The Storm at the Door

by Stefan Merrill Block

  Frederick pulls open the door to the fire escape and lunges to the stairwell’s railing. He looks down to find only the surreal evenness of an orange glow illuminating the stairs’ descent, the lines of which converge at a great distance far below. Schultz is nowhere to be seen, and Frederick’s first apprehension is panic, a primal heat rising, all his movements now dictated by instinct. Schultz, he believes, has fallen into the dim orange abyss, and Frederick begins rushing downward to—what? Race down fifty-two floors to undo a fifty-two-floor plummet? They are not rational, these motions. Frederick is already down to the forty-ninth floor, when he pauses. He breathes through his nose. The smells of fresh paint and plaster mix with his own heightened, acrid scent.

  Taking two and three stairs in each bound, Frederick returns to the fifty-second floor, and passes it, surges up the one additional length of stairs with a swiftness that borders on flight. At the staircase’s end is an opened door, an image like a surrealist painting: the dull, industrial space of the stairwell opening to a pure void, the blue and white infinity of the sky. Frederick passes through the portal and lowers himself onto the rubber membrane of the roof’s surface. He does not bother to check whether the door has an external knob, does not bother to prop it in case it locks, which it does. But it doesn’t matter; soon, others will come for him.

  Turning the corner, the stairwell’s entrance no longer obstructing a clear view of the roof’s far side, Frederick finds him. There Schultz stands, only feet from that infinity.

  Schultz doesn’t say anything for the moment, feels no more obligation to respond to Frederick’s plea that they go back down than he would to answer the wind tussling the bush of his hair or the seagulls circling nearby.

  Strangely, Frederick feels himself calm. He does not try to force Schultz, by yelling or by intervening with his own body. Since their escape, Frederick has felt frantic and unbound, his plans vague, his goals unlikely. But here now—with all sounds muted by the wind, with the entirety of Boston before him—is a soothing sense of conclusiveness. Here, in this moment, it somehow seems as if this sight may be the entire reason they have escaped, as if there could be some revelation in the closeness of that wholeness. Perhaps Frederick has not merely followed Schultz on an insane errand, for lack of better plan. Perhaps it is, instead, the ancient question about the mad, the question about prophets: insanity or vision?

  Nothing, G-d said, will be restrained from them.

  The Om of this tower, equal to the Om of the universe, is a blank page on which Schultz could write any future in the resurrected language.

  Schultz had meant to say other words. The wounded world is spread there before him. With Frederick as his witness, he had planned to speak in his true language, and begin to heal it. Schultz understands that whatever he says now will be. But he cannot help it; first, he must speak only to heal himself.

  Irit, he begins, in Yiddish. Isaiah.

  Ookalay.

  Each letter spelling her different aspects, filling her in before him.

  Belooka.

  One syllable, his lost boy’s face, then his arms, then his hand outstretched.

  Schultz does not think now of all his years of work, his culling of all the names, his comprehensive project of transliteration, what he has accomplished, what it might allow. Schultz can think only of his wife, and his murdered unborn son he has just seen, for the first time.

  Ookalay. Belooka. They are present, not just in aspects, as in memory. They are now as present as each bolt, each steel beam, each pane of glass beneath him is present.

  Ookalay. Belooka. But they stand back from him still. Why? Irit will not allow their boy to run to him, holding him by the wrist. She stands there, in that infinite space, saying something that is inaudible to Schultz. In the true language there is no true name for I don’t understand, and so Schultz says this in Yiddish. Irit is speaking, but Schultz cannot hear, and so he says in Yiddish, I cannot hear. He says in Hebrew, Speak up!

  Ookalay, Belooka. Louder, he says. Louder, Irit!

  He knows he must go to her. It requires that leap. She always made that leap, which analytic Schultz never allowed himself. She believed while he remained the skeptic. With faith, she always leapt: not just for G-d, but for love, for her family, for her family’s lives while Schultz remained in Boston, cowering within his own visions. It was she who kissed him first.

  Ookalay. Belooka. Schultz knows there is still one word left. There is one word he does not yet know. He knows this is the word, the last word, which Irit is speaking to him. His own true name. But to hear it he must go to her; he must make that leap. It is not a test, not exactly. It is simply the truth. To hear the name that creates him, he must leave physics and reason, and what it was he thought he wanted to accomplish, and he must go to her.

  Ookalay. Belooka. He closes his eyes, and she is still there, on both sides of his lids. He leaps.

  Irit lets go of his son’s wrist, and Isaiah’s hands grasp Schultz’s arm. Irit comes to Schultz and puts her mouth to his ear. At last, Schultz can hear.

  There are the seagulls flying above, the busboys clearing tables below, the society women kissing familiar cheeks, the workers toiling over their business, the class of schoolchildren pulling up in a bus to tour the new tower, a red smear of him on the protruding ledge thirty or forty feet below. And much, much farther down, what was Schultz is obscured by the gathering crowds.

  My grandfather stands at the edge. The distance is great and unreckonable and seems to be growing still.

  1

  On its perch in the kitchen, the phone rings.

  For the last week, my grandmother has allowed herself to use the phone only when it is she who dials; she has told my mother and her sisters to do the same, to ignore all ringing phones.

  Those awful, pushy creditors, Katharine has explained. They just keep calling and calling, and I can’t bear to speak with another.

  Her daughters are still girls, but even they seem to see through this dissemblance.

  The phone is ringing, Mum! It’s ringing! Rebecca calls from her room upstairs.

  Don’t answer it! I told you not to answer it!

  But Muuuum, this is so weeeird!

  I don’t want to talk to those people. Now listen to me, I said don’t answer it!

  But Muuum, what if it’s Jeremy? Rebecca says.

  You can call him later. Don’t answer it!

  Mum!

  Fortunately, the phone finally silences.

  This is BS! Rebecca yells.

  Tough toenails, Katharine says to herself.

  Katharine knows she must not let herself speak with Lars again. Maybe he will stick to his pact not to call until the night they have agreed to meet, but likely he will not. She is to meet with Lars one week exactly from today, but Katharine has stuck to her plan not to speak with him until the decided-upon date, in order to sort things out for herself. She wants the decision to be her own, but still, even in the ringing of an unanswered phone, she can feel his needs. In certain moments, Katharine is certain she will meet Lars, certain she will capitulate to everything he wants of her; other times, she is certain she will not.

  An hour later, the postman slips the mail through the front door’s slot. Sorting through it—third and fourth warnings of debts with a few car advertisements thrown in, as if in attempt at humor or cruelty—Katharine does not at first perceive the significance of the thick manila envelope, even after she reads the return address of the Mayflower Home scrawled onto its top left corner. It has been just a week since her father called to inform her he has stopped making his weekly payments to Mayflower, and still that news resonates in all her thoughts. How will it be after her husband is lobotomized? Or, possibly, will the cessation of payment compel Dr. Canon to release him? Mayflower has played such a prominent role in her internal life that at first it seems not unusual an artifact of it would crop up here in her mailbox. But then, she realizes, this is the first piece of mail she has received from
Mayflower in all the months of Frederick’s hospitalization. Katharine feels herself quickening.

  A bill sent to her, now that her father refuses to pay? But the package is too thick for a bill. Maybe his file. Maybe her father had phoned Dr. Canon to tell him he would no longer be paying, and Canon, in a fit, decided to forward to Katharine all of his reports on Frederick’s progress, or lack thereof.

  Katharine lays the envelope on her kitchen table, pulls out the papers it contains one or two inches, no more. This glimpse is all she allows herself to see of it: maybe forty or fifty pages, written in an erratic version of Frederick’s script.

  Katharine stands, turns to the phone, and dials Lars Jensen to tell him that, on second thought, she would like to see him tonight instead.

  During the brief conversation, which consists of Lars reciting a list of suggestions in a memorized way (both flattering and vaguely dispiriting to know how thoroughly he has considered the details), the package lies open on the kitchen table before her, Frederick’s letters just peeking out from the envelope. She does not know why, precisely, she refuses to allow herself to read, just as she can’t know exactly why she has phoned Lars. With only her children for company, Katharine has been alone with her mind for months, dizzying herself with its spiraling movements. But now she does not allow herself self-scrutiny.

  Lars will drive the three hours from Exeter. Lars tells Katharine he will meet her at the house, if she wants, but that maybe she should hire a sitter for the kids, and choose some other place. Katharine agrees and phones the sitter, a smart high school girl with a stutter, who will come at six.

  Just going to dinner with the ladies, Katharine explains to her daughters (Rebecca predictably protests that, at fourteen, she is old enough to look after her sisters). But we have some catching up to do. Might be late.

  As she prepares her face for her—what? date?—with Lars, Katharine surprises herself by nearly beginning to cry. She whispers her husband’s name, and then tries to correct herself. Katharine tries to think of Frederick’s failures, but there is only the terror in his eyes, the ice pick poised. Katharine clutches herself with both hands. He is alone in a mental hospital now, in part by her own doing. Or is it by her doing? And how, so many pages? What has he written? She cannot bear to contemplate the weight of it.

  Katharine stands. It is time to go meet Lars.

  Might be late, she tells the girls again, on her way out the door.

  My mother and her sisters surround Katharine, begging her to settle their disputes before the court of Mum retires for the night. The sitter shrugs at her apologetically. Katharine attends to the quarrels evenly, calmly, firmly, as she has learned she must, and leaves.

  1

  It happened on a Friday. Much of the staff, eager to put aside the working week’s institutional grimness for weekends of boozy frivolity, did not follow the local news and so did not hear of Schultz’s death until the next week began. Rita, too, did not learn the news until Monday. But then why, for Rita, was that relentlessly beautiful weekend so vaporous with dread? A hazy oppressiveness, like a premonitory mourning, fogged every frame of the movie she went to see on Friday, clouded the space between her and a boy she agreed to meet for dinner on Saturday (it would never work, it was too sad, the boy’s unvarnished enthusiasms, glistening against her gloom). Was it that she knew, in some instinctive way, that the events of the last weeks were now bound, irretrievably, to some dark outcome?

  Whatever the reasons, when Rita finally learns the news through the static of her transistor radio that Monday morning, it seems to her that somehow she already knew. Still, Rita rushes to dress, and drives half-recklessly up to Mayflower, parking in front of Canon’s office. Before she shuts off the engine, she pauses in her seat to wonder why she has hurried here. Climbing out of her car, hours before she is due for work, Rita realizes the truth: even though she has come to despise aspects of him, even though she has decided—or perhaps not decided, the awareness simply has come to her—that the affair is over, she knows she has come for Albert’s sake.

  She tries his office door, finds it locked, and so she slips her key into the latch (you are one of only three people with this key, he once told her with a sexual exuberance). When she enters, she thinks the room is empty, but then her eye catches on the dull texture of his tweed coat in the far corner.

  Albert is seated on the divan, his hands covering his face. He glances up to Rita without surprise. He seems to expect Rita here as certainly as he nightly expects his wife to come into the bedroom. He turns away, cradles his face, and speaks.

  We have done incredible things here. There were still cows wandering around this place, for chrissake. I will not let one man destroy all the good we have done.

  Rita remains silent, and so Albert lowers his hands and faces her.

  You know how much good we have done.

  Rita nods, but vaguely. Vaguely, and this slightest faltering of her assurances is enough to flip on Albert’s rage, the next words coming fast and moist with his spittle.

  If you don’t think we have done good here, why have you stayed?

  In this surreal aftermath moment, Rita briefly considers trying to explain it. Instead, she only tells Albert that she’s been wondering that herself.

  Albert’s face takes on a strange aspect, something she has never exactly seen before. It takes a moment for her to comprehend the fact of what she is witnessing; it is not verified until the evidence trickles across his face.

  Out of instinct, she reaches for him, smearing, rather than wiping, his tears. Out of her mouth come platitudes—why is it, she wonders, she always transforms into this glib counselor at the sight of tears? I know you have done your best, she concludes.

  Albert nods at this, inhales his bottom lip, and produces a string of disembodied words, I—This—How—But—Are—

  To quiet him, Rita puts her mouth on his.

  Neither Rita nor Albert acknowledges it, at least not in words, but there is a bloodless awareness of departure to the final attempt that follows, like the handshake that the high generals of warring armies must make to seal their truce. Her body is not receptive, his not giving, and after five minutes of awkward attempts, Albert pulls away and apologizes, citing a stomachache. They will never try again.

  2

  That afternoon, Canon shuts his office blinds and removes his emergency pack of Pall Malls from the desk drawer. He lights one, the little glow in the darkened room both a slight comfort and a sad metaphor. Canon does not allow himself to reflect on his situation at large, does not count his failures, with Rita or with his patients. Instead, he thinks of what Frederick Merrill wrote in his journal.

  It is so simple. As the failure mounts on all sides, as he sits there in the shadow of his shameful valley, Canon perhaps allows new considerations. One could scale those walls, one could scrape and climb to the light far above, where others seem to live so simply, and perhaps never make it. One could spend a lifetime climbing that faltering climb, Canon thinks, or else simply open the fearsome door that presents itself at the valley’s nadir. But it would take great courage to do either: the resolute constant courage of the climb or the sudden drastic boldness of opening that door. Canon thinks of Professor Schultz.

  3

  And my grandfather? There he is, as he knew he would be if apprehended, returned to solitary. Nearly accounted for now is that void in my family’s history, that absence that stretches between Frederick’s naked romp on Route 109 and the pages that my grandmother received, the pages she would keep in the attic for years, until, one day when I was seven, I would find her sitting before the fire, contemplating their incineration.

  The gap is nearly accounted for, but not just yet. For now, my grandfather paces his small cell in the solitary ward, banging at the door to ask to speak with Canon and, failing that, to be let out to the bathroom.

  Frederick has spent three days in solitary, but he is yet to be provided the fateful paper and pencil. In his
little room at this moment, instead of letters and words, there is only the wordless horror that Schultz’s death unbound. When he is allowed the occasional trip to the bathroom, Frederick tries to speak with the orderlies, at least to speak with someone.

  I had no idea. He told me his son was there. How could I have known? There will never be anything as horrible. How could I have?

  But, after a tiresome afternoon and evening of Frederick’s frantic pleas, which the Crew Crew boys in the solitary ward could no more tune out than they could ignore a baby’s urgent crying, they yell at him to shut up until he finally does.

  And so there my grandfather is now, left to silence. Or not silence exactly, but the calls of the other men and women in the solitary ward, echoing. The muffled noises of other patients, and a faint ringing in his room that may or may not be produced by the single lightbulb caged to the ceiling.

  4

  He’s in such a fragile state. He could be a great danger to the other patients. Not to mention a major distraction.

  The next afternoon, Canon attempts to explain his reasoning to the two investigators hired by Mayflower’s board of directors (in institutional euphemistic terminology, the board calls them consultants, these two bearded, balding men whom Canon knows well from their reputation in the academic literature). The two men look at each other, and then the one with the mole asks how long, then, will they have to wait to talk with Frederick. When Canon again explains that Frederick is in a very troubled state, and that reliving the incident at this moment could be catastrophic, the two men look at each other again.

  Canon provides the men answers as best he can, deferring to minor staff failings, the unforeseeable way in which his patients escaped, the statistical fact that almost no mental hospital is entirely free from suicide. That, despite all the planning and order in the world, some things are simply uncontrollable.