Moving Day: A Thriller (11 page)

Rose Peke is mesmerized by the occasional blink of the light on the device that Peke has set between the seats. It is as blindly mesmerizing as her husband in sum has proved to be. Just as steady, yet just as oblique. As obvious as it is mysterious. As charming as it is twinkling on its surface. Its hardwiring, its purpose, less ascertainable, less knowable. He is like that blink of light. Charming but formal. Modest but insistent. Simple but transfixing. And like him, it leaves little choice, it seems, but to follow.

And she has followed him as blindly, as trustingly, as he is following the blinking light. Because he is like a beacon, a lighthouse, against the wild shoals of her emotions, her longings, her ambitions.

Nowadays, of course, it’s unfashionable, incorrect, to follow a man like that. Back then, it was considered virtuous, and today it
is considered weak. But even then, even in that world of half a century ago that largely accepted it, her sophisticated friends, her cultured parents, her colleagues at the architecture magazine were surprised. So independent a woman. With so independent a spirit. How could she?

No one understood that it was a choice. Eyes wide open. Because her fierce independence, the independence that she prided herself on, seemed to be nothing, withered and pale, compared with his. In truth, she has found that she does not need a full accounting of his life. Of what has happened to him. It is obvious from his capacities. From his resolve. She has gone along with his life, partly in wonder, partly to observe, to see how far his independence can go. The facts, the tragedies of his life before, he has never offered, but she has never pressed for them. And oddly—ironically—it is nevertheless
their
secret. The secret that they share. The secret that, in fact, she doesn’t know anything about, when everyone of course assumes she does.

The secret that is still a gulf of mystery, that they have tacitly agreed to leave intact. For her to look across the canyon at him with that terrifying gulf between them. And find him—in that unknowing, in that distance—continually attractive. Alluring as the distance—as the far side of the canyon across the gulf—always is.

“It’s a long ride. Perhaps this is the time to tell you what happened to me,” he says. A little miracle of mind reading that ceases to seem miraculous—that indeed they have each started to expect—after fifty years of marriage.

She smiles. “You must feel pretty guilty about dragging me along. Because you feel the need to offer something substantial in return.” Her eyes narrow slightly in thought, and then their edges turn up in mild amusement. “And as of right now, that’s the only gift you can give me. The only thing you still own, isn’t it?” She looks out. “But give it when you really want to. Not when you’re offering it because you’re in a corner.”

She smirks. He sees her expression and smirks in return. In each of their expressions is some indivisible quotient of annoyance and affection. Both of them melt slightly into smiles—thin, conspiratorial—in recognizing it.

Of course, there was always one other thing: something not evident or explicable to her cultured parents or sophisticated friends. Something that should have been obvious to them, in their sophistication, but perhaps was not. Something so obvious to her. How he looked at her. And how she could see in that look what she meant to him. How to this survivor of unspeakable events, she was everything. How there was nothing and no one else. How despite all their possessions, their friends, their children, their lives, there seemed for him to be nothing else but her. Even after all this time, he still regarded her that way sometimes. As if there were no other matter, no other protoplasm in the universe. Blinkered, bottomless, utter desire. Beyond words, beyond description. But now, of course, they were headed off to find those same possessions she was sure had no comparative meaning to him. Making her question what had so long seemed unquestionable. Making her challenge the one unchallengeable assumption of her married lifetime.

The interstellar display of evening lights has flicked on. They drive on in silence until her question. “Will they stop somewhere?”

“At this point, it’s just a he, I think,” Stanley tells her. “He’s not going to stay the night anywhere, I’ll bet,” he says. “He’ll drive all night, into the next day.”

“Do you know where he’s going?”

He shakes his head no. “Somewhere sparse. Somewhere they attract no attention. That’s my guess. He might stop for food and certainly gas, but that’s all. But we’ll stay the night somewhere. The signal should remain.”

A concession she knows is mainly for her. She knows he could drive all night. He has the stamina. Even at seventy-two. He is a half
step slower these days, but he is magically healthy, blessed with an almost animal vigor. In the rare menial task when he needs it—lifting luggage, shifting furniture—he still has much of his bull-like strength. He exudes a life force that makes some of their increasingly frail friends jealous, she sees. His energy can seem, well, inhuman. An apt description, if you strip
inhuman
of its negative connotation, that is.

At the Four Seasons in Cleveland, the valet takes the Mercedes. There is a midwestern ease, a slow, informal pulse, to the bellmen and the desk staff that is at odds with the majesty and hauteur of the lobby as the Pekes check in. They have called ahead to some old friends, a retired oncologist from the Cleveland Clinic and his wife, whom they first met on a Caribbean vacation years before.
Yes, we’re driving cross-country. Once before we croak.
In their phone conversations to set up a dinner, the theft never comes up.

They meet at La Fontanelle, Cleveland’s finest French restaurant.

The Mercers smile broadly as they approach the Pekes, seem nearly giddy, as if with the unmediated glee of having won a contest and now striding up to collect the prize. All four of them are dressed with like smartness for the occasion, the men in crisp navy blazers and bright ties, the women in simple but sophisticated dresses, with print scarves and shawls. The Mercers have, Peke can sense, new spring in their step, new energy, on seeing their old Caribbean pals, and he feels some of this energy, too, though he knows it is only the Mercers’ energy momentarily reflected in him.

“Hello, hello, hello”—an awkward but affectionate pas de quatre, an effervescent round of handshakes and hugs and arms across backs. Peke sees Rose’s joy of connection—a temporary break from the pressures of events, from her loneliness amid them. Full decorum is restored only as they are led to their table.

The restaurant achieves its strived-for Europeanness—a Europeanness that, paradoxically, seems to become more pronounced, Peke sees, more strived for in certain settings, the farther into America they go. A regal, formal, forced elegance: crystal chandeliers suspended from high ceilings, a thick leather folio of wines to choose from, even the dining chairs correct in proportion, immediate in comfort, rife with civility. It is a Europe he never knew, of course. A Europe that was taken away from him when he was still a boy. A Europe that, he can see, exists in American dreams as it exists in his own. Does this in fact make him more of an American? Sharing this wistful fantasy of Europe? It is another misty irony in his double lifetime.
One life collapsing into another.

“So. The continental crossing,” says Dr. Bob Mercer, grandly, safely.

Stanley Peke nods with a smile.

“Well, welcome to Cleveburg. A place to raise families. Flat, virtuous, unironic. A place not to think too much. Which makes it as American as you can get.”

“Oh, now, Bob,” his wife, Emily, reprimands teasingly.

First, children, of course. Children and grandchildren. The requisite but exultant exchange of information. Jack is in the film business in Los Angeles, an editor of documentaries, has two darling little girls, says Emily Mercer. Our daughter Sarah is out there, too, says Rose; she’s a lawyer specializing in the oil industry, deals a lot with the Saudis. Our other daughter, Anne, is an internist in New York, with three boys, God bless her. And Daniel, of course, took over the business. Very solid. He has a boy and a girl. Names and ages. Each offspring getting his or her due. Hitching a ride on the forward progress of their children’s lives—their own lives don’t describe a similar forward arc of news anymore. In their own lives, the news is now
made
to happen—planned and purchased. Overseas
trips, concerts, charity dances. Lives that have had their turn now take their turn observing other lives.

There is, in their grandparent stories, their modest anecdotes, a palpable sense of completion. Dr. Mercer adds to it more specifically. “I retired late last year,” he tells the Pekes.

“Forty years in oncology at the Cleveland Clinic,” Emily pipes in.

“Forty years of saving people,” says Rose graciously.

“And not saving them,” Bob adds, not gloomy or reflective, but rather for the record.

“Bob is working in a free clinic downtown now. Donates his services.”

“The local golf courses are quite pleased about that,” Mercer jokes. “The grass is back.”

“He couldn’t just retire. Couldn’t go cold turkey,” says Emily.

“Like Stan did,” observes Rose.

Which merits Bob’s unalloyed curiosity. “You, what . . . just stopped one day?” asks Bob. “That amazes me. I mean, what do you do with your time?” An unblinking midwestern bluntness that Peke likes.

“Exist,” says Peke, more humorously than cryptically. “And that’s good enough for me.” Knowing they will accept that. That a survivor’s answers are given wide berth, are allowed to make sense. He’s seen enough for one lifetime. Just wants to relax. Enjoy the little things, the creature comforts, the leisure he never had. The Mercers are assembling some version of that, no doubt.

He elaborates slightly, only out of regard for them. “Read. Garden. Think.”
Brood.
He shrugs. “I look in on the business occasionally.” A chemical business that produces a line of high-grade bonding materials that the automotive and aerospace industries use in manufacturing. “My son, Daniel, runs it now, so I can still pop in and snoop around. Daniel puts up with me politely. I
still know most of the employees. When they know you’re a survivor, everyone’s very polite, of course. Even your own son.” After the world has been so impolite. He smiles. “I have to say, Daniel’s got it running smoothly. At this point, honestly, it doesn’t seem to need me
or
him. Things work in America,” he says with a twinkle. “You go use a toilet five miles into the woods in a national park, and it works.”

“Almost everything,” counters Bob, with intentionally dark implication. “We haven’t talked to you since the Trade Towers.” The oncologist is conversant with death. Is a mortality professional, is comfortable discussing it, has labored in its portals all his professional life. “We were obviously less directly affected by it here. How was it?” he asks Peke, assuming, it seems, that a comfortable reacquaintance has sufficiently taken place.

It is a question that, Peke has noticed, their out-of-town visitors to Westchester have begun to ask as well. Acceptable, almost required, dinner conversation. Nearly impolite if you
don’t
ask. Though usually a subject drifted to, and not summoned so directly.

“How was it?” Peke adjusts his seat. “It was kids,” he says, getting to what for him is the pertinent point. “Our kids’ generation. Working fathers with young families. Even a few our own kids knew.” It’s all still inconceivable, he can sense, to his neighbors, to his family, to that magnificent city. He can still see that inconceivability—the immense brute block of the unimaginable—in his neighbors’ eyes. But it’s not inconceivable to him. A catastrophe, yes, but catastrophes can become as familiar as sunlight.

“Not all kids.” Mercer looks at Peke. “Stan, did you know there were several Holocaust survivors in those buildings? Survivors of the camps?” It is for the first time a searching, direct look. A look in which their wives and the elegant restaurant are momentarily gone, and the two men are somehow alone.

“Yes.” Peke nods, says flatly, “I did know that.”

To survive the base depredations of one continent; to inhabit the noble heights of another. To daily occupy soaring symbols of commerce and productivity and human achievement. To ascend to heaven in the morning and back to Earth each night, to travel freely between Earth and clouds, to look down from the sky every day at the famously welcoming harbor that in fact welcomed you—and then to have that daily heaven, that epic statement of human capacity, fall away beneath you. Toxic fumes descending from the ceiling . . . trapped with hundreds of others . . . unable to breathe . . . the perverse echo, the ancient feverish black repeating dream, unexpectedly enacted in serene offices high in the air. Would you think, in your fraught final moments, that fate had singled you out, that fate had taken special notice of you for this treatment? Or would you think, conversely, that fate had taken no notice of you at all?

“They survived, thank God,” says Robert. “They weren’t among the dead.”

“They survived.” Peke raises his eyebrows and gently corrects him. “But, Robert, my old friend, they
were
among the dead.”