Fire & Water

by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

  I turned to look at Ryan, who sat in the backseat manipulating a strand of yarn into Jacob’s Ladder.

  “Look,” Mary K said, her voice softer but still insistent. “The Bridge is closed. Pull off and get a room. Whatever you do, don’t turn on the TV. I’ll get on the ferry and be there within the hour.”

  “What is it?” The note of alarm in Mary K’s voice raised smoky fear within me.

  “Just do what I say, Murphy. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Call me when you’ve got a room. Keep Ryan away from the TV. I’ll let everyone at the pub know you’re okay.”

  The traffic was my excuse to Ryan for renting a hotel room. As soon as we got a room, I called Mary K with our location. Ryan drew pictures of nesting birds in her sketchpad. I stared out the window toward the bay with San Francisco’s twinkling skyline in the distance. Every cell in me itched to turn on the TV, but if I’d learned nothing else, I’d learned to trust Mary K.

  A firm rap came at the door.

  “I’ll get it!” Ryan squealed and bounded for the door.

  “Yay! You brought Welby to our sleepover.” Mary K entered the room. Her shoulder sagged under the weight of the same knapsack I’d seen her carry into our Stanford dorm room twenty years before. My throat clutched when I saw my ashen-faced friend. Welby pranced toward Ryan, his collar tags jingling.

  “Can we have dogs in the hotel?”

  “Welby’s no dog, kid. You know that.”

  “I know. I know,” Ryan said with a roll of her eyes. “He’s a wise old soul in canine form.” She took the leash from Mary K and led the dog across the room.

  Mary K ruffled Ryan’s hair. “Hey, keep an eye on the mutt, would you? There are training treats in my pack. I want to talk to your mom for a minute.”

  A cloud passed in front of Ryan’s eyes. Usually curiosity would make her pester us for details. Instead she squatted down and nuzzled Welby, but her smile faded.

  Mary K and I stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind us. She patted the end of the bed, inviting me to sit down to sit next to her. She drew a deep breath. “It’s Jake.”

  I waited for the mallet of pain. I closed my eyes and listened. The pulse of helicopters sounded in the distance. I could not force my eyes to open. Looking into my friend’s steady blue gaze might break me into pieces. “All this traffic. The helicopters. The sirens. It’s Jake?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  Slowly, I looked at her. “Is he dead?”

  Mary K nodded, her unblinking eyes locked onto mine. “They just confirmed it on the news. Bastards didn’t even wait to notify next of kin.”

  Everything in me went slack, every muscle conspiring to crumble me to the floor. Mary K grabbed onto me, keeping me from sliding off the edge of the bed.

  I pulled myself to standing, then held onto the corner of a bureau to steady myself. “Take Ryan and Welby for a walk. Buy her dinner,” I commanded flatly. “She loves that waffle cone place just down the block. Buy her an ice cream after. Take her Christmas shopping. Anything.”

  “But Murphy, I—”

  “Please. Give me some time. I’ve got to sort this out and figure out what to tell her.”

  “You’re sure? You don’t want me to stay here with you?”

  “I’m sure. We’re going to need you and that furry friend of yours right here with us.”

  “You can take it to the bank, Murphy.”

  * * *

  With the click of the door I snatched the TV remote. In a box behind Tom Brokaw’s shoulder perched the same black-and-white press photo that had been in The Times. Across the bottom of the screen a caption floated: “Jacob Bloom, 1952-1997.” In his steady baritone, Brokaw described the horror. I could absorb only pieces. “… renowned artist.” “… rare visionary.” “… tragic loss.” “… as beautiful as it is horrifying.” “… artistic vision run amok.” “… madness of a brilliant artist.” “… dramatic history as part of one of America’s wealthiest families.” “… possible suicide or drug use.” “… pending autopsy.”

  I willed myself not to blink as I stared at the images before me. The screen filled with shaky, water-speckled footage taken by a weather helicopter crew of a strangely colored helicopter flying above the north tower of the Golden Gate. The bridge sat eerily empty of cars because of wind warnings. The copter lurched, suddenly tilting ninety degrees. From the open door, dozens of pale blue bags fell. Seconds later, they burst apart, letting fly thousands of fluttering sheets and shards in greens, blues, silvers, and golds that floated in a spectacular shower of color.

  Tom Brokaw’s voice told the end of the story. “… then, quite suddenly, things went hopelessly awry.” I could listen no more. All I saw was the calico helicopter tossed by the wind, tumbling over and over until its propeller hit the top of the bridge’s tower. Like a wounded sea bird, the chopper spiraled downward, tangling its crumpled wings in the cables of the bridge until wind dragged it off of the screen toward San Francisco’s rocky shore. Flames from burning fuel lit falling sheets of paper and vellum.

  For one brief instant, all of the falling debris cascaded in front of the bridge and I recognized the image as familiar: a perfect, shimmering waterfall spilling from the side of the bridge, backlit with the fiery orange sunset.

  Jake’s preposterous image was now real. Fire and water in the same place, at the same time. With shaking hands, I switched the channel, watching it from new angles—trying to catch a glimpse of the pilot’s face.

  Film crews shot footage of the second phenomena that emerged in the current. The enormous swatches of foil, paper-thin sheets of glass, and opalescent vellum joined together in writhing forms, moving in undulating, underwater choreography. The creation became a school of glittering fish as the current beckoned it out to sea.

  On the TV screen was everything I’d feared and everything I’d prayed for. Jake was finally freed from the torment of his madness. He’d left in a torrent—a beautiful destruction—a storm that left a swath of ruin in its wake.

  But had he left in a cloud, intoxicated with narcotics? Had he planned this whole thing as an elaborate suicide—a death with a vivid and spectacularly artistic exclamation point? Each possibility was a firefly, lighting itself in my mind, then fading back into the darkness.

  Jake, what have you done?

  Post Mortem

  By the time Mary K brought Ryan back to the hotel, I had watched Jake die countless times. When I heard the cheerful tinkling of Welby’s tags outside the door I clicked off the TV.

  As I waited for Ryan to settle Welby down, I hoped that the perfect words would find their way to my lips. Mary K and I exchanged glances. “Hey Squirt,” she said, “Why don’t you come over here so your mom and I can talk to you awhile?”

  Together we told Ryan of what had occurred. Prepared for tears and screams—or worse, a slip back into the silence from which Ryan had so recently reemerged—I braced myself. Instead, she looked up at me, her eyes unblinking. “Daddy’s dead, then?”

  The simple truth of her words pierced my heart. “Yes, baby.”

  There it was, the look of relief I’d seen on Ryan’s face at the pub the night before. The unmistakable calm that comes when a long fight is at last surrendered. Ryan closed her eyes and sat still as night.

  “What are you doing, baby?”

  She opened her eyes and in them I saw the cool green tones I’d first seen in Jake’s. “I can still see him,” she said. “So he’s not really gone. And he’s not sad anymore because he doesn’t have to be lonely without us.”

  I felt a sudden and odd sense of calm even amidst my grief. For the first time, there was nothing left for me to do. No choices remained.

  I remembered the first date I’d had with Jake, when he’d created gourmet pizzas at The Front Room. I’d told him about my Jane Doe who had died in the ER that day. “Her pain is over now,” he had said. “You’ll be the keeper of the last memory of her.”

  “No, my darling. Daddy’s no
t sad anymore.” I said to Ryan. “His pain is over.”

  * * *

  We all slept together that night in the king-size bed, Mary K and I wrapping our limbs around Ryan, Welby an extra blanket at our feet. Though the bridge was reopened by morning, we took the Sausalito ferry back to San Francisco, leaving my car at the hotel. I just couldn’t drive across the Golden Gate.

  “You’ll take care of Welby for me, right, kiddo?” Mary K said to Ryan when our cab reached the pub. “I’ve got a lot to do, so he’d just be in my way. He’ll have more fun with you.” Ryan’s hands had not been off of the dog since she’d learned of Jake’s death the night before. She nodded.

  “Great,” Mary K said, handing over her knapsack. “ I’ll bring more food tonight. I know you’ll take good care of him.” Mary K. knelt down. She rubbed Welby’s ears and hugged Ryan. She stood, grabbed me, and hugged me hard, then broke away and rushed into the cab.

  * * *

  That afternoon Ryan and I sat cuddled on the couch in my dad’s flat, watching The Land before Time videos and avoiding all broadcast TV. Alice pulled out an old jigsaw puzzle. She and Ryan sat at the kitchen table, filling in the pieces. Now and then my eyes would meet with Alice’s. Seeing her and Ryan together transported me back in time to when she sat at that very table doing a puzzle with me after the death of my mother—or at least the woman I’d known then to be my mother. I could now feel, as if it were my own, Alice’s anguish at both losing her friend and acting as a substitute mother to the child she’d given birth to.

  After eleven, Ryan was finally asleep, her arms wrapped around Welby. I slipped down the staircase to the bar. Dad’s rumbling snore emanated from behind his bedroom door.

  Tully sat at the end of the bar, a mug of tea in front of him. With a pat, he invited me to sit on the stool next to him. Alice sat at the family table with an embroidery hoop, sewing sequins onto felt New Year’s hats.

  TV pundits squawked about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski.

  “Do people really care about this?” I muttered.

  Tully shrugged. “Gossip. People love it.”

  I nudged Tully’s shoulder. “Thanks for picking up my car.”

  Tully patted my arm. “Least I can do.”

  The local news then began replaying film from earlier in the day of Jake’s body being pulled from the rocks at the base of the bridge on the San Francisco side. My gut knotted when the black body bag sagged with his weight as officials hoisted it onto a gurney. The charred helicopter was a crumpled bit of cellophane on the rocky shore.

  “Mikey, turn that shit off, will ya?” Tully grumbled.

  “Please. I have to see this,” I said.

  Together we watched until Jake’s body had been placed into the coroner’s wagon. The newscaster commented on Jake’s “fatal masterpiece.” That’s what everyone had begun to call it.

  A Santa Rosa farmer then spoke, revealing that Jake had rented his large barn. The farmer hadn’t known who Jake was. Jake had hidden a used helicopter, which he’d stripped and repainted, in the barn. For over two years he’d amassed explosives and the rest of the materials for his “project.” He’d painted the helicopter silver with swaths of tangerine and blue to disappear against a sunset sky. The contents of the bags were released mid-air by the detonation of small, explosive devices timed perfectly to burst just as they reached the cables of the bridge.

  Watching the footage dozens of times made it no more real.

  From behind me came Dad’s voice, gravelly and deep. “You can shut it off now, if you would please, Mikey?” His hand rested on my shoulder and I felt its warmth penetrate into my bones. “Haven’t you’ve seen enough, Kitten?” His hair was misshapen and his fleshy cheeks bore the crinkled impressions of his pillowcase. His feet were clad in his worn leather house slippers. He pulled up a stool and squeezed in beside me. Mike brought him a cup of tea.

  “You’re a good lad, Mikey,” Dad said as he lifted his cup. Mike poured a second cup and then I felt Alice’s gentle kiss on my cheek. The two men scooted aside and Tully pulled up a stool. The three of them could not sit close enough to me.

  “All of us here know a little bit about grief,” Dad said. “And we know what it is to be unable to save someone you love. It feels like you die along with them. But here’s the truth of it, Kitten. Tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, your heart will pump and your lungs will pull in the air they need and let go of what they don’t.” Alice dabbed her nose with a tissue tugged from her sleeve as Dad continued. “You’ll keep on living because you’ve a daughter to care for. I know this path. But don’t let this phase of deadness go on too long. In one blink Ryan will be driving a car. In two, she’ll be leaving for college. In three, she’ll be a mother herself. You don’t want to miss all that.”

  “I hope we get some more cucumber days, Dad. I’m sort of over this pickle thing.”

  “We will, darlin’. That’s a promise.”

  I stood and looked at the love-filled faces at the end of the bar. Newly exhausted, I climbed the stairs knowing that, just as they had for my whole life, they were watching my every step.

  The following day I accepted the condolences of loved ones and visitors, but all of it seemed like a hazy dream. Only one thing would make it all seem real.

  I had to see Jake’s body.

  * * *

  Chewing my cuticles, I sat in a plastic chair outside of a door labeled CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO MEDICAL EXAMINER. The sting of the pink flesh around my thumbnail and the bead of blood that erupted reminded me that despite the numbness I felt, life still coursed through me, just as my father had said it would. The mingled odors of antiseptics and floor wax and the harsh glow of fluorescent lighting gave me an odd sense of familiarity.

  After lengthy protest, Mary K had agreed to arrange for me to see Jake’s body, but not from behind the viewing window. I’d already seen him through the distance of a camera and a television screen. I needed to be closer.

  The door opened and Mary K peeked out. “You’re sure, Murphy?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “But this is some grisly shit.”

  “I’ve seen dead bodies before.”

  “Not Jake’s.”

  Mary K escorted me to the morgue. Jake’s body had been drawn from its holding drawer and he lay on a stainless steel table, covered with blue surgical draping. The chill of the room wrapped itself around me. I tried to identify Jake’s profile under the blue sheet.

  “Can I have a minute?” I asked.

  “I can’t leave you by yourself in here. The coroner would shit a Maytag. He already chewed me a new asshole, warning me not to let you touch anything.” Mary K guided me to where Jake’s body rested. She studied me until I nodded, and then she pulled back the draping.

  At first nothing of Jake was recognizable. His hair was pulled straight back from his face, revealing the pale swath of his forehead. Sooty smudges lined his jaw. His face was more grotesque catcher’s mitt than human face: gray and misshapen, covered with abrasions. His nose bore cuts deep enough to reveal shining white cartilage. The lips I’d kissed a million times were no longer full and ripe, but colorless and twisted.

  On his torso, beneath the feathery tufts of chest hair, was a sutured, T-shaped incision, starting at the hollow of Jake’s throat, disappearing beneath the drape that covered his lower body. Like it was her signature, I recognized the perfect evenness of Mary K’s surgical handiwork that closed the gash. Across his chest, where so many times I’d rested my head, Jake now wore a gaping wound that no stitching could disguise. The flesh was shredded and pulpy; its resemblance to the gashes in his New York exhibit caused me to feel lightheaded.

  I hoped to see his wedding ring; the platinum wreath of twigs that was the perfect mate to mine, but Jake’s left arm had been severed at the elbow—lost to the sea.

  Nothing of this body before me conjured Jake for me until I spied the fine white crosshatch of old scars over hi
s arms, chest, and abdomen. I looked up at Mary K, whose expression told me that we were both looking at the same perversely beautiful pattern.

  “That’s a fuckload lot of scars, Murphy.”

  In the thick of his bushy, dark eyebrow, I found the single small scar, offset from the symmetry of the others. It was an insignificant white line—nothing by comparison to the gouges that now riddled his body, and miniscule in comparison to the elaborate mesh of self-inflicted scars. For an instant I was no longer standing in the morgue. Instead I stood beside an examination table in an ER, yellow wires protruding from Jake’s ears and the buzz of music, while I stitched his brow. A sideways smile. His cocky swagger. His penetrating gaze.

  I reached out and touched the fine white line. His skin was cool, but I felt the warmth of recognition radiating through my fingertips.

  Mary K looked over her shoulder. “Murphy.”

  I jerked my fingers away and stepped back. After one last look I closed my eyes. Mary K picked up my silent signal and pulled the draping over Jake’s face.

  “Let’s go up to my office,” she said. “You look a little green.”

  * * *

  Mary K pulled out her desk chair, inviting me to sit. She drew a plastic bottle of orange juice from the fridge under her desk. I welcomed its sweetness in my dry mouth.

  “You gonna puke or faint?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Look Murphy, I took a look at the tox results just before you got here. They’re going to release them to the media.”

  My heart galloped. I had exhausted myself wondering if the cruel blows of the helicopter crash had been softened by a pillow of narcotic numbness. Was it a drugged haze that clouded his judgment and slowed his reflexes, causing the crash? Was it all just another colossally impulsive act that had gone awry? Or had Jake been fully conscious, fully intending all of this?

  “Clean,” Mary K said.

  Surely I had heard her wrong.

  “Nothing?” I asked. It seemed impossible. “Not antipsychotics? Not antidepressants? No speed, barbiturates, heroin?”