Love and Will (17 page)

“About the hole?” She nods. “He did do that. I forget now where the hole was—by the dresser, the closet, whatever.”

“Not that I'm saying there wasn't a shot. But I think it would have been patched up. By the way, you don't think you should call Bill now? If he was heading for a big drunk before, the later you call him, the more incomprehensible he'll probably be, if he does pick the phone up.”

“Maybe I'll wait till tomorrow—around ten; noon, even. Or see if he calls back tonight. Whatever it is, I know it can hold. But last time I saw Aunt Cecile was a day or two before she died. Or a week or two, but she looked so bad—or that's my memory of it, and I probably only saw her for a few seconds—that I think of it as a day or two. I don't know why my folks brought me there. And my mother came this time. I suppose they thought I was old enough. Fifteen, maybe fourteen. Maybe they wanted me to play with my cousins Catherine and Ben—distract them.”

“Catherine and Ben? Since when do you have cousins with those names?”

“Catherine's since died. She got the same brain cancer her mother had, but the doctors said it wasn't hereditary. ‘Coincidence,' they said. I remember the figure of one out of five thousand that two people in the same family would get it. That was about the same as for two people living on the same city block. For a while she was my favorite cousin. We played together a lot, or at least once a month. But hardly ever at her apartment. Almost always at ours or in Riverside or Central Parks. Nate used to beat up his kids too. Ben didn't get it as much. He locked himself in the bathroom or screamed hysterically if he thought he was going to get hit or ran to the neighbors, or just wasn't a target for Nate's violence as much as Catherine and Cecile were. Maybe because those two yelled and fought back. Catherine lost a front tooth to him once. And he hit her head too. Once with a teapot. Picked it up to throw at her and when the water came out of the spout and top—or tea did. Maybe it scalded him and he got even madder because of that, but he hit her head with it. She had to go to the hospital. Had several stitches—maybe thirty. He was a madman. He died by walking into a streetlamp.”

“How? He was knocked unconscious, got a head injury—you know, swelling of the brain's membrane from it or a blood clot—and died?”

“It's a mystery. He hit the streetlamp, went down, but it wasn't enough to kill him—just knock him out. In other words, he didn't die from the blow. He died of a heart attack. There was some connection—maybe only a doctor could tell us what it was—but he got the attack while he was lying on the sidewalk. But this is the odd part. A policeman came, tried to revive Nate, searched his pockets for identification, found a whole bunch of bookie slips, and somehow got hold of a policeman friend of his, or something, because in about ten minutes two other policemen showed up at Nate's building, got into his apartment and cleaned out every cent he had stored away there. What's odder is that my father knew some policemen would do that once word got out that Nate had died suddenly on the street. Apparently every policeman knows that if you're a bookie, and Nate was a very successful one, you've lots of cash stashed away in your home to pay off big winners and such, and also because most of your income is never declared for taxes. In fact, when Ben called my father to tell him Nate had died an hour ago on the street, my father's first response was to tell him to rush right over to Nate's apartment and clear out all the money in two shoeboxes in the bedroom closet. Ben didn't want to. He said that as much as he hated Nate, he still had at least a day's grief and mourning in him for him. But my father told him ‘Don't be a moron. I've got grief for him too. But there must be twenty thousand dollars there, and if you don't get it, the cops will.' How'd my father know what the cops would do? He knew lots about city life, that's all. So Ben rushed over to the apartment, but the police were already long gone. He couldn't press charges. For what? Their stealing illegal money? If he did get the money back, the government wouldn't let him keep it anyway. They'd look at all of Nate's reported income over the last five to ten years, and Ben and Catherine, to pay back Nate's owed taxes, would probably have to dig into their inheritance. Ben was also afraid the cops would kill him if he went to the city against them. Nate still left a lot to his kids. Jewelry, gold. But Catherine, married and with a child by then, died a year later from her brain cancer. And Ben's in jail now, my mother says. She saw it in the newspaper a few months ago. Maybe he's out by now—but for running a gambling operation in his home. In fact—well didn't I tell you I met him in an apartment building elevator a year ago?”

“No. I would have remembered. Because it would have been the first time I ever heard of your cousin Ben.”

“I don't know why I didn't tell you. I know I wanted to. Reminded myself to tell you, after I met him. Anyway, I hadn't seen him for ten years, probably more. Maybe not since Catherine's funeral. And I heard this guy, running from the lobby, yell ‘Hold the elevator. Press the “Door-open” button.' So I pressed the button and in comes Ben. We were both so surprised we even kissed each other's cheeks. I was on my way up to see Hector Lewis. Ben then lived in that building. But according to the newspaper, my mother says, he has another address now, or maybe he gave a phony one to the police. But he was on the top floor, Hector on the eighteenth, and Ben said, as we're going up, ‘Guess what I've become in life?' I said ‘Well, according to Aunt Ruth you went into the dress business, so I suppose you've become a millionaire.' He said ‘A bookie, isn't that amazing? I hated the guy, but I end up doing just what he did, and I think I'm going to do even better than him.' Maybe, after taking a beating in the dress business, he took what experience he'd learned just from watching Nate all those years and started taking book, running gaming tables, which I don't think Nate ever did, and also numbers and stuff, my mother said my cousin Holly told her. Or maybe he was never legit—a word my father like to use—before he became a bookie. I know that as a teenager he was thrown out of a few boarding schools for causing trouble and then in this city got arrested for drunken driving, without a license, but I don't remember hearing of anything worse.”

“No wonder you never talked about them. Actually, that's not fair. Because though I can't picture Cecile very well from everything you've said, Catherine seemed very nice.”

“She was. And to me, sonofabitch that he was, Nate was still kind of interesting in a way. And look what that poor kid went through—Ben. If I'd had his life as a kid, would I now be much different than he? No matter what—why I also never mentioned Catherine, I don't know. I was never closer to one of my cousins. Then, when she was around fifteen, she got big and fat, and stupid, it seemed, when before she was always curious and perceptive, and I couldn't talk to her about anything except our playing together as kids. Last time I saw her she was so sad she made my cry. She'd lost about a hundred pounds, but it wasn't, and I don't say this to be funny, an improvement. No, forget that. She had no hair. She was wearing a wig. Her speech was slow. She'd gone through operations and one chemotherapy session after the other. My heart bled for her. She acted retarded. But she was so sweet. I don't ever remember her being as sweet as she was then, though she was always a very kind person. Generous. She had about a month to live. In fact, all this took place at one of Cynthia's daughters' weddings. And it's not that she got big and fat and stupid. She got heavy, that was her business, but after everything she went through as a kid, and then was still going through as a fifteen-year-old, you could understand why. She was pretty smart too, in her own way. She was a good businesswoman till she got sick. And whatever I might have suggested, I don't think her sickness was Uncle Nate's doing—hitting her on the head. Or if it was his doing for Cecile's cancer either. I don't know about such things. But what that family's gone through is unbelievable.”

“It's still difficult for me to understand how I never heard about any of them. From you, from Ruth. But this card. What's it mean? Who's it from? Who is this Cecile?”

“I don't know. Someone's playing a joke. What's the postmark say? It's this city. Sent yesterday. The mail's faster than I thought. I don't know any Cecile. My Aunt Cecile is the only Cecile I've known. Or that I can remember having known. But certainly no Cecile for years. And this Cecile is talking about today, isn't she? Someone's cracked. Someone's trying to start trouble between us. You're the only person I love and love being in bed with and the only person I go to bed with and there isn't any other woman, and hasn't been since maybe a week or two after I met you, whom I've known in that kind of way.”

“I'll accept that,” and she tears up the postcard. They kiss. He says “No, a long one, not just a hello, back-from-work kiss.” They hug and kiss. Then she says “Like to split a beer?” and he says “Why not?” and follows her into the kitchen.

Nothing's on his mind. Can't read, doesn't want to sit around the apartment and snack anymore. If he stays here any longer he'll uncork a bottle of wine and drink it down while he looks out the window, stares at the walls, ceiling light fixture and the floor. He gets up to go out. But if I go out, he thinks, where will I go? Take a walk, see what you'll see. Don't stick around here doing nothing, ending up sleepy from all the wine, overstuffed from all the snacks, asleep by seven or eight so up around four or five in the morning and then what'll you do? More staring, eating, drinking. Maybe try the newspaper again.

He sits down, opens the newspaper. Explosion someplace. A woman shot. A woman raped. Two boys find a decomposed body on a beach. Milton Bax wins Endenta Prize. New movies. Spy grabbed. Two dozen pregnant whales run aground. Famous physicist dies of mysterious disease. A young woman crossed the ocean in a canoe. Television listings. Sports. Ads. Juniper Holland's “perfect brownie” recipe. He crumples up the paper, sticks it into the fireplace. Lights the paper, watches it bum. An ash floats through a hole in the fireplace screen and he grabs it in the air. His hand's smudged from the ash. He rubs his hand on his pants. Now his pants are smudged. He brushes his pants till only an indelible spot's left. He sits in the chair. Think about something. Let something just come to mind. Daydream.

He remembers a real event. It was a number of years ago. Three. He was married then and was changing the baby's diapers. Esther. “I peepee,” she liked to say, and he or Jill would change her. “If you know when you peepee,” he used to say, “then you should try to peepee and kaka into the toilet.” “Toilet?” she used to say. “Potty,” he used to say. “Potty and toilet, same thing.” “Same thing?” she used to say. “Sweetheart, don't repeat everything I say.” “Don't repeat?” she used to say. Though it only sounded a little like “Don't repeat.” Like her “toilet” only sounded a little like “toilet.” “Potty” she could say. “Dough repee,” she used to say. “Toyet. Same sin.” She didn't peepee into the toilet till she was three. People said that was very late. He and his wife didn't mind her not using the toilet till then. Some things one gets used to. And he liked changing her most times. The softness of the diapers, patting her crotch and bottom with a warm washrag, drying her, pinning the diapers on her, the rubber pants, the long pants or stretchies or shorts. She would be on her back on the changing board and he would be sitting in front of her on the same bed and he would often lean over and kiss her forehead or the top of her head or her cheek. Sometimes he'd say “Kiss daddy,” and she'd kiss his cheek. Then he'd finish dressing her, if he hadn't already finished, and stand her up on the floor or just lift her off the board and put her into or back into bed.

But he was changing her, he remembers, when the phone rang. He looks at his hand. Still a little dirt. He picks at it with his fingernail, then spits into a handkerchief and rubs it into his hand till the spot's gone. It's not that I mind dirt, he thinks. He smells his hand. It smells from spit, but that'll go away quickly enough. And an ash really isn't dirt. I could, in fact, almost any other day, walk around with my hand smudged like that or even worse. Not the whole hand smudged, but a much larger spot than there was. Anyway: walk around or just stay here without paying any attention to the smudge till it disappeared through nothing I consciously did.

He turns around and looks out the window. About fifteen feet from his window are two windows in a brick wall. Above the wall—his apartment and the apartment or apartments he's looking at are on the top floors of their buildings—is some gray sky. Maybe I should stare at that slit of sky till something passes in it. A bird, helicopter, sheet of newspaper, a plane. Rain, even. Stare till it rains. It can't snow. Not the season for it. What else could be in the sky that might pass, drop, stay there awhile, float by? A cloud, of course. Hailstones would be unlikely. A balloon. On the other side of the building he's looking at is a street. Someone could walk on it holding a balloon. The balloon could be released, accidentally, intentionally, and float past that slit of sky he's looking at. He looks at that sky for around two more minutes, tells himself to look at it another minute and if nothing passes in it, to stop. He looks at it another minute. Nothing passes. He faces forward, rests his head back against the chair, remembers.

The phone rang. He yelled something like “Jill, would you get it?—I'm changing the baby.” She yelled she would and ran to her studio from wherever she was and picked up the phone. “Oh Randi,” she said, “hi,” and that's all he remembers hearing from that phone call. That was all he heard. Because he remembers that maybe an hour later he thought about why he hadn't heard more of the phone conversation than just “Oh Randi, hi,” and decided it was because she must have started speaking very low after that or else had shut the door. He never asked her about it, though once or twice had wanted to. But she came into the baby's room a few minutes later, while he was on the floor putting away Esther's books and toys and Esther was sitting on the floor trying to string beads, and looked very sad. She was very sad, but when she came into the room, or rather, stood inside the door with her shoulder against the jamb, as if, if she didn't lean against it she wouldn't be able to stand, all he could tell was that she looked very sad. What he thought then was that she was sad because of something she'd learned over the phone or something that had happened to her since she put the phone down. Because, he thought, what could Randi have told her that made her look so sad? And how come she didn't let him speak to Randi? She was his niece. They were quite close. Maybe Randi had called to tell him something about his sister, but something so terrible that she was now relieved she wouldn't have to be the one to tell him. “What is it,” he said, “something wrong?” She nodded. She brought her hand to her mouth.