by Walter Blum
She came into the room and lowered herself into a chair opposite the bed. He knew she wanted to talk, but the subject eluded him and the initiative had to come from her. She studied her big, sandwich-like hands. A muscle in her cheek twitched. It was the only intimation he had that something was happening below the surface.
“She couldn’t come?
“Susan?” For some reason, he missed the clues that might have warned him what she was leading up to. It meant she had the advantage, and that put him one level down. “No, she had a bad cold. I couldn’t ask her to make a trip like this.”
“She should have been here,” his mother murmured, her lips compressed in stoic suffering. “He didn’t approve, you know,” she went on to say.
“Who?”
“Your father. He didn’t approve of this woman you married.”
“He didn’t approve of Susan?” She nodded. He shook his head. “He never said a word to me. You were both at the wedding, and I never heard a word from either of you.”
“Your father wouldn’t have said anything. He was not that kind of man.”
“He told you he didn’t approve?”
“Of course he didn’t, but I could tell how he felt. You know, Adam, it wasn’t necessary to travel so far from home to find a wife. There are plenty of girls right here in the neighborhood who would have taken you at a moment’s notice. Fine girls from good homes.”
“You’re saying Susan is not from a good home?” he bristled. His mother knew exactly the right buttons to push, but it was his fault. He had opened the door, and she had barreled through it.
Sylvia’s eyes widened. Mock innocence filled them to overflowing. “Did I say anything like that?” She drew herself up. “Why must you twist my words? Why must you always make it look as though I said something I didn’t? I am not that kind of a person. I have only your best interests at heart, Adam, and if you would listen to what I try to tell you instead of playing games, you might spare yourself a great deal of misery.”
“Now what are you trying to say?”
“Nothing, nothing. I don’t think we should continue this discussion.” She got to her feet. “It’s obvious you’re so infatuated you’ve closed your ears to those who are nearest and dearest to you. But I understand how that can happen. It’s not my place to get involved in your private affairs. If I did that, I’d be accused of being an interfering mother.”
“For God’s sake, what are you trying to tell me?” Adam was torn between despair and exasperation.
“Nothing at all.” She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“But you just said…”
“I’m only trying to protect you, Adam.” She started for the bedroom door. “I don’t want you to get hurt, and my instincts tell me that this woman you’ve married is going to be a thorn in your side. She’s not who you think she is. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it has to be said, and I want you to remember that I warned you. I want you to remember I meant it only for your own good. She’ll bring you nothing but grief, Adam.”
“She’s brought me nothing but joy, Mom.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. All I’m trying to say is that life doesn’t always come out the way we think it will. Your father and I married for love, and there are things we learned later that I’m sorry to say we didn’t know on our wedding day, and we shed a lot of tears after that. But then it was too late. Remember what I said, Adam.”
She was almost out the door when she turned, and he could see that her eyes were moist.
“Watch your step, Adam.” She seized the knob. “Nothing in life ever comes out the way we think.”
***
The big six-oh. Those were originally Frank Genero’s words. Genero, a friend ever since Adam had come to California thirty years ago, had been a pediatrician before his retirement, but then his wife Edna had died of pancreatic cancer, and some of the wind had gone out of him. He had grown up in a small town west of Kansas City, where getting to know your patients personally was the rule rather than the exception. He was the sort of friend a man needs, and a party like this was one he was unlikely to miss.
“The big six-oh,” Dr. Genero intoned, “is not something a person takes lightly at any time.”
Why not? he wondered. Why not, in fact, welcome it? The numbers brought him closer to peace, to acceptance, to the final amnesia of death. If nothing else, death meant erasing the past and that was a consequence well worth hoping for. But of course the reality was nothing like that, for he was incapable of picturing what it must be like to be no longer alive.
Still, if life was pain, surely death must be the opposite. He had no fear, only a terrible sense of fulfillment being denied. Nothing ever satisfied him, not entirely. He even wished he could feel older. Genero sometimes kidded him how good he looked for his age, his vigor, his strength, his unlined face behind the bristling beard. He would have felt more comfortable with a few more lines.
He drove out of San Francisco and down the freeway, thinking how good it was to have familiar sights around him. Everything the way it should be. To his left, the blue-gray of the bay nestled in a crook of freeway, like some immense cat hunkered down beside its master for the night. A brisk wind whipping the water into wildflowers. No illusions here, only the acrid hum of traffic, the swooping of gulls, the rush of jetliners rising in silvery consonance out of the airport to the south. A pale daylight moon floated over the hills to the east. He checked the cruise control again and let his mind wander.
Why shouldn’t he be happy with what he had?
What more did he want? In another half hour, he would be back where he belonged, and another hour or so after that, having showered and changed, he would come downstairs to greet the first of his guests. Before long the house would be overflowing with them, and what could be happier than a party, a celebration to mark the passage of another moment on the endless timeline?
He thought of the man who sat across from him in his office earlier that day. Grohmeyer. It struck him that not once had they referred to each other by their first names. A man of infinite grayness, he remembered thinking—a man who could recede into the scenery and disappear if need be—a talent of many uses. A good person to have on your side, but not easy to trust. At least he’d been discreet during their interview, he’d left the outcome pending; he hadn’t given the detective any more information than necessary.
He pulled off the freeway, drove another two and a half miles and eased the Mercedes up the driveway, pressing the remote button to raise the garage doors. Through the windows of the house, he could make out the figures of the catering people setting up for the evening. It was supposed to have been a surprise party, that’s how it was envisioned at first, but with everyone coming in and preparations and what have you, just the mere logistics made that impossible.
All right, people have birthday parties. He should learn to accept it, and yet it annoyed him that something so ordinary as a turn of the calendar required so much fuss. The toasts, the presents, being congratulated for what he hadn’t done, for being the sort of person he wasn’t…it was all such a bother, and yet he couldn’t disappoint the others. They were all looking forward to it. He slipped the tape of Bach’s Double Concerto out of the deck and into its jewel-box case. What would he have been listening to at this time in his life, thirty-five years ago? Secret Love, of course. Doris Day, Patti Page, Nat Cole, the others. But it was a different world. He himself hadn’t changed, but the road had taken more twists and turns than he was prepared for. More than he was willing to admit to.
Sliding out of the car, he donned his jacket and walked to the front door, half expecting it to take him somewhere else, but it was his own house, his own time. No surprises.
And Genero was there, waiting. Untypically early, in fact, which meant they had time to retire to the library for a quick cocktail, which for Genero was a margarita. Adam s
tuck with his usual fruit punch. Genero remarked on the guests who would soon arrive.
“Everyone who is everyone,” he observed.
“I didn’t know I had so many friends,” Adam admitted. He closed the door behind them. The two best chairs in the room were large and leather, and they faced each other beside a fireplace. After all these years, Adam still counted reading as his greatest pleasure and he had filled the shelves with enough books to give the place an academic look. An end table had been misplaced. Genero stepped around it to get at a chair, and Adam, leaning over to move the chair away, winced.
“You all right?” Genero wanted to know.
“Yes, fine. No problem,” Adam insisted. “Just an old injury with the wrist. I broke it once.”
“Your wrist?” Genero shook his head. The family physician was speaking now. “You mean to say after all this time—and all I know about you—hell, man, when did you break it?”
“A long time ago.”
“When?”
Adam stiffened and Genero quickly changed the subject. Their friendship, he realized, depended on knowing just how far to go. Move in, step away. Don’t press. Genero was an expert at that sort of thing, and as long as they were honest with each other, as long as they could express what was on their minds, even when difficult matters were involved, sooner or later the invisible wall that sprang up whenever the past was mentioned would melt. At least that’s how Genero saw it. Adam wasn’t so sure.
“Well, in show business,” said Genero, “they have an expression: Break a leg. That’s what you wish an actor so he’ll give a good performance, good luck.”
“Luck.” Adam winced.
“You must believe in luck.”
“I’m not sure what I believe in. I know it seems like luck, but whenever I turn around to look, the thing isn’t there.”
“Oh, everyone has a little luck,” Genero reminded him. “It’s part of the drama of life.”
Adam grinned at the theatrical tint to Genero’s remark. “Well,” he mused, “I’ve gotten to an age where luck seems to be nothing but a bit player. So if I hit the jackpot tomorrow, it’s not likely to make much of a difference.”
“Sounds as if you’re getting mellow, my friend.”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.”
“It’s not good and it’s not bad,” Genero said. “It’s just a fact of life. Welcome to the big six-oh.”
“And the future,” Adam said, aware that they had left their champagne glasses in the other room. But his mind was fixed on a singular point. On a smile, a smile so dazzling it would have blotted out the sun had this been daytime. A smile he remembered as though it were yesterday, that lasted from the moment he slipped the ring out of its box and onto her finger and asked her to be his wife until what seemed, at that moment, to be the end of time.
“The big six-oh,” he repeated.
The number resounded in his mind. He could hear it echoing through the years, an articulation of what once was and would be no longer, the decline of man’s hope and the end of illusion.
17
Little by little, the road began to climb. As it ascended, he found himself clutching the wheel, his palms sweaty, his heart thudding inside his chest. For a moment he was disoriented. As he rounded a curve and approached the top of the hill, he could see his destination looming before him.
There was no way you could miss it. From one end of the county to the other it could be seen, 162 feet high, twelve feet in circumference at the base and inside a staircase rising like a corkscrew to the top. Gray stone for walls, taken from a nearby quarry. On rainy afternoons they seemed to weep, and rivulets formed in a ditch near the front door. Two arched windows, crisscrossed with metal bars that let in enough light during the day so anyone climbing the stairs could see where he was going. At night, a series of bare bulbs on a cord lit the stairs. Below, a narrow, unpaved road that led to the tower; drivers were warned to sound their horns and watch out for cars coming down the steep incline the other way.
Tonight, rain came down so hard it seemed to be falling sideways. The tiny parking lot beside the building had turned to mud, lightning flashed and thunder rattled the slippery stones as he fumbled with the key that let him in. It was a big oak door with hinges that had grown rusty with time and screeched as he pushed inside. There had been a power surge earlier, and several of the bulbs were blown out. Adam thrust the door closed behind him, fighting the wind that threatened to blow it open again.
He leaned against the door. The weather was worsening. There was a terrible howling outside, like an animal clawing the tower in a desperate effort to get in. The sound would have frightened him if he let it, but he knew it had to be just the wind.
From time to time the staircase seemed to be ablaze with a white electric fire. The walls dripped with water that had somehow seeped through from outside. Slowly, gripping the flimsy iron banister that was always threatening to collapse, he began his climb. He had been sleeping poorly the past few nights, and his body felt drained, enervated. It was as though he were enveloped in a vast spider web, palpated by fingers struggling to push through the skin, to gain access to places where they didn’t belong.
He began counting steps as he climbed, something he had done so often he knew exactly how many there were and what they felt like, a little slippery perhaps but manageable. The banister rattled, and if you didn’t know better you’d think it was about to come loose, but it was bolted firmly to the wall. He tried to hurry his steps, aware that once he made it to the room at the top, he could sink into the soft leather armchair that faced the curved, plate-glass window and watch the storm come and go, listen to the rattle of thunder, enjoy the circus of lightning that played around the tower, sit in the pilot’s chair and conduct his listeners through the mysteries of love while playing the music they wanted to hear and be, himself, a spectator in the dance of night.
He was halfway up when he saw it.
It could be a human figure, he wasn’t sure. More like a shadow, a kind of presence on the landing at the top of the tower, vibrating angrily. From this distance, it was hard to gauge its size or what it looked like, or if it was even human, but he could tell it must be enormous, something dark and terrifying, and it would soon be coming down as he made his way up. His heart beat wildly, his lungs pumped as he fought to catch his breath. A knot of pain gripped his stomach. Sweat dripped down his arms. He knew there was no way he could make it around the thing at the top of the stairs, and the last thing he wanted to do was force a confrontation.
He had to get out of here. Turning, staggering, stumbling, he skidded down the stairs and threw himself at the front door.
It was locked.
How could that have happened? He had the key in his pocket and no one else could have come along and locked him in. And yet the key wouldn’t turn. He pulled on the handle as hard as he could. Nothing. Looking back, he could see the shadow at the top of the tower starting to descend. Fear bubbled up inside him. He wanted to scream, but when he opened his mouth nothing came. If this was a dream, it had to be worse than anything he’d ever known.
He could see what was coming. In a few more seconds his legs would become paralyzed, then the rest of him would freeze like a statue and he would be helpless.
He couldn’t allow that. The thing was on the stairs now, slowly descending, and if he didn’t move quickly it would all be over. Gathering every ounce of courage, he took a deep breath and raced up the stairs.
The next thing he knew he was standing at the top of the stairs, alive, untouched.
He stepped into the control room and let the heavy door swing closed behind him. The voices were gone. The shadow was gone. The fear was gone. All that remained was a gray sauce on the bottom of the dish where the fire had burned, and a thin line of sweat just above his nose.
***
Ten minutes later, it was as though nothing had happened, as though he had passed through a gate and into a garden where nothing
could ever pursue him again, the only reminder a kind of rawness in his throat that had welled up when he tried to scream.
There was a hot plate and a kettle on a stand beside one of the turntables. He went into the men’s room, filled the kettle with water, set it on the hot plate and ladled a spoonful of instant coffee into a cup. Then he moved on to the library in back and began pulling records off the shelves. The nightly routine calmed him, and before long he was able to put the incident on the stairs out of his mind. He noticed that some of the green paper jackets, which encased the records, were ripped from constant use, the label in the upper left-hand corner peeling. He would have to ask Mr. Baines to order some replacements.
Record by record, the plastic wire rack began filling up—music he knew almost by heart. Clooney and Como, Percy Faith and Dean Martin, Sinatra, Doris Day, Montavani and Patti Page, vocals separated by instrumentals, ballads alternating with up-tempos, a nice balance was what he always looked for.
This was the best part of the job. If the top-40 people ever bought WCAN and moved in with their prefabricated play lists, their slogans and recorded spots, their contests and shouted announcements, their formats and blueprints—if that happened, all this would vanish. The Bell Tower would no longer be a place conducive to dreaming and reveries, to lovemaking and sweet sounds. The lights would go up. The tower would shut down.
But slipping behind the microphone, his stack of records behind him, coffee bubbling in the pot, the theme song cued up on Turntable No. 1, he could ignore the ominous noises chattering just outside the door. Vaguely, he wondered if the thing on the staircase was still there. He had never really gotten a good look at it, but he was sure this was one apparition he wanted no part of again.
The network feed was coming to an end, a half-hour big band remote from some ballroom in Pittsburgh that he could only imagine, filled with laughing, happy people, all of whom seemed to have drunk too much and were having too good a time, especially since this was a Thursday night. Who partied on a Thursday night? he asked himself. He would remember that later. It meant nothing to him now, though. The network announcer with the orotund voice—the kind that always went with large, fat men who had oversized chest cavities, people like Simon Denning—bade his listeners around the country a fond farewell, aloha, buenos noches, and to all a good night.
