There was a basket of yarmulkes at the door to the chapel. They seemed at odds with the bland, goyish entry room, complete with an Early American grandfather clock. But Fox had been, if not Jewish, a Jew, and many of the men were covering their heads.
Faith slid into a seat far enough back for a good view of the audience—the mourners, she corrected herself—but close enough to hear the lines—the eulogies, that is. It had felt like a performance from the mo-78
ment she’d pulled up to the entrance, her cab nosing out one limo and pulling up behind another. The service was private, the paper had said, and no time or place was given, but Emma had called Campbell’s, posing as her father’s cousin—“He has some,” she’d told Faith—and received the information. She’d called Campbell’s because, Faith realized, it would never have occurred to Emma that there might be other possibilities. So here Faith was—waiting for the curtain to go up, or down—after getting the message from Emma the night before.
The night before. Faith had been tired, but pleasantly so. After finishing dinner at Santa Fe, Richard and she had gone to Delia’s, a newish downtown club on East Third Street. The owner was Irish, and Delia’s had a slightly Celtic air, enhanced by books on the
“auld country” scattered about. But its main charm was in its unabashed romanticism. The interior was the color of raspberry silk sashes on little girls’ party dresses. There were vases crammed with fresh roses. A vintage bar and minuscule dance floor completed the decor. Prints of elegant long-ago ladies hung on the walls.
They hadn’t danced, not this time, but talked for hours more. Then Richard had taken her back to her apartment building. At the front door, he’d asked,
“When can I see you again?” “When would you like to see me?” she’d answered, slightly muzzy from fatigue and a large cognac. Richard asked, “Tomorrow?” It woke her up instantly, a dash of cold water. This is going fast, she thought, half in fear, half in delight.
“That’s too soon. Besides, I have to work. The next day?” He kissed her, and it was a good one, not too dry, not too wet. Her purse slipped off her shoulder into the 79
crook of her arm. He slid it back into place. “I’ll call you.”
“ ‘To everything there is a season . . .’ ” Faith opened her half-closed eyes. The service had started.
It was plain by the third tribute that if she had hoped to get any clues as to Nathan Fox’s true nature, it would not be here. But she had not harbored any such hopes. Funerals and memorial services are only venues for truth in fiction, where scenes of bereavement might dramatically reveal hitherto-undisclosed feelings. In reality, most people keep their private opinions private and eulogized. True, she’d been to heart-wrenching services where the naked grief of those left behind laid bare their hearts, but it was never a surprise. The same for those stoic occasions where not a single tear was shed.
There were no tears at Fox’s service, but a great deal of talk. The dinosaurs—the remaining larger-than-life figures from the radical sixties—needed to weigh in and be counted. Radical lawyers, radical professors, radical clergy, radical writers, professional radicals.
The chapel was packed. People were standing.
Faith began to feel fidgety in the warm room. Outside, it was cloudy, with gray skies. A light snow had begun to fall earlier in the day. It was bitterly cold. Inside, the smell of wet wool, designer perfumes, the single floral arrangement of oversized stargazer lilies, and furniture polish commingled. The temperature crept up, increased by the crowd. Faith began to feel slightly nauseated.
She took off her coat and tried to concentrate on what the speaker was saying. There was no casket, no urn. The only sign of Fox’s mortal existence was a 80
large framed photograph next to the flowers. It was the same picture that had been in the Times. His smile looked less smug and mocking now, more self-deprecating, sadder. But that could just be the place getting to her. She leaned over to look directly toward the man who was sonorously droning on, and for the first time she spied Poppy, who had turned around, presumably looking for someone, or counting the house.
Poppy Morris was sitting in the middle of a row.
Protective coloration? Unlike most of those Faith could see, Poppy looked genuinely stricken. There were deep circles under her eyes that even carefully applied concealer didn’t mask. She turned her head back, face-forward. Noting the woman’s distress, Faith seriously doubted that Emma was the only one to know that Fox had been back in town; the only Morris to have seen him in all these years.
Two more pundits spoke, and Faith did not even attempt to concentrate after hearing the beginning of the phrase “This is the end of . . .” It was all so impersonal.
What was she going to tell Emma? There was no wail-ing, no gnashing of teeth, no rending of garments. Not that Emma herself would have behaved with such primitive lack of control, but Fox’s daughter was bereft. She’d want to hear that others were also. That her father would be missed. That her father had been cherished.
Faith turned around, as much to stretch her neck as to see how many people were behind her. A middle-aged woman stood against the wall, her eyes locked on the speaker, hanging upon every word. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Faith would have liked to stare longer. Not only was someone besides Poppy exhibit-ing signs of loss, but the woman was hard to catego-81
rize. She was wearing a drab mustard-colored parka, which she’d unzipped, revealing a white cotton turtleneck. Her hair, light brown with as much again of gray, was parted in the middle and worn in a long braid, snaking down across her shoulder toward the waistband of whatever was completing her uninspired outfit. There was some sort of button pinned to the jacket. Faith could not read the slogan from this distance, but she was sure it expressed solidarity with someone—or something like whales or redwoods. It wasn’t hard to imagine her in the sixties, fist raised, hair blowing in the wind, finding answers in Fox’s di-atribes—and maybe more. Emma, and Richard Morgan, had spoken of Fox’s women. Faith had a hunch that the lady in brown was one.
The man who had read the lines from Ecclesiastes at the start of the service stood up again and addressed the group.
“Aside from his cousins Marsha and Irwin”—he nodded toward two elderly people sitting close together in the front row—“Nathan Fox leaves no survivors but his words. As his agent and friend, I watched his words transform a generation. Nathan was cruelly, barbarically struck down in an act we cannot compre-hend, but he is not dead. Not while his words live.” This looked to be the finale and Faith tuned back in.
“No survivors.” Well, she knew that wasn’t true. She looked at the back of Poppy’s head. Besides the two of them, who else in the room knew that Arthur Quinn’s words were false? Knew the whole story, knew enough to blackmail Emma?
“He was a skinny kid when he came to me with the first book. How could I not take him on, even when he called me a parasite?” He paused for the laugh, which 82
came. “Yeah, I told him, I’m a parasite, but an honor-able one.” More laughter. “He liked that.” Quinn stopped again, seeing that Nate Fox in his mind’s eye, or assuming that was what people would think. A sensitive parasite.
His voice grew louder as he continued his speech.
“How could I not do everything to spread those words?
He wrote with passion, conviction, and a monumental sense of injustice. There’s been a great deal of talk these last days about Nathan Fox’s life underground—