He took the paper from me and scanned it. “God,” he said. “How could they have done that?”
“How? How?” I said, sounding unhinged. “It’s easy. Had Eric cooperated and named names, this demand never would have been served on him. But if you don’t play ball with those shits, they’ll do everything possible to destroy you. Everything.”
I started to cry again. I buried my head in Jack’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so damn sorry . . .”
I felt another hand on my shoulder. It was Joey. “Let’s get you guys out of here,” he said softly. “You don’t want to look at this no more.”
We somehow made it to the elevator and back to the bar. Joey left us the whiskey and a couple of glasses. Jack poured us two shots. I was descending into deeper shock—to the point where my hands were starting to shake. The whiskey helped. For the eighth time that night, I pulled myself together. Jack was slumped in an armchair, staring ahead. I reached for his hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Just overwhelmed. And guilty that . . .”
He hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Guilty that I never really got on with Eric.”
“It happens.”
“I should’ve tried harder. I should’ve . . .”
He broke off, on the verge of sobbing. People always surprise you at the strangest moments. Here was Jack—who never really liked my brother—in tears over his death. That’s the thing about a genuine tragedy. It reminds everyone that all the arguments we have with each other are ultimately pointless. Death silences the quarrel—and we’re suddenly left with the realization that our dispute with the other person had a built-in obsolescence; that, like everything we do, it was of the moment. And that moment—that sliver of time we call life—counts for nothing. Yet we still have the arguments, the quarrels, the rancor, the anguish, the jealousy, the resentment . . . the splenetic underside which shadows everyone’s existence. We live this way—even though we know it will all end; that, somehow, everything is doomed. Maybe that’s the real point of anger—it’s the way we rage against our complete insignificance. Anger gives consequence to that which is fundamentally inconsequential. Anger makes us believe we’re not going to die.
We drank some more whiskey. It had its beneficial effects. We said nothing for a while. We just sat in that empty bar as it gradually became flooded with morning light. Eventually I spoke.
“I have to tell Ronnie.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I was thinking that. Do you want me to handle it?”
“No. He has to hear it from me.”
I asked Joey to go upstairs and root around Eric’s papers, to find Ronnie’s touring schedule. He discovered it on the same table where I found the IRS demand. Ronnie was playing in Houston that night. I waited until noon to call him—by which time I was back in my apartment, and had already begun to make arrangements for the funeral in a few days’ time. Ronnie was groggy when he answered the phone. He seemed surprised to hear from me, and instantly worried.
“You sound bad,” he said.
“I am bad, Ronnie.”
“It’s Eric, isn’t it?” he asked in a hushed voice.
And that’s when I told him. I tried to keep it as simple as possible—because I knew I’d start falling apart again if I got into too much detail. There was a long silence when I finished.
“Ronnie . . . you okay?” I finally asked.
Another silence.
“Why didn’t he call me?” he asked, his voice barely audible. “Or you?”
“I don’t know. Or maybe I do know, and I don’t want to say . . .”
“He loved you more than . . .”
“Please, Ronnie. Stop. I can’t deal with . . .”
“Okay, okay.”
Another silence.
“You still there?” I asked.
“Oh Jesus, Sara . . .”
He started crying. Suddenly, the phone went dead. Half an hour later, he called back. He sounded shaky, but under control.
“Sorry I hung up,” he said. “I just couldn’t . . .”
“No need to explain,” I said. “You better now?”
“No,” he said, sounding flat. “I’ll never get over this.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
“I really did love him.”
“And he you, Ronnie.”
I could hear him swallowing hard, trying not to cry. Why is it that we always try to be brave at moments when bravery is futile?
“I don’t know what to say,” Ronnie said. “I can’t make sense of this.”
“Then don’t. The funeral’s the day after tomorrow. Can you make it?”
“No way. Basie’s a strict operator. He’d let you off work if it was your mother who died. But flying back to New York for a friend’s funeral? No way. And people might start asking questions about the type of friend Eric was.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I will worry about it. I want to be there. I should be there.”
“Call me when you’re back in the city. Call me anytime.”
“Thanks.”
“You take care.”
“You too. Sara?”
“Yes?”
“What am I going to do?”
I knew what I was going to do. After I put down the phone, I careened into the bedroom, collapsed across the bed, and let go. I must have cried for a solid hour. Jack tried to comfort me, but I screamed at him to go away. I needed to do this—to weep my heart out; to surrender to the sheer terribleness of what had happened.
There are moments when you think you will cry forever. You never do. Eventually, sheer physical exhaustion forces you to stop, to settle, to becalm yourself amidst all the mad turbulence of bereavement. And so, after an hour (maybe even ninety minutes—I had lost all track of time), I forced myself up from the bed. I took off all my clothes, letting them drop to the floor. I ran a bath. I made it as hot as I could tolerate. Wincing as I slid into it, my body quickly adjusted to its warmth. I took a facecloth. I dunked it in the water. I wrung it out. I draped it across my face. I kept it there for the next hour, as I floated in the hot water and tried to empty my mind of everything. Jack wisely didn’t come in to see how I was. He kept his distance. When I eventually emerged from the bath—covered in a robe, with a towel around my hair—he didn’t try to hug me, nor did he say anything inane like, “Feeling better, dear?” He was smart enough to realize that I shouldn’t be crowded right now.
Instead, he asked, “Hungry?”
I shook my head. I sat down on the sofa. “Come here,” I said.
He joined me. I took his face in my hands. I said nothing. I simply looked at him for a very long time. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask what I was thinking. Maybe he knew. You are everything I have now. Everything.
Eric’s funeral took place two days later. It was held at the Riverside Funeral Home on Amsterdam and 75th Street. Only a dozen people showed up: Jack and Meg, Joel Eberts, a handful of friends from Eric’s theater days, a classmate or two from Columbia. Nobody from NBC made an appearance. Marty Manning did send a wreath, and a note to me, in which he said that Eric wasn’t just a brilliant writer of comedy, but a true mensch . . . and someone who didn’t deserve the fate that had befallen him:
“We live in strange times,” Manning wrote, “when a man as funny and gentle as your brother is bullied into despair. Everyone on the show loved him. We all wish we could be there Monday to say a proper goodbye—but Monday is our big rehearsal day. And as Eric himself would have said, ‘The show must go on.’ Please know you’re in our thoughts . . .”
I knew full well (from Eric) that Monday was just the first read-through of that week’s script—and that it never really started until around eleven in the morning. Had Manning and Company wanted to, they could have easily made the ten AM service at the Riverside. But I understood their reluctance to make an appearance at the funeral. Just as I
understood the subtext of the line about Eric being bullied into despair. Like everyone else, Manning and his team were terrified of the same fate befalling them. And I was pretty damn certain that a directive came from Ira Ross and the brass on the forty-third floor that no NBC personnel should attend the funeral, just in case the FBI had decided to post a man at the door to take down the names of anyone who dared to show solidarity with Eric.
As it turned out, Mr. Hoover and his associates reckoned that my dead brother was no longer a threat to national security—so unless they had the Riverside Chapel covertly staked out, I could detect no sign of FBI presence. Instead, the dozen mourners who dared to show their faces sat together in the first two rows as a Unitarian minister made a series of telling comments about Eric’s integrity, his sense of conscience, his courage. The minister’s name was Roger Webb. The funeral home had recommended him when I said that Eric was, in essence, a nonbeliever (“Then this Unitarian reverend is the guy for you,” the funeral director told me). I had expected some bored man of the cloth who would say a few prayers, mutter a couple of platitudes, and be glancing at his watch during the entire service. But Roger Webb was young, earnest, and actually nice. He made a point of calling me a day before the funeral and asking a lot of questions about Eric. I suggested that he come over to my apartment to talk things through. He showed up a few hours later—a baby-faced thirty-year-old from Columbus, Ohio. From a few passing comments he made as we sipped a cup of coffee, I sensed that he was good news—and, like most Unitarians, liberal in temperament. So I opened up, telling him exactly what had befallen Eric—and the admirable, but self-destructive choice he made when he refused to name names. I also risked mentioning his involvement with Ronnie.
He listened in silence. Then he finally said, “Your brother sounds like he was a remarkable man. And a total original.”
I felt my throat tightening. “Yes,” I said. “He was definitely that.”
“We’re actually scared of originality in this country. Of course, we spout on about rugged individualism, and all that John Wayne nonsense. But, at heart, we’re a nation of Babbitts. ‘Don’t rock the boat, don’t step outside the social norm, don’t question the system, be a team player, a company man.’ If you don’t conform, God help you.”
“You sound like Eric.”
“I’m certain your brother would have put it in a smarter, wittier fashion that I just did. I’m a huge fan of the Marty Manning Show.”
“I want you to speak your mind at the service, if that’s all right with you.”
“No one can really speak their mind these days—because it may be taken down and used against you. But there are ways of getting the message across.”
The next morning, Roger Webb stood to the left of my brother’s coffin and addressed the sparse assembly of twelve mourners. He talked about choice.
“Choice defines us. Choice forces us to confront our true nature—our aspirations, our fears, our ethical fiber. Often in life, we make the wrong choice. Or, in the case of Eric, we do something quietly heroic—we make the right choice, even though we know it is that choice which will undermine all that we have created in life. Eric was faced with an appalling decision. Should he harm others to save himself? It is the sort of choice that illuminates an individual’s conscience. Had Eric opted to save himself, his would have been an understandable decision—because, after all, the instinct toward self-preservation is a huge one. And personally speaking, I don’t know what I would have done if I had been presented with the choice Eric had to make. For that reason, I hope we can all find understanding in our hearts for those who have recently had to face such a choice—and, for whatever reason, could not sum up the same level of selflessness which Eric did. Forgiveness is one of the hardest things in life—and possibly the most crucial. Eric did something supremely courageous. But those who did otherwise should not be condemned outright. This is a curious moment in American life—and one which, I sense, will come to be viewed in retrospect as a foul, demagogic juncture in our collective history. I hope we can all find the courage to understand the moral pressures which have engulfed so many of us—to salute Eric Smythe’s bravery and mettle, yet to also show empathy for those who felt it necessary to make equally difficult, but more self-preserving choices.
“Being a minister, I should probably underpin such a sermon with a line from the Bible. But being a Unitarian, I can also get away with invoking poetry—specifically, a few lines from Swinburne. ‘Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.’”
Next to me, Jack buried his face in his hands. Meg started to sob. So too did most of the other mourners. But I simply stared ahead at the coffin, appalled that this was actually happening. Maybe it was the stark sight of that simple pine box—and the realization that my brother was inside it. Or maybe it was the knowledge that everything you do in life is reduced to this—that this is your ultimate destiny. Whatever the reason, I was too numb to cry; too deadened by the shock of the past few days.
We said the Lord’s Prayer. We asked that our trespasses be forgiven, as we (allegedly) forgave those who trespassed against us. We sang a single hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—chosen not because of its uplifting Lutheran message, but because Eric once told me it was the one hymn he could never get out of his atheistic head from all those Sundays that our parents dragged us to church. Roger Webb gave a final benediction, asking us to go in peace. The undertakers wheeled the coffin down the aisle. We followed, streaming out into a perfect spring day. There was much hugging and dabbing of eyes among the mourners as the coffin was loaded into the back of the hearse. People began to say their goodbyes. Only four of us—Jack, Joel Eberts, Roger Webb, and myself—were going to accompany Eric to the crematorium in Queens. I wanted it this way—because I knew that all eyes would be on me as the coffin disappeared into the furnace, and I needed these final moments to be private ones.
We traveled out in a long black limousine. It trailed the hearse. We got stuck in a massive traffic jam on the Queensboro Bridge. There had been an accident up ahead. Everyone began to lean on their horns. None of us had spoken since leaving the funeral home. Roger Webb broke the silence.
“Looks like we’re going to be a little late,” he said absently.
“I think they’ll wait for us,” Joel Eberts said, and I found myself giggling for the first time in days.
“Eric would have loved this,” I said over the din of car horns. “The perfect New York send-off. Even though he never really liked Queens.”
“No one from Manhattan likes Queens, the Bronx, or Brooklyn,” Joel Eberts said. “The problem is, when you’re dead—Manhattan doesn’t want you anymore. So you inevitably end up being shipped to Queens, the Bronx or Brooklyn. I think that’s called ‘irony.’ ”
“Did your brother specify cremation in his will?” Roger Webb asked.
“There was no will,” Joel Eberts said.
“Predictably,” I said. “Eric was antiefficient. Not that there was any estate to speak of. Even if there was, those bastards in the IRS would swallow it whole. No doubt, they’ll now try to put some sort of lien on the few odds and ends he left behind.”
“That’s another day’s work, Sara,” Joel Eberts said.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I said wearily.
“Joel’s right,” Jack said, squeezing my hand. “One thing at a time. You’ve been through enough.”
“And it’s not over yet,” I said bleakly.
“That was a hell of a good sermon, Reverend,” Joel Eberts said. “But I’ve got to tell you something—though I think turning the other cheek is a noble, high-minded idea, putting it into practice is goddamn impossible . . . ’scuse my French.”
“I’m a Unitarian—so you can use ‘goddamn’ all you like,” Roger Webb said with a smile. “But you’re right. ‘Turning the other cheek’ is a Christian idea. And like most ideals—especially Ch
ristian ones—it’s exceptionally difficult to live up to. But we must try.”
“Even in the face of out-and-out betrayal?” Joel Eberts asked. “Sorry—but I believe there’s a cause and effect to our actions. If you risk doing a, then b will inevitably happen. The problem is—most people think that they can dodge the consequences of b. They can’t. Things always catch up with you.”
“Isn’t that a rather Old Testament view of morality?” Roger Webb asked.
“Hey—I’m Jewish,” Joel Eberts said. “Of course I take an Old Testament line on such things. You make a choice, you make a decision. You live with the ramifications.”
“So, in your book, there’s no such thing as absolution?” Jack asked.
“Spoken like a good Catholic,” Joel Eberts said. “That’s the big difference between the Irish and the Jews. Though we both wallow in guilt, you guys are always chasing absolution. You’re always working the forgiveness angle. Whereas we Jews go to our graves blaming ourselves for everything.”
The traffic eventually started moving. Within ten minutes, we were at the gates of the cemetery. We all fell silent again. We followed the paved road, past row after row of graves. Finally, after acres of headstones, we reached a squat stone building, topped by a long narrow chimney. The hearse bypassed the front entrance, and headed toward the rear of the crematorium. We stopped by the entrance. The limousine driver turned back to us and said, “We’ll wait here until somebody comes out and tells us they’re ready.”
Ten minutes later, a graying gentleman in a dark suit emerged from the doors of the crematorium and nodded toward us. We went inside. The chapel was a small, simple room—with five rows of pews. Eric’s coffin was on a bier, to the right of the altar. We filed down to the front row. As previously agreed between us, Roger Webb did not offer a final prayer. Or a final benediction. He simply read a single passage from the Book of Revelations:
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
I didn’t believe a word of that Biblical passage. Nor did my late brother. Nor, I sensed, did Roger Webb. But I’d always loved the sentiment behind those lines: the idea of an eternity without anguish or adversity; a celestial payoff for the vicissitudes of life. Roger Webb spoke the lines beautifully. So beautifully that I felt a small sob catch in my throat. A moment later, I heard the clank of machinery. A curtain behind the bier opened, and a belt beneath the coffin rolled it toward the furnace. Immediately, I stiffened. Immediately, Jack took my hand. And held it tightly.
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