“Did she say so?”
“From how she talks about him. ‘Gravitas,’ ‘ambition,’ ‘integrity.’ You know.”
“She’s idealizing adolescence. That’s so her. You know, torn between Big Ideas and a party. She’s always been that way.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“No, no.” Julius laughed. “We just want to be at the Party of Big Ideas. Ideally, to throw it. We see there’s no contradiction.”
“Only the insufferable suffer for art. That’s what Ludo says. ‘It’s so déclassé.’”
They laughed, a little awkwardly.
“Does he really believe that?”
“He doesn’t believe in suffering, no.”
“Like suffering is a choice?”
“Whatever.” Marina had stood, put their cups in the garbage, and they had gone back out into the cold.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Burying the Dead (3)
The day of the memorial service, Friday, November 17, was clear and brisk. Murray woke early, despite the gloom of the motel room, washed and dressed without disturbing Annabel, and went outside for a walk. The vista, from the Hampton Inn just off the highway, was not encouraging: it could have been anywhere. The tarmac already had its leached winter aspect, the salt-white rime at its edges, drifts of garbage sodden along the curb. The huge neon signs of the chains provided the only color: the golden arches, the jangling bell, the colonel’s cheerful grin. Even in the early morning, the wind-swish of the highway traffic blanketed the air, like background music. Murray was the only pedestrian in sight.
They had flown to Syracuse the evening before, with Marina and her friend, and had driven the hour north in the dark. He’d called Judy when they arrived, but hadn’t gone over to see her: she’d been with Sarah and Tom, who were putting their children to bed, and she hadn’t invited him. They had taken supper, an inedible excrescence, at a restaurant across the parking lot, in a booth beneath a faux Tiffany lamp, served by a spotty high school girl with an eerily keen smile and an imposingly cleft chin. Julius had been very bright about it all: “This is like being back home, for me,” he said. “I always think you have to respect these restaurants, in their way. I mean, what was here before Bennigan’s and Applebee’s? Probably nothing.”
“Not much,” Murray said, remembering the rare steakhouse outings of his childhood, the thrill of shrimp cocktail or canteloupe on ice.
“So that’s got to be good, right? They don’t pretend to be anything they’re not.”
“I traveled a long way to escape this,” Murray said. “And you did, too, I bet.”
“So did Frederick,” said Annabel, and they were all quiet for a moment.
“Who’s coming tomorrow?” Marina asked.
“I don’t know.” Murray sighed. He knew nothing about his sister’s life, which only now and momentarily seemed egregious.
In the morning, walking along the side of the road among the gas stations, fast-food places, and a couple of other motels ( TAY HER! RO MS FROM ON Y $39.9!), a rough scrub of gravel and dead weeds beneath his feet, Murray tried to imagine that Bootie’s memory might peaceably belong here, but could not. He remembered the boy at his dinner table, in his office, trying so hard, and yet so ill-equipped for that existence. A matter of confidence, no doubt. He might have learned, in time, if he’d been tough enough. Which—Murray felt entitled to think this because the boy’s story was over; no possible turns or new beginnings—he had not been. Murray’s nose reddened, in the wind, and he could feel his ears, burned knobs on either side of his head. Toughness was about doing what needed to be done. No regrets, no waste, no giving in. The boy had given in, too many times. Who knew what went on in his head, but whatever it was, it had killed him. Murray had thought a good deal about this: the boy had been working blocks away. He’d not been at the office before the towers were hit—his supervisor, Maureen, had said so. Which meant that for him to be crushed, he had to have gone closer, on purpose, drawn to the horror; he had to have been watching it at the epicenter itself, had to have gone, and stood, and stayed. Which was, in such a boy, its own perversity. He felt some grudging admiration, but that was a separate matter. Nobody had thought the towers would fall, of course, but even so, so many bystanders—most—had survived. Murray would not feel responsible for something he had had nothing to do with. At any moment, the boy could have turned and walked away. The firemen and police would have tried to make him. Instead, he had delivered himself to the fires. It was positively Greek.
You could control what you did, if you wanted to. You had, like an actuary, constantly to be calculating the odds. Was it efficient? Was it productive? Did the benefits outweigh the risks? So many people didn’t bother—a kind of stupidity, Murray felt, a lack of vision, or purpose. Anyone who said that they just woke up and found themselves in the place they’d always wanted to be was lying; and anyone who believed such a person was a fool. It was all a matter of will.
He’d walked home, on the eleventh, and had taken a shower and gone to his study and waited, aware that in his actuarial efforts he had miscalculated. His desire to be with Annabel was ultimately never in question: she was his life. He’d managed to reach Marina on the telephone, late in the afternoon, and had not mentioned Chicago to her. She didn’t even seem to remember about it. Annabel had finally come home near eight, drawn and pale, with the boy, DeVaughn, in tow. She’d spent the day with him, it transpired; his mother was missing, his mother had set off from Harlem for work in the North Tower at 6:45 that morning. Unlike some others, she hadn’t called her family, hadn’t spoken even to her husband after that. Which had encouraged them to hope—maybe she’d been held up somewhere, out on an errand, even in the mall in the basement, buying a bagel, maybe she would emerge, unexpectedly, from the subway, with her weary smile, her long dark green raincoat a little dusty, but otherwise unharmed. Annabel had helped DeVaughn make posters, with a picture of his mother at her last birthday party, in a sparkly gold and black sweater, her close-cropped Afro glistening in the light, the girlish sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks showing. In the photo, she was smiling broadly, her teeth glinting, and because DeVaughn had taken the picture, her crinkling eyes showed love, and concern, and hope, too. Or that’s what Annabel felt, and told Murray, through tears, in bed that night. She’d helped DeVaughn make the posters (D.O.B. Dec. 12, 1968; Distinguishing Marks: freckles, burn scar on her right wrist, etc.), and then had helped him post them downtown, or as near as possible, which was why they were so late getting in. They’d called the hospitals, but couldn’t get through. The plan for the morning was to go back downtown to try to find her.
“I didn’t expect you, lovey,” she said to Murray, in his arms. He held her for a long moment, aware of the boy lurking behind, looking at the floor, the wall, anywhere but at them, his hands moving like birds in the shadows. “How did you get here?”
“It’s a long story,” he’d said. “I’ll tell you later.” And then he, with uncommon effort, had made them all scrambled eggs on toast and slices of tomato, and they had sat in surreal and agonizing silence, the three of them, in the dining room, the large boy with his face set in barely restrained panic, and Annabel staring largely at the wall, as if there were nothing left of them but their husks.
In bed, he’d tried to say something; but Annabel had hushed him. “I’m just glad you’re here. It means everything that you’re here, now. Hold me close. Don’t talk.”
And in the morning, he’d started again to explain, when DeVaughn was still sleeping in the room that had been Bootie’s, and she said, “No. You chose to come home. That’s all I need to know.”
“But I’ve never, you should know, never—”
“It doesn’t matter. Maybe someday, okay? But not now. Now, what matters is that you’re here. Yesterday morning, I actually sort of prayed. I complained, anyway, to the God that doesn’t exist. Why isn’t he at home, I said, because in such a time, he should be home. I was angry. And then
you were home. So. Like a miracle. Think of poor DeVaughn. He’s been praying, so far for nothing.”
“Which is why one shouldn’t believe in God,” Murray said. “Because there is no answer to the problem of theodicy.”
“She may be in the hospital as we speak.”
“She may.”
And then DeVaughn had wandered into the kitchen, wearing the same clothes as the day before, and his sneakers, and his jacket. He had his hands in his pockets. He nodded at Murray, mumbled, “Morning, sir.”
“Murray, please. Call me Murray.”
“We’d better go.” Annabel had clapped muffin crumbs from her hands, over the sink. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us. You need to eat. Take a muffin. Lowfat bran, with raisins. There might be nuts in it—you’re not allergic to nuts?” She held the muffin out, and after a moment DeVaughn took a hand from his pocket with which to accept it. He looked at it as if it were a space rock, and then dropped his hand, with its muffin, to his side.
“We’ll see you later, lovey,” she said to Murray. “Or I will. Aurora might come today—it depends, I guess, on the subway. But I’ll come back when I can. I love you.” She had kissed him full on the mouth, a proprietorial kiss, and he had known that in this way she was saying what she wanted to say.
After they’d gone, he’d waited a short while and had dialed Danielle’s number. He got the machine, and left her a message, apologizing for his hasty departure, and asking her to call to let him know she was okay. He left a different version of the same upon her cell phone; but heard nothing, and as the hours passed, he began to worry about her. He rang again, and again, although the third time he left no message. In the days that followed, he was eaten by her silence, more invasively than he might have been by any words; and although, by the time her message came—on his cell, a week later: “Please could you leave me alone”—he was not surprised, neither was he liberated. He found himself, unhealthily, obsessed. Still more than when they had been lovers, he thought about her, heard her laughter, turned, thinking to have seen her, in the street. He sat at his desk, supposedly penning articles on the events—and indeed, he did write numerous articles, suddenly called upon to provide moral or ethical guidance, to offer a path for confused and frightened liberals through the mad alarums and self-flagellations of those hideous, tumultuous weeks—while actually staring at the wall, repeating her name over and over inside his head. It was as if she stood directly in front of him, not just blocking his vision but making it impossible for him to see her whole. He couldn’t accept that he would not see her at all; couldn’t believe that when he had so much, of such importance, to think upon, she could, in her sirenical unimportance, so fully occupy his mind. But after she left her message, he didn’t call her. He was tough. He gleaned from conversation with Marina that Danielle had fallen into a depression, that she was badly off, and this almost prompted him to capitulate; but he had his pride, too, and while he wrote her e-mails daily, he did not send them, kept them instead stored in his “send later” file.
And all the while he was waiting for Annabel to ask about the night of the tenth. Sometimes it seemed that this was his punishment, to be continually wondering what she thought, or knew, or imagined. Their most ordinary exchanges were, he felt, permeated by her silence, her imposition of silence, on the issue; but he could detect no wrath, no resentment. She did not snap at him, or look askance, or berate him. She remained her own self, if anything more indulgent, though abstracted. It made him want to tell her everything, the whole truth, and in moments, late at night, a scotch by his side, he could imagine her calm acceptance of him, of his story, her loving embrace, her absolution. But on this, too, he remained firm, knowing this harmonious vision could only be fantasy. He gave away nothing.
And she, for her part, remained preoccupied. The days and weeks made clear that DeVaughn’s mother could not appear, that she had been where she was supposed to be, on the 101st floor of the North Tower, among those most unfortunate whom he and Danielle had witnessed, choosing between one hell and another, like the enactment of some Byzantine icon. Eventually, perhaps, a ring would be identified, or a sliver of bone; or perhaps nothing. And the boy, Annabel said, was sapped of all fight, blank and docile now, though whether this was in preparation for a new and more terrifying onslaught of rage was not clear. A cousin had been found, in White Plains, who might take him, take the shards of his life and self and begin again, if such were possible. The stepfather had already retreated, removed, with DeVaughn’s mother’s disappearance, from the scene. Murray watched Annabel cry over this boy, this lost soul, and cry, too, over Bootie.
Because it was largely Annabel who took on that burden, too, of helping Judy negotiate the hospitals and registers, of retrieving his belongings, of visiting with Judy the smoking maw downtown into which her only son had vanished. Murray was called upon by his public. He had much writing, and speaking, to do. He formulated a reasoned middle ground that, while not stretching so far as those who claimed America deserved it, nevertheless gently reminded his suffering compatriots of the persistent agonies of the West Bank, or of the ever-growing population of disenfranchised Muslim youth around the globe. He argued in favor of understanding rather than blind hostility, commended policies emphatically not of appeasement but of productive realignment, a reordering of America’s foreign policy priorities that might affect the balance of anti-American sentiment in the world, while providing the United States, at the same time, with potential Middle East and Asian partners. He wasn’t opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan, but qualified about its methods. He held firm on civil liberties, on human rights, on international sovereignty. He did so not merely in print and on the radio, on panels on CNN, but also, early on, in a prolonged television interview, late-night, in which he found himself, surreptitious scotch on the rocks tucked close beside him, momentarily flummoxed by his interlocutor, a heavily made up, aging blonde, who marveled in a Southern accent of closed “O”s and sharp punctuations, “What I’d like to know, Murray—and forgive me for getting personal, here—is how you manage to stay so intellectual, so detached about it all, when this tragedy, I believe, robbed you of your nephew? Am I right in saying these evil people killed your only sister’s only son?” He had blinked, aware of blinking, reminded, in the instant, of Bootie’s tic of blinking, and had cleared his throat, then bowed his silver head—a gesture that could be construed as respect, or resignation, or dismay at the interviewer’s crass intrusion—and said, “Some things are family matters. It’s an indescribable loss. And ours is just one of thousands.” After that, people wrote about it. Other journalists expressed astonishment that this tragedy hadn’t turned him hawk, did not have him baying for blood, and saw therein, no matter their political stripe, a mark of the man’s immovable integrity; and Murray couldn’t help but be aware of the irony that Bootie’s death had granted him greater nobility, an importance—he knew it to be false—as a man of justice, unswayed by the arrows of misfortune. But perhaps, had he been able to see it, Bootie would at last have been proud of his uncle.
And as for the book: it waited. He’d thought, before the events, that he might abandon it; but now he saw that this had been merely a small man’s fear. He had been afraid, when it appeared now, so clearly, and without vanity, that even if his words were not genius, they were still more truthful, and thoughtful, than those of most of the men and women who surrounded him. They were good enough; and he was called to write them. Who knew, perhaps he would dedicate the book to his nephew. He was taking notes, through the weeks, in the knowledge that the tragedy would completely reshape his endeavor: how to live was a different question, now. More urgent. Less answerable. He would begin again, and would write, he knew, a better book because of it.
Back at the motel, he found his family—Annabel, Marina: they were his family, everything—at breakfast with Julius. Julius, peculiar-looking always, but now positively bizarre, with the bald patch at his hairline, from which new tufting sprouted,
and the raw mangle of his cheek, a pirate’s scar on his boyish face. In this strangeness, he had gelled his hair like a porcupine, but Murray refrained from comment because he thought that at thirty, for all they might seem it, Marina’s friends could no longer be treated as children. (He thought, and then banished the thought, of the pale flat of Danielle’s belly, of the way her hipbones jutted when she was lying down.) All of them were subdued, gray like the day, with its high, moving clouds.
“Are we ready?” he asked.
Annabel took Marina’s hand across the fake-wood table, and Murray noticed that his daughter had been crying. Her violet eyes were redrimmed and puffy, her makeup a little streaked. He suddenly remembered her small, three, perhaps, upon his knee, the warm wriggle of her, her black hair clinging in silken strands at his chin, the high-pitched infectious laughter: so simple a happiness. Bootie had brought such joy to Judy, before he grew plump, and sullen, and angry with the world for all it had not given him. It was, Murray finally felt, truly an indescribable loss; and his own eyes filled, at last and for once, with tears.
But he banished those, too. It did not do to feel too much. He was called to higher things than feeling; and if he broke his vigil and allowed it, he might lose himself altogether. Judy had not asked him to speak at the service—he knew it was because she blamed him; how could he not know? Looking at Marina, he realized that he would, in her stead, have done the same—but he was prepared to, if need be. He had written a few words on an index card that he carried in his pocket: “Bert’s funeral. Bootie’s ambition. The article. Integrity.” If he spoke, here of all places he would tell the whole truth. Not that anyone would care to hear it, except Bootie himself, who could not be present. He wanted to tell the story of their division, of how he had felt himself betrayed and, in weakness, had in turn betrayed the boy. He couldn’t undo it, wouldn’t, in the telling, sentimentally claim responsibility for Bootie’s death (the boy had chosen his own path: Murray was clear on this), but he wanted it known. The truth was all anyone had to hold on to.
The Emperor's Children Page 45
