“He loved you,” Max said.
“God, we’re stupid.”
Max leaned away to look at her full in the face. Her big pupils swallowed Max’s reflection. “What do you mean?”
“We lived like jerks, always nagging. We wasted it,” she said. That judgment broke her down. She sobbed and covered up. She bent over quickly, so fast that by the time Max hugged her he was hugging a human bundle, a falling human bundle. They sagged against the hallway and slid down together.
Max said, “No, he loved you. You made him happy.” He kept on saying those sentences into her sobs: “You made him happy. He loved you.” Max remembered all the times his partner’s greyhound face had snarled: “Nan’s sucking the life out of me. I’ve got to leave her. I love the kids, but she’s killing me.” Yet Max believed what he told Nan wasn’t a lie. “He loved you,” he said again to Nan. “You made him happy.” That was the truth because Jeff couldn’t know any greater pleasure than to have someone to blame for all his dissatisfactions.
Nan answered him through the tears. The sobbing made it hard to understand her words. Relatives had appeared in the hall, including Sam, her elder boy and Jonah’s friend. He was holding a portable video game in one hand. It drooped forgotten, still a part of him, the way a toddler might drag along a security blanket. His pink face, usually expressionless, was scrunched up in a frown that was the result of mixing fear with tears. Max nodded encouragingly at him. Sam mumbled a “Hi” and Max knew that Sam was another legacy from his dead partner he couldn’t refuse. Sam came over and leaned against his mother’s back.
“He loved you,” Max repeated. “You made him happy,” he droned and then paused to hear what Nan was mumbling.
He heard her this time. She said, “Shut up.”
Max refused Brillstein’s offer of a ride and took a taxi home. It was after ten-thirty. As he entered his apartment Max heard the eighth inning of a Mets game playing on a radio in Jonah’s room. Max glanced down the hall but saw no light coming from his son’s door. He was probably still awake anyway. The living room was also dark. Max moved into it, heading for the kitchen. “Max…?” Debby called in a whisper from their bedroom. She came rushing out. She had on a long nightgown and reminded him of the romantic ghosts in old black-and-white movies: she glided to him in a blur of flowing white. She rushed into his arms and whispered, “I’m scared.”
He pried her off gently, but with conviction. “I don’t have patience for that anymore.”
Debby seemed genuinely puzzled. “Patience?”
“I can’t make it all okay.”
Again Debby seemed to make an unusual effort to restrain herself. She moved up on her toes as if he were too tall to see. “Max, what’s wrong? I don’t know what you mean.”
“I want you to know. Things are different. I can’t fix everything for you.”
She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, and looked away toward the bright windows. They glowed from the streetlamps and the shimmer of the river. When she looked back her face had relaxed. There was anger in her voice, but it was real, not posturing. It was the thrilling truth. “You don’t fix everything for me,” she said.
“I know,” Max agreed. “And I can’t try anymore. I’m hungry,” he added. He moved off to the kitchen, flipping on all its lights. He had removed the fluorescent fixtures and replaced them with halogen spots. It was elegant, but not a kitchen, he had to admit to himself. Kitchens should have the merciless glare of pragmatism. Food. He was so hungry he wanted to eat everything in the cabinets.
“You want something?” he called to his wife, the beautiful ghost, standing in the doorway with confusion on her face. She watched him without answering. He started his feast alone.
BURYING
THE
DEAD
10
Carla noticed a shadow waiting at the door of her small private room. She turned her head on the pillow, crinkling the stiff hospital linen, and there her husband stood, pale and silent and ominous, like a ghost come to accuse.
Carla wanted to call to him, but she had no energy in her body. For hours she had watched the medical personnel come and go, tending to her numbed limbs. If they said anything about Bubble it was to say there was no news. Some spoke to her gently, some were annoyed. She had no voice to answer, anyway, no desire to be aware and talking.
“Carla…?” Manny called in uncertainly.
At the sound of his voice she cried. The tears first stung, then soothed her irritated eyes. A doctor had explained that the smoke from the plane was poisonous, and her eyes might burn for a few days.
Manny entered. She was ashamed and afraid. She lowered her head, diminishing herself, prepared for whatever he might do, ready for a blow or an embrace.
Manny adored his son. His passion for Bubble had surprised her. After all, he had agreed to have children with a shrug, and while she was pregnant he talked incessantly about how much it would cost to raise a child. He never seemed to look forward to becoming a father. Yet from the moment Manny held Bubble in his arms he was nuts about him. He bragged about Bubble’s size, his looks, his smarts, his boldness and his strength. When Bubble stripped off his clothes and paraded naked (pulling on his little cock, belly thrust forward, a cartoon of masculine pride) Manny beamed. He was unashamed and unafraid of his son’s self-love. The pleasure he showed at Bubble’s ability to wrest a toy from another tot embarrassed her. But the clearest proof of Manny’s great love was that anything Bubble asked for, his daddy bought. Immediately. Without giving consideration to the cost or whining about the expense. And if, after a few minutes, Bubble lost interest in the toy, Manny might frown, but that was all. “Anything for my boy,” he’d say.
She had let his son die. How could he feel anything but hate for her?
He approached her bed warily. He looked all around it, suspiciously, as if there might be someone hiding in ambush. “You okay?” His voice was husky and quiet. “A doctor told me you’re okay.”
She nodded. She was okay, although her leg was broken in two places and the top of her hand had been badly burned. “You were lucky,” a nurse had said without irony. “Some of those people…” she added and didn’t finish. Carla knew. The longer she lay in that room the clearer the images from the crash. Gradually, things she had seen, things that her brain had refused to understand, were reseen in vivid horror. The body she had fallen on top of was only half a body. The man who yelled at her as she ran out was missing an arm.
Was that what he yelled at her for? Did he want help looking for it? Horrible. It was horrible.
Did he get out? She didn’t want to know. She wanted to forget.
Manny kissed her on the cheek, the way you would a grandparent, and backed away a few feet from the bed. “I’m here,” he said grimly. “You hurting?” he nodded at her leg.
She shook her head no. When was he going to ask about Bubble? Or tell? Did he know more than she?
“The airline got me here as fast as they could.”
She shut her eyes at the idea of that, of anyone she knew in an airplane. “Don’t!” she croaked in a panic at the thought.
“Sorry,” Manny mumbled. “Anyway, they did it.” He bent down to be at her level, carefully raised his hand to her forehead and touched her delicately, like a priest’s blessing. “I love you, babe,” he mumbled.
There was a scream inside her. The drugs had buried it underneath her numb skin. She shut her eyes at her husband’s touch. She was back in the burning plane. The man missing an arm yelled at her for running. Inside, she screamed to chase it away.