by Judith Frank
DEDICATION
For my brother and sister,
Tony Frank and Paula Frank-David
And for my mother, Marjorie Frank, 1935–2014
Zichrona l’vracha
EPIGRAPH
But these three cubic feet of bone and
blood and meat are all I love and know.
Loudon Wainwright III, “One Man Guy”
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
PART II
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PART III
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Judith Frank
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
I
CHAPTER 1
HE HAD THOUGHT that watching a movie would agreeably distract him, but the images unspooling on the tiny screen and the tinny sound coming through the headphones were an irritant, like an inexpert touch between a tickle and a scratch. Matt sat back in his seat and took off his headphones, crammed a pillow behind his head and shoulders, closed his eyes. The events of the past day came streaking toward him, and he opened his eyes again quickly. He stole a glance at his partner, Daniel. But there too he had to look away, the sight was so shocking. Daniel’s head hung, his chin touching his chest; Matt had called the doctor and gotten some Ativan, and Daniel was far gone on it. His lips were slack, his eyes cratered and bruised. In a single day his dark hair and beard stubble had become streaked with gray, something Matt had always thought was a horror story cliché. Daniel was all of thirty-eight and looked ancient and decrepit, Matt thought, and was immediately ashamed of himself.
Matthew Greene was six years younger than his partner, tall and thin, with a head of thick brown hair that lightened in the summer sun. He had a handsome angular face, and a grin that placed a perfect demonic dimple in his cheek, so that his smile looked more wicked than he intended. Now his eyes were grainy with exhaustion. They were a few hours into their flight to Tel Aviv, and meal carts were starting to be rolled down the aisle, bringing with them the smell of cooked meat. The Ativan was in Daniel’s bag in the overhead, and he contemplated getting up and fishing it out. He hadn’t till now, because somebody had needed to be on the ball, but now he felt wasted, his mind humming and strung out.
Was it only yesterday that the call had come from Daniel’s father? Time seemed bundled and knotted, and when he tried to calculate the hours backward, they evaporated before his eyes. When the call came, he had been sitting at the computer in his study, watching a chickadee make restless, shivery passes at the bird feeder in the bare backyard. After he ended the call, he put the phone back into its charger very carefully. He stood and looked around, then sat down on the floor. The room was thunderously quiet, and he was bewildered to be alone with this information. He wondered, When did an event like this actually take? If he sat there very quietly, could he prevent it from coursing out into the wider world, where it would happen to other people instead of just to him and Daniel’s father? The dog ambled up and he clutched its big head, trembling, thinking that every moment that passed without his breaking the news to Daniel would remain a happy moment from Daniel’s old life.
Twenty minutes passed. He was conscious of his bare feet getting cold, of the dog’s sigh, and of the study darkening as clouds passed over the weak March sun. Finally, the image of Daniel working tranquilly in his office, innocent of the knowledge that his world was about to be destroyed, became even more unbearable than the idea of telling him, and he stood. He went into the bedroom and put on a sweatshirt, found his coat and keys, and went out to the car. As he drove, he let his mind deliberate but forbade his heart to register, practicing fiercely how to say it, how to build up to it gradually without torturing Daniel with suspense. He had made Daniel’s father promise not to call him at work, to let Matt break the news himself; he was glad he could be the one to tell Daniel but agonized over it too, wondering if Daniel would ever forgive him for being the one to tell him his twin brother, Joel, had died.
He pushed back to recline his plane seat. He remembered getting to Public Affairs and going into the office of the director, Daniel’s boss, April, so Daniel could make a quick exit without having to excuse himself. Matt stood before her and made his first attempt at saying the words out loud: Daniel’s brother and sister-in-law were killed in a café bombing in Jerusalem. April cried out and clutched her heart; he had never uttered words before that had so much sheer physical power. They gave him an embarrassing sense of self-importance, as though he were bragging, or exaggerating, and his body was spastic with apology, even though he knew, as she was telling him, that there was no need.
It was weird, he mused. As a kid, he’d dreamed of being famous, as an artist or an actor. Those dreams had subsided as he’d gotten older. But here all that dream-energy had come rushing back, like a floodlight dazzling him. His mind buzzed unpleasantly around those feelings, knowing that he wasn’t really culpable for whatever weird feelings came to him in crisis, but also wondering if they said something definitive about his personality. He stood, took down Daniel’s bag from the overhead compartment, found the pill bottle he’d been looking for, and shoved the bag back in. He sat down with a thud and a sigh, and put one of the tiny pills on his tongue.
By the time he’d opened the door to Daniel’s office, he’d hardly been able to breathe. Daniel had been sitting at his desk with a manuscript in front of him, scratching his head with a big pensive scowl, and at the sight of Matt his face had broken into a smile whose sweetness Matt was certain he would never recover from. He’d breathed “Dan,” and “Honey,” and burst into tears. Daniel had rushed around the desk, banging his leg and swearing, and Matt choked out the words as they clutched each other, his head over Daniel’s shoulder and his eyes squeezed shut because he couldn’t bear to see. He felt Daniel slip through his arms to the floor. Kneeling beside him, his fingers twined through Daniel’s dark hair, his throat seizing, Matt had raged against the hard fate of this man who so didn’t deserve it, and wondered whether Daniel’s face would ever light up again at the sight of him. Certainly it hadn’t since.
He remembered the minutes passing, and he remembered growing drowsy, and his mind beginning to drift. He’d listened to the sounds of office life outside the door, made out a phone conversation between one of the secretaries and what seemed to be her daughter complaining about her husband. They spent so much of that day down on the floor—not only because it was hard to stand, it seemed to him, but also because they were trying to cringe low to the ground to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible, like terrified animals. Finally, Daniel lifted his head and whispered, “Take me home.” He let Matt help him to his feet. “Easy, baby,” Matt murmured as Daniel stood unsteadily, looking at him with wide, shocked eyes.
After he’d gotten Daniel home, he’d been on the phone nonstop. First with Daniel’s father, who was channeling all of his horror into obsessing over whether they should fly El Al or Continental. And then with Continental, trying to get a bereavement rate for a next-day flight. Trying to figure out, without bothering Daniel about it, how they’d get a death certificate in Israel. Finding the passports and ascer
taining with relief that they hadn’t expired. Logging onto Weather.com to see what the weather would be like in Jerusalem this time of year, and, seeing that it fluctuated wildly, overpacking. Calling their friend Cam to take the dog. Interrupting that conversation when a call came in on call-waiting from the president of the college, offering his condolences and his services. Matt thanked him repeatedly, burdened by his windy solicitude; Cam was crying on the other line and he wanted to get back to her.
All the while, Daniel had been lying on the bed, shaking, his knees drawn up and his arms thrown over his head; his jacket and tie and shoes were strewn on the bedroom floor, and he ran periodically to the bathroom to vomit. Matt kept approaching the edge of the bed, and then, overwhelmed by a sense of his own irrelevance, turning away. He picked up Daniel’s jacket from the floor, brushed it off, and hung it in the closet. Finally, he lay down carefully beside Daniel, enveloping him with his arms and drawing the stockinged soles of his feet up his calves, trying to still his shaking with his own bigness, his warm body. Daniel’s shirt was cold and damp from sweat, and his teeth were chattering. “Honey, you’re chilled,” Matt had murmured, “let me get you into the shower.” But Daniel had let out a moan and blindly thrown an elbow that struck Matt in the cheek, and Matt had stumbled off the bed and ran out of the room. In his study, he stared out the window at the yard, which was blurred and somber in the fading light, and fought back tears of fury. He touched his smarting cheek, which hurt all the way to his teeth, and told himself not to be such a big pussy. There was a pack of Camel Lights stuffed in a drawer; he took one out and lit it, blowing smoke forcefully out the open window. He knew he was being stupid and childish. And yet, fury coursed through him, and on its heels, a terrifying intimation of the suffering to come.
MATT REACHED FOR THE in-flight magazine, flipped through it looking for the crossword and saw that someone had already done it. He studied the map of Continental’s flights, and then the floor plans of various European airports, and then he read an article on how to respect and handle the customs of foreign businessmen. He hoped Daniel’s father, up in business class, saw it, because he knew he’d like it. He was a corporate executive, and from the time they were teenagers, Daniel and Joel had bought him, as birthday and Father’s Day and Chanukah presents, books on how to be effective, how to motivate others, how to think outside the box. Sam’s total immersion in the corporate mind-set was something Matt found both alienating and adorable, and he related to Sam like a fascinated anthropologist, getting him to talk about company retreats where they did relay races based on army training exercises, or used their teamwork to build a jet engine out of matches and cardboard and nail polish. It was Rosen family lore that Sam once read a book about how to utilize humor to defuse difficult interpersonal relations. When his wife, Lydia, saw it, she’d smacked her forehead with her palm. She called him the only Jew in America without a sense of humor.
Matt stuffed the magazine back into the seat pocket and opened his tray table. Around him were the shuffle of newspapers, the drone of the engines, the metallic sound coming through people’s earphones, the murmur of beef or chicken? Across the aisle from them, in the three middle seats, sat a religious family with a fat baby and a toddler in a frilly dress who was peeling stickers off a sheet and laying them carefully on her armrest. Exploded all over their seats and the floor were wet crumbs in smashed Baggies, crayons, plastic pieces from games, empty yogurt containers, Goldfish crackers. The mother was kerchiefed and red-cheeked, joggling the baby with an expression of hassled professionalism, and the father pale, with blond ringlets down the sides of his face, reading a small prayer book. There was something a little hot about the guy’s detachment, his look of being above it all.
Matt needed to pee, but he’d waited too long; the food cart was blocking the aisle behind him. He wondered what Daniel’s parents were eating up in business class—probably not something called “beef” or “chicken.” They were probably drinking heavily, too. The four of them had found one another in the security line in Newark, where Daniel’s parents, looking like ghosts in expensive travel coats, had pulled Daniel toward them with a cry and clung to him while Matt dragged their bags and gently herded the huddled group forward, ignoring the curious glances of other passengers. He was sweating and winded by the time they settled in at the gate. It pained him to see how shock had blunted the normally ingenuous features of Daniel’s father; Matt could see the tiny webs of capillaries around his nose, and when Sam put his and Lydia’s passports and boarding passes into the inside pocket of his jacket, his hands shook. Lydia had sat huddled in the crook of Daniel’s arm, from time to time grasping his sleeve and whimpering, “Those poor babies,” and “Why didn’t God take me instead?” Her dramatic dark eyes were bloodshot, her face dusted over with recently reapplied face powder. Matt felt terrible for her, but her behavior made him think that she had seen one too many Anna Magnani movies. Since when did she even believe in God? He had gladly gone off to perform helpful tasks, buying a neck pillow and some Tylenol for her, and two new luggage tags for his and Daniel’s bags, and Time and Entertainment Weekly for himself.
Now, as a tray was set in front of him, he had the sudden thought: Maybe Lydia’s response was a Jewish form of expression? Maybe the Jews were one of those howling or keening peoples, their mourning a residue of the customs of their often-bereaved peasant ancestors? Matt’s fingers grew still over the silverware packet he was trying to open. He was destined to be ashamed of himself, he was learning; since yesterday’s call, there was virtually no thought that came without recoil. So, believing it was always better to face his demons, he made a mental list of all the thoughts he was ashamed of:
1. Was grief going to make Daniel look old and shriveled?
2. And if so, would they ever have halfway decent sex again?
3. He clearly wasn’t going to make the Rufus Wainwright concert on the twenty-sixth: Could he just let that go?
4. Would his, Matt’s, needs and aspirations ever be considered important again?
5. Would he ever get to just be a normal, young, shallow queen again, or would tragedy dog him for the rest of his born days?
But Matt knew these questions were bullshit, that he was evading the real issue: If Joel and Ilana had really done what they said they were going to do, he and Daniel would be returning home with their kids, and the life he knew would open up into dark seas he couldn’t even begin to chart.
THREE MORNINGS AGO, MATT had awakened singing Gershwin:
They laughed at me wanting you—
Said it would be Hello! Goodbye!
But oh, you came through—
Now they’re eating humble pie.
He lay smiling next to Daniel in bed, with his hands folded behind his head, singing to the ceiling in a husky morning voice. It was their fourth anniversary; four years before, Matt had come up to Northampton to visit the shy Jewish cutie he’d met at a party in New York. He knew Daniel had never imagined being with him for so long; he’d thought of Matt as an amazing sexual windfall, and continued insisting that it was just an affair even after Matt moved permanently to Northampton, even after Daniel’s friends began to tease him that his “affair” had begun wearing Birkenstocks with socks, a virtual guarantee that he’d never be allowed back in the city. Daniel just couldn’t believe—and sometimes Matt couldn’t believe it himself—that a young gay man would choose to leave New York to live in Northampton, which the Enquirer had once called, in an effort to shock, Lesbianville, USA.
That morning he turned to Daniel, stuffing a pillow under his neck. “Remember how you thought I was just some shallow hottie, but then you couldn’t help falling in love with me?” he asked.
The memory of that morning made Matt clench his teeth, and as he picked at meat in gravy with peas and carrots, his partner still unconscious beside him, his mind cautiously turned over the question of what the terrain was like in Daniel’s head. Like a tornado, he imagined, whipping trees up from
their roots and slamming them into cars. He remembered an educational segment he’d recently seen on the Weather Channel, where the quiz question was: During a tornado, where is the safest place in a mobile home? After a commercial break they returned with the answer: NOWHERE; leave immediately. It had shocked him, the cruelty of the trick question; wasn’t it bad enough that these people had to live in mobile homes? They were advised to go outside and find a regular house—some wealthier person’s decent home, he had acidly glossed to Daniel—and failing that, to find a ditch to lie in. He had been indignant. “ ‘Yeah, you pathetic trailer trash, go lie in a ditch!’—that’s basically what they’re saying, isn’t it?”
He set aside his roll and piece of chocolate cake for Daniel, hoping he’d be able to choke down food that was mild and sweet. He looked at Daniel’s sagging head. NOWHERE, he thought, that’s where it’s safe to be. Leave immediately, go lie in a ditch.
AFTER DINNER AND A long wait in the bathroom line, Matt read the movie and TV reviews in Entertainment Weekly and drifted off with the magazine in his hands. He was awakened by murmuring voices and the jingle of a bracelet. Lydia was standing over them, bringing in the sweet musky smell of her perfume, which Matt always smelled on his ears and collars for a few days after they spent time with her. He looked at Daniel and saw that he’d awakened too, and had a cup of ginger ale on his tray table. He pressed his hand, which lay on the seat between them, against Daniel’s knee, in a discreet hello.
“Darling,” Lydia was saying to Daniel, with a hollow trace of her old intensity, “for the shiva, I think we should pick up some bourekas at that little bakery on Joel’s street.”
Daniel laid his head back. “Okay, Mom,” he said. His voice was hoarse, and he brought his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. His shirt was open at the neck, the curls in the back of his head flattened.
“It’s just that Ilana’s parents are utterly useless in this regard.”
