This time the funeral was a quieter affair. Neither James nor his sister wanted a lot of people, so the only others in attendance were Jim and Angie, with Anthony, Jennifer, and Maria, and baby Margaret-Jayne, plus, of course, Jackie and Phil Defantino.
At the end of the service and the internment, while Jim and Angie took the children back to their respective cars, James and Nicola stayed back to speak with Phil and Jackie. When they had exchanged the customary commiserations, Phil asked Jackie to wait for him in the car. She looked a little puzzled but did as she was asked.
The three of them watched her walk away and then Phil turned to James and Nicola and, with a deep sigh, reached into his inside coat pocket and produced a brown paper bag that was about the shape and size of paperback novel. He handed it to James.
“What is it?” Nicola asked.
“I think I know,” James said as he opened the bag. Without removing the contents, he peered into the bag. For a few seconds it did indeed look like a paperback book, viewed from the page edges rather than from the spine. He folded the bag over again and handed it back to Phil. “There’s nothing there that we want, Phil,” he said. “Just some cards.”
“James—”
“Nicola, remember what I told you Mom had said about destroying the magic?”
Nicola nodded.
James turned back to Phil. What were they like, those last dozen or so postcards? How much did he deteriorate by the time the end came? Suddenly, James felt thankful that his mother had died when she had. He couldn’t imagine the heartbreak she would have gone through having to read them right up to the end, and then for the cards to stop completely. He said, “Just get rid of them.”
“You sure?”
“We’re sure.”
Nicola nodded and turned away.
“Will you be needing any help? With the house, I mean. Boz’s books and magazines . . . all that stuff.”
James shook his head and breathed in deeply. The intake of breath made him appear bigger and stronger than he felt. “We’re going to get a dealer in, sell the lot. We could do it ourselves, advertising them, but it’d take too long. And we’d sooner see it happen in one hit.”
“I understand,” Phil said. “Well, if you need any help with anything at all, just give me a call.”
“Will do. Nick and I are staying at the house for a few days to sort out all the furniture and, as you say, all of the books. Dad’s old firm is doing the realty.”
“He’d like that.”
“That’s what we figured. Anyway, by the end of next week, it’ll just be a shell with a FOR SALE sign in the yard.”
Phil sighed and looked around. Jackie was standing by Phil’s 4 × 4—she waved when she saw him looking and he nodded before turning back to James and Nicola. “Well, I guess that’s it.” He shook James’s hand and gave Nicola a kiss on the cheek. “Keep in touch, huh?”
“You bet,” James said.
Watching him walk away from them, they saw him remove a handkerchief from his pocket. In the stillness of the cemetery, the nose-blow—when it came—sounded like a clarion call or Last Post. Neither James nor Nicola could decide which.
The weekend wasn’t as traumatic as they had feared it would be. And though they had both expected to be wracked with nostalgia, going through their mother’s clothing and furniture proved to be relatively easy, with most of the stuff being either thrown away in a collection of garden refuse bags or stacked in neat piles for the thrift and charity stores off Main Street. In addition, they had a guy calling around early the following Tuesday to take all the furniture they didn’t want or need—as it turned out, they didn’t need anything and kept back only a couple of items that had earned a place in their memory.
The man from the Realtor’s office—a guy called Dane—came around on Sunday and prepared a notice on the property. When he left, after less than an hour, James and Nicola stood watching the FOR SALE sign long after his car had disappeared.
Monday morning dawned and with it came a sense of closure. The sun was shining, the house was pretty well cleared, and they were both looking forward to getting back to their own homes. The grieving process had started but, as James said—and had said repeatedly over the weekend—things could have panned out a lot worse than they had done.
By midmorning, Nicola had wiped down all the paintwork and vacuumed the house from top to bottom. Now it was just a house: All the evidence of its life as the Mendholssons’ home was stored as memories in the cerebral databanks of James’s and Nicola’s heads, to be accessed whenever they were required.
The one thing they hadn’t thought of doing occurred to James as he watched the mailman walking along the sidewalk.
“Hey, we need to get in touch with the post office to have Mom’s mail forwarded to one of us.” He got up from his seat on the floor against the side wall when he saw the mailman turn into Irma’s yard. “You want to do it, or me?”
“I guess me,” she shouted after him, “because I’m here in town and I’m home with Margaret-Jayne most days.”
James opened the door. “Makes sense to me,” he shouted. Then, to the mailman, “Hey, how are you today?”
“I’m fine, but tired. Seems like I work harder at home on weekends than I do during the week.” They both laughed. The mailman handed a small bundle of envelopes to James and expressed his sympathy for his loss. “How you doing anyways? It’s a sad time for you.”
James nodded as he flicked through the letters. “Yes, it is, but I think—”
He stopped when he saw the postcard. He recognized the picture immediately—Venice . . . the Bridge of Sighs, the gondolier, the stone buildings: Everything was there, just as it had been on the very first card that Irma had received from Boz.
James turned over the card. The first thing that he noticed was that this card was not addressed to his mother: It was addressed, in his father’s hand—a strong hand once again—to him and Nicola, care of his mother’s address:
Dearest James and Nicola,
the message began.
Well, this is going to be the last card, I’m afraid.
“Is everything okay?” the mailman asked.
Your mom arrived here yesterday morning—I can’t tell you how good it was to see her again. Adventuring all by yourself is such a lonely business.
“James?” Nicola called from the room, her voice echoing in the empty house.
She wants me to show her everything else and while we’ve got a mighty long time together now, there’s such a lot to see!!! Look after each other and your wonderful families.
Love as always. Dad
And there was a P.S. at the bottom.
Nicola appeared alongside him just as James was finishing reading. The mailman was walking back down the path, shrugging repeatedly to himself.
Somewhere off on the interstate a truck horn sounded, dopplering from soft to loud and then back to soft again, like some kind of animal.
“I don’t believe it,” James said, shaking his head.
He handed the postcard to Nicola and put his hands up to his face.
Nicola read.
“My God,” she said. “His handwriting is back to normal and he sounds lucid again. But all this stuff about Mom—how could he have—” She stopped, looked up at her brother, then back down at the card.
P.S. I’m sure the past few days have been difficult for you both but I’m absolutely fine. Couldn’t be happier. Have a wonderful life, both of you. We’ll be following your progress—whenever our busy schedule permits it!
Much love,
Mom
“How—”
James interrupted her. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, “about that card, and the one that came before—the first one.”
Nicola, wide-eyed, simply nodded her head for him to continue.
“I think we were wrong . . . about the sun setting, I mean.”
Nicola turned it over and looked at the photograph closely. “I’m betti
ng that’s a sunrise!” He turned and smiled at her. “The start of a brand-new day.”
The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Hamlet (1601)
The great poet Emily Dickinson said that parting was all we know of heaven and all we need of hell, and, at least on this side of the veil, that’s true. But who’s to say what wonders are in store for us? For when that final breath has been taken, everything that follows may well be turned into a hand-colored, wish-you-were-here picture postcard, sent from the endless sand dunes of Beyond and delivered for your astonishment via that vast sorting office we know as . . . the Twilight Zone.
OBSESSION
David Black
For your consideration: Paul Keller, citizen, husband, father—who went to a party looking for laughs, and instead met his future, in which laughter would be rare. Because your future is never what you expect in . . . the Twilight Zone.
1
Paul Keller had the perfect marriage, perfect kids, the perfect job—the perfect life. Perfect but, one might also say, perfectly dull. No edges or surprises. As Mark Twain said, “Heaven is great for the climate but terrible for society.”
One Saturday night at a party, Paul (who was a senior trader at a successful brokerage house) and his wife, Claire, were chatting with friends when, across the room, Paul saw Lily Sass and realized for the first time he had been missing something in his life—her.
He always thought Claire was his soul mate. That’s what he told her at their wedding seventeen years ago.
That Saturday night, he realized he was wrong.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just a chill,” Paul lied.
“In this room?” Claire said. “It’s overheated! I’m dying.”
“Maybe,” Paul said, “I’m coming down with something.”
On Monday morning, at work, Paul’s father-in-law and boss, Ben Kipfer, stuck his head into Paul’s office.
“If you’re coming down with something,” Ben said, “take the day off.”
“I wish Claire wouldn’t tattle to you,” Paul said.
“She said ever since Saturday night, you’ve been under the weather,” Ben said, studying Paul for signs of flu. “Said you woke up sweating last night. The sheets were soaked.”
“Ben,” Paul said, “you know how much I love and respect you. But what goes on in my bedroom, soaked sheets and all, is none of your business.”
That day, Paul had lunch with his best friend and coworker, Laurie Traynor, at a Japanese restaurant on Fifty-seventh Street.
“You do look a little pale around the gills,” Laurie said.
“Has Ben been spreading stories?” Paul said.
Laurie shrugged.
“No one wants to catch the flu,” Laurie said. “Not with the market the way it is.”
“What I tell you stays at this table?” Paul said.
“Have I ever betrayed a confidence?” Laurie asked. “Even something as innocuous as taking Viagra.”
“I just needed something to perk things up,” Paul said.
“There are lots of other guys who’d perk things up outside the marriage bed,” Laurie said. “Married as long as you’ve been, using Viagra is like renewing your vows.”
“Saturday night,” Paul said, “I met someone. Well, not exactly met her, but saw her.”
“What’s her name?” Laurie asked.
“I don’t know,” Paul said.
Laurie fiddled with her sake cup.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
Surprised by the question, Paul said, “Nothing. I love Claire.”
“Your life is too good.” Laurie laughed. “You can’t help flirting with disaster.”
That evening, at home, Paul was helping his thirteen-year-old son, Jason, with his math homework. His sixteen-year-old daughter, Kelly, left to go “study” with friends. Claire was pasting pictures from the family’s last vacation into one of their many photo albums.
Paul couldn’t stop thinking about Lily—although he didn’t yet know her name. He didn’t imagine her figure or her face, but the heat he felt when he saw her, a tingling that slithered up his spine like a snake.
The next afternoon, at his usual coffee shop, Paul sat at his usual stool at his usual spot at the counter. He ordered his usual lunch—a BLT, bacon extra crisp—when he glanced into the long narrow room and saw Lily, opening her mouth to eat a forkful of chicken salad.
Her mouth closed. She chewed and looked over her still-raised fork into Paul’s eyes.
Paul felt the snake in his spine again.
Lily’s tongue darted out and licked her lips. And she smiled. At Paul.
Paul smiled back. Folded his newspaper to the editorial page and had to read a paragraph in Gail Collins’s op-ed piece three times before he realized he was too distracted to focus.
When Paul again glanced at Lily, the booth she’d occupied was empty.
She had left.
At work, for the rest of the afternoon, Paul was in a foul mood. He uncharacteristically snapped at his secretary when a sheet of paper she put on his desk sailed onto the floor.
At home, he was unusually silent.
He went into the bedroom early and was sitting on the bed, his laptop in front of him, when he overheard Jason ask Claire, “What up with Daddy?”
“Yeah,” Kelly said, “what’s his damage?”
“Probably a bad day at work,” Claire said.
“Well,” Kelly said, “that’s not my fault.”
When Claire came into the bedroom later and curled up in bed next to him, Paul stiffened and said, “Can’t you see I’m trying to work?”
Claire studied Paul’s face—she couldn’t recall the last time he had spoken so coldly to her—and then slipped out of the bed and went into the living room to read.
Two days later, Paul spotted Lily’s reflection in the window of a cigar store as he was going in to buy some Gloria Cubana Churchills. He whipped around, but was too late. She was gone.
The day after that, on the way to work, Paul saw her at the far end of his jammed subway car. By the time he had elbowed his way through the car, she again was gone.
Must have gotten off at the last stop, Paul thought.
But had they stopped?
He had gotten on the subway at Eighty-sixth Street. They were just now pulling in to the Seventy-ninth Street station.
Had he somehow made a mistake and gotten on at Ninety-sixth Street? Then, she might have gotten off at Eighty-sixth Street.
His cobbler was on Ninety-fourth. But he couldn’t remember dropping off shoes before heading to work.
Paul determined not to let Lily distract him anymore.
But at lunch, at the diner, she was in the same booth she had been in a few days earlier.
Paul slipped off his stool and walked over to her, offering his hand.
“Paul Keller,” he introduced himself. “I saw you at the party the other day.”
“And all over town,” Lily said, taking Paul’s hand. “Lily Sass.”
Feeling her touch made Paul weak. Looking into her eyes made Paul dizzy.
“Can I buy you lunch?” Paul asked.
But he had already sunk into the booth across from her. He couldn’t help it. He felt his legs were about to give out.
Her tongue darted out and licked a spot of coffee off her lips.
“I would like that,” Lily said. Fixing his eyes with hers, she said, “And after lunch, why don’t we play hooky?”
They ended up in Lily’s apartment—on Riverside Drive and West Eighty-eighth Street.
“I don’t do this with just anybody,” Lily said.
“No, no,” Paul said, sitting beside her on the couch. “Of course not.”
They had been necking. No petting, just kissing. Something Paul hadn’t done since college. No, Paul thought, not since high
school. By college, the distinction between necking and petting—between petting and fucking, for that matter—had become quaint.
But every time Lily seemed to invite Paul to go further than just kissing, Paul thought of Claire, of Kelly, of Jason, and stopped himself.
“I’m not crazy,” Lily said. “You feel it, too.”
“Yes,” Paul said. “It’s like I’ve found—”
“Yourself,” Lily finished for him.
“I was going to say that,” Paul said, shocked to realize that the connection he felt with Lily was real.
“Like you’ve found yourself,” Lily said. “At last.”
That night, Paul suggested he take Claire and the kids out to dinner.
“What’s the occasion?” Claire asked.
“I just feel like doing something all together,” Paul said.
In the restaurant, Paul worked too hard to make conversation, asking Kelly and Jason the kinds of questions about school and their friends he rarely asked. Trying to get Claire into a discussion about a recent movie he’d read about in the Times, but in a stilted, cocktail-party chatter way. By the time the check came, all four of them had lapsed into silence.
“Well,” Claire said, standing, “that was fun . . .”
Over the next month and a half, Paul met and necked with Lily three more times. At their last meeting, Paul explained he had to cut it off.
“I don’t know where I am anymore,” Paul said.
“You don’t have to explain,” Lily said. “I figured it was too good to last.” She gave a rueful smile. “Timing is everything, huh?”
For a month, Paul buried himself in his work. But the more he tried to forget Lily, the more he thought of her.
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 13
