Two days later Max returned without phoning ahead and stood in the tiny foyer, his hands folded, to ask if she wanted to see scenic Jersey City. He shuffled his feet like an awkward adolescent asking her out on a date. She said yes, sure that he was kidding about the Jersey City part, but he wasn’t, he wanted to see the Newport Center Mall and that’s what they did, driving all around it while he made comments on the architecture and the surrounding old buildings, many of them deserted, even burned out. Later, when she returned home her mother made a big joke out of his idea of sight-seeing and probably Manny would have too, if Carla were talking to him, which she wasn’t. That was why she tolerated her mother’s reappearance from California with the intention of staying through New Year’s. With her mother there it was easier to ignore Manny.
Carla enjoyed Max’s tour. After they went around and through the Newport Mall by car, he pulled into its huge multileveled parking lot and asked if she wanted to eat some lunch. She was hungry. The same sort of gnawing hunger that came on suddenly in the middle of the night, a hunger for comforting foods, a hunger she couldn’t satisfy no matter how much she ate and a hunger that so far she had felt only when alone.
She wanted to say yes but she was frightened at the idea of leaving the car. The mall was crowded with Christmas shoppers.
“Remember,” Max said. “We’re ghosts. They can’t do anything to us.”
“You’re crazy,” she said to him, scared by his idea. She felt comfortable telling him. “You’re really crazy, you know that?”
He smiled with his lips shut; the double curves at his mouth’s corners undulated. The sun came across his face through the windshield; his white skin seemed to glow whiter, as if he were made of packed snow.
“I should talk,” she said. “Okay.” She took a breath and opened the car door. He came around to her side. He put his arm through hers. He was wearing a navy-blue wool jacket, a thin jacket that hugged his upper torso and left the rest of him exposed. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked, shivering inside her goose down.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I should buy a coat in the mall.” They walked across a covered bridge from the parking lot and entered the mall.
It was beautiful, Carla thought. They had come in on the third floor and she could see down through the open central area to the two lower floors. Everywhere there were Christmas decorations and scenes. Sculptures of reindeer were paused beside plastic pine trees and brilliant poinsettias, all arranged on soft white cloth that looked like snow. There were lights strung along the glass panels at the ceilings and also along the railings of each level so that white, red and green lights blinked everywhere—pretty stars in a small universe.
And the people! Carla had forgotten what crowds of people look like. Haggard mothers shouted after their running children. Harassed fathers stood before store windows filled with goods, their heads bowed, defeated by choices. Giggling teenage girls flounced past, packed together, shoulder-to-shoulder, hair bouncing and trailing them like wedding trains. Solemn boastful teenage boys paraded after the girls; like sullen peacocks, their legs stretched ahead of their torsos with suspicious grace, eyes watching the girls with contempt and mastery.
Max guided Carla among them. She noticed a fat mother with pink beefy arms carrying a newborn. Every other second the mother kissed her baby’s bald head softly—a reflex while she studied the mall stores. She wasn’t even really in the throes of loving her baby; the constant kissing was routine. Carla didn’t hate her, didn’t pity her, didn’t envy her. She wondered about her life, if she had always been fat, what her husband was like, and if the baby was her first child. She stopped beside them and stared at the newborn’s head while the mother paused to look at the shoe store’s display window. Carla brought her face within inches of the baby and the mother; neither seemed to notice her. Maybe she was a ghost.
Max tugged at her to continue. She felt they were gliding soundlessly to the rhythm of the piped Christmas music, passing unseen by the mob of shoppers: gangs of men, women and children bustling with packages, eyes red and exhausted yet shining with appetite. They weren’t gangs, Carla reminded herself. They were families, spinning out and then back to each other, like planets in orbit, loose and yet never free.
“I don’t have a family anymore,” Carla said to Max. They were at the crossroads of the mall where it divided in four directions above a large central courtyard. She leaned against a railing that barred her from dropping two floors down to the big open area. Down there a man in a Santa suit in a mock sleigh was being photographed with babies and toddlers. She noticed the long line of children and parents waiting their turn with him. She looked up from that hurtful sight at Max. She felt faint. “I don’t have a family,” she repeated in a weak voice.
“What do you miss?” Max asked. Against the lights and bright decorations he was as pale as a ghost.
“I was going to buy him toys,” she said and sobbed. She tried to stop and then sobbed more. She was embarrassed; she was no longer invisible. She turned away from the startled faces of the mall shoppers and bent out over the banister, shutting her eyes and fighting the pain inside. But the happy music kept on wounding her; and even though she had her lids shut and her eyes were swimming with tears, she could still see the Santa below with awed children on his knee, watched by smiling, satisfied parents, and that hurt so much she wished she could scream herself to death—disintegrate in a single explosion of grief.
“Let’s buy them,” Max said. He leaned down and looked at the Santa. Max seemed to be floating in the mall’s air, glowing from its clear panels. He looked so different from everyone else, although his clothes were no better and he wasn’t bigger or stronger or handsomer. He was at ease, unfazed by her sobs and upset. “Let’s buy him the toys. What did he like? How about a sword? My son used to love swords. He still does but he’s too old to admit it.”
She didn’t understand him. Or didn’t believe she had understood. “Your son…?” she mumbled wiping her wet cheeks.
“How about it? What would your son like for Christmas? Does he play with Legos? No, he’s too young. How about the big ones? Or Bristle Blocks? Does he have Bristle Blocks? They’re great. They can really use them and they don’t get bored by them for years.”
Carla still wasn’t sure she understood. “You want me to buy presents for Bubble?”
“Bubble?” Max said.
“My son, Leonardo.” She understood now; he was crazy. “You want me to buy presents for him. That’s sick.”
“Why?” he asked innocently.
“Because he’s dead. It’s only going to make me feel bad to pretend he’s not.”
“Of course he’s—what did you call him?”
Carla lowered her eyes. She felt ashamed. She didn’t know of what. “Bubble,” she mumbled.
“Bubble,” Max said as if he were tasting it. “Of course Bubble is dead. But your wish to give him presents isn’t dead. I like giving presents too. So let’s do it.”
“What? Are you serious? You wouldn’t do this yourself.” She wasn’t angry, but she didn’t believe in him suddenly. “You gonna buy a present for your father?”
“My father,” Max said thoughtfully, again as if he were tasting the word. “I’ve never bought anything for my father,” he said wonderingly.
He sagged against the railing, no longer afloat. Carla felt she had hurt him and it was just like hurting a child—he looked crumpled and defenseless. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not a good idea. That’s all I meant.”
But he wasn’t hurt. Max’s pale blue eyes focused on her, curious and energetic. “I made him something in school. I carved his name in wood. You know, a nameplate to put on his desk. But I never had a chance to buy him a real present.” He moved close, filling her vision, blocking the pretty stars and talking louder than the happy music. “Let’s do it! Let’s buy presents for the dead.”
She wasn’t angry anymore or appalled either, but she couldn’t accept his idea
. She backed against the railing to get some distance from his eager face. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“What’ll we do with them?” she demanded, exasperated and confused.
“Do with them?” Max shook his head of white and black curls. The sparkling Christmas lights in the ceiling shined through his halo of hair.
“Who do we give them to!” Carla almost shouted. His suggestion made goose bumps up and down her back. She was scared of buying things for the dead. Vaguely, she feared it was sacrilegious.
“I don’t know,” he said, undeterred. “We’ll figure that out later. Come on,” he took her arm and tugged. “I know just what my dad would want.”
“You do?”
Max was excited. He pulled her the way a kid would, dragging her down two flights of stairs and hurrying her into a trot until they reached the side of the mall where a large Sears department store took over all the space. He moved with such enthusiasm that they attracted glances even from harried Christmas shoppers. He kept going through section after section until he reached the hardware department.
Max stopped in front of an enormous red metal tool chest, displayed with its top open, its interior drawers out in various levels, each one filled with a tool or a part of a tool that fit precisely in the space allotted. “He liked to build things,” Max said with a smile of satisfaction.
“Can I help you?” a young salesman asked. He was skinny and his head had a distorted shape, the top extraordinarily wide and flat and then narrowing to an unusually small and narrow chin.
“I want to buy that.”
The chest and tools were so expensive that even the salesman had to be told twice that Max meant to buy both. The salesman’s excitement at the effortless sale of an item he obviously thought would never be sold brought a flush to his oddly shaped cheeks. His hands shook while he wrote out the order.
“We lived in an apartment,” Max told Carla while they waited on the clerk. “So Dad couldn’t really have room to work, but he used the maid’s room, right off the kitchen, and built chairs—he even built our dining room table. “His voice, his language, the slouch of his body had become like a boy’s. He beamed at her while he talked. “And he used to fix things for the neighbors for free. Anything he could. Just on the weekends. I’d watch and he’d give me the hammer to hold or have me do the easy stuff. Anytime we had to get something at the hardware store he’d stop in front of one of these”—Max pointed to the display chest—“they weren’t as magnificent as this one—and long for it. He’d look at it silently for minutes and minutes while I pulled at the drawers and then he’d say, ‘I’d like to have that,’ and walk away.” Carla saw the tears collect in Max’s pale blue eyes. But he was still smiling.
When the salesman took Max’s credit card, Max told him that he wanted the tools and chest shipped. The salesman paled. His little chin quivered. He said in a strangled voice that to get the chest there by Christmas it would have to go by UPS and that would cost extra.
“I don’t care what it costs,” Max said, his eyes staying wet, but not letting go of their tears. “It’s for my father and I want him to have it on Christmas.”
The salesman paused for what seemed a long time and said nothing. He regarded Max with respect during the silence. When he finally spoke he said softly, “I wish I was in your family.”
At first Carla had thought Max’s idea mad, then dangerous. As she watched him feel this happiness she wanted it too.
“Where are you sending it?” she asked him as he wrote down the address for the salesman.
“Where am I sending it?” Max said loudly and he and the salesman exchanged looks as if Carla were quite foolish. “I’m sending it to my father. It won’t fit under my tree. It won’t fit under his either. He’s Jewish. He doesn’t have a tree.”
The salesman nodded politely. “Happy Hanukkah,” he said when they were finished.
Max took Carla’s arm and said, “I’d like to buy Bubble a set of Bristle Blocks. Unless that’s what you’re getting him.”
She saw Bubble reach for a Ninja Turtle figure belonging to another boy in the sandbox and screech when she said he couldn’t grab it away. The boy’s mother explained her son didn’t want to share it because it was a special toy—he had just gotten it for his birthday.
“I want it for birthday,” Bubble said to Carla.
“Okay, I’ll get it. I’ll get you everything you want. I just do whatever you tell me. I’m your slave,” and she had kissed him and they had had pizza—Ninja Turtle food—and she had never had the chance to buy it. She had promised her beautiful baby a long list of toys for his birthday and she hadn’t kept her promise.
Carla could remember the toys Bubble wanted; she could hear his musical voice asking for them. Wanting to buy things for Bubble still lived in her.
“Let’s go to a toy store,” she said to Max. “You can get him the Bristle Blocks. I got plenty on my list.”
After buying the presents they ate madly at the Food Court, a square area in the mall ringed by fast-food stands. They went from one counter to another, eating without any common sense. They each had a hot dog and an egg roll and a slice of pizza and a bucket of fried chicken and two frozen yogurts. While they ate they had Bubble’s presents wrapped for a fee; the money went to children with AIDS. They put the presents in the Saab’s trunk. Max asked if she minded touring some more of beautiful Jersey. She was glad to stick with him.
He drove through miles and miles of industrial landscape. She told him about Perlman’s group therapy session, reminded of it when they passed a Sheraton. Max made no comment while she recounted all the survivors who had claimed he saved their lives. She tried to prod him by drawing a pitiful picture of Jackie, the cheerleader mother: “One woman came there just to say thanks to you. She acted like she really needed to see you. She said she and her sons would have died without you.”
But Max wasn’t provoked. He said, “It’s so weird the stuff they have to believe.” And he changed the subject, reciting another fact about the warehouses and factories they passed. He seemed to know why every brick in New York and also New Jersey was put there. He was very intelligent, Carla thought, easily the most intelligent person she had ever met, but in a useless and sad way.
“What do you build?” she asked when they were in the tunnel going back to Manhattan. Riding with Max, speeding through the glowing fluorescent coffin buried under the river wasn’t scary. She remembered the agony and terror she had felt when coming home from the group therapy session with Manny. She had shut her eyes, put her head between her knees and screamed until they were out. I was so crazy, she thought, comparing that day’s hysteria to this calm with Max. Is it Bubble’s death or is it Manny that’s making me so crazy? Or is it because he’s fucking another woman?
No, I was crazy before I knew about her.
“I don’t build anything. I design homes,” Max answered after a long pause. She had almost forgotten her question. “I was going to say houses,” Max said. “But they’re really people’s homes. Built for good closet space.”
It was only their second meeting yet she knew him well enough to know he meant he didn’t think closet space was worth fussing about. “I’ve lived in small apartments my whole life,” she said, “and I’d love to have a big closet.”
“Exactly. That’s the way my clients feel. I don’t blame them. But you see architecture has nothing to do with comfort or usefulness. Sometimes we pretend it does, but really if it was a choice between people and a beautiful building I’d lose the people. I always thought there was something to be said for the neutron bomb.”
They came out of the tunnel and Carla was surprised by the sun. The sickly white glow of neon had obliterated her memory of it and she was delighted it still existed. She pressed the button, let her window roll down and allowed the warm light and the cold air to wash her face.
“I’m sorry,” Max said. “That was just a joke. Pretty stupid.”
“You say what you want, Max. It don’t bother me. Every time I open my mouth I piss people off. I know what you mean. You love buildings. You love all buildings, even the ugly ones. You can’t love all people.”
He laughed. “That’s right. Not even the beautiful people.”
“It’s easier to love the beautiful people,” Carla said.
Max laughed very hard at her comment. He cackled for more than a block.
“It’s not that funny,” she told him, worried by the energy of his laughter.
“You must make them crazy,” Max said as he controlled himself. “You’re very hard to bullshit.”
He parked his car in a lot and carried the shopping bags of wrapped toys.
“I want to give Bubble’s gifts to Monsignor O’Boyle,” she said.
“You could put them under your tree,” Max said.
“No. I got him what he wanted. Bubble didn’t mind sharing his—” she couldn’t finish that sentence.
“Okay,” Max said. “Then I’ll give the Bristle Blocks also.”
Monsignor O’Boyle wasn’t at Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, they were told by a young priest who answered their knock. Carla explained they wanted to donate the toys to poor children.
“Oh, they picked up for the Foundling Home yesterday,” he said as if they had made a mistake.
“Don’t they come again before Christmas?” Carla asked.
“I don’t know,” the young priest said.
“Take them,” Carla said with a command and confidence Max hadn’t seen in her before. “If there’s a problem tell the Monsignor to call me.”
“What a jerk,” she said about the young priest as they crossed Mulberry Street. Her eyes were bright; Max wanted to gather her wild black hair in his hands and look into them. Instead he walked beside her up the steps of her building and into the vestibule. They were jammed in there like two people squeezed into a phone booth. She pressed the intercom to her apartment. As she turned back to the door, Max’s face was right there, up close. He whispered, “Thanks for coming,” and kissed her on the lips, sweetly. Not for long, but it wasn’t chaste either. “Would you tell your husband that he does some of the finest plastering and painting I’ve ever seen? He looks to be a good electrician too. And I guess, judging from the window frames, he’s a good carpenter also—”
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