Lazaretto (14 page)

THE LETTER WAS
addressed to Linc. His hands shook as he opened it. His eyes glazed over as he read the words, even as he tried not to comprehend the words. It was from Nevada. She introduced herself as Buddy's dear friend. Said that Buddy was too distraught to write himself, and anyhow his penmanship was less than legible, so she was writing, she said, to give him the sad, sad news that Buddy's sister Meda had passed away, that she was likely already buried by the time this letter arrived, that Buddy was heartbroken, but on the mend.

Linc had been unable to say the words out loud, Meda's dead. So he went straight to Bram's room and simply handed the letter to Bram so that he could read it for himself. They stood in the middle of Bram's room, refusing to look at one another because the pain on the other's face would be unbearable. Their world shrank then to the size of a dot, a dot too small to contain them both. Bram said that he needed to go to Philadelphia right then, he needed to inhale the same air that Meda had when she took in her last swallow of air.

Linc just stood there, dazed; his chest felt as if it were collapsing in on itself. What good was Philadelphia without Meda? What good was anyplace without her? He told Bram that he was engaged in a big bricklaying job and could not travel just now. “Just as well that you don't,” Bram said. “Robinson's people must still have it out for you. But with my scars they will not know me.”

Linc felt a rage brewing then. “To hell with Robinson's people. Weren't they the cause for us having to to run away like rats without a hole? Weren't they the reason we were separated from Meda in the first place? They will not keep me from”—he stopped himself, asked himself
from what?
From Meda? She was dead. Dead! “They will not keep me from at least kneeling down at Meda's grave and telling her goodbye. Thank her for being, for being—” For being what? he asked himself. Just for being, he thought. That was enough, her being. He wanted to see Buddy, too. He wanted to stand in front of Buddy dry-eyed, shoulders squared, and tell him he was sorry for his loss. For their loss. “Let Robinson's people come after me; I'll give them what I still owe Robinson.” Bram lowered his eyes when Linc said that.

Linc and Bram made arrangements to meet the next afternoon at McGillin's Olde Ale House on Drury Street in Philadelphia. Bram left. Now Linc had the time and space he needed for a proper breakdown, such as no other man should be witness to, because men just did not cry the way that Linc needed to cry. And he did cry. He cried and cursed God, he cried and called out Meda's name, he cried and wished for the faceless, nameless woman who'd pushed him out into the world, the father who could have been a prince or the devil himself for all he knew, cried that he did not know. And after that, he just cried.

BY THE TIME
Bram arrived in Philadelphia he was already feeling sick. He'd already experienced that predictive dry mouth, sweating already, and then shivering, already losing his coloring. He traveled to Buddy's house but no one was at home, no one on the entire block, it seemed. Then a young girl sitting outside near the corner told him that Buddy had gone fishing 'cause his sister died and he was hurting.

He ended up at the Benins'. He was greeted by a pleasant brown-skinned woman, this one not in a uniform, just as Meda had never worn a uniform, though the rest of Benin's house staff did. He wondered if this was Meda's replacement. Taller than Meda, and meeker, she looked down, away, not directly at Bram. When he told her who he was, her eyes shot open. “I have heard of you from Miss Meda! You are quite the virtuoso. Mrs. Benin speaks of you often, as well.” She ushered him into the music room and left to summon Mrs. Benin.

There stood the piano, just as before, that elaborately carved Schomacker. It appeared now less like the mountain it had when he was a child. He touched it, then drew his finger away lest his touch cause it to crumble and collapse down upon him in an avalanche. Then he heard Mrs. Benin's voice behind him. She said, “Why, hello, Bram,” and the avalanche began in earnest as his craggy emotions loosed and the foundation no longer held and the precipice toppled and his eyes flooded. They were soft tears,
for Meda; he covered his face and cried into his hands for Meda. “Bram,” Mrs. Benin called his name again, and his cry went stormy because now it was for Mrs. Benin. It was a hard cry because it was unexpected. He fought this cry, tried not to cry for her, even as he did, so this cry rankled him as it forced its way out. He sensed Mrs. Benin tighten as she stood behind him, the way she would tighten when he'd pour everything he had into a piece of music, when it would even be a moment of transcendence for him, she'd tighten lest she be forced to feel. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his face and wiped it dry. Then he turned to regard her. She looked as she had when he'd last seen her, more than ten years ago, same globed-shaped face, same pert nose and thin lips, just a measure hardened.

He saw her gasp; she raised her hand toward his face and then pulled it back quickly. He remembered his burn scar then, and he put his own hand on his forehead, almost as if he was doing it on her behalf. “It looks worse than it is, actually. I got into a tussle with a candle and the candle won the first round.” He forced a laugh, then cleared his throat and apologized for the display of emotion he'd just unleashed.

“It is somewhat understandable. Meda showed you inestimable affection.”

He nodded. “If I may, I'd like to visit her room.”

“There is nothing there. Her brother's people have collected her belongings.”

“Did she take her last breath here? In this house?”

“You should of course know that I permitted—”

“Did she take her last breath here?”

“She did.”

“Was she alone?”

“Her brother's lady friend had come to see her, she was with her. Good Lord, Bram,” she said, as she moved toward the piano
and took a seat at the bench, “is this an interrogation? I did not keep a log of her visitors, after all.” She ran her fingers along the keyboard. “And as I was about to say, before your rudeness prevented me, I allowed for her to remain here for weeks after she was no longer able to perform her duties. I saw to it that she was comfortable. Mr. Benin even arranged that she be examined by his best physician. I was not obligated to do any of it, but I did.”

“That was kind of you,” Bram said. “I am glad you had the opportunity in the end to make up for the times when you were not so kind to her.” He was sorry as soon as he said it, the way her face seemed to break up like a shifting jigsaw puzzle. He slid in next to her on the bench. She started playing Beethoven's Sonata in D major, their favorite duet, which formerly had served as his reward for a good practice session. He allowed her to play alone at first. Then he found his way—more likely his fingers found their way—to the keys, and he picked up his spot and started to play. She called out “decrescendo,” then “piano, piano,” encouraging him, instructing him as if he were still ten.

When they were done, he moved from the piano and bowed toward an imaginary audience, the way she'd taught him. She applauded. She stood then and cleared her throat and said, almost in a whisper, that there had been complicated situations with Meda that he wouldn't understand. He thought he saw a pleading in her eyes and he nodded, sensing that he'd freed her some with the nod, and it had cost him nothing after all. She asked him then if Linc had returned to Philadelphia with him.

“No,” he said, stiffening at the question. “Why do you ask?”

“Robinson's family is still looking to bring him to justice.”

“So they have not relinquished their hunger for revenge?”

She held up her finger. “Bram, you cannot deny that Linc has caused that man—caused his entire family—horrendous suffering.”

“Mrs. Benin, just as you aver that there are things I do not
understand about your situation, trust me, there are things that you do not understand about ours.”

“Well, I suppose we can agree on that much,” she said with a half-laugh. They stood there awkwardly, then she pulled Bram into a quick hug that caught him off guard, and then promptly departed, leaving him free to go to Meda's room.

Bram was leaking sweat by the time he reached McGillin's, where he and Linc were to meet. His insides felt charred, each breath so heated that exhaling burned his throat, his nostrils. Even when he used the necessary, the thin stream leaving him was boiling hot. Then Linc arrived and they settled in at a table.

“You look like shit, worse than the black death,” Linc said to him, as he ordered a glass of ale and a shaved pork sandwich, and Bram said that he would have the same. “This is the worst I've seen you, you need to get to a dispensary.”

“I will be well soon enough, as always,” Bram said.

“This is not some dead ghost inside of you, Bram, no matter what you believe. You're truly ill—are you such a flaming dunce that you don't see it?”

“I went to Meda's room . . .” Bram tried to talk over Linc, but his voice was thinning.

“Look at you, even your eyes look like piss—”

“I felt her while I was in her room. I felt her spirit—”

“And I'm sure you have no appetite, as usual.” Linc stopped then, as he realized what Bram had just said. “You felt
whose
spirit?”

“Meda's. If you calm down—”

“Brother,” Linc said, as he looked directly at Bram, though it hurt to look at him in such a state, “Meda is dead, she is not coming back to talk to you, or me, or anybody else, because the dead do not return.” As Linc said it, he realized all over again that Meda was dead, the realization of which had been coming to him in rough waves. One minute he was going about his business,
and the next drowning again. Afraid that he might not be able to contain a fresh display of emotion, he got up, said that he had to relieve himself.

He was halfway to the back door that led to the alley of the pub when he turned around, sorry now for the harsh way he'd just spoken to Bram, realized that he was speaking to himself as well as Bram in that instant. Realized that he wished he could believe as Bram did that it was possible to hear from, to speak to Meda. But he could not believe it, and he envied Bram's capacity to trust in things that he could not see. Bram was looking down at the food that had just been set in front of him when Linc called his name. As Bram looked up, Linc extended his elbow, that gesture that they'd had from childhood was between the two of them only, and it said: You are my brother and I love you more than life itself.

Bram extended his elbow, returning the gesture. He smiled, though it hurt even to smile. He watched Linc walk away from the table and if he'd had the strength he would have called him back and told him just to sit for another minute. But he barely had the strength to call out, used what strength he had to lift himself from the table and take the few short steps across the sawdust-covered floor to the tavern's front door. He just managed to get to the outside where the blazing sun was no match for the heat roiling inside his stomach, moving up past his chest, forming a ball in his throat, choking him. He leaned. Then he gagged. He spit up an ocean of black-colored blood. He fell then against the red-colored cobblestone pavement. It felt good to rest here, as he pulled his knees to his chest as if he were five years old again and curling up on Meda's bed to take an afternoon nap.

LINC SETTLED THE
clouds in his chest and was on his way back to the table when he saw a woman in the alley struggling with a container of trash. Her cheeks were red, her swollen
ankles peeking from under her skirt, and he guessed she was the age his mother would have been as she huffed and puffed, and there was no way he could not help her, and so he offered his arm to escort her back across the alley. She pushed him away on a laugh: “With those charming looks, go break the heart of someone closer your own age. Try my daughter, she's not spoken for, you know. Yoo-hoo, get here, Maggie!” she called, and a younger woman sauntered toward them with cheeks as red as hers, though she had markedly slimmer ankles. Linc was polite. He took the younger woman's hand in a gentle press between his own, called her “my lady” as they embarked on the timeless two-step of him pretending that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and she with lowered eyes, fingers pressed over lips to suppress a giggle as if she'd never been addressed in such an unfathomable way. He was not aware of the commotion out in front of the tavern, of the shrieks and then the urgent clang of the emergency wagon. Workmen had been laying tracks for the new horseless trolley, so there were bursts of that ear-splitting noise; otherwise his senses were engaged back in this alley, where the air was hot and close and smelled of granite dust and rotten peaches. Pigeons circled overhead dropping white smatterings, butchers on a break two doors down argued loudly, and Linc felt himself weakening under the sway of the young woman's shyness. Though it was feigned shyness; she was a forward one, he could tell. She asked him if he was Black Irish, as his lovely eyes and hair were so dark, and he told her that his mother died birthing him, his father had been killed in the war, and that he was likely a mongrel. Her cheeks bloomed even redder as she whispered that she had a mongrel dog once that loved to be stroked, and she'd taken great pleasure in obliging. “Such great pleasure,” she said as her voice dipped into a moan and her hooded eyes opened wide for the briefest moment as she
looked at him directly. He went into a tug-of-war then with his own arousal—on the one pull of the rope was the thrill of being enticed into her softness, on the other was past experience, which told him that she'd soon make demands that he'd be unable to meet. But as she talked, he realized that she was hinting that she wanted no other time than this time. She was smart, he could tell. And their repartee got hot as the sun back there as he looked around for her mother. “Mum is left,” she said then. “Put in her day's work and gone to make her cabbage stew. I like cabbage thrust in the hot pot until it softens. You?” she asked.

“I confess, I do,” he said as he felt his discretion fall away such as it had never done while in a sober state. She put her fingers to her lips, motioning for him to be quiet, and led him to the end of the, by then, desolate alley, where a broken-down carriage with three wheels sat propped on its axle. She climbed into the seat and pulled him to her. He expected at that moment for her to name her fee. Reasoned that the one she called her mum was but a poor excuse for a madame. But it didn't matter at that point. He'd already crossed that line where he'd grown two more legs and lost the use of his rational mind. She curled her finger, demurred a “Come on here,” as they squeezed into the floor of the carriage, at which moment she took complete control. Controlled the moves and the tempo, controlled when he squeezed and arched his back and even covered his mouth to quiet the
uh
, the
ah
, all gaspy sounds he made. She took care of things the way no woman ever had, rendering him a sap with no spine, no constitution, no brain to speak of. He was just an explosion of sensation, whipped round and round, and she owned him completely.

Afterward, he was dazed, lying on his back on the floor of the carriage, watching the cumulus clouds point down and laugh. He didn't move at first, too drained and satisfied to move. When he felt the blood flow back into his head, his brain, when he was
thinking relatively clearly, he gathered himself, pulled his clothes back together, and stumbled out of the carriage.

The alley was eerily empty. He felt his pocket then. His billfold was gone. He yelled out, “Hey, Maggie, you dirty thief!” He ran from one end of the alley to the other. Then stopped himself, reasoning that she and her so-called mum likely did this all the time, surely they had an escape route. He started walking toward the back of the tavern. Felt a lump of rage in his throat at her, at himself for being such an ass. The lump exploded in an unexpected eruption of laughter. He thought he was on the verge of hysteria, he laughed so hard; he was out a week's wages, and still he laughed, the laughter seeming to come from the same deep place that throbbed painful over the sad fact of Meda's death. Remembered suddenly how Meda used to tell him that although she wasn't wholly certain at all times that there was a God, she was pretty sure about the matter—when in the midst of heartache there was suddenly presented a reason for laughter.

He stepped back into the tavern, where the air was cool the way that stone buildings felt cool. He would tell Bram about what just happened to him, give them both some reasons for laughter.