Among the Dead (28 page)

Perhaps some years later she comes to Frank to apologize, but perhaps not.

In this projection into the future, Frank assumes that Los Angeles muddles along without the big earthquake, that America muddles along without a military coup, that life goes on as it usually does. Frank dies, and the nurse in the next room hears his last word: ‘Mary.'

The phone rang. Frank said hello to Julia Abarbanel.

‘Frank, it's Julia.'

‘Why did you have to tell her?'

She asked him, ‘What do you mean?'

‘The letter.'

‘What letter?'

Frank wondered how Julia had even known about the letter, since he had torn it up and flushed it down the toilet. Anna had written her note to him on the back of the letter. But of course, she had seen the letter in the newspaper, when the plane crashed. But which plane had crashed? The one going or the one coming home? Why had he bothered telling his wife the truth? The truth had destroyed his life.

‘Nothing,' said Frank, ‘I was having a dream.'

‘A nightmare.'

‘I guess.'

‘At Auschwitz the prisoners in the cell blocks wouldn't wake someone up if he was having a nightmare, because reality was always worse.'

‘I didn't know that.' What else was there to say?

‘I'm sick over this,' she said.

‘It's hard on all of us.'

‘I'm glad you said that. Nobody in the family really knows how to talk about this.' At family dinners, at Passover or Thanksgiving, when there were fifteen people at a long table, he could talk to Julia, even with Anna there, and a bubble would form around them, and inside this bubble they could say anything about anyone at the table, and they couldn't be heard. Now he was free. He thought they would be fucking soon. How was her body? She was what, thirty-five? Did she exercise? Was she firm?

‘Are you coming in?' he asked. He wanted to see her.

‘Tomorrow. Your mother said there's this thing in San Diego, but I can't get in to LA until the afternoon.'

‘You don't need to be here. The airline is throwing it. It's not a funeral. It's for the cameras.'

‘What do they know about the guy with the gun?' Her questions were getting almost too casual, and Frank, as much as he wanted to scrape the crust from every facet of the event, wanted to set the limits, to maintain the family's respect for his sorrow.

‘I haven't actually followed that.'

‘Every airport in the country is putting security checks at all the employee entrances now.'

‘It's a little late.'

Julia was quiet. So she was embarrassed, he thought. She returned to Lonnie Walter. ‘They recovered the flight-recorder,' she said.

‘I hadn't heard that.'

‘They haven't played it yet, but they have it. There's a report that the control tower has it all on tape. I heard on the news that he came into the cockpit.'

‘Was it a bomb?'

‘A gun, that's what they think. And he knew where to fire it, where the fuel lines run through the walls, where to blow out the windows, so he turned the plane into a bomb.'

‘Everyone must have seen it.' If he had said this to his mother, she would have told him not to think about it, because she didn't want to have the picture of a terrified Anna and an ignorant-of-the-crisis Madeleine watching the crazed black gunman forcing his way to the cockpit with a flight attendant. But it was something
he could say to Julia, and a way of exciting her, getting her ready for bed.

‘What a shitty way to die,' she said.

‘At least it's fast,' said Frank. ‘That's the only blessing I can find. You can't even imagine how scared they must have been, but then it's over. It's not like starving to death in a lifeboat.'

‘Did you see the letter?' she asked, skipping to another subject.

‘Which letter?'

‘There you go about letters again,' she said, lightly. ‘The letter this husband wrote to his wife?'

‘Oh, yeah, Mom and Dad said something about that.'

‘This guy took his wife to Mexico so that he could try to get the marriage kick-started after he'd had an affair.'

‘What was in the letter?' This was a stupid question to ask, and he knew it would come back to him.

‘I don't have it in front of me, but it was, like, darling, I love you, I'm sorry I hurt you, and I fucked this other woman and it's over and if you don't want me, fine, I understand.'

‘Did they say anything about names?'

‘No. Can you imagine? If he hadn't had the affair, maybe he wouldn't have taken his wife on the trip, and then they'd both be alive.'

‘And their daughter?'

‘There was nothing in the letter about any children. Did you hear something?'

‘I don't know. I'm confusing this with something else. I know, the people who were killed on the ground.'

‘A lot of people were killed on the ground.' But she didn't say this to force him to clarify his meaning, only to show her awe.

With the letter's resurgence into the conversation, Frank thought he would stop breathing. He tried to swallow, but panic choked him. ‘I have to go,' he squeaked.

‘Where?' Why did she have to ask that? What business was it of hers?

‘Some kind of pre-memorial service downstairs.'

‘Good luck,' said his cousin.

‘Thanks.'

‘We all love you, Frank. All of us.'

Yes, but do you? He didn't ask. He hung up.

There were voices in the hall. He opened the door, and the
woman he had seen earlier, arguing by the elevator, was talking to one of the other mourners.

‘I'll get to you later,' she said. And she smiled. He didn't understand. She gave him a business card for Dave Dessick, Attorney at Law.

In the morning, the letter was everywhere. Frank woke up early, and the paper was outside his door with the continental breakfast he had ordered the night before. The letter he had written for his wife to read was on the front page. It was also the lead item on the morning television news.

THE GENERAL THEORY OF THE LETTER
:

The author, as well as his wife, has died in the crash. Reporters are trying to find out who they were. There is a debate about the public's curiosity, and the rights of the couple's mourning relatives to keep this private. Women newscasters are asked by the men beside them if they would forgive an unfaithful husband if he wrote them in this way. Frank is grateful that they all say yes. A few of them add, winking at the camera, that they would easily kill their men, though, if they catted around again.

Frank knew that the reporters did not know, did not know that the letter writer was alive, had not heard Mary Sifka's name. It must be the airline, he thought, controlling the story. They'll let Mary's name out, or let out my name, when they want to destroy the lawsuits. He was thinking this, and chewing on a gummy room-service croissant, when the phone rang. It was Mary Sifka.

‘It's you, isn't it? That's your letter, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Frank.

‘So the name, the one that they're keeping out, it's mine, right?'

‘Yes.' There was silence. He was trying to be kind, but nothing he intended mattered any more.

‘You stupid asshole, did you say “Mary”, or did you say “Mary Sifka”?'

‘Mary Sifka.'

She screamed out, ‘No!' And then, through terrible sobs, she said, ‘They're going to find out, you know that, don't you?'

‘Yes. They'll call you,' said Frank. He could try to be as direct with his mistress as he had failed at being direct with his wife.

‘I know that. I think they already did. The phone rang last night, and my husband answered, but they hung up. They must know who I am, that I'm married. It's not hard to find that kind of thing out. So they're probably waiting until I answer the phone myself.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘What can I do? I can't deny it. I can't say that's not my name. It's my name. It's not a common name.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘This is going to ruin my life.'

‘I know that.'

‘Yours too.'

‘Probably.' I could have said, Mine is already ruined.

‘No, definitely. I'm going to see to that. Your life is going to be destroyed in some way that you can't even imagine. I want to see you die without dying.'

‘I don't think we should talk now.'

‘I'm telling my husband.'

‘Maybe you should.'

‘He hates attention. He's a quiet man.'

‘Will he leave you?'

‘You think that's what I want? If I had wanted him to leave me, I could have arranged for that the first time we fooled around in your office. Do you think that's what I want?'

‘I don't know,' he said.

‘If that's all I wanted, to be without him, if I'd wanted to leave him, I would have already. Do you think I couldn't leave him if I wanted to?'

‘Yes, I think you could.'

‘I can do what I want.'

He wondered if this repetitive belligerence of hers came from vodka. ‘Well, since you love him, maybe you should go somewhere with him. To help him see that it was over with us, that you were back with him. Take him some place.'

‘Mexico?' she said, with great bitterness, implying, and Frank thought this cruel of her, that if they got on the plane to Mexico, they would die in a crash.

What if I volunteer to pay for the tickets? thought Frank. Would she try to kill me? ‘The name might not come out,' he said. He was trying to convince himself of this, so he could go to the memorial service and not faint, or start barking. There was the picture in his head, he saw himself growling and yelping, rolling around
on the floor, shitting his pants again, because everyone in the world knows his worst secrets.

‘You think so?' She also wanted to believe this.

‘You might be able to deflect this. You may need a lawyer.'

‘A lawyer, yes.' Frank understood that Mary was desperate, and she was hanging for her life on this raft of hope.

‘A lawyer could, you know ...' He didn't finish the sentence, because then she could say, ‘A lawyer could threaten to sue if they print my name without permission. But you'd have to claim the letter from them, wouldn't you?'

‘Maybe I could do that.' It was a possibility. What had started as something to keep Mary Sifka from going out of her mind had come back to him as a way through this mess. If he asked for the letter back ... but what would that do? They'd know who he was, they'd know Mary. And the letter had been in his wife's possession, and she was dead. The letter had been discovered in a public place. ‘No,' he said, ‘that won't work. We can't do anything about this.'

‘This is my fault,' she said. ‘If I hadn't sucked your dick, you wouldn't have made this trip. If I hadn't let you give me a hand-job in your office.'

‘Don't say that.' Actually he wanted her to say that; it was giving him an erection.

‘We're the most miserable animal in the world,' she said. Philosophy. He hated this. ‘Whatever we touch, it turns to shit. There's really no such thing as love, is there? Deep down?'

‘Probably not,' said Frank.

‘Because if there was, then we really would hold on to each other.'

‘I held on to you. We held on to each other.'

‘But we weren't supposed to. We're supposed to hold on to the people we married. There's a commandment about it.'

‘I guess we're going to be punished,' said Frank.

‘Don't you think that
this
is the punishment?'

‘I suppose,' said Frank. He wished that he had thought of that line, it would have impressed her.

‘I wonder if we'll have any friends left.'

‘Don't worry, Mary.' He said her name, trying to find a way out of the conversation. ‘The roof will fall harder on me than on you.'

‘They'll see me as the whore who stole the husband.'

‘They'll see you as the woman who was seduced.'

‘Or the businesswoman who sold her pussy to get a deal.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘No, you just hope they won't tear us apart like that.'

‘Just think about other scandals. How long do they last when nobody famous is involved? A few days? We're not the news, we're just a human-interest story. And when the whole story comes out, what really looks that bad? We had an affair. We broke it off. I went back to my wife, you went back to your husband. I think it makes us look sort of good. Maybe even noble. We could be heroes.'

‘Frank, no, the only way you could have come out of this a hero would have been if you had died with them. And the letter was found. And with my name in it, I'd have to be the Jezebel. You know that.'

‘I guess so.'

They were both calm now. Frank knew they needed this moment of peace, because when it ended, they would say goodbye, and it wasn't likely that they would talk to each other soon, or even again, ever.

It was time to say goodbye.

‘Don't forget,' he said, ‘that we had some nice times together.'

She snapped back at him, ‘They weren't nice, Frank. What we did was cheap. It was dirty. Death in life for you, Frank, death in life.' And then she hung up.

And then the phone rang again. It was Lowell, calling from the lobby.

‘How are you feeling today?' asked his brother.

‘Much better.'

‘We have to decide on a lawyer now. Everyone involved is choosing now, and there are two guys people are gravitating to. I have to check them out. They both sound good. But there happen to be differences of opinion. Has anyone talked to you about Dessick or Berberian?'

‘Who?' asked Frank. He didn't want to say anything about the lawyer's card.