Epitaph

by James Siegel

  But she did, starting from the ground up, from a pair of beaten-up imitation leather slip-ons completely covered with beads of water, to a pair of cotton pants-chinos they used to call them-to a plain white shirt soaked clear through. And to the cane, aluminum, which, lined up with his right leg, had completely eluded her from the other side of the street. A cane.

  In a way, it shook her more than the gun had. For in her fervid imagination, there'd been no room for this, no place for another appendage of creeping age. She had enough of that at home; she'd been expecting more lethal props. But when she took a moment to think about it- a moment she spent poised between two large and rather oily puddles-she realized that all it had done was confirm her basic hunch. Vulnerable she'd thought him- vulnerable he was. Perhaps a friend was just what the doctor ordered.

  But what was the watcher watching?

  "Good morning," she said, in a voice that didn't actually sound like hers.

  He turned to look at her; and smiled. No, she thought, this watcher was not like the other one at all.

  "Good morning."

  He had a pleasant voice, homey, her mother might have said, not too rough and not too soft either.

  And then, before she knew it, they were engaged-vir- tually married-in conversation.

  She told him her name. He told her his. She asked about his leg. He told her of an accident.

  She told him about the lot, about her committee, about her husband, about Mrs. Tyler's niece's infidelity, about, in fact, the moon.

  He told her where he lived, the name of his cane's manufacturer, the advanced weather forecast for the New York City area, the time of day.

  And then, just about halfway through their conversation, he told her what she wanted. Not with words, but with a quick pointed look, a look that came more than halfway through their little talk, when plainly beginning to worry about the interruption to his vigil, and evidently too nice to be rude about it, he sneaked a glance across the street. Toward, she assumed, his target, the veritable apple of his eye.

  Well. That was her first reaction. Just well. For if she'd expected some other target, if she'd settled on her own rather sinister candidates for the title of who the Watcher watched-and she had-she'd been proven to be sadly and completely off the mark.

  For it was only the doctor, the good Dr. Fern. Beloved of the elderly, and caretaker of her own Mr. Simpson's precarious health.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It hadn't been difficult. In fact, given all that had come before it, all the wasted time and wasted travel and wasted pain, the ease with which he'd secured the name seemed almost pathetic. Like climbing the highest tree in the yard only to pluck a fruit so rotten it just about falls into your hand. A phone call to Raoul. A phone call to Mr. Greely. A phone call to Rodriguez. That's all it took. What was the name of Mrs. Winters's doctor, he'd asked Raoul. The one who recommended Florida? Fern, he'd replied. The old people love him. And why did the old people love him? 'Cause he's one of them. Not a day under eighty, Raoul said. Imagine that. Mr. Greely had needed some time to jog his memory. Palm, he said after a few minutes. Could it be Fern? I think it's Palm. But it might be Fern? Dr. Fern? An elderly gentleman in his own right? That's it, Greely said. An old doctor, too old-that's why I don't go to him. Dr. Palm. You mean Dr. Fern. Maybe. And Rodriguez, whom William once more interrupted in the act of sunning himself, who took ten minutes of the phone company's time to make his way down from the roof where his ten-year-old cradled the phone before a too-loud TV; Rodriguez remembered it perfectly. Fern, he said. Like the plant. If the plant was a Venus flytrap maybe. That's who came that night, he said. Old-real old. That it, bro? You didn't call him? No. Who did? Weeks did. Weeks didn't. What's the difference? Maybe Jean did. Before he went down for the count. Wasn't Jean French? French Hungarian. There you go then. The doctor parlay-vood too. He must have rang him up before he kicked. I don't think so. Okay, you don't think so. That all, Jose? Fern. Like the plant. Remembering later how he'd stared so hard at the list that night, the list of the missing, trying to find a common denominator that didn't seem to be there.

  But there had been. Fern.

  Fern was the common denominator.

  Fern, who lived on a dead-end street within walking distance of everybody. Arthur Shankin. Doris Winters. And Jean.

  Jean, who on his way to bag another runaway had run into the biggest runaway of all. The murderer of two hundred and fifteen men, women, and children-most of which Jean had greedily taken part in, but three of which he hadn't, the three that carried his name.

  What Jean must have felt that night.

  To begin with, he was scared, Weeks said.

  To begin with, yes. He must have been torturously scared, frightened out of his mind. But then, something else. A chance, a chance as clear as day. To balance the books, to erase an unholy mistake-to unburden himself of the only guilt he'd ever carried. To take the mark of Cain and burn it off with acid.

  But not too fast. It had been over fifty years-no reason to rush now. And besides, though Jean may have had the morals of a snake, he lacked the capacity to shed his skin. He was-first, foremost, and forever-a detective. And the detective in him must have spotted some familiar clues, sniffed out a most evocative odor. Could it be that Dr. Petoit hadn't hung up his syringe just yet? Could it be that it was still wartime, and there were still Jews out there running for their lives?

  Only now they were called the elderly-pushed into ghettos called retirement communities, forced into concentration camps called old age homes, ignored by most, forgotten by family, absolute fair game for everyone else. And just as Jean had been a Jew then, Jean had been old now. It must have made it seem all so familiar, so shaped by fate, or cosmic irony, or maybe even God. In the end, maybe Jean had even believed.

  Jean, like all good detectives, had gone about building a case. Even started a file, just like the old days. Even taking some precautions too, setting up Weeks as his insurance policy in case a safe dropped on his head. And perhaps, just perhaps, even showing Weeks a picture from the past-that's Santini there, and over there, that's William, William the Boy Scout, William the cuckold, William the priest. Because, after all, priests tend to show up at funerals, don't they.

  And then a safe had dropped on his head.

  And now, here and now, was the priest.

  Standing, after more dead ends than he cared to remember, in the only dead end that mattered, talking with a woman who seemed intent on devouring him with words.

  And thinking this-as she prattled on and on-that he should go to the police. That of course he should. No doubt about it. There were twelve missing people here, and a mass murderer that made Ted Bundy look quaint, so he should go to the police. Immediately go there.

  But then, maybe there was doubt about it. Just a little doubt. Sure, it was there somewhere-say hello, doubt, and take a bow. Like, for instance, maybe he'd made all of it up in his head. Maybe it sounded completely coherent to him, but maybe it would sound completely incoherent to someone else. For example, the desk sergeant at the 105th Precinct. Who'd be interrupted mid-donut by a geezer trying to convince him that the next best thing to Eichmann was hiding out just around the corner. Not exactly hiding out, either, but when he wasn't involved in nefarious doings-calmly going about the business of practicing the Hippocratic oath on a bunch of patients who swore by him. Maybe the sergeant would look up from his coconut-creme donut and see an average- variety fruitcake.

  Besides, it wasn't like he exactly liked the police. He didn't. Not for anything in particular, but simply because in his old job, not liking the police had been an occupational hazard, like having to work on Christmas, or having your wife screw someone besides you. Of course, the police didn't like detectives much either-they were always getting in each other's way. Maybe they were simply too much alike-detectives and policemen-half the detectives having been policemen in a previous life. Detectives knowing half the police were shit and the police knowing they knew it. Here
you had detectives taking money to investigate things, and the police constantly taking money not to. Both on a first-name basis with guys with funny monikers. The Tuna. The Lip. The Bull. Those guys. Police and dicks tending to use the same professional witnesses, to shake down the same professional snitches. That kind of familiarity couldn't help but breed contempt. Three Eyes hadn't been any different. There you had Jean ruining legitimate DA cases left and right, Santini hogging the off-duty money New York's finest counted on to send the kids to college, and William trailing his cheating hearts all over town and occasionally taking it on the chin for just being their associate. He'd suffered an overload of parking tickets, had twice been rousted downtown on suspicion of something or other which always turned out to be nothing or other, and had even gotten blackjacked outside a cop bar once by an off-duty patrolman just practicing his opposite-field swing.

  So though William knew he should go to the police, knew, in fact, that he would go to the police, he wasn't going to the police just yet.

  He was back on the job, wasn't he? He was back in the saddle. So he was going to run out the drill. And what did the drill say? It said surveillance.

  Over and just to the left of the talking woman's head was a house surrounded by pink rhododendrons and weeping willows. A sign was stuck off center in the middle of a thick and handsome lawn.

  Dr. Fern M.D., it said.

  Healer of ills.

  From a distance, he looked like any other eighty-year- old man. But any other eighty-year-old man wouldn't have caused William to avert his eyes as if they'd been seared by the sun. Any other eighty-year-old man wouldn't have caused his stomach to drop to his quivering knees and cause his body to start involuntarily turning toward home.

  Dr. Fern had a shock of white hair-tousled, as if someone had just run their fingers through it. His body was wiry and thin. He wore black thick-soled shoes. That was all William could actually see. What he felt was terrified.

  The old people love him,Raoul the janitor said.

  Yes. He could see why they loved him. One of them. One of us. And he suddenly remembered what Mr. Leonati had once said when he'd returned from a trip to Ger- many-the Teutonic Tour or Holiday in Heidelberg or some such name.

  Scared me, Mr. Leonati had confessed. So beautiful, so familiar. There was a nice old man looked just like me, roasting chestnuts in the bus station. I smiled at him-then I wondered if he'd roasted Mr. Brickman's uncles during the war. Okay.

  Okay.

  Dr. Fern looked jolly. From a distance, he looked like the kind of doctor an older person would lean on. An older person wouldn't mind taking off their clothes in front of Dr. Fern. An older person wouldn't mind confiding in him either. Dr. Fern would understand, Dr. Fern knows what it's like.

  And if Dr. Fern said go to Florida, an older person would say when?

  William, another older person, slid back further into the weeds. He was sweating a lot-more than usual, more than maybe was humanly possible. It was running into his eyes and stinging them.

  Dr. Fern was staring at his lawn now. Staring at it and kicking it softly with his right shoe. Sweeping strands of willow grazed his shoulders. He looked like a poster boy for the joys of retirement. Just a man out on his lawn, taking the air, surveying what's his. Only it wasn't his, not exactly. It was everybody else's. He'd taken it from them.

  An old gardener limped out from behind the house, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with weeds. Dr. Fern pointed to the lawn and said something; the gardener, his face crisscrossed with lines, ignored him.

  Dr. Fern stared after him, contemplating some further directions maybe. But he gave none-instead he suddenly looked up.

  He was looking right at him. William was convinced of it. Of course he was. Staring right at him like a hunter gauging the distance to his prey. William should run, scram, throw away his cane and crawl on all fours if he had to. Dr. Fern was death, and death was calling for him.

  But Dr. Fern was only looking at the sky, shading his eyes as if searching for land. He wasn't looking at William after all.

  William pressed back against the brittle weeds, relief washing over him like a sudden rain shower. He shivered; imagine, this close to death and still scared stiff. Scared stiff because he was this close to death, right across the street from it, within hailing distance.

  The gardener was back now, gesturing at the flowers as if willing them to bloom. Dr. Fern walked over and said something else to him.

  He seemed just a little bored with him; he listened to the doctor like you listen to someone else's child. Which, with William, had always been every child, always someone else's, not his and Rachel's. And now he wondered if she'd really had one, their child, and if she'd had it, if it really was theirs. That's why he'd never really tried to find out of course. Because he might've found out that their child, wasn't, was Santini's instead, conceived on a sweaty night in the Par Central Motel. That's why he never mailed the letters, why he picked up the phone without dialing a single number or uttering a word. Thirty-five years, and he couldn't get that picture out of his head. Just like Jean, who couldn't get a picture out of his head either, an image of pale dust settling like snow on a cell in the bowels of hell. Of a doctor who made you ill.

  This doctor, the kindly Dr. Fern, whom the gardener was shrugging off like a gnat, as if he wasn't interested in what the doctor had to say because he'd heard it all before maybe, because he had more important things on his mind. The garden and the weeds.

  William was still shivering, suddenly cognizant of his own rancid odor, like something dead, like something almost dead.

  The gardener walked off, then came back with a single bag of charcoal. So Dr. Fern was having a barbecue, a quiet barbecue in the garden complete with weiners and roasted marshmallows maybe. But where was the grill?

  The gardener unloaded the bag; it hit the ground with a sound like muffled thunder. The kind of thunder that's still far away but getting closer by the minute. The kind you huddle against in a quiet corner of your room.

  Where was the grill?

  Something was wrong. The gardener was upset about something, he was pointing at the ground and motioning to the good Dr. Fern. Ah, the bag had broken, that's all. A little of its charcoal had seeped out in a thin white line.

  There wasn't a grill to be seen.

  Dr. Fern was helping him out now, helping the hired help, smoothing the spilled charcoal into the soil now, cleaning it up.

  There wasn't a grill anywhere.

  Okay, fine. Because there wasn't any charcoal either.

  Charcoal, after all, is black.

  Other things are white. But not charcoal.

  Like lime. Lime is white. And ash. Ash is white. Ash white.

  So maybe Dr. Fern wasn't having a barbecue after all.

  He dreamed about Rachel that night. A dream that left him tired and melancholy. It was a dream of something true, of something that had happened early in their marriage. A frigid winter's day, the morning after an ice storm had left everything coated in crystal. There's the happy couple, cozy as bugs in a rug. Home, with nothing much to do, nothing, that is, except cuddle and snuggle and whisper about the future, they go out for food-Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel foraging for nuts. It's a ten-block walk to the nearest grocery store, the ground as slippery as freshly waxed tile. They nearly skate there, pulling and propping each other up like the Protopovovs all the way to the store and back. They never quite let go of each other's arms, they never separate for more than an instant, they're one another's lifelines for as long as they're out there.

  Later, propped up in bed surrounded by absolute silence, it seemed to William that they never needed each other quite as much as they did that day. They made it through an ice storm, but life had proved far more slippery. And life was very much on his mind right now. Life as a palpable, measureable, and ownable thing. As something that could be lost, given up, taken, stolen, thrown away, screwed up, or sacrificed. Take your pick. The doctor, for instance, had ta
ken. Alma Ross, Arthur Shankin, Doris Winters had lost theirs. Jean had, of course, taken too. And then, when his own life had seemed all but lost, he'd tried to take it back. And where did William fit in? Had he thrown away his? Thrown it away somewhere in the pawpaw patch, somewhere between losing Rachel and losing hope, between a shattered heart and a shattered shoulder. Somewhere there. And when it's that far gone, can you ever find it, short of a miracle, that is?

  Perhaps you start by starting. And though he'd started and stopped and stopped and started like the rusted engine he was, he was now at a fine hum, all pistons go, ready to roll. Today, for instance, he'd been a very busy beaver.

  He'd paid a visit to Mr. Weeks. Paid him a visit, and told him everything, starting with Florida and ending with Fern. He'd left him with names, numbers, and one very simple instruction. If William failed to call him by noon tomorrow, Weeks was to call the police. They'd shook on it in the hallway, Mr. Weeks's hand as smooth and translucent as wax paper.

  Back at the apartment building, where Mr. Leonati scolded him for not resting his leg and asked his opinion on which tour he should take this fall-the Sardinian Splendor or Norwegian Nights-he'd gone upstairs to find Mr. Brickman listening to a tape.

  Hello Grandpa, the tape said, this is Laurie…

  Mr. Brickman had taped it off the phone. Just to listen to, he said, from time to time. Then, looking a little embarrassed, he said, If I ever want to, that is…

  William had just needed a minute of his time.

  If he, William, should ever not return to his room- tomorrow, the next day, or any day, Mr. Brickman was to look in the top drawer of his dresser. There would be a will there. Also-he was to call a Mr. Weeks. That's all.

  But Mr. Brickman, of course, wanted to know what all the mystery was about, all the morbid mystery. My heart, William told him. It's been giving me trouble. Mr. Brickman said he understood. Then had come the hardest part. He'd never written a will. Rachel had left him while they were still more or less young-after her, there'd been no one else, of course, to provide for. He found a piece of paper stuck between a magazine, took it over to his bed, then stared at it for over half an hour. Then a word.