by John Irving
Fortunately for the all-news network, the first vessel to arrive at the crash site was a Merchant Marine Academy training ship with seventeen cadets aboard. These young novices at sea were great for the human-interest angle--they were about the age of college upperclassmen. There they were in the spreading pool of jet fuel with the fragments of the plane's wreckage, plus people's shopping bags and body parts, bobbing to the oily surface around them. All of them wore gloves as they plucked this and that from the sea. Their expressions were what Sabina termed "priceless."
Mary milked her end lines for all they were worth. "The big questions remain unanswered," Ms. Shanahan said crisply. She was wearing a suit Patrick had never seen before, something navy blue. The jacket was strategically opened, as were the top two buttons of her pale-blue blouse, which closely resembled a man's dress shirt, only silkier. This would become her signature costume, Wallingford supposed.
"Was the crash of the Egyptian jetliner an act of terrorism, a mechanical failure, or pilot error?" Mary pointedly asked.
I would have reversed the order, Patrick thought--clearly "an act of terrorism" should have come last.
In the last shot, the camera was not on Mary but on the grieving families in the lobby of the Ramada Plaza; the camera singled out small groups among them as Mary Shanahan's voice-over concluded, "So many people want to know." All in all, the ratings would be good; Wallingford knew that Wharton would be happy, not that Wharton would know how to express his happiness.
When Mrs. Clausen called, Patrick had just stepped out of the shower.
"Wear something warm," she warned him. To Wallingford's surprise, she was calling from the lobby. There would be time for him to see little Otto in the morning, Doris said. Right now it was time to go to the game; he should hurry up and get dressed. Therefore, not knowing what to expect, he did.
It seemed too soon to leave for the game, but maybe Mrs. Clausen liked to get there early. When Wallingford left his hotel room and took the elevator to the lobby to meet her, his sense of pride was only slightly hurt that not one of his colleagues in the media had tracked him down and asked him what Mary Shanahan had meant when she'd announced, to millions, "Patrick Wallingford is no longer with us."
There'd doubtless been calls to the network already; Wallingford could only wonder how Wharton was handling it, or maybe they had put Sabina in charge. They didn't like to say they'd fired someone--they didn't like to admit that someone had quit, either. They usually found some bullshit way to say it, so that no one knew exactly what had happened.
Mrs. Clausen had seen the telecast. She asked Patrick: "Is that the Mary who isn't pregnant?"
"That's her."
"I thought so."
Doris was wearing her old Green Bay Packers parka, the one she'd been wearing when Wallingford first met her. Mrs. Clausen was not wearing its hood as she drove the car, but Patrick could imagine her small, pretty face peering out from it like the face of a child. And she had on jeans and running shoes, which was how she'd dressed that night when the police informed her that her husband was dead. She was probably wearing her old Packers sweatshirt, too, although Wallingford couldn't see what was under her parka.
Mrs. Clausen was a good driver. She never once looked at Patrick--she just talked about the game. "With a couple of four-two teams, anything can happen," she explained. "We've lost the last three in a row on Monday night. I don't believe what they say. It doesn't matter that Seattle hasn't played a Monday-night game in seven years, or that there's a bunch of Seahawks who've never played at Lambeau Field before. Their coach knows Lambeau--he knows our quarterback, too."
The Green Bay quarterback would be Brett Favre. Wallingford had read a paper (just the sports pages) on the plane. That's how he'd learned who Mike Holmgren was--formerly the Packers' coach, now the coach of the Seattle Seahawks. The game was a homecoming for Holmgren, who'd been very popular in Green Bay.
"Favre will be trying too hard. We can count on that," Doris told Patrick. As she spoke, the passing headlights flashed on and off her face, which remained in profile to him.
He kept staring at her--he'd never missed anyone so much. He would have liked to think she'd worn these old clothes for him, but he knew the clothes were just her game uniform. When she'd seduced him in Dr. Zajac's office, she must have had no idea what she was wearing, and she probably had no memory of the order in which she'd taken off her clothes. Wallingford would never forget the clothes and the order.
They drove west out of downtown Green Bay, which didn't have much of a downtown to speak of--nothing but bars and churches and a haggard-looking riverside mall. There weren't many buildings over three stories high; and the one hill of note, which hugged the river with its ships loading and unloading--until the bay froze in December--was a huge coal stack. It was a virtual mountain of coal.
"I would not want to be Mike Holmgren, coming back here with his four-two Seattle Seahawks," Wallingford ventured. (It was a version of something he'd read in the sports pages.)
"You sound like you've been reading the newspapers or watching TV," Mrs. Clausen said. "Holmgren knows the Packers better than the Packers know themselves. And Seattle's got a good defense. We haven't been scoring a lot of points against good defenses this year."
"Oh." Wallingford decided to shut up about the game. He changed the subject. "I've missed you and little Otto."
Mrs. Clausen just smiled. She knew exactly where she was going. There was a special parking sticker on her car; she was waved into a lane with no other cars in it, from which she entered a reserved area of the parking lot.
They parked very near the stadium and took an elevator to the press box, where Doris didn't even bother showing her tickets to an official-looking older man who instantly recognized her. He gave her a friendly hug and a kiss, and she said, with a nod to Wallingford, "He's with me, Bill. Patrick, this is Bill."
Wallingford shook the older man's hand, expecting to be recognized, but there was no sign of recognition. It must have been the ski hat Mrs. Clausen had handed to him when they got out of the car. He'd told her that his ears never got cold, but she'd said, "Here they will. Besides, it's not just to keep your ears warm. I want you to wear it."
It wasn't that she didn't want him to be recognized, although the hat would keep him from being spotted by an ABC cameraman--for once, Wallingford wouldn't be on-camera. Doris had insisted on the hat to make him look as if he belonged at the game. Patrick was wearing a black topcoat over a tweed jacket over a turtleneck, and gray flannel trousers. Almost no one wore such a dressy overcoat to a Packer game.
The ski hat was Green Bay green with a yellow headband that could be pulled down over your ears; it had the unmistakable Packers' logo, of course. It was an old hat, and it had been stretched by a head bigger than Wallingford's. Patrick didn't need to ask Mrs. Clausen whose hat it was. Clearly the hat had belonged to her late husband.
They passed through the press box, where Doris said hi to a few other official-looking people before entering the bleacher-style seats, high up. It wasn't the way most of the fans entered the stadium, but everybody seemed to know Mrs. Clausen. She was, after all, a Green Bay Packers employee.
They went down the aisle toward the dazzling field. It was natural grass, 87,000 square feet of it--what they called an "athletic blue blend." Tonight was its debut game.
"Wow," was all Wallingford said under his breath. Although they were early, Lambeau Field was already more than half full.
The stadium is a pure bowl, with no breaks and no upper deck; there is only one deck at Lambeau, and all the outdoor seats are of the bleacher type. The stands were a primordial scene during the pregame warm-ups: the faces painted green and gold, the yellow plastic-foam things that looked like big flexible penises, and the lunatics with huge wedges of cheese for hats--the cheeseheads! Wallingford knew he was not in New York.
Down the long, steep aisle they went. They had seats at about mid-stadium level on the forty-yard line; they we
re still on the press-box side of the field. Patrick followed Doris, past the stout knees turned sideways, to their seats. He grew aware that they were seated among people who knew them--not just Mrs. Clausen, but Wallingford, too. And it wasn't that they knew him because he was famous, not in Otto's hat; it was that they were expecting him. Patrick suddenly realized that he'd met more than half of the closest surrounding fans before. They were Clausens! He recognized their faces from the countless photos tacked to the walls of the main cabin at the cottage on the lake.
The men patted his shoulders; the women touched his arm, the left one. "Hey, how ya doing?" Wallingford recognized the speaker from his crazed look in the photograph that was safety-pinned to the lining of the jewelry box. It was Donny, the eagle-killer; one side of his face was painted the color of corn, the other the too-vivid green of an impossible illness.
"I missed seein' ya on the news tonight," a friendly woman said. Patrick remembered her from a photograph, too; she'd been one of the new mothers, in a hospital bed with her newborn child.
"I just didn't want to miss the game," Wallingford told her.
He felt Doris squeeze his hand; until then, he'd not realized she was holding it. In front of all of them! But they knew already--long before Wallingford. She'd already told them. She had accepted him! He tried to look at her, but she'd put up the hood of her parka. It wasn't that cold; she was just hiding her face from him.
He sat down beside Mrs. Clausen, still holding her hand. His handless arm was seized by an older woman on his left. She was another Mrs. Clausen, a much larger Mrs. Clausen--the late Otto's mother, little Otto's grandmother, Doris's former mother-in-law. (Probably one shouldn't say "former," Patrick was thinking.) He smiled at the large woman. She was as tall as he was, sitting down, and she pulled him to her by his arm so that she could kiss his cheek.
"All of us are very happy to see you," she said. "Doris has informed us." She smiled approvingly.
Doris might have informed me! Wallingford was thinking, but when he looked at Doris, her face was hidden in the hood. It was only by the ferocity of her grip on his hand that he knew for certain she'd accepted him. To Patrick's astonishment, they all had.
There was a moment of silence before the game, which Wallingford assumed was for the 217 dead on EgyptAir 990, but he hadn't been paying attention. The moment of silence was for Walter Payton, who'd died of complications from liver disease at the age of forty-five. Payton had run for the most yards in NFL history.
The temperature was forty-five degrees at kickoff. The night sky was clear. The wind was from the west at seventeen miles per hour, with gusts to thirty. Maybe it was the gusts that got to Favre. In the first half, he threw two interceptions; by the end of the game, he'd thrown four. "I told you he'd be trying too hard," Doris would say four times, all the while hiding under her hood.
During the pregame introductions, the crowd at Lambeau had cheered the Packers' former coach, Mike Holmgren. Favre and Holmgren had embraced on the field. (Even Patrick Wallingford had noticed that Lambeau Field was located at the intersection of Mike Holmgren Way and Vince Lombardi Avenue.)
Holmgren had come home prepared. In addition to the interceptions, Favre lost two fumbles. There were even some boos--a rarity at Lambeau.
"Green Bay fans don't usually boo," Donny Clausen said, making it clear that he didn't boo. Donny leaned close to Patrick; his yellow-and-green face added an extra dementia to his already demented reputation as an eagle-killer. "We all want Doris to be happy," he whispered menacingly in Wallingford's ear, which was warm under Otto's old hat.
"So do I," Patrick told him.
But what if Otto had killed himself because he couldn't make Mrs. Clausen happy? What if she'd driven him to do it, had even suggested it in some way? Was it just a case of the bridal jitters that gave Wallingford these terrible thoughts? There was no question that Doris Clausen could drive Patrick Wallingford to kill himself if he ever disappointed her.
Patrick wrapped his right arm around Doris's small shoulders, pulling her closer to him; with his right hand, he eased the hood of her parka slightly away from her face. He meant only to kiss her cheek, but she turned and kissed him on the lips. He could feel the tears on her cold face before she hid herself in the hood again.
Favre was pulled from the game, in favor of backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, with a little more than six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Mrs. Clausen faced Wallingford and said, "We're leaving. I'm not staying to watch the rookie."
Some of the Clausens grumbled at their going, but the grumbles were good-natured; even Donny's crazily painted face revealed a smile.
Doris led Patrick by his right hand. They climbed back up to the press box again; someone a little overfriendly let them in. He was a young-looking guy with an athletic build--sturdy enough to be one of the players, or a former player. Doris paid no attention to him, other than to point back in the young man's direction after she and Wallingford had left him standing at the side door to the press box. They were almost at the elevator when Mrs. Clausen asked, "Did you see that guy?"
"Yes," Patrick said. The young man was still smiling at them in his overfriendly fashion, although Mrs. Clausen had not once turned to look at him herself.
"Well, that's the guy I shouldn't have slept with," Doris told Wallingford. "Now you know everything about me."
The elevator was packed with sportswriters, mostly guys. The sports hacks always left the game a little early, to assure themselves of prime spots at the postgame press conference. Most of them knew Mrs. Clausen; although she worked principally in sales, Doris was often the one who issued the press passes. The hacks instantly made room for her. She'd pulled the hood back on her parka because it was warm and close in the elevator.
The sportswriters were spouting stats and cliches about the game. "Costly fumbles ... Holmgren has Favre's number ... Dotson getting thrown out didn't help ... only the second Green Bay loss in the last thirty-six games at Lambeau ... the fewest points the Packers have scored in a game since that twenty-one-to-six loss in Dallas in '96 ..."
"So what did that game matter?" Mrs. Clausen asked. "That was the year we won the Super Bowl!"
"Are you coming to the press conference, Doris?" one of the hacks asked.
"Not tonight," she said. "I've got a date."
The sportswriters ooohed and aaahed; someone whistled. With his missing hand hidden in the sleeve of his topcoat, and still wearing Otto Clausen's hat, Patrick Wallingford felt confident that he was unrecognizable. But old Stubby Farrell, the ancient sports hack from the all-news network, recognized him.
"Hey, lion guy!" Stubby said. Wallingford nodded, at last taking off Otto's hat. "Did you get the ax or what?"
Suddenly it was quiet; all the sportswriters wanted to know. Mrs. Clausen squeezed his hand again, and Patrick repeated what he'd told the Clausen family. "I just didn't want to miss the game."
The hacks loved the line, Stubby especially, although Wallingford wasn't able to duck the question.
"Was it Wharton, that fuck?" Stubby Farrell asked.
"It was Mary Shanahan," Wallingford told Stubby, thus telling them all. "She wanted my job." Mrs. Clausen was smiling at him; she let him know that she knew what Mary had really wanted.
Wallingford was thinking that he might hear one of them (maybe Stubby) say that he was a good guy or a nice guy, or a good journalist, but all he caught of their conversation was more sports talk and the familiar nicknames that would follow him to his grave.
Then the elevator opened and the sports hacks trotted around the side of the stadium; they had to go out in the cold to get to either the home-team or the visiting-team locker rooms. Doris led Patrick out from under the stadium pillars and into the parking lot. The temperature had fallen, but the cold air felt good on Wallingford's bare head and ears as he walked to the car holding Mrs. Clausen's hand. The temperature might have been in the thirties, near freezing, but probably it was just the wind that made it fee
l that cold.
Doris turned the car radio on; from her comments, Patrick wondered why she wanted to hear the end of the game. The seven turnovers were the most by the Packers since they had committed seven against the Atlanta Falcons eleven years before. "Even Levens fumbled," Mrs. Clausen said in disbelief. "And Freeman--what did he catch? Maybe two passes all night. He might have got all of ten yards!"
Matt Hasselbeck, the Packers' rookie quarterback, completed his first NFL pass--he finished 2-of-6 for 32 yards. "Wow!" shouted Mrs. Clausen, derisively. "Holy cow!" The final score was Seattle 27, Green Bay 7.
"I had the best time," Wallingford said. "I loved every minute of it. I love being with you."
He took off his seat belt and lay down in the front seat beside her, resting his head in her lap. He turned his face toward the dashboard lights and cupped the palm of his right hand on her thigh. He could feel her thigh tighten when she accelerated or let up on the accelerator, and when she occasionally touched the brake. Her hand gently brushed his cheek; then she went back to holding the steering wheel with both her hands.
"I love you," Patrick told her.
"I'm going to try to love you, too," Mrs. Clausen said. "I'm really going to try."
Wallingford accepted that this was the most she could say. He felt one of her tears fall on his face, but he made no reference to her crying other than to offer to drive--an offer he knew she would refuse. (Who wants to be driven by a one-handed man?)
"I can drive," was all she said. Then she added: "We're going to your hotel for the night. My mom and dad are staying with little Otto. You'll see them in the morning, when you see Otto. They already know I'm going to marry you."
The beams from passing headlights streaked through the interior of the cold car. If Mrs. Clausen had turned the heat on, it wasn't working. She drove with the driver's-side window cracked open, too. There was little traffic; most of the fans were staying at Lambeau Field until the bitter end.
Patrick considered sitting up and putting his seat belt back on. He wanted to see that old mountain of coal on the west side of the river again. He wasn't sure what the coal stack signified to him--perseverance, maybe.