“I’m clearing up.”
“In the middle of Sally’s shiva?”
“Yes,” she said. “In the middle of Sally’s shiva.”
“I think you need to take it easy.”
“Naomi — you’ve just stepped on a bit of food,” Shirley said, pointing at her foot. Naomi yelped and everyone turned to her. Shirley used that as an opportunity to go out to the bins again. Then she went back to the throng in the living room carrying a big roll of garbage bags.
It was bustling in there. She tried to be unobtrusive: she knew it must look odd for the bereaved mother to be wandering around holding a large bin liner. Still, nobody seemed to take much notice until one of the waiters offered her a mini smoked salmon bagel from a large silver tray. Instead of taking one of them with the napkin he offered her, she took the whole tray out of his hands and tipped it into the bag. The next to go were the deviled eggs — her mother’s favorite — then the herring on rye bread. She handed back the empty trays politely. The waiters’ mouths were frozen open. They kept glancing at each other for help.
“Why don’t you offer some drinks around?” she said. “People probably need a refill.”
The next thing she did was go over to Bonnie and Phil’s table. Bonnie grasped her hand from across the makeshift bar and said, “Let me do you a cocktail, darling. You must be exhausted. I’ve got apple, mango, orange…”
“I’m fine, Bonnie.”
“Or coffee,” Phil chipped in. “Remember how Sally loved a frothy cappuccino?”
She did remember. Coffee was all Sally drank by the end, not cappuccino, of course, which had too many calories, just black. But she wasn’t really listening to Phil. She had squatted down and was sweeping the brownies and fairy cakes and flapjacks into the bag. That was when she realized that the room had begun to fall silent, with the only buzz of conversation coming from the other end, the non-Jewish end, where they had probably had enough drink not to notice much.
Her mother was suddenly standing above her, and with surprising strength pulled Shirley up onto her feet and snatched the garbage bag out of her hands.
“Shirley, I want you to stop this now,” she whispered in her ear. “I want you to come upstairs with me and lie down.” Then she tried to pull her by the arm, but Shirley was having none of it.
She had some sympathy for her mother, who would hate everyone staring at them. The most important people at a shiva were the bereaved: they were meant to be cosseted and pampered. What they were not meant to be was manhandled out of the room trailing an overflowing garbage bag into which they had deposited the food so kindly brought by the mourners.
Shirley resisted her mother’s pull, so the next move was to call for help. “Does anyone know where Alan is?” she said, hoping a singsong quality to her voice might mask her desperation. Then she shouted, “Alan! Alan! We need you.”
People began turning round to see where he was. Gradually, a little gap began to appear that ran all the way through to the other end of the room as people moved apart, and Alan came into view. He was staring down the room at Shirley, a deranged woman with her hair coming down and her mascara running and food stains on her clothes, trying to wrest a black garbage bag from the hands of her mother. He began to weep in great, soundless hiccups until, finally, he bowed his head as if in shame.
The person who saved the day was Joseph. He walked slowly down to where they were standing and simply took charge. He put his arm round her mother and gently moved her towards Bonnie and Phil.
“I think Mrs. Levy needs a drink,” he said. “Can you make her one of those nice cocktails you’ve been doing?” Then he came back to Shirley.
“You can’t do this on your own,” he said softly. “Tell me what I should do. Is it the drink you don’t want, or the food? Do you want everyone to go?”
“No, they can stay and drink. Just the food,” she whispered.
He nodded briskly. “Okay. Leave it to me. You sit down.” He gently pushed her onto one of the low stools that her mother had wanted her to sit on all along. He took the full garbage bag out of her hand, tied the top of it and put it under Bonnie’s makeshift bar. Then he grabbed a breadstick from the table and made a little chime on the side of his glass to get everyone’s attention. He didn’t need to do that really: the whole room was staring at him in silence already.
He spoke in a light, clear voice, as if he was announcing no more than where the coats were meant to go. “Please have some more drinks, but there’s been a little problem with the food,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be going round clearing it up.” A woman, about to pop one of the little bagels into her mouth, looked down at it closely and quickly put it back on the tray as if it had salmonella.
Joseph knelt down beside Shirley. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and hugged him. “Thank you,” she said. “I think I saw Sally. She told me what she wanted.”
She had seemed so clear that day to Shirley. It wasn’t that she was less clear now, it was just that she had become two-dimensional, like a photograph rather than a sculpture. There had been no more visions of Sally in the fifteen years since her shiva. No wonder the vividness had faded. But it had come back tonight.
At three in the morning Shirley was sitting in the lobby of the hotel in her dressing gown talking to the police. The paramedics were upstairs in Joseph’s room and they would be bringing him down soon. It was hard for her to concentrate. She could not keep everything that had happened tonight in her head at the same time: Alan, then Joseph and, most perplexing of all, Sally. That was the only positive thing that had come out of tonight. She was going to store it away like a present and open it later.
She had already done some crying. She did not know whether it was for Alan or Joseph. Now she was just in shock. Before the police arrived she had been to the bathroom behind the reception desk and thrown up. There was quite a mess, but what did it matter in this place? It was filthy anyway. Now she looked terrible. She did not like being seen without makeup but it was all in her and Alan’s room and she had not gone back there after discovering Joseph unconscious.
She felt fuzzy and her stomach ached. She was trying to focus on what the policeman was saying.
“Is Mr. Carter a relative, Shirley?” She was not sure why they were on first name terms.
“No.”
“But you know him?”
“Yes. He’s a friend.” She was trying to hold herself together, but she could not stop her voice shaking.
“And you were in his room? You were both in there?” Then he added in a softer voice, “Together?”
She said coldly, “We were not together in his room when whatever happened to him happened. I only went to his room afterwards.”
“Because you heard cries?”
“No.”
“Then why did you go to his room?”
She paused for a moment and thought about how to answer that. She could hardly mention Sally. “I wanted to talk to him.”
The detective nodded. “I see. At two in the morning?”
“He is a great friend of mine. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t go and see him even if it is two in the morning.”
The man sounded contrite. “I’m sorry, Shirley. We have to ask painful questions. Do you know what happened to Mr. Carter?”
“Of course I don’t know what happened to him. I just saw his body,” she said.
“Do you know who was in his room with him?”
“No, I don’t.”
“We’ll be examining the closed circuit footage from the corridor and the lobby.”
“Well I hope you find him.”
“Him? You know it was a man?”
“I don’t know it was a man, but I presume it was a man.” She was trying hard not to cry. Oh, Joe, she thought, what have you been doing?
She was tired now. “I’ve told you what I know, which is really nothing. All I did was find him and call an ambulance. Anyone would have done that, would
n’t they? May I go now? Please.”
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you. We may want to talk to you later, Shirley.”
She stood up. She did not want to go back to her room, but she had to get dressed if she was going to go to the hospital when Joseph went. She took the lift back up. The door to the room was open and all the lights were on but Alan wasn’t there. She was relieved. She felt sick at the thought of seeing him, sick at the thought of what he had done. She dressed and slapped some makeup on. When she came out into the corridor the paramedics were bringing Joseph out of his room on a stretcher trolley. She followed them.
“How is he?” she asked. “I was the one who found him.”
“We’ll have to wait until we get to the hospital, until the doctors can examine him.”
“All I’m asking is if he’s still alive,” she said.
“Yes, but he’s unconscious.”
“I’ll be coming to the hospital.”
“Are you a relative?”
“Yes,” she said thinking quickly. “He’s my brother.”
The stretcher trolley was too big to fit in the lift so the men had to maneuver it down the stairs, trying to keep it level. When they came into the lobby, she saw Kevin and Alan talking to the police. She felt her heart plummet.
“This is Shirley,” the policeman said. “She was the one who discovered Mr. Carter.”
“They know who I am.”
Alan was not looking at her. Kevin stood up and moved a few yards away. “Shirley — can I have a little word with you?”
Reluctantly, she followed him to the corner of the lobby. He pulled Shirley into his arms and gave her a great hug. Their row seemed a long time ago.
“Oh, Shirley,” he said. “My heart goes out to you. What you’ve been through…”
“It’s not me who’s been through anything, Kevin.”
“Don’t think for a minute I’m not grieving. In my whole career nothing as awful as this has ever happened.” She did not say that his whole career did not encompass very much. She was going to be polite.
“I need to ask you something. I need you to do something for me.” She waited. “This is a very delicate situation.”
“That’s one way of putting it, yes.”
“I know we’ve had our differences but let’s not argue, Shirley. Let’s be friends. I know how much you’ve done for the show. I know how much it means to you.”
She sighed. “What is it you want, Kevin?”
“How we handle this is absolutely crucial. The show was shaky tonight. I know that. We both know that. There are press people coming up from London for the matinee this afternoon. I would cancel them if I could, but can you imagine how that would look? I don’t want anyone to think the show’s in trouble. Which it isn’t. I’ll give the cast a pep talk before the matinee, tell them they’ve got to up their game. They have to give the performance of a lifetime today. It’s got to be brilliant, Shirley. It’s make or break.”
He was so transparent. “And you don’t want anyone to know about Joseph yet. Is that it?”
He nodded. “Please. Not till after the show. What kind of performance would they give? Nearly everybody’s staying in those service apartments so they’re not going to hear for a while. It’s only a few hours till the matinee. I’ll organize a quiet meeting after the show to tell everyone. I want to do it sensitively. I want to tell the cast and crew when they’re on their own. You know how important this was to him. It’s what Joseph would want.”
Shirley thought about it for a moment. Reluctantly, she conceded that it probably was what he would want.
She nodded. “All right, Kevin, I won’t say anything.”
“Thank you, Shirley, thank you. We’re doing this for Joseph.”
Shirley hoped he was not going to say, “The show must go on.”
He gave her another hug. “The show must go on.”
She walked back past Alan and the policemen. She did not look at Alan. At the reception desk she said, “I want you to organize another room for me. Preferably not on the same floor as I’m on now. And will you call me a taxi? I’ll be waiting outside.” Then she walked out of the lobby. She heard Alan call her name.
Of course it was chaos at the hospital. She had to insist that they move Joseph’s gurney out of the corridor while they were waiting for the doctors to arrive. Under the bright fluorescent lights, his face looked terrible. It was the color of putty where it wasn’t bruised and bloody. She was holding his hand, clammy and cold.
They would not let her go with him when the doctors took him away. She had to sit in a scruffy waiting room where there weren’t even any magazines, just a pile of pamphlets about sexually transmitted diseases. People do go to hospital for other kinds of illnesses, she thought.
She had to wait for three hours before she saw anyone. Finally a young doctor came and sat beside her.
“Your brother is in a very serious condition,” he said.
“Yes, I realize that. I did discover his body, you know.”
“He’s unconscious. His injuries are very extensive.”
“Yes, I know that. My father was a doctor. Our father.”
“Well then, you’ll know how crucial the next twenty-four hours are.”
She began to cry.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, I would not like a cup of tea. I would like to see him.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment.”
“Well when will it be possible?”
“We’ll let you know.”
Finally, around lunchtime, they let her see him, but they made it very clear that she could not stay for long. She asked them to leave her alone with him for a moment, but they said no: they wanted to monitor him constantly. On balance, she did not think that saying she was a doctor’s daughter again was going to alter the situation.
She decided to walk back to the hotel. As she passed the theater she realized that the matinee must have already begun. She went in and stood at the back. They were halfway through the first act and it did not seem to be going too badly. The revolve was working properly again and there were no sound problems. It seemed to be more focused than the night before. At the end of the first act, after Joseph and Alan’s song, there was a lot of applause, much more than last night.
Even though it was only mid-afternoon, she felt she needed a drink, but when she walked into the bar she saw Alan. She turned round to go, but in a second he was by her holding her arm to stop her leaving. She wrenched her arm away and said, “Please don’t say ‘We have to talk.’ ”
He pulled her over to the corner of the bar. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“What about? About what’s happened to Joseph? About what you’ve done?”
“This and Joseph all at once — it’s like the perfect storm,” he said in an agonized voice.
“Oh please — don’t resort to clichés. There are enough clichés in the situation as it is. And what exactly do you mean by ‘this’?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Is ‘this’ a fling? Isn’t that what middle-aged men have?”
“I was trying to end it.”
“Who is she?”
“Nobody you know.”
“Who is she?”
Alan looked down. “Someone I met online.”
Shirley thought she was going to be sick. “Was she the first?”
There was a silence. Finally Alan said, “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“What? You were trying to buy a book on Amazon and strayed onto some sex website by mistake?”
“I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
“But you found it anyway.”
“We can work through this. We can make it all right.”
Then she began to cry, which was the last thing she wanted to do at this moment.
“It can never be all right. You’ve betrayed me!” she shouted. “You’ve betrayed Sally.”
His voice was shaking. “I would never betray Sally. I loved Sally. You weren’t the only one to suffer.”
“It’s not a competition, Alan. There’s no first place.”
“You suffered so much there was no room for me.”
“Oh please,” she said, “Tell that to some agony aunt.”
“We were so unhappy.”
“Of course we were unhappy! Sally died.”
“Before then.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Even before she got ill, Sally wasn’t happy. She was so withdrawn.”
“She was a teenager, for God’s sake!”
“She hated that school. We should never have sent her there.”
“It was a better school! If she was going to be a doctor…”
“She didn’t want to be a doctor.”
“She could have done anything she wanted!”
“She didn’t have a chance to do anything she wanted.” Alan closed his eyes. “I feel guilty every moment of the day.”
“Even when you’re with your online woman? I bet that distracts you.”
“Yes. Maybe it does,” Alan said quietly.
“Well, that’s very lucky for you. Nothing distracts me from Sally. Nothing. And the one thing — the one thing!—that’s kept me going through these long, dead years without her is that I don’t feel guilt. If I did, I couldn’t go on living. How dare you use her as some kind of excuse!” she shouted. “It’s nothing to do with her. It’s all you. You’ve destroyed us.”
She turned and walked out of the bar and into the theater as the lights were coming down. She was shaking so hard that she had to steady herself by holding the rail at the back as the second act started. She tried to concentrate on the ridiculous things that were happening onstage. At the end, to Shirley’s surprise, people were getting to their feet and clapping.
She was trying not to think about Alan. Every betrayed wife seemed to stay with her husband. She had seen politicians who had been caught in some tawdry scandal standing with their arms round their frumpy wives as flashbulbs popped. She had more dignity than that. She would cut Alan from her life. He would be dead to her. He would be more dead to her than Sally was.
The Songs Page 11
