pam stood up, fuming. “That’s ridiculous! What if the last person he called was the trash collector? Would you have let them come into his hospital room?” Both the nurse and the social worker tried to calm her down while they waited for the director of nursing to call them back. Marie left the room. She would find the woman herself and confront her; anything to help Pam who was acting so out of character that Marie was frightened. She spotted the young woman walking quickly down the hall toward the exit.

  “Miss, wait! Wait, please!” Marie called after her. The woman walked faster at first and then decided it was fruitless—she might as well get it over with. She stopped and turned, not replying, just waiting as asked. Marie quickly walked up to her. She looked at her face. It was the same girl she’d seen earlier on the street, only now without makeup and her eyes were swollen and red from crying, clearly brokenhearted.

  “Please,” Marie said, “I am sorry to disturb you, but we have to know who you are. Jack was my sister’s husband. Who are you?” The young woman hung her head down and began to weep again. Marie led her by the arm to the side of the hall, out of the way. “I saw you with him, with Jack, this morning,” she whispered. “I was at the bagel place on Broadway, and I saw you walking hand in hand to the subway. I saw you kiss each other. I was going to confront him tomorrow. They’re having a Memorial Day picnic for the family—were having a picnic. I would never say anything to hurt my sister, but she needs to know the truth now or it will kill her.”

  Sandra heard what was being said to her, but she couldn’t respond. She didn’t know what to say. If they had been discovered, so be it. There was nothing else to tell. They had nothing together that was tangible. It was fleeting, an illicit affair. A momentary encounter that brought two people who were attracted to each other together for just a few months, not even a year.

  “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry? Will that do it? Okay then, I am sorry. I am sorry I had an affair with your brother-in-law. I’m sorry he died tonight. I am sorry they called me to come to the hospital; that my number was in his phone.” No, she thought, I take that back. I’m not sorry they called me. If they hadn’t, how would I have found out he was gone?

  She realized the travesty of what had just taken place—that the mistress was called first, before the wife. No wonder she was angry! The mistress should only find out about death by reading the paper, the final indignity, the obituary. New York Times, page 32. Jack Edward Smith. Born 1955. Died 2010. Husband of Pamela, father of Lisa and Brent, son of Bernice. Lover of Sandra. Yes, thank God for the cell phone. Without her number in it, she would have waited to hear from him for three days. Then the final horror—going into the office on Tuesday and being surrounded by their coworkers and having to hear it from one of them.

  Her revelry was disturbed by Pam, her voice echoing down the corridor.

  “Marie, what’s going on? Who’s that?” Sandra watched her as she scurried toward them. She remembered Jack using a similar term when describing his wife; everywhere she went, she scampered he’d said. She was always in motion, always doing something. She couldn’t go to a movie or the theater without taking something like knitting or it would drive her nuts having to sit still.

  And then she noticed that Pam was as gorgeous as a fifty-five-year-old woman could be. Although hardly at her best now, you could tell she took good care of herself. In addition to good genes, she worked out daily, stayed out of the sun, and spent a small fortune on her hair and skin. It showed.

  Now they stood face to face. Marie needn’t have said a word. Pam was no slouch. She knew who this young, attractive woman was. She could see immediately why Jack was attracted to her, why he would betray his wife for her. It must have been uncontrollable. She stood looking at Sandra and put out her hand, not to shake, but to grasp Sandra’s.

  “I’m Pam Smith,” she said. “Please, who are you?” Sandra started to weep again unattractively, snorting. She could barely get the words out. “Sandra. Sandra Benson. I am so sorry.” The tears cruised down her face, dripping off the end of her nose. Pam took a step toward her and Sandra looked up startled, fully expecting her to haul off and slap her across the face. Instead, she placed her hands on the young woman’s shoulders and pulled her to her bosom. She had to stand on her toes to hug Sandra. Pam started to weep as she embraced Jack’s lover.

  “I’m sorry, too. Poor Jack. I’m sorry, too.”

  5

  Pam had to get home. She needed to call the children and get them back East. Jack’s mother—oh God, how am I going to tell her Jack died? Who does that? The parent should die first. She didn’t think she had it in her. She would have someone call Jack’s brother, Bill. Let him do the dirty work. She had a party to cancel; it would be a funeral picnic instead. But first, she had to see this young woman home safely. There would be plenty of time later to sort it all out, and she said as much out loud.

  “I wish we could go to the coffee shop across the street from our apartment. I could sit there all night with the both of you, talking and sharing stories about Jack,” Pam said, Marie mortified, thinking my sister is really an asshole. Pam continued, “But I have to get home. Promise me you’ll rest tonight and to
morrow or Monday, we must get together, okay? I have two children who don’t know their father is dead yet, and I have to contend with that before I do anything else.”

  The three women got into a cab together. Pam held Sandra’s hand until they reached her apartment uptown. She asked Marie to see her to her door. She did as she was asked. Marie remembered to get her phone number, although she now had Jack’s cell phone handed over by the nurse, which housed the number, along with text messages, voicemail messages, and only God knew what else.

  Faced with an hour’s cab ride home, Pam made a mental note of whom she needed to call. When Marie got back inside, she told her she was going to call the children and then Bill. The calls to the kids were the worst. Lisa became hysterical, screaming, “No! No!” into the phone over and over again. Pam faced that it was not going to be easy to hang up on her teenage daughter, so she gave the phone over to Marie and, using Marie’s phone, called her son, who had the same reaction. Fortunately, both children where at places where public transportation was abundant, and no one would have to get into a car to come home. They both promised to wait to try to get home until the morning. Things wouldn’t seem so bleak in the morning, she thought.

  Then she had Marie call their mother. She just couldn’t do it. Although Jack wasn’t Nelda’s favorite person; she didn’t wish harm on him. Pam couldn’t say one more time tonight, “You need to brace yourself, Jack is dead.” Or worse, “Your father is dead.” She was sure the shock of his mistress, the girlfriend, would come although she hoped it would be sooner rather than later because magically, she needed her. She needed someone else who knew him intimately.

  In Pam’s peculiar way, she was happy with the knowledge that it wasn’t so much that he was tired of her and that was why he no longer asked for lovemaking; he was simply spent from doing it with Sandra. That somehow, oddly made it easier to swallow, the idea that he had someone else, someone who he might have liked better than her. But she would deal with it later. I must be in shock. People in shock were expected to make wrong decisions. She didn’t want to make any mistakes.