When the Past Came Calling

by Larry S. Kaplan

  “Poor, Steve.” She sighed, as if in that single utterance she was acknowledging all of the injustice in the world. “He was too young to die.”

  “Was it a heart attack?” I asked because the cause of his death was still a mystery to me. “Benny was always vague about it. He made it sound like it was because of a weak valve or congestive heart failure—something like that; but I could never nail him down.”

  “That wasn’t it at all,” June said softly as she took her first sip. “Steve committed suicide. That’s why it hit Benny so hard. He was too ashamed to tell the truth, so we kept it to ourselves. The way Benny saw it, his father preferred death over being his father. That’s a bitter pill for a sixteen-year-old to swallow.”

  “I had no idea. In fact, I’m shocked to hear this, especially only now.”

  “Suicide is a dreadful thing, David, especially for the survivors, who are usually overwhelmed with terrible feelings of guilt. And we can only imagine how awful it must have been for Steve, what he must have gone through.”

  “Was your husband clinically depressed?” I asked. “He always seemed so upbeat to me. But I know that doesn’t always mean anything.”

  “His depression had to do with his job at Holt Industries, the aircraft parts company where he worked his whole life. Steve designed the remote control system that opened and closed the bomb bay doors on military transport planes. Do you remember that time, in early August, 1966, when a hydrogen bomb was accidentally dropped by an air force bomber over Greenland? Fortunately, since Greenland is so sparsely populated, there were no casualties. Not even from the radiation. But it was a colossal embarrassment for our government—and right in the middle of the Cold War. It resulted in strong international pressure on the United States to stop all air transport of hydrogen bombs after that.”

  “I didn’t know your husband was involved in any way with that incident.”

  “Anyway, he couldn’t deal with the aftermath. It ate him up. It would be his legacy, he told me: ‘The engineer who almost started WWIII.’”

  “Did Benny know all this? If he did, he was good at keeping it a secret.”

  “Benny didn’t really understand the importance of his dad’s role until after he died. You see, Steve never bragged about what he did or the projects he worked on, at least partly because the information was sensitive, having to do with national security. But after Steve’s suicide, I decided I had to tell Benny the truth.”

  “I guess that explains how you guys could afford to live in the Towers. We always wondered how, you know, on just an engineer’s salary. But I see now that your husband wasn’t just any engineer.”

  “Oh, but his importance was never reflected in his income. The reason we could afford to move here had nothing to do with Steve’s salary. In fact, the house was practically given to us.”

  My eyes widened in astonishment at this surprising news, but I made no comment.

  “It’s true,” she continued. “The prior owner was a colleague of Steve’s at Holt. He’d inherited money from his family, and he was very fond of Steve. He insisted that we take the house off his hands. He was retiring and planned to move someplace south. We could hardly refuse such a wonderful gift.”

  “So that explains it. It did have everybody wondering.”

  “And talking, I’m sure—‘The Jews who moved into the Towers!’” She laughed to herself as she said this. “Now, tell me, David,” she said, her tone more serious, “you said you had a reason you wanted to see me. I’d like to think it was because you missed me all these years, but I suspect it has to do with Benny.”

  “It does, June. You might have heard that one of our high school classmates just passed away. Michael Eisenberg.”

  “Yes, of course. I saw it on the news. The US Attorney.”

  “I was hoping I would see Benny at the funeral.”

  “Was Benny a friend of his? I don’t remember a Michael Eisenberg ever coming around.”

  “No, he wasn’t a close friend of Benny’s. Michael was my debate partner in high school. Benny mainly knew him through me back then. But in more recent years, I think Benny became closer with Michael.”

  “Well, there is no way Benny would attend something as public as a funeral. He’s become very paranoid, David.”

  “I’ve heard that. Still, I thought maybe…”

  “Why do you want to see him after all this time?”

  “To apologize.”

  “Apologize…for what?”

  “For kicking him out of the Timekeepers. If I’d known the reason Benny started acting the way he did—if I’d known his dad committed suicide—I could have been a better friend. As it was, I was—excuse me—a total asshole.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it now. You didn’t know, so how can you blame yourself for that? But…is that really the reason you want to see Benny? Before you came here tonight, you didn’t know about Steve’s suicide—so you couldn’t have known there was anything to apologize for. David, tell me, what’s the real reason?”

  “Look, June, it’s probably nothing to be concerned about. It’s just that Benny shared some information with Michael about your former neighbors—the Montgomerys—in a phone conversation the day before Michael died. The people Michael was working with think that what Benny told him about Philip Montgomery might be connected with Michael’s death.”

  “What? Philip Montgomery! Now you’re scaring me.”

  “I don’t mean to, I just…”

  “Are you sure Benny would’ve even mentioned him? After all, the Montgomerys moved away a lifetime ago.”

  “I know. But Montgomery may be connected to a case they’re currently investigating.”

  “Just the idea of him gives me the shivers.”

  “It’s really important, June, that I find Benny so he can tell these people whatever it is he told Michael. Then maybe the whole thing gets resolved and goes away.”

  “I wish I could help, David, but I can’t. I have no idea where Benny is. I don’t even know where he sleeps at night.”

  “Michael told me he’s still obsessed with the Kennedy assassination.”

  “Well, he took a trip to Mexico City a couple of months ago, and he came back thinking he’s finally solved it. ‘I’ve unraveled it, Mom,’ is what he said. Only now he thinks someone or some group knows that he knows, and he’s very frightened of what they might do to him.”

  “Does he ever come by to see you?”

  “Oh heavens, no. He’s even afraid to call. Every so often he will call me, but from a pay phone. When he’s certain the call can’t be traced.”

  “Well, when he next calls you, will you please tell him I need to see him? And tell him I’m sorry—I need to apologize for the last twenty-three years.”

  “I will, David. If he calls, I will.”

  We finished up our coffee, taking our last sips in silence. As I reflected on our conversation, I realized something June said was starting to trouble me.

  “What was it about Philip Montgomery that gave you the shivers?” I asked. “I thought he kept to himself. That’s what Benny always said.”

  “It was something stupid, really. One night, not long after Steve’s party, Steve and I were out in the backyard, relaxing and enjoying some wine together, when we heard a buzzing noise. It was a miniature airplane, remote controlled. Philip had been flying it in his front yard, and somehow it had gotten stuck in some trees in our backyard.”

  “Gosh, that sounds like something a kid would do.”

  “Yes, not only that, but it was his attitude that bothered me. I mean, it was already dark when he came over and asked Steve to help him get the plane. It was pretty high up in the branches, so Steve had to poke around in the garage to find something long enough to reach it. And once he’d retrieved the plane, Philip wanted to show him how the remote control worked. He was rather insistent about it, boasting about how he’d designed it himself. He totally intruded on our evening.”

  “So
unds pretty rude.”

  “But I also remember how impressed Steve was after he saw the inner workings of the device. He told me later it was cutting edge. Anyway, it gave the two of them something to talk about. After that, Steve would visit with him frequently, showing Philip how to fine tune the remote control on his plane.”

  “Did you know that Montgomery was the head of a religion?”

  June yawned and looked instantly embarrassed. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’d think with all this coffee…yes, Steve told me about that. It impressed Steve that he could lead a church and still have a better head for technology than most engineers.”

  I mulled over this information and then decided it was probably time to leave and let June have her evening back. “Well, I’d better get going.” I stood up, and so did she. “It was good to see you again, June.”

  She walked with me to the front door. “I hope I hear from Benny soon,” she said before giving me a long embrace and then kissing me on the cheek. “I think it’s important that you try to be friends again. I don’t care about any of this other stuff.”

  As I started to step outside, June stopped me. “Look at what I’ve done! You have a lipstick smudge on your face. Let me get something to wipe it off.”

  “That’s OK, June,” I said, “There’s no one who’ll be jealous. It will be my little badge of honor.”

  When I arrived at my apartment about thirty minutes later, I noticed that the answering machine light was on. I pressed the button to play the message and was surprised to hear June Friedman’s voice.

  “David,” she said, sounding somewhat breathless, “Benny just called. I told him about your visit, and he wants to see you—tomorrow night. He said to tell you, ‘backstage.’ I have no idea what that means and he wouldn’t explain, but he said you’d know. He said to meet him there at seven o’clock.”

  Chapter 12

  April 16, 1989

  “Backstage.” Only someone as crazy as Benny would come up with a place like that to meet. He was counting on me to remember. And I did.

  It was a place we discovered in the fifth grade. Back then, in the fall of 1960, a bunch of us from Miss Kloeckner’s class played Johnny Across during every outdoor recess. One kid would start out in the middle of the field, between two safe zones on either side. The object was for the rest of us to run from one safe zone to the other without getting tagged by the kid in the middle. If you were tagged, you joined the kid in the middle chasing everybody else. After each mad dash from one side to the other, whoever was in the middle would yell, “Johnny Across,” signaling the kids who were still “alive” to run back the other way.

  Eventually, those in the middle outnumbered the kids who were still alive. Invariably, Paul Gilford, the fastest kid in Miss Kloeckner’s class, was the last kid to be tagged. Sometimes he would make it back and forth unscathed three or four times after everyone else had been tagged, with as many as fifteen of us chasing him. One day when Paul was out sick, I assumed the mantle of the most difficult kid to tag. Our playground rivals from Mrs. Waller’s class were watching me, their faces etched with expressions of jealousy. For some reason, they didn’t mind when Paul was the star of the game, but it seemed to bother them that I was.

  There were three deaf boys with them from a special education program for the deaf at our school. Since they were in Mrs. Waller’s home room, they would sometimes hang out with the other kids from her class at recess. I suspected there was something else amiss with them because they were a lot bigger than the rest of us, and their heads looked larger—out of proportion—to their bodies.

  After I managed to win my third Johnny Across in a row, I noticed the leader of Mrs. Waller’s boys sign to the biggest deaf kid and then point at me. I knew something bad was about to happen.

  Benny saw it too. He was watching the game from the sidelines, as he always did. He was afraid that if he played and was the first kid in the middle, he would never tag anyone and the game would go on forever. Now he was maybe thirty yards away from me.

  As the three deaf boys started walking in my direction, he screamed, “David, let’s go!” and started running toward Lincoln Hall, the junior high school building on the opposite end of the playground from our elementary school. When I started jogging to catch up with him, the deaf boys started chasing me. Things did not look good.

  I picked up my pace, and after about thirty seconds of hard running, I lost my pursuers and found Benny in the Lincoln Hall parking lot, crouched behind a car parked in back of the building near a gray windowless door. He was holding up a set of keys with a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Look what I found,” he said as he stood up, dangling what appeared to be a janitor’s key chain with a half-dozen keys. “Someone must have dropped it. Maybe one of them opens that,” he said, pointing to the sealed doorway.

  “Well, hurry up and try it,” I urged as I heard the sounds of the deaf kids approaching. The first two keys failed, but with the third, Benny managed to unlock the door, and we pushed our way inside.

  “Hallelujah!” he exclaimed softly as we entered a dark space. Emboldened by our newfound safety after he secured the lock, Benny screamed at the door: “Try to get us now!” His bravery was probably wasted since the deaf kids couldn’t hear him even if he’d yelled directly into their ears. Still, my best buddy was feeling heroic, and he’d earned it.

  We located a light switch and turned it on to explore our new surroundings. We discovered that we’d stumbled upon a passageway leading to the backstage area of the junior high school theater. Directly in front of us was a short stairway leading to an expansive platform with highly polished wood floors, shielded by heavy curtains on our right and a brick wall on our left. In between were endless cables and pulleys that dropped down from the ceiling and a huge canvas backdrop depicting a mountain sloping into a meadow with the words Sound of Music emblazoned across the top.

  “How cool is this?” Benny wondered aloud, clearly impressed by the theatrical setting.

  Then we noticed another door, embedded in the brick wall behind the stage. “One of these keys must open this door too,” Benny said excitedly, as if he were an explorer about to set foot in uncharted territory. The second key he tried let us in, and we found ourselves in a small space, only slightly larger than a closet. The thick cobwebs that clung to its corners were signs that it had been unused for some time. The room, if you could call it that, contained a sink and nothing else. Benny tried the faucet and it worked, although the water emerged a rust color for the first thirty seconds or so before it ran clear. From all appearances, the room’s original purpose as well as its existence had long since been forgotten.

  “This is the best discovery of our lives,” Benny announced. “No one will ever find us here.” He kept the two keys that had gotten us backstage and into the closet-like enclosure and threw away the others. We figured that whoever had dropped them outside must have gotten another set by now. Through the rest of fifth grade, Benny and I would often spend recess in our special backstage room, where we were never discovered.

  By the time we were in sixth grade and actually attending classes in Lincoln Hall, hiding away backstage wasn’t such a big deal anymore—at least not for me. But since Benny was always looking for an excuse to avoid spending recess outdoors, I suspected that he probably continued to use it. Outdoor recess meant pick-up games, and no matter what the game, Benny was always the last to be chosen.

  The night after receiving June Friedman’s voice message, I drove to Lincoln Hall and parked in the back of the empty lot. I hadn’t visited in some time, but I marveled at how effortless it was to imagine I was still thirteen and arriving early on a winter morning when it was still dark. The door to what had been our private refuge so many years earlier looked unchanged.

  Benny and I had devised a system to determine if one of us was hiding out there when we didn’t see each other at recess. If I was looking for Benny, I knocked using the Morse code for my initials:
long, short, short for D, and long, long for M. If he was looking for me: long, short, short, short for B and short, short, long, short for F.

  I knocked on the door with a closed fist, feeling the metal against my knuckles: long, short, short, long, long. After several seconds, the door screeched open, and Benny Friedman’s pudgy face was suddenly staring back at me. It could have been 1960 all over again.

  “I figured you’d remember what ‘backstage’ meant,” he said, beckoning me inside.

  “Well, after all, we spent a lot of school recesses here, Benny.”

  “Come, David, have a look at this.”

  I followed him to the stage, where he pointed to the canvas backdrop. It was painted with the image of a street scene in Victorian London, where an old ruffian was instructing a disheveled innocent in the art of picking pockets; at the top, OLIVER! appeared in bold letters.

  “Some community theater is using Lincoln Hall to put on the show. What are the odds of that?” Benny asked in amazement.

  His reaction was understandable in light of the fact that he’d appeared in our high school production of Oliver!, in the role of Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker. His participation in the musical had shocked all of his friends, especially me. Benny was so well known as an introvert that it was hard for us to fathom what impelled him to appear onstage—voluntarily—in front of hundreds of people and sing a song no less. It was Mr. Sowerberry’s lament to Oliver, “That’s Your Funeral.”

  I believe the reason was simply that his English teacher in sophomore year—Miss Zelznick—encouraged him to try out for the show. She was in charge of the theater department and was the show’s director. I think Benny was secretly in love with her, and he would have done anything to please her. Still, when he was chosen for the part, I feared he would be paralyzed by stage fright when it came to opening night. But Benny surprised me. He performed the role of Mr. Sowerberry like a real trouper. I thought he might even pursue a high school acting career by appearing in other shows, but Oliver! was his first and last.