Act of God

by Jill Ciment

  Ashley packed her belongings like checkout time wasn’t till noon. She dreaded going outside. The night air was blustery. All she had to keep warm was the beach blanket. She walked for blocks jiggling car door handles to see if one would open. Outside a grocery store, she stopped to calculate the risk of stealing dinner when she spotted Edith, the sister that Kat had told her was dead. Why would Kat have said she was dead? Probably to trick her into feeling sorry for her so that she would give Kat back the letters. Kat had only pretended to be her friend. The stout, gray-haired twin was paying for eight large bags of groceries when Vida’s super walked up to her at the register with one last item to buy, the wrapper of a chocolate bar he was finishing. She smiled at him. Even from twenty feet away, looking through a frosted shop window, Ashley recognized Kat’s big false teeth.

  Keeping twenty paces behind, she followed them to a three-story clapboard house with steamy windows. Six cat silhouettes slept on the sills. It must be warm inside.

  She stepped out of the shadows. “You still need Russian translator?”

  “Give us a minute, Frank,” Kat told the super, who hauled in all eight bags of food, then shut the door with his foot.

  Ashley felt hunger twist her intestines, like a bully twists a weakling’s arm.

  “Why should I even talk to you?” Kat asked.

  “I translate for food.”

  “There’s nothing left to translate, Ashley. I had to burn the letters.”

  “I sorry I steal gift card,” she said, casting her eyes down in contrition, though all she really felt was ravenousness.

  “You were supposed to be my friend.”

  “I punished. Man rob card from me anyway.”

  “I would have shared the money,” Kat said, opening the door wide enough for Ashley and her stuffed pillowcase to fit through. “Come on in, you look like you could use a hot meal.”

  Once the warmth kissed her skin, she began shivering. The house smelled of cabbage and sausages. An old Polish woman was making dinner in the kitchen. Kat went to get her a cup of hot tea and a snack to hold her over until dinner. Alone in the living room, she wandered around. The walls smelled of fresh paint. The furniture looked new. The shelves had nothing on them, no photographs or knickknacks. When Kat returned, Ashley ate the bread and cheese so fast she forgot to taste it and drank the tea before it cooled, scalding her lips and tongue.

  “You look skinny, Ashley. Where have you been?”

  “God punish me big-time. I eat only ketchup and garbage. I live under boardwalk, like rat.”

  “You lived on the beach?”

  “First time see ocean.”

  “Your first time? You’d never seen the ocean before? Oh, Ashley, the first time is primal.”

  “No big deal,” Ashley said, but it wasn’t true. The first time she’d dipped her toe into the sea and felt its volatility and vastness, she realized all humans were insignificuntskis, but rather than that knowledge diminishing her, it made her less lonely.

  “It must have been scary living under the boardwalk,” Kat said. “I know. I once had to sleep in a doorway.”

  “I never scared.”

  “Everybody is scared, Ashley. I’m scared something will happen to Frank. I’m scared whatever killed Edith is inside me. I’m scared my happiness will end.”

  “Okay, maybe I scared a little.”

  “Of what?”

  She didn’t know how to translate insignificuntski, so she put it another way: “I scared I end back in Omsk.”

  “Would that be so bad? Your parents are probably worried sick.”

  “Probably sold bed day I go.”

  “I ran off at your age. You can’t imagine how I worried my mother and Edith when I dropped out of college to follow the Grateful Dead.”

  American dead are grateful? “You follow dead people?”

  “It was the name of a band. The point is you shouldn’t follow anyone but yourself. That was my mistake. You can do and be anyone you want.”

  “Lady Gaga?”

  “How about Ashley? After all, she didn’t exist until you made her up.”

  Dinner was served in the kitchen, a communal bowl steaming on a table set for six. After Kat introduced her to everyone, Ashley sat on the only empty chair, at the table’s far end. Whenever her mother set a bowl of food before her and her siblings, eight forks clashed to get at the one piece of meat. With practiced adroitness, Ashley speared the largest sausage for herself before anyone else had a chance to pick up his fork. Only after she’d devoured half of it did she look up and see that the others were gaping at her, as if she were a wild animal.

  “It’s been a while since Ashley had a home-cooked meal,” said Kat, breaking the silence by spearing an ample sausage herself.

  “Guess who I saw yesterday?” said the lady with a black cat on her lap.

  “Vida,” guessed the Polish cook. “Word is she’s working at a nearby gym.”

  “Someone hired Mushroom Mary to work with the public?” asked her husband.

  “Jimmy, the guy who owns the gym, told me she had to declare bankruptcy,” said Frank.

  “I know I shouldn’t torture myself,” said Kat, “but sometimes I wonder how different it might have been if only she’d listened to Edith in time, but she claims she never heard Edith’s messages.”

  “She heard them,” said Frank. “She’s an actress. Who ever heard of an actress not listening to her messages?”

  “She says Edith’s death was nobody’s fault. An ‘act of God,’ she called it.”

  Ashley ached to be part of the camaraderie, but no one paid attention to her. Her stomach was full, but she didn’t feel any less lonely in this warm kitchen than she did under the boardwalk. She speared a second sausage. Didn’t Kat promise her she could be anyone she wanted?

  “I Vida’s houseguest,” she announced. “I there when mushroom found. I see Vida listen to messages. I hear Edith say something smell funny in basement.” In fact, hiding in Vida’s guest room closet, she’d heard nothing except her own pulse.

  But she had everyone’s attention now.

  “You saw her and you never told me?” asked Kat.

  “I tell you now. She laugh when Edith leave message.”

  “She laughed?” Kat looked as surprised as pained.

  That night Ashley slept in a room on the ground floor, across from the Polish couple’s door. Other than a bed, the only decor was an empty bureau and wire hangers in the closet. Kat had promised to buy her a new winter coat and boots tomorrow. She opened her pillowcase and removed the plastic laptop she’d been hauling around since her penthouse days. She set it on the bureau and squared it so that it sat dead center. Then she hung up the few rags she owned on the wire hangers.

  She crawled under the covers. She hadn’t felt this safe and warm in weeks, but rather than it relaxing her, it made her more anxious. She looked at the moon through her curtainless window, the same moon she had slept under at the beach. She heard scratching at her door. She opened it, a cat slipped in. She tried to chase it out, but it hid under the bureau. She got back in bed, and the cat joined her. It settled on her chest, emitting a low-pitched vibrato, a feline lullaby that soothed her to sleep.

  “Should I believe that girl?” Kat asked Frank as they got into bed that evening. Their room was on the third floor with a sitting area and a private bath. “I think she was so desperate to stay the night that she would have said or done anything. When I invited her in earlier, I wondered if I wasn’t inviting trouble. She stole from me, Frank, my last hundred dollars. But she looked so lost standing under the streetlight. Yes, she looked skinny and hungry and cold, too, but basically, she looked lonely. I wonder if I used to look that way to Edith when I just showed up uninvited at her door?”

  She propped herself up on her elbow. Frank’s eyes were closed, but she knew he was listening. “You think Vida is evil like Gladys and Mrs. Syzmanski called her tonight?”

  “Mrs. Syzmanski goes to Mass every
morning and Gladys lights votive candles for her dead cats. They only know from good and evil.”

  “You believe it was an act of God, Frank?”

  “I used to get on my knees before every fight and pray for God to let me knock the lights out of my opponent. You know how God answered? He knocked out one of my lights.” He pointed to his blind one. “I say to hell with God.”

  “You think Vida is responsible for Edith’s death?”

  “I don’t know if God or the oil spill or the Chinese wallboard brought the supermold, but no matter, Vida should of returned Edith’s calls right away. She owes you an apology. Maybe she owes us all an apology.”

  “Can you legally make someone apologize?” Kat asked Stanley over the phone the next morning after she explained to him how her former landlady had contributed to Edith’s death.

  “I don’t want to be discouraging, Katherine, but a wrongful death suit can drag on for years. In the end, the only ones to get rich are the lawyers.”

  “It’s not about the money. I just want an apology.”

  “An apology is an admission of guilt, and her insurance company might not like that. If human negligence contributed in any way to the infestation, they could be out tens of millions. They have a vested interest in proving that the mold was an act of God.”

  “Maybe the mold was an act of God, but Edith’s death wasn’t. She might have gotten out in time if only Vida had listened to her.”

  “Have you tried just asking her for an apology?”

  “She claims she never heard the warnings Edith left on her answering machine, but I don’t believe her.”

  “If you’re sure about forgoing monetary damages and all you’re seeking is an apology, there’s a fairly modern trend these days called ‘restorative justice.’ It’s not a litigious procedure so the insurance company needn’t get involved. But it is a legal action. The offender—in this case your landlady—must go on public record to take full responsibility for his or her wrongdoings and offer an apology. It seems to give the victims a sense of fairness and closure.”

  “Would I have to forgive her?”

  “That would be entirely up to you.”

  “Consider yourself served,” said the stocky leather-clad man waiting for Vida outside the gym at six a.m. Mystified, Vida accepted the envelope as the man took off on a motorcycle.

  Before breaking the seal, she read the name on the return address: Price, Bloodworth, Flom, Mead & Van Doren, LLC. She’d never heard of the law firm, but those names alone sounded foreboding.

  Dear Ms. Vida Cebu,

  This letter concerns the unfortunate death of Edith Glasser from an ischemic stroke caused by fungal pneumonia contracted during her lawful residence in your apartment building. My client and the sister of the deceased, Katherine Glasser, is prepared to forgo a lawsuit seeking damages on the condition that you acknowledge your role in failing to take reasonable and practical measures to mitigate the damage that the infestation of toxic mold was causing to the well-being of the occupants. The pathology report leaves no room for doubt that inhalation of spoor was the principal factor in her death. In lieu of a lawsuit for damages and in release of all claims against you for wrongful death, my client seeks a written apology.

  This apology must demonstrate to my client your acknowledgment of culpability and your heartfelt regret for failing to take action. Failure to provide this written apology within fourteen days of the receipt of this letter will result in a revocation of the offer and litigation will commence soon after.

  I strongly urge you to review this letter with your own counsel.

  Sincerely,

  Stanley Flom

  Senior Partner

  After she opened the gym, she called Virginia. “What do you make of this?”

  “Vida, I haven’t practiced law in ten years.”

  “Maybe I should just go ahead and apologize. The poor woman lost her twin sister.”

  “The question is what exactly are you apologizing for? Or more to the point, what does she imagine you’re apologizing for?”

  “That I didn’t find out about the mold in time. Her sister called me to complain about a smell in the basement and I didn’t return her call right away. It was the same week I had that squatter camping in my guest room closet. By the time I was shown the first mushroom by the police, it was too late to do anything. I had to flee with only the clothes on my back, too.”

  “Why don’t you explain that to her? Don’t admit to any blame, but make sure your condolences sound heartfelt. Maybe she just needs someone to say they’re sorry for her sister’s death. A twin, it must be so hard. Just make sure you read me the letter beforehand.”

  The gym began filling up with regulars. The first to arrive every morning was an intense young man slathered in Bengay; then came the breast-augmented hedge fund manager who walked the treadmill while shouting into her cell as if her voice had to carry twelve thousand miles on its own power to reach her partner in Hong Kong; then came the saddest client of all, the chubby boy who never seemed to lose weight. His routine consisted solely of squats.

  No actor can make a life’s work out of self-exhibition without some colossal need to be noticed. Vida’s morning workout, if you will, was to exercise a kind of hypnotic power over one of the regulars and get them to look up and notice her without her doing anything to attract their attention. It wasn’t acting, but it was as close as this job got.

  The chubby boy was grunting at his mirrored reflection, his broad back to her. He was easily crunching two hundred and fifty pounds, the canyon between his buttocks widening with each squat. Vida exerted her powers and he spun around, as if a ghost had tapped him on the shoulder. His look of despondency caught her off guard. Whatever demons he was crunching weighed a lot more than two hundred and fifty pounds.

  That night she sat down to compose her apology with pen and ink. A handwritten letter seemed the only appropriate way to convey true sorrow, and she felt awful about Edith’s death. But every draft ended up in the wastepaper basket. She couldn’t find the right tone. Should she begin with the apology or the explanation? When she started with the apology, the explanation read like a proviso on her sorrow. When she began with the explanation, the apology sounded like an afterthought.

  Halfway through the fourth attempt she finally realized why. She wasn’t telling the whole truth. The morning that Edith had left the first message about the smell was the same day she had had lunch with her old mentor, eighty-nine and still producing. He’d started in burlesque and never minced words. When she complained to him that no one was considering her for any good parts, he told her point-blank why. “You’re the Ziberax lady. Who wants the media circus your name will bring to a serious project?”

  When she came home that afternoon and heard Edith’s voice on her answering machine, she pressed the Erase button. Edith was always complaining about something, and Vida didn’t have the wherewithal to listen to another lecture on building maintenance when her career was dying.

  She put down the pen and went to the mirror. If she could act out the apology, maybe she’d find the right tone. Her mouth frowned and her eyes filled with tears. She had captured sorrow, but what did repentance look like? She mentally skimmed the pages of Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, but she couldn’t recall repentance. He must not have included it.

  Of course he hadn’t included it. Animals don’t repent.

  Dear Katherine,

  Please know how deeply sorry I am about Edith’s passing. She was beloved by everyone who knew her and her loss is a tragedy. Had I known she was in danger prior to us all being evacuated I would have taken immediate action.

  I never heard Edith’s messages. I never had the chance. There was an intruder in my house. I only found out about the mold after the police arrived to arrest her. One of the officers found a mushroom in the closet where she’d been hiding.

  Katherine, I can’t begin to imagine how difficult and devasta
ting it is to lose a sister, a twin sister. My heart goes out to you.

  Sincerely yours,

  Vida

  Kat read the letter with raw disappointment. “Where is the apology? She takes no responsibility.”

  Frank read it with simmering deliberation. “Vida knew about the smell before she called the police on Ashley. She told me to check the basement for leaks.”

  They sat on matching armchairs in Stanley’s corner office. He’d stepped outside to give them privacy. This morning, when he had called to tell her that Vida’s letter had arrived, she’d told Frank that all she wanted was finality and peace. She felt anything but peaceful now.

  “She blames Ashley, Frank. What does a ninety-pound scared girl hiding in a closet have to do with her not calling Edith back?”

  “Tell her to go to hell. She listened to Edith’s messages.”

  “My god, all she has to say is ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call Edith back.’ ”

  “Tear up the letter and mail her back the pieces.”

  “And then what? Make good on my threat? Stanley said a lawsuit could last years. It will only be a constant reminder that I’ve lost Edie.”

  “Tell her she’s got to write you another letter.”

  “It will only be another chance for her to make excuses.”

  “Spell out what you want her to say.”

  “I want her to look me in the eye and say, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call Edith back.’ ”

  Dear Ms. Vida Cebu,

  My client, Katherine Glasser, found your letter of apology woefully inadequate and is offended by what she considers to be your obstinate avoidance of accepting responsibility for not returning the deceased’s calls with prudent expediency. She wants you to take the remainder of the fourteen-day deadline to reflect on how your actions as the property owner, responsible for her tenants’ health, contributed to the premature death of Edith Glasser. My client loved her sister very much and is devastated by her death. She wants closure to this tragic situation.

  The offer to forgo monetary damages will expire unless you appear in person at my offices on March 19 prepared to admit culpability and offer my grieving client a heartfelt and meaningful apology.