— Steady, Mr. J.
— Just get me to the church on time.
— Huhhn?
— The bathroom, Sally. The bathroom.
— Yes, sir.
Dilate your nostrils, Mendelssohn. Hurry on now. Mach shnell. Enough creakiness. Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, even the problem of being alive.
— You look pale, Mr. J.
— Never felt better.
— We forgot, she says.
She crosses the room and bends down to the walk-in closet. Stretching the white of her uniform into two neat halves. Oh, I’m a terrible man, but, Lord, there are indeed worse sights. Hear no evil, speak no evil, but at my age I should at least get a little peek?
— I forgot what, Sally?
Out she pops, all flesh and smiles, swinging a pair of slippers in the air.
— Oh, Sally, I don’t need any stupid slippers!
— Mr. J.?
— Did you hear me? No slippers, woman.
She bends and taps his leg and gets him to raise his foot anyway.
— It’s so you don’t slip, Mr. J.
— This is not a goddamn ice rink, Sally.
She darts the whites of her eyes at him and he lifts his right foot in a gentle apology. Oh, Sally, but did you really have to choose the fuzzy ones? Isn’t there a more subtle pair you could root out? Has my whole life come down to fuzzy slippers? Nor are they a perfect fit from Brooks Brothers. And did you really have to put a diaper on me in the middle of the night? And is my treacherous son in trouble yet again? Did something happen to my lovely grandkids? Is my daughter yet returned from her mission of peace?
He is glad, so very glad, that Eileen never had to see any of this. She checked out two years ago now, dearest Eileen. Imagine that, never smoked a cigarette in her life and ended up with the cancer all over her lungs. A quick, sharp exit. At least there was that. Exit ghost. Take Hamlet with you.
— All set, Mr. J.
Under starter’s orders. The Zimmer race. Might as well get the checkered flag. Assume a virtue, said the Bard, if you have it not. When in the world did she start calling me Mr. J. when my real name is Peter, Petras, Peadar? She glimpsed my initials once, I suppose. Which is not all she glimpsed, more’s the pity. Oh, Mendelssohn, you miserable fool. Solid as Peter’s rock you are not.
— Thank you, Sally.
— Hhhrrrmmmpppf, she replies.
Be a mensch, Lord, and put me out of my misery. What an exertion simply to get to the bathroom. He maneuvers the walking frame over the trim piece, manages to close the door. He stands, holding on: there are handles all over the bathroom. An emporium of handles — handles for the sink, handles for the shower, handles to haul himself up out of the bath, handles for the handles.
He nudges off the slippers, opens the drawstrings of his pajamas and lets them drop to his feet, steps slowly out of the puddled cloth. The string tangles around his big toe and he almost stumbles but he catches himself at the edge of the sink. A quick glance in the mirror. Hail, fellow, well met. That is not me. Nor even I. Good God, I look like a pair of old curtains with a great big valance under my neck. A rubbery thing, could stretch to eternity.
Onwards. Onwards now. Life is short, but it’s the morning that takes all your time.
Clean yourself, Mendelssohn, get yourself together. Dignity and grace. I was born in the middle of my first jury argument, though sometimes I feel I’ve been born at other times too. And who in the world would be interested in a second memoir anyway when truth be told the first was an all-out flop? Ridiculous, really.
He reaches down and pulls at the side of the diaper. Careful now. Contents in the underhead bin may have shifted during flight.
Oh God, oh Lord, there’s nothing worse than the sound of velcro.
There’s nothing worse on this fair earth.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
There are two cameras in the living room, both motion-activated. The first is hidden in the bookcase, the other well concealed on a shelf by the window. Both have fish-eye lenses, which gives the pictures a faintly maritime effect, everything stretched out on a moving wave.
When the curtains are opened, light flushes the room with a theatrical surprise. The focus is the large oak dining table, surrounded by six Chippendale chairs, hand-carved, fretworked. On the table sits a Chinese vase with flowers and a patterned dish that holds keys, letters, pens.
There is a large painting on the wall above the table, a portrait of Mendelssohn, wearing suit and tie, large-rimmed glasses, a serious gaze.
There are several other paintings in the room, eclectic in style and taste, the most prominent one a Maine seascape. A Persian rug takes up an expanse of the living-room floor. An all-glass coffee table sits by a long sofa. The books on the coffee table appear to be floating in mid-air: Roth, Márquez, Morrison.
The rest of the room has an ancient lived-in feeclass="underline" a dark Steinway with an open lid, a set of fire irons by the blocked-up chimney, an antique wooden bar with several crystal glasses perched on top.
Later the homicide detectives will be surprised by the presence of the cameras: they will find out that it was Mendelssohn’s son, Elliot, who secretly installed the nannycams to keep an eye on Sally James, though there doesn’t seem much reason to suspect her at all, nor much reason to watch Mendelssohn at the table, sipping his coffee and reading his paper, looking down upon himself from his own portrait, the older self looking considerably more wan.
They scrub through the digital video and watch the footage from the day of his death. Every now and then Sally James walks in front of the mantelpiece camera. She vacuums. She arranges cushions. She sits for an hour and reads a magazine. Mendelssohn himself shoves his walking frame into view exactly three times: once, when he shuffles to the writing table, reads a book, scribbles a note, checks his BlackBerry; another, when he shuffles to the window to check, presumably, on the snowy weather outside; another, when he stands in the room, in the early morning, staring vacantly ahead.
When he turns to the camera he is caught in the faded glory of his maroon dressing gown. He has the lined cheeks, the hooded eyes, the frugal smile of age, but there is still something of the robust boy about him, the way the memory of his body still appears to move under the skin.
The detectives watch Sally emerge several times into the living room, slow and laborious. Each time it takes a moment for the aperture to adjust. A backlit blaze, then a slow darkening. She wears nurse whites and slippers. She is broad, sturdy, with an undulation to her shoulders. A large hip-sway. No malevolence to her, no impatience. Nothing untoward or suspicious. She comes in, puts down the early morning smoothie, sets the table for toast and coffee, hands him the newspaper, returns again with a jar of marmalade. The footage is chilling only because it is so ordinary.
Nor is there much in the way of interest, or evidence, later, when she helps Mendelssohn into his overcoat, wraps his scarf, dons his hat, takes his elbow, and walks him out of the living room.
They will watch Sally when she returns to the apartment to see if she betrays any further emotion, but she simply sits in the armchair, puts her feet on a footrest, reads her magazine. Later, when she receives the news in a phone call, she will throw her arms to the sky and rush through the living room, turning once to retrieve her coat and shoes. In the late afternoon, she will pace the floor, and when the news of his death is confirmed, she will fall grief-stricken to her knees.