The Death of All Things Seen

by Michael Collins

  They both looked stunned. It was recorded without sound. It went on longer than it should. His father’s lips began moving. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. He was saying something. It added a solemnity and underlying mystery to have his father speak and not hear it.

  He remembered far back with Ursula, how she had quieted him on their first night after the act was done. She had wanted to hear his heart and not his opinions. Words meant so little and he had quietly caved to a love that would sustain them. It was the opposite in this instance, the silence so sharp in the insistence of an underlying rage barely contained.

  In releasing the child, there was opportunity for some show of affection. His father was a head taller, his lips near the crown of Helen Price’s head. He did not kiss her, when, at one point, there had been an act and an intimacy that begat a child, and Nate felt a deepening sense of her pain, for the betrayal of what had happened.

  Nate stopped the projector at the moment the child was surrendered and they were suddenly out of frame. In their absence, he could see the shrouded relief carving of a giant Egyptian and Indian cradling time aloft out over the city.

  It was 4.46 p.m. by the clock, deep afternoon in late April 1963. April 22 to be precise.

  Nate checked the historical meteorological records. The mercury read sixty-two degrees at two in the afternoon in what was described as a week of glorious weather, a high pressure front of blue skies. It was a point of no importance, but a fact, nonetheless, that could be accessed on the Internet. The Cubs were playing well out of the winter pen in Arizona, in advance of what would be their first winning season since 1946. Jack Brickhouse was making the calls on WGN.

  Nate spent another hour screening reels in the way an ad man might audition actors for a part. His father wore his pants cinched above the hips. He had a figure not dissimilar to Clark Kent, as played by a vintage George Reeves, the original Superman, when vainglory and heroism were not necessarily aligned, the glasses worn such a weak conceit. It was, he understood, less Lois Lane being actually duped, as her wanting to be duped, to permit normalcy to proceed alongside valor as it did, or had, in the lives of so many who had served during the war effort.

  Nate fed another spool, unraveling unremitting hours of tedium, his father at his office window, his gaze drawn to the camera like some desultory God.

  At some point, a tripod had been purchased. Helen appeared in one sequence, smoking at his father’s desk in the fashion of James Cagney. He thought her so fundamentally ignorant. Her misconception of how men of power acted, when she had evidence to the contrary, when at certain moments, there must have been confidences gained and succor sought, before eventually, and without ceremony – like mild-mannered Clark Kent – his father had taken his leave, not up, up and away, but to his death below.

  *

  On his laptop, Nate opened a site from the Philippines. You could buy a kidney on the Internet, or begin the brokering. He stared at a line of bantamweight men, all smiling, fathers with their arms raised revealing stitch marks running beneath their ribcages.

  They were all healthy success stories, each having willingly agreed to sell their kidney to pull their family out of poverty. They were posed against a non-descript Manila slum of corrugated shacks. Their lives were not changed so much. It was no different when you overdrew on a credit card. Extended credit, or pawning something, was never tied with absolute freedom, or to a definitive change of fortune. It bought the illusion of a certain respite from crushing debt. It let you luxuriate in things you did not need.

  Nate’s cell phone beeped, a declarative one-liner email. In the lobby.

  A minute passed, then five, then ten. Nate waited. The reel kept playing.

  Theodore Feldman had done Helen Price a great harm. Nate believed it. It had taken a willful act to exert his improvident influence over a woman so fundamentally lost. She had a lazy float to the left eye. It gave her expression a flattening quality. She had never been good looking, and perhaps it was this that had made her susceptible to his father’s advances.

  It had taken the two of them in their mutual foibles. Nate would make this conditional assessment, not to relieve his father of a great wrong, but to apportion how it happened, the ease with which Helen Price fell under his father’s influence.

  She had represented a reprieve from the war, an endearing faithfulness, distinct from the underhanded affectations of Harper Delacroix, who as an incessant presence had foisted his Southern sensibilities on Shelby Feldman, who, in a desperation in coming north, was never truly comfortable there, no matter what Theodore Feldman or any other Northerner might have offered.

  Nate could discharge their relationship as simply as that. He understood better what they never shared, but for a brief flicker in the intensity of the war.

  Whatever about his mother, in those rare instances when Helen appeared on the reels, there was a strangeness of her general disposition, a stiffness to her movements. She pulled at her skirt and jacket, all of it managed, but not with any assuredness, so she was forever an amateur negotiating a bit part, a woman caught in some far cast plot she couldn’t finally manage, so her world, what she sought, had disappeared, and had long before she was born.

  Nate was turned toward the door, caught in the beam of light. A tape was still playing, his father at his desk, the camera rolling in a stultifying omniscience God must have endured, watching over this man, this hero, determined to persevere as best he might a life, when his best days were behind him.

  Nate closed and opened his eyes, his thoughts landing on the awful circumstance of Walter Price’s suicide. He had given absolutely no thought to the man, to this cuckolded man. What a terrible word! “Cuckold!” that it even existed in a language, that it had a name.

  Did Walter Price know it?

  *

  Another email arrived, a single word, Here!

  It had been a mistake summoning Norman Price. It had troubled Ursula greatly that Nate had come upon the idea of approaching Norman. It was a betrayal to her, extending their natural union in death. She had settled like a bad conscience.

  He whispered, ‘Sorry’ into the grey dark.

  Nate let out a long breath. In light of what he now knew, the meeting seemed pointlessly hurtful. How could he explain the reels, when he had come upon them so recently, and he had yet to come to terms with something not yet fully understood?

  He would not presume to assert any influence as a half-brother, or as a half-not-brother. They were bound, but not in a way that should be pushed upon either of them. There could be nothing gained. He had been rash and too mindful of his own circumstances, when there was Norman Price to consider.

  At some point in the future, he would forward the reels to Norman and let him configure his own understanding. It was decided.

  He sent a cursory email, abrupt but deferential, ending any chance of their meeting. ‘Regrettably, due to unanticipated circumstances, I am returned to Canada. I beg your forgiveness.’

  Of course, Norman Price, if he wanted, could have checked the desk to see if Nate was checked out. In fact, a minute later, the phone in the room rang and rang.

  Nate held his breath, waiting for it to stop, its insistence in his head, the shrill ring. Norman Price knew he was there.

  A minute passed, then another, and then five minutes.

  Nate heard voices and footsteps along the corridor. He sat staring at his father, the tape at the end of the reel, the last tape. He purposely played it last, this the day he died, the quiet meditation of a life coming to an end. It was different from the other reels. The date was written in his handwriting, not Helen Price’s.

  His father had set up the tripod. He walked toward the camera and away, sat with a conscious stiffness that his destiny was decided, and had been for a long time. He did not look up or drink in the way he did on other occasions.

  He put his signature to a series of letters or statements, the flourish of his hand raised at the end of signing his
name. At a certain point, his father simply stood, and, adjusting his tie, he was then out of frame. A sheer curtain billowed a moment later, a ghost passing, his father gone to his death.

  The reel went on a good while longer in his absence. Fifteen minutes or so, until it was uncovered, who had jumped, because there was no identifying the body from such a height, a search conducted floor-by-floor, until there was the frightful desperation on Helen Price’s face, her hand raised to her mouth, upon entering the office. She was caught staring at the camera, the absolute horror of it, the wide-eyed stare and her mouth open in an awful bawling that he heard in his head, when there was no recorded sound.

  The phone rang again, a shrill ring from another era, the inherent alarm in the sound itself when a phone was never at arm’s length, and it took a breathless rush to reach it. It kept on ringing. Nate had his hands to his ears.

  Norman Price had the tenacity to knock on the door. He called Nate’s name, and when he was done knocking, when Nate was sure, when the persistent shadow from under the door was gone, when he heard the elevator door open and close, he unplugged the projector, let the bulb cool.

  Standing in the sudden dark, he lifted the projector for its dead weight, to know he still existed, to somehow anchor the present.

  PART II

  The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

  —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  24.

  THERE WAS ACTIVITY on the house, as the realtor described it, a tentative cash offer by a family of Mexicans.

  The outstanding issue not yet managed was their legal status. The family had been to the house three times already. There was nothing easy in real estate, and it was made more difficult in the tightening of credit. An intermediary, a legal immigrant, might front the offer. It was done within their community. The realtor sounded unsure. She had not worked with this community before.

  Under better market conditions, the house might have been a starter home for a young couple, a law grad, accountant, a medical intern, those of upwardly mobile means, starting out, the house close to the commuter train. A house, until recently, meant equity in soaring market values, monopoly money, a recoup against unrealistic student debt and credit cards. Accommodation had been made within the system.

  The projected tentative offer would be lowball, his realtor warned. They had a number in mind. He should be prepared to counter. He magnanimously declined. They were hardworking immigrants, and, if they could swing it, he wanted the deal closed.

  Norman was in the post-shock of Nate Feldman’s retreat, in Nate’s decision not to meet. Something had been decided at the last minute. He couldn’t figure what it was that so suddenly changed. It mattered, and did not matter. His life was elsewhere.

  The realtor called on a daily basis. It was the new preoccupation, the new distraction. Life had a way of intervening. The family wanted relatives to do another walk-through before making their offer. The realtor advised of further rumblings. He should brace for an even lower offer, or they might want a land agreement option, a variant of renting with an option to buy.

  Something dropped in the pit of Norman’s stomach. The house might not close. If these buyers walked, he was looking at a mounting investment of retrofits if he was going to compete in a buyer’s market, when a house might now be lived in for a very long time. His only solace, he held no note on the house. The question was put two ways: How much was he willing to lose in a sale, or how little was he hoping to gain?

  *

  Joanne arrived bare-footed and unannounced before Norman’s office door on the morning they had a car rented again from Alamo to visit his home in the suburbs. It was still dark, but there was shading in the East, the days lengthening. Spring was in the air.

  Joanne asked quietly, ‘You were up all night writing?’

  Norman nodded. He didn’t take the opportunity to explain. He said, in an almost whisper, in deference to Grace sleeping, ‘I might write for an hour.’

  Joanne was turned and gone into the kitchen. She poured coffee. She repeated the minivan pickup time – 11.30. She was back at his office door, her chin set on the lip of the cup. A minute later, she slipped along the hallway. She was on a hideaway bed, in with Grace. The conceit of the tent had passed. She was here more permanently, but it was yet decided how they might fare. It fell under the category, Platonic.

  In the quiet indecision, Norman looked at the box from Mr Ahmet. There were files on all four of the officers related to the gangland-style murders. Each officer had his own personality, his own history, but Mr Ahmet centered in Norman’s mind. He had a chart on the wall, the intersecting histories, the birth records and marriage records of the varying characters, their ethnic origins. Mr Ahmet was the outside perspective that might better comment and understand what needed to be explored and explained. All points of inquiry went through him, what could be known ostensibly, within the bounds of reason. The legal brief, the officious nature of his position, might allow Norman to exercise a variety of voices. He had a working title, ‘A Grand Indictment’.

  *

  A half-hour or an hour passed, some allotment of time. Norman looked up. In the bathroom, the door was ajar. He had been looking for some time. He was unaware of it, and then he was aware of it.

  Joanne was working a washcloth along her extended arm, her head angled so it appeared she was licking her arm with the earnest resolve of a cat. She repeated the process with her other arm and then began on her legs, each leg in turn. He could see between her legs. He closed his eyes.

  She approached minutes later, in a wraparound towel tucked at her cleavage. Her hair, gathered in a bun, revealed the sweep of her features, clear to her high forehead. She was of strong German stock, high cheekbones particular to northern regions, eyes blue, lips full, and, yet, she missed being exactly good-looking, second chair flute, always present, amenable, but generally overlooked, at home with Sheryl, and later in school, and with Dave.

  She had revealed what had happened, why she was the way she was, as she described it, ‘So fucked up!’ And yes, she had called Peter, and, if he would have taken her, there was a good chance she might have left. She couldn’t be sure, but it had seemed an option.

  Norman held nothing against her.

  She smelled of cocoa butter, a hydrating ritual religiously adhered to since high school, Palmer’s Formula, bought at a fraction of what it cost for more expensive lotions. She told him this. He was aware she was talking. She had a way of saying ‘Ka-ching!’ when she beat the system, the sound of an old-fashioned cash register.

  ‘Eleven-thirty, right?’ she said eventually, looking down at her wrist, at a non-existent watch and then at Norman directly.

  He was caught staring at her a second time, an assessment of their chances, their odds. He was unsure. He was deeply preoccupied. There were things and moments that held his attention in a gathering of ideas not quite ready to make their presence fully known, but they were everywhere, in the way one courts and invites revelation, how one must be open to what is fast approaching. It was a feeling he longed to inhabit.

  It was enough enticement, his look, for Joanne to know she was being watched. You were in grave and present danger in emoting even the remotest interest in her life. She hung on an appeal of any human kindness. She was off on one of her stories. It began as a non sequitur. It could not be stopped, in the way you could only board up against a hurricane, brace the sustaining winds.

  She informed him that he could use any of her stories free of charge. In fact, she would be insulted if she didn’t appear somewhere within his work.

  *

  Time slowed in the way only a family can weigh down life. At the small kitchen table, Joanne explained the term Recon to Grace. That was what Joanne was calling the trip out to the suburbs. She posed, James Bond style, her hands clasped and her index fingers extended in the shape of a gun. She made the
sound of the Bond music.

  Grace was bemused and eating a waffle drowned in maple syrup. She had not seen James Bond. It was obvious, but Joanne was determined that Norman play the bad guy, Auric Goldfinger, to elaborate and teach Grace.

  Norman made a cackling laugh of evil, advancing on Joanne, who said, ‘Do you expect me to talk?’ and Norman answered, in his best evil German voice, ‘No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!’

  It alarmed Randolph, who roused, his legs skating out from beneath him on the tile flooring, his bark sudden, determined, a distant memory of how Peter must have been aggressive and might, or might not have, struck Joanne. There were secrets still.

  They were forty-five minutes behind. It wasn’t even referenced that there was a schedule, the excitement deflated somehow. Randolph skulked as Norman packed the dishwasher, and then he was gone.

  In the hallway, Joanne, in pantyhose and a bra, put her finger to her lip.

  Norman overheard Grace say the word recon. He edged to the door, a game already in progress, a circle of dolls around her, Grace ensnared, trapped. She imitated the Barbies’ shrill Chinese voices.

  There appeared no way out, then she got into the Bond pose and, turning slowly, with each shot, kicked and toppled a doll.

  It was curdling, the depth of her psychological issues. But there had been healing, if he could call it that. In the configuration of her language, the dolls were identified with China. They were on the side of Evil. Randolph represented American experience, his head angled, his ears perked. They were allies.

  The dolls were all dead, or in the process of dying. Grace grabbed and spoke harshly to a Barbie, shook her in the act of interrogation with an authenticity that betrayed this was lived experience. She still wet the bed.

  Randolph was up on his haunches. He wanted in on the action. Grace put the doll close to her face. She said roughly, ‘You want to finish her off, Randolph?’

  The word Randolph was understood, and Randolph barked, his tongue a long sinew of hot affection, all slathering kisses, Grace modulating between Chinese and English. There was no presumption Randolph could speak Chinese. English closed round their relationship.