Jesse Kellerman

by The Executor (v5)

  . Everywhere you looked, there was music and art. It was all impossibly Romantic. She had once gone to a party at the home of a man who owned a dozen Klimts, one of which he kept in his kitchen, on the door to his icebox. During ball season the parties never stopped, orgies of booze and waltz that ran till five in the morning, when the dancehalls burst open, spilling everyone out, men staggering into lampposts and women running barefoot in their gowns. Those with sufficient strength and foresight would pick themselves up and go for Katerftühstück,

  the morning-after breakfast, consisting of pickled herring and strong black coffee, guaranteed to stop a hangover dead. All that was gone now. She hadn’t been back since the eighties, finding it too depressing. Her Vienna—the real Vienna—existed only in her memories, and I understood that my job was to provide her a canvas on which to re-create them. I did my best. I listened with enthusiasm; I tried to ask intelligent questions. When she mentioned the impossibility of finding a decent Sachertorte

  in Boston, I went to the Science Center and downloaded several recipes, baking up one a day, every day for two weeks, until at last I managed to produce something she winkingly deemed “an impressive fraud.” From then on I made it fresh every Monday. Following lunch, we watched the soaps. Even in this she revealed herself as discriminating. Aside from One Life to Live,

  she enjoyed As the World Turns

  and Guiding Light. General Hospital

  she abhorred as “inelegant”; The Young and the Restless

  and The Bold and the Beautiful

  were both “implausible.” When she said that, I couldn’t hold back a laugh. She started laughing, too. “One must never abandon one’s critical faculties,” she said. If there was nothing on, I ran errands or read some more. At three o’clock she joined me in the library for our official conversation, and before dinner—which she ordered from the market, prepared in tins, and which we ate in the kitchen, never at the formal dining table—I went out for a long walk, my mind digesting everything it had taken in that day. It was a wonderful way to live, at once relaxing and invigorating. If I had anything at all to complain about, it was the maid, a stout Romanian with loaf-like breasts and a three-dimensional birthmark on her upper lip. Once a week she pulled up at dawn in a blue Subaru station wagon, its headlights held on with duct tape. Letting herself in through the service porch, she undertook to wake me with her racket, galumphing around the house, humming to herself in a minor key as she dusted and swept, pausing only to shoot me spiteful glances as I stumbled out to brush my teeth. Her dislike for me was understandable (although no more pleasant for that). I added to her workload, and as I later learned, Alma paid her a flat fee, rather than by the hour. Before I showed up, she must have been making a killing. Now she had to contend with extra laundry—extra male laundry—and three extra rooms. She therefore went out of her way to disturb me, following me around the house, treading heavily, breathing heavily, and always humming.

  Everything she sang sounded like a funeral march. The Eastern Bloc must have been a sad place to grow up. I don’t think she knew my name, referring to me in the third person or, less often, as “sir,” pronounced seer and dripping with sarcasm. I wonder who she thought I was. A young lover? A grandson? I decided to kill her with kindness. I thanked her for small favors. I complimented her voice. She started to make eye contact with me, and I thought I’d begun to bridge the gap, until the following week, when she barged into my bedroom at six A.M., vacuum roaring. I groggily ordered her to leave. “Sorry, seer,” she said, slamming the door as she went. Giving up, I began spending those mornings out of the house, using them to catch up on e-mail. That I could go a week at a stretch without withdrawal proved that I needed the outside world a lot less than I’d thought. It’s amazing how much of what passes for communication is garbage. No phone, no Internet—and no worse off. Other than Alma, there were few people I wanted to talk to, and doubtless Yasmina had been spreading propaganda, telling our friends her side of the story. I ignored Evites; I grew addicted to the DELETE button. My world was shrinking, and that suited me fine. WE EACH LIVE to a rhythm, one that dictates the way we speak, move, and interact with our environment. Some people like to leave their mark. Enter a room after they’ve been in it and find the furniture displaced, the lampshades askew. Others, like me, live in the background. Throughout my adult life I’d had roommates, and in every case my rhythm clashed with that of those around me, Yasmina being the one exception. I had come to miss that kind of easy syncopation, and it was a joy to feel it once again. With Alma I felt both unalone and uncrowded. She gave off such quiet, steady vitality that I could sense her across the house. We kept in constant communication, trading witticisms from adjacent rooms, reassuring each other with our footsteps. Comforting as it was to be near her, it was proportionally upsetting when she took ill. In my first five weeks of residence, she had four attacks. I’d know something was up the instant I exited the library to find a certain stillness hanging in the air, our rhythms decoupled. These episodes were unbearably random. One lasted an hour; another, all afternoon; and though she continued to insist that she was in no real danger—recovering by the next day—I had serious difficulty sitting on my hands. It was to my great relief that she told me her doctor was due for a visit. I came home from my walk on the designated afternoon and saw a green BMW parked in the driveway, a gaunt woman half into the driver’s seat. “You must be Joseph. Paulette Cargill.” We shook hands. “I didn’t realize doctors still made housecalls.” “I don’t. Alma is exceptional.” “That she is. I hope everything’s okay?” The doctor made a slightly helpless gesture. “It’s the same,” she said. She then gave me a mini-lecture on trigeminal neuralgia and the difficulties of case management. “Surgery helped for a little while, that was back in oh-two, but the pain started to come back about eighteen months ago. We’ve discussed trying again, although in my opinion—and she agrees—it’s the wrong choice. At her age, every additional year brings greater risk of complications. We could do more harm than good. The goal at this point is to get the pain to a more bearable level, not to cure it. I’m afraid that’s simply not realistic.” “She keeps saying she isn’t in danger.” “She’s not. Actually, she made a point of telling me to reassure you. She says you’re worrying yourself to death.” “Yes, well, it’s worrying.” “In your position I’d feel the same way. Aside from the discomfort, though, she’s in perfect health. With her bloodwork, she could live to be a hundred.” A silence, as we both considered the implications of that statement. “Will it get worse?” I asked. “I don’t know.” “But it won’t get better.” Another silence. “We’re all doing the best we can,” she said. I said nothing. “That goes for you, too,” she said. “I haven’t done anything,” I said. “But you have. Her mood is excellent.” “I guess so.” “Trust me. I’ve been caring for her for fifteen years. This is as good as it gets.” I tried not to think about how bad it could get. “Just keep doing exactly what you’re doing. I’ve been bugging her for years to find someone to talk to. What she needs is to make the most of moments when she’s pain-free.” I nodded. “Like I said, I don’t make housecalls. Alma is ...” The doctor touched her heart. “Call me anytime.” Inside, Alma was at the kitchen table, two plates and two forks and the remainder of that week’s Sachertorte

  set out before her. She looked up when I entered, smiling her enigmatic smile. I saw it now as an expression of impenetrability, a hard veneer of sadness. Pain has long been a source of interest to philosophers as an experience that is both universal and incommunicable. There’s a sense in which it’s harder to watch someone else in pain than it is to endure that same pain yourself: we have no more potent reminder of our alone-ness. It is pain that sets limits on empathy, drawing a bright line around what we can ever hope to know about another. At that moment I wanted badly to stand in Alma’s place, and knowing that I could not made me ache twice over. She picked up the cake knife, made to cut herself a largish piece. “A little extra for me to
day. I believe I deserve it.” We ate in silence. Or rather, I did; she in fact ate nothing at all, eroding the cake with her fork, prodding the little sachet of whipped cream until it deflated. I got up to rinse the plates and behind me heard her chair scrape the floor. “I am very tired and should like to lie down. If I am not up for dinner, I assume you can fend for yourself.” “Is there anything I can do?” I said. Her face then passed through many phases, all of them obscure to me. “I only hope that you shan’t pity me.” “Never,” I said. “Never in a million years.” She nodded, turned, disappeared. I reminded myself what the doctor had told me; I tried to accept that this nothing, this shackled passivity, was as much as I could do. A bitter pill, for it was at that very moment, when she was too weak to talk, that I began to appreciate the depth of my debt to Alma. Whatever comfort I afforded her, she had already advanced me tenfold. For that I will forever be grateful, looking back on those early days as the happiest of my life, all the more so for how fleetingly they passed.

  10 W

  hat it sounds like,” Drew said, “is Harold and Maude.” It was late March. I’d ventured out of the house in a feeble attempt to maintain the fiction that I still had a social life. To thank him for repeatedly putting me up, I bought us lunch at Darwin’s: deli sandwiches and macaroons the size of trumpet mutes. We took our food to Harvard Yard, where we sat on the steps of University Hall and watched Japanese tourists snap photos of frazzled undergraduates. Drew’s real name was Zhongxue. A computer scientist by training, he came from Shanghai by way of Milwaukee. We’d met in the artificial-intelligence seminar and become fast friends. Like me, he was All but Dissertation; unlike me, he had stopped of his own volition, dropping out to play poker full-time. He now made his living shaking down bachelor parties at Foxwoods. His parents wept whenever he called. “Please,” I said. “All I’m saying, it’s a strange way to talk about a lady old enough to be your grandmother.” I said nothing. I couldn’t think of how to describe my feelings for Alma. One deeply uncomfortable dream aside, I didn’t find her attractive, not per se. Obviously not. If we’d met fifty years ago... But this was now, and given the circumstances, I could not reasonably look on her as an erotic subject. But it wasn’t quite friendship, either. These days, friendship is cheap and fungible; go on the Internet and you can collect two thousand “friends.” That kind of friendship is meaningless, and I considered it blasphemous to apply the term to Alma. The closest fit I could come up with was Platonic love, not in the colloquial sense but according to its original definition: a spiritual love, one that transcends physicality, that goes beyond sex, beyond death. True Platonic love is the fusion of two minds. “She’s the most interesting person I know,” I said. “I’ll bet.” He growled, clawed the air. “Idiot.” “Seriously, I’m happy for you. I don’t understand you, but I’m happy for you.” “Stop it.” “What.” “Stop saying you’re happy for me.” “But I am.” “I’m not dating

  her.” “Uh-huh. Your old roommates sounded more my style. Introduce me?” “You’re about a hundred pounds underweight.” “On it,” he said and stuffed half a macaroon in his mouth. A tourist ran up to us and began photographing him. “He thinks we’re students,” I said. Drew nodded, his mouth full of coconut. “Just so you know, we’re not students,” I said. “I’ve been expelled, and he’s a professional gambler.” “Havad!” yelled the tourist. “Okay,” Drew said, coughing out crumbs. “Show’s over.” He shooed the tourist away. Undeterred, the man positioned himself behind a tree, fitting on a zoom lens. “These people,” said Drew. “What’s so appealing about pictures of complete strangers. Who cares?” “Evidently, they do.” “I should tell him to shoot my left side. That’s the photogenic one. Hey, happy almost birthday.” One of Drew’s talents is a remarkable memory for dates and numbers. It’s especially peculiar because he has a terrible time remembering anything else: to flush the toilet, for example. “Thanks.” “Are we going to party?” “We?” “I forgot,” he said. “You don’t like parties.” “I don’t mind parties, but I don’t see why one’s called for here.” “Uh, because it’s fun.” “It’s not a milestone.” “It’s your birthday. Think about it, at least.” “I’ll think about it.” “Say the word. Crap, I almost forgot. Your mom called for you a few days ago.” I was perplexed. “How’d she get your number?” “I guess she called Yasmina first. Anyway, call her back.” “Did she say what it was she wanted?” Drew shrugged. “Probably calling to wish you a happy birthday.” These days I heard from my parents only when they had bad news: the divorce of a cousin, the death of our family dog. If my mother had gone to the trouble of calling both Yasmina and Drew, then the news in question had to be of a far greater magnitude. I thought of my father. He wasn’t yet sixty, but he had overworked his machinery, and his own father had died of a heart attack. Suddenly I had a vision of him, crouched beneath someone’s kitchen sink, straining to loosen a U-bend—then an angry grunt, a mighty crash, a spilled can of Comet. I stood, balling wax paper between my palms. “I think I’m going to go.” “Whoopsy. I didn’t mean to freak you out.” “It’s all right.” I handed him the rest of my macaroon, wished him good luck at the tables, and walked to the Science Center to make a collect call. “JOEY,” SAID MY MOTHER. “I’ve been trying you forever.” I winced at the old nickname. “Here I am.” “Your girlfriend said you moved out.” “I did.” “What happened?” “I moved out. That’s all.” Having inferred from her tone that my father was still alive, I was ready to end the conversation. “What’s up.” “Well, honey, I know you’re busy out there, but I want you to think about coming home for a visit.” I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t know, Mom.” “You didn’t hear me out yet. It’s important.” I waited. “Yes?” “Well, it’s been twenty years.” Twenty years, but never very far away, and with that mild invocation the memories poured over me with the force of an avalanche. I remembered an April snowstorm. I remembered the gagging sound of a truck starting in the cold, and a state trooper in our kitchen, and three cups of coffee left out on the counter overnight. I remembered all this and more as my mother began to ramble. “We thought maybe we could have a little memorial service round bout Chrissy’s birthday. Nothin fancy but Grandma’s getting on and who knows. No time like the present. We could invite some of his old pals, you know Tommy Snell still lives in town, and so do a lot of the kids we used to have around. Course Tommy’s all grown up, he has the shoe business like his dad, and wouldn’t you know it but he’s stone bald like him, too. Everybody’s changed so much, Joey. You’d get a real kick, seen’m all. They weren’t your own personal friends, I guess, but still and all.... Anyhow, Rita said she’d ask Father Fred to say something, he’s always so good with things like that. Not that I’d ever ask, but if people want to help, it’s rude to turn’m down. But I wouldn’t want to do it less you came. That wouldn’t look right. I’d like to, though, and you know what, I think Dad would too if he came right out and said so. But he’s not going to agree either, less you come. I know he won’t. So it’s up to you. You know we never put pressure on you to do one thing or the other, but I think it’s the right thing to do.” A pause. “Joey?” “I’m here.” “You hear me?” “I heard you.” The day of the funeral was my first and last time in a limousine, and I remember staring through the darkened glass as we pulled up to the graveside, feeling awed by the immensity of the crowd. Next morning’s paper would call it the biggest turnout since the town fire chief, who keeled over at a block party from an aortic aneurysm. Among the mourners I spotted Chris’s soccer coach, a legendarily stony man, his face beet-red and wet. The limo idled and the door opened magically, like we had a ghost butler. Was this what fame felt like? My mother climbing out, hoisting herself up awkwardly on a pair of proffered arms. Next the swell of my father’s behind, out of place in anything other than coveralls. And then me, in one of Chris’s old flannel suits. It itched and the pants were too tight, and as I got out of the limo, I tripped. People lunged forward, grabbed me; someone called my father and he c
ame back to take possession of me. With the coach flanking my other side, I felt like a prisoner being escorted to the gallows—a flight risk. In a sense, I was. It took me a few years to get my bearings, but as soon as I did, I ran. On the phone, I heard my mother talking about plane tickets. “Hang on,” I said. “I haven’t said I would come.” In the ensuing silence I sensed her gearing up for one of her meltdowns. I said, to head her off, “I’ll do my best, but no promises. I can’t leave whenever I want. When are we talking about?” She made a small, resentful noise. “You forgot his birthday.” “I didn’t forget. It’s October tenth. That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking how long you expect me to come for.” “You’ll have to spend the night, the last flight out’s at five. I need to know, Joey. Rita said she’d get a big photo of Chrissy for people to sign. These things take time.” “It doesn’t take six months to have a photo blown up.” “I don’t want her to feel rushed.” This was exactly the kind of irrational stuff that drove me nuts. The fact that she had already waited this long—twenty years, rather than five or ten—vitiated such stubborn urgency. Why now? It seemed so arbitrary. And yet it would be typical of my mother to stifle her needs until they could no longer be contained and frothed over in histrionics. “Is something going on?” “What do you mean. Nothing’s going on.” “Something must have happened to inspire this.” “It’s the anniversary.” “So?” “So, anniversaries are important.” And then: “Father Fred’s leaving.” Whatever I expected her to say, it wasn’t that. I considered Father Fred a lodestar, the single living fixture of my past by which to extrapolate my present position. Leaving? For what possible purpose? What about the whole speech on how God had brought him back home, and life moving in a circle, and so forth? All a bunch of empty moralizing, aimed at placating a restless teenager? It troubled me to think of him as that superficial, and I felt a throb of anxiety, followed by anger. She said, “Before he goes—” “Wait a second. Where’s he going?” “He’s moving to California.” “When? Why?” “You call him and ask him that. Meantime I want to make sure he’s around, cause he was so important in Chrissy’s life. Yours, too.” I said nothing. “So I need to know if you can come.” “I don’t know.” “When’ll you know.” “I have to clear it with my employer.” “When can you do that?” “When I can. All right? For crissake, leave it al—” “Don’t get snotty with me,” she said. “After everything I don’t deser—” Rather than yell, I hung up. “SORRY I’M LATE,” I called. “I lost track of time.” Opening the library door, I stopped short on the threshold. Across from Alma, in my usual chair, sat a wiry man with the wispiest beard imaginable. His shirt looked five sizes too big, his shoes even shoddier than mine, their laces undone and their tongues coughed out, like they were vomiting up his ankles. Even with the strung-out aesthetic, he was undeniably handsome, quite the young buck, with a penetrating stare and Alma’s heart-shaped face, which on him looked boyish, almost Grecian. They both wore the same conspiratorial half-smile, as though they’d been caught in flagrante. Queerly, this caused me to feel ashamed. “Mr. Geist, allow me to introduce my nephew. Eric, this is Mr. Geist, my tenant and interlocutor.” Eric tilted his chin back. “Hey.” I nodded hello. “We were just discussing you,” said Alma. “Is it three o’clock already?” “Ten after,” I said. “Goodness, so it is.... I hope you don’t mind if we table the debate for today. My nephew has been away and I have not seen him in too long.” “... if that’s what you want.” “Yes, please.” I wanted to snap my fingers at Eric, who was picking at a scab. “. . . all right.” “We shall resume tomorrow, then? Very well.” Thus dismissed, I crept away to my room, where I lay on the bed, reeling. She had never mentioned a nephew before. Here I’d thought we were growing close. We were