Let me just say that I’m doing everything I can not to get sick, right here in the office of the funeral director. The whole place creeps me out, which is pretty astounding for someone who scours photographs of concentration camp victims all day long.
“Are you okay?” Sage asks.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking you that.”
She sits up. “Where’s Adam?”
Wow. Just like that, an invisible wall cleaves the space between us. I rock back on my heels, putting distance between the couch where she’s lying and myself. “Of course,” I say formally. “I’ll get him for you.”
“I didn’t say I wanted you to get him.” Sage’s voice is as thin as a twig. “How did you know . . .”
She doesn’t finish her sentence; she doesn’t have to. “I called you when I got back to D.C. But you didn’t pick up the phone. I started to get worried—I know you think a ninety-five-year-old isn’t a threat, but I’ve seen guys that age pull a gun on a federal agent. Anyway, someone finally answered. Your sister Saffron. She told me about Minka.” I look at her. “I’m so sorry, Sage. Your grandmother was a very special woman.”
“What are you doing here, Leo?”
“I think that should be pretty obvious—”
“I know you’re here for the funeral,” she interrupts. “But why?”
Various reasons run through my head: because being here is the right thing to do; because there is a precedent in the office for coming to the funerals of survivors who’ve been witnesses; because Minka was part of my investigation. But really, the reason I am here is that I wanted to be, for Sage. “I didn’t know your grandmother, of course, the way you did. But I could tell just by the way she looked at you when you didn’t know she was looking that family came first, for her. It’s like that for a lot of Jews. Almost as if it’s in the collective unconscious, because once, it got taken away.” I glance at Sage. “Today, I thought maybe I could be your family.”
At first Sage doesn’t move. Then I realize that tears are streaming down her cheeks. I reach for her, right through that invisible wall, until I am holding her hand. “So, no biggie, but is this good crying, like you’re happy to set another place at Thanksgiving, or bad crying, like you just found out your long-lost relative is a creeper?”
A laugh bubbles out of her. “I don’t know how you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it so I can breathe again,” Sage says. “But thank you.”
Whatever barrier I thought was between us is completely gone now. I sit next to her on the couch, and Sage rests her head on my shoulder, simply, as if she has been doing it her whole life. “What if we did this to her?”
“You mean by getting her to talk about what happened?”
She nods. “I can’t shake the feeling that if I hadn’t ever brought it up—if you hadn’t shown her the pictures . . .”
“You don’t know that. Stop beating yourself up.”
“It just feels so anticlimactic, you know?” she says, her voice small. “To survive the Holocaust, and then die in her sleep. What’s the point?”
I think for a moment. “The point is that she got to die in her sleep. After having lunch with her granddaughter, and a very dapper, charming attorney.” I am still holding Sage Singer’s hand. Her fingers fit seamlessly between mine. “Maybe she didn’t die upset. Maybe she let go, Sage, because she finally felt like everything was going to be okay.”
• • •
It is by all accounts a lovely service, but I don’t pay attention. I’m too busy looking around the room to see if Reiner Hartmann shows up, because there’s still a part of me that believes it’s possible. When I realize that he’s probably not going to come, I focus my attention on Adam, who is standing unobtrusively near the back of the sanctuary the way a funeral director should, trying hard not to stare at me every time Sage grabs on to my arm or buries her face in the sleeve of my suit jacket.
I’m not gonna lie; it feels pretty damn good.
When I got dumped in high school by a girl who wanted a more popular, studlier date on a Friday night, my mother used to say, Leo, don’t you worry. The geeks shall inherit the earth. I am starting to believe this might actually be true.
My mother would also tell me that hitting on a woman who’s grieving at her grandmother’s funeral is a one-way ticket to Hell.
I don’t recognize any of the mourners, except for Daisy, who is sobbing softly into a linen handkerchief. At the end of the service, Adam announces when and where shivah calls can be made. He also lists two charities, suggested by Pepper, where donations can be sent in Minka’s memory.
At the graveside, I stand behind Sage, who sits between her two older sisters. They look like her, but overblown; birds-of-paradise flanking a primrose. When it is time for Sage to throw dirt into the grave, her hands are shaking. She tosses three handfuls. The rest of the mourners—a collection of both elderly people and friends of Sage’s parents, from what I can gather—throw handfuls of dirt as well. After it is my turn, I catch up to Sage, and without saying a word, she slips her hand into mine again.
Sage’s house, which has been commandeered by her sisters to host a post-funeral gathering for friends and family, looks nothing like the home I was in just a few days ago. Furniture has been rearranged to accommodate the crowd. The mirrors have already been covered for mourning. Food is spread on every horizontal surface. Sage looks at the throngs of people streaming in the front door and takes a shuddering breath. “Everyone’s going to try to talk to me. I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can. I’m not going anywhere,” I promise.
As soon as we walk inside, people swarm around Sage to offer their condolences. “Your grandma was my bridge partner,” one nervous, birdlike woman says. A meatball of a man with a gold pocket watch and a handlebar mustache who reminds me of the guy on the Monopoly Chance cards hugs Sage tightly, rocking her small frame back and forth. “You poor thing,” he says.
A balding man holding a sleeping toddler in his arms catches my eye. “I didn’t know Sage was dating someone.” He awkwardly sticks out his hand, which is caught under the chubby knee of his son. “Welcome to the circus. I’m Andy. Pepper’s other half.”
“Leo,” I say, shaking his hand. “But Sage and I . . .”
I realize I have no idea what she’s told her family. It is certainly at her discretion to explain what’s going on with Josef Weber, if she sees fit. But I’m not going to be the one to break the news to them if Sage hasn’t.
“We’re just working together,” I finish.
He looks at my suit dubiously. “You don’t look like a baker.”
“I’m not. We met through . . . well, Minka.”
“She was something else,” Andy says. “Last year for Chanukah, Pepper and I got her a trip to a fancy salon for a manicure. She liked it so much she asked if, for her birthday, we could get her a pedophile.” He laughs.
But Sage has overheard. “You think it’s funny that English wasn’t her first language, Andy? How much Polish and German and Yiddish do you speak?”
He looks horrified. “I don’t think it’s funny. I thought it was sweet.”
I put my arm around Sage’s shoulders and steer her in the opposite direction. “Why don’t we see if your sisters need a hand in the kitchen?”
As I lead her away from Pepper’s husband, Sage frowns. “He’s such a dick.”
“Maybe,” I say, “but if he wants to remember your grandmother with a smile, that’s not such a bad thing.”
In the kitchen, Pepper is putting sugar cubes into a glass bowl. “I understand not buying creamer because of the fat content, but do you really not have milk, Sage?” she asks. “Everyone has milk, for God’s sake.”
“I’m lactose intolerant,” Sage mutters. I notice that when she talks to her sisters, her shoulders hunch and she seems like a smaller, paler version of herself. Like she’s trying to be even more invisible than usual.
&nbs
p; “Just bring it out there,” Saffron says. “The coffee’s cold already.”
“Hi,” I announce. “My name’s Leo. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Saffron looks up at me, then at Sage. “Who’s this?”
“Leo,” I repeat. “A colleague.”
“ You bake?” she says doubtfully.
I turn to Sage. “Okay, so which is it—do bakers wear clown suits or something, or do I dress like an accountant?”
“You dress like an attorney,” she replies. “Go figure.”
“Well, good,” Saffron says, sailing past us with her platter, “because it’s completely criminal that there’s not a single decent deli in this entire state. How am I supposed to feed sixty people with pastrami from Price Chopper?”
“You used to live here, you know,” Sage calls out after her.
When her sisters bustle out of the kitchen and we are alone, I hear crying. But it’s not Sage; and she hears it, too. She traces the sound to the pantry, and opens the doors to find Eva the dachshund trapped inside. “I bet this is a nightmare for you,” she murmurs, picking the dog up in her arms, but she is looking at all the people gathered to celebrate her grandmother’s life. People who want to make her the center of their attention, as they share memories.
While she is still holding the dachshund in one arm, I pull her through the back door of the kitchen, down a set of stairs, and across her rear lawn to the spot where I’ve parked my rental car.
“Leo!” she cries. “What are you doing?”
“So,” I ask, as if she has not spoken. “When was the last time you ate?”
• • •
It’s only a Courtyard by Marriott, but I order a bottle of crappy red wine and a bottle of even worse white; a French onion soup and chicken Caesar salad; buffalo wings and mozzarella sticks and a cheese pizza; fettuccine Alfredo, three scoops of chocolate ice cream, and a colossal slice of lemon meringue pie. There is enough food for me, Sage, Eva, and the rest of the fourth floor, were I inclined to invite them.
Any reservations I have about kidnapping a grieving girl from her own house, where she is supposed to be sitting shivah for her grandmother, and smuggling a dog into a pet-free hotel, are allayed by the fact that the color has started to come back to Sage’s face as she works her way through the bounty in front of her.
The room, made for business travelers, has a small sitting area with a couch and a television. We have it tuned to Turner Classic Movies, with the volume low. Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn are on the screen, arguing with each other. “Why do people in old movies always sound like their jaws are wired together?” Sage asks.
I laugh. “It’s a little known fact that Cary Grant suffered from TMJ.”
“No one from the 1940s ever sounds like trailer trash,” Sage muses. As Jimmy Stewart leans close to Katharine Hepburn, she dubs a line for him. “Say you’ll go out with me, Mabel. I know you’re out of my league . . . but I can always start bowling on Tuesday nights instead.”
I grin, speaking over Katharine Hepburn’s scripted response. “I’m sorry, Ralph. I could never love a man who thinks loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk.”
“But, sugar,” Sage continues, “what am I gonna do with these NASCAR tickets?”
Katharine Hepburn tosses her hair. “Hell if I care ,” I say.
Sage smiles. “This is a missed opportunity for Hollywood.”
She’s turned off her phone, because her sisters will be calling her nonstop, once they discover her departure. At one end of the couch, the dog is snoring. The screen abruptly fills with the carnival colors of a commercial. After watching something that’s so black and white, it’s overwhelming. “I suppose it’s done now,” Sage says.
I check my watch. “The movie’s got another half hour.”
“I was talking about Reiner Hartmann.”
I reach for the remote and mute the television. “We don’t have the possibility of a deposition from your grandmother anymore, much less a video testimony.”
“I could tell a court what she said—”
“That’s hearsay,” I explain.
“It doesn’t seem fair.” Sage tucks her leg beneath her on the couch. She is still wearing her black dress from the funeral, but she’s barefoot. “That she would die, and he would still be alive. It feels like such a waste. Like she should have lived to tell her story, you know?”
“She did,” I point out. “She told it to you, for safekeeping. And now that she’s gone, maybe it’s yours to tell.”
I can tell Sage hasn’t thought about her grandmother’s death that way. She frowns, and then gets up from the couch. Her purse is an oversize black hole, from what I can see; I can’t imagine what’s inside it. But she rummages around inside and pulls out a leather notebook. It looks like something Keats might have carried around in his purse, if that was in style back then.
“The story, the one she talked about that saved her life? She rewrote it, after the war. Last week, for the first time, she showed it to me.” Sage sits back down. “I think she’d like you to hear it,” she says. “I ’ d like you to hear it.”
When was the last time someone read aloud to you? Probably when you were a child, and if you think back, you’ll remember how safe you felt, tucked under the covers, or curled in someone’s arms, as a story was spun around you like a web. Sage begins to tell me about a baker and his daughter; a soldier drunk with power who loves her; a string of murders linked like pearls throughout the village.
I watch her as she reads. Her voice begins to take on the roles of the characters whose dialogue she’s speaking. Minka’s tale reminds me of Grimm, of Isak Dinesen, of Hans Christian Andersen; of the time when fairy tales were not diluted with Disney princesses and dancing animals, but were dark and bloody and dangerous. In those old tomes, love took a toll, and happy endings came at a cost. There’s a lesson in that, and it’s tugging at me; but I am distracted, held spellbound by the pulse in Sage’s throat that beats a little faster the first time Ania and Aleks—the most unlikely of couples—meet.
“Nobody,” Sage reads, “who looks at a shard of flint lying beneath a rock ledge, or who finds a splintered log by the side of the road would ever find magic in their solitude. But in the right circumstances, if you bring them together, you can start a fire that consumes the world.”
We become the upiory in the story, awake all night. The sun is already crawling over the horizon when Sage reaches the part where Aleks falls into the trap the soldiers have set. He’s jailed, and scheduled to be tortured to death. Unless he can convince Ania to kill him first, out of mercy.
Suddenly Sage closes the book. “You can’t just stop there!” I protest.
“I have to. It’s all she wrote.”
Her hair is a mess; the circles under her eyes are so dark it looks like she’s fielded a punch. “Minka knew what happened,” I say decisively. “Even if she chose not to tell the rest of us.”
“I was going to ask her why she never finished it . . . but then I didn’t. And now I can’t.” Sage looks at me, her heart in her eyes. “How do you think it ends?”
I tuck Sage’s hair behind her ear. “Like this,” I say, and I kiss the ridged trail of her scar.
She sucks in her breath, but she doesn’t pull away. I kiss the corner of her eye, where the skin pulls down because of a graft. I kiss the smooth silver flecks on her cheek that remind me of falling stars.
And then, I kiss her mouth.
At first, I hold her in my arms like something fragile. I have to exercise every fiber of my body not to crush her tighter against me. I’ve never felt like this about a woman: like I need to consume her. Think of baseball, I tell myself, but I know nothing of value about baseball. So I start silently listing the justices of the Supreme Court, just so that I don’t scare her off by moving too fast.
But Sage, thank God, winds her arms around my neck and presses herself flush against me. Her fingers comb through my hair; her breath
fills me. She tastes of lemon and cinnamon, she smells of coconut lotion and lazy sunsets. She is a live wire, and everywhere she touches me, I burn.
When she grinds her hips against mine, I surrender. With her legs wrapped around me and her dress tangled around her waist, I carry her into the bedroom and lay her down on the crisp sheets. She pulls me over her body like an eclipse of the sun, and my last conscious thought is that there could not possibly be a better finale to this story.
• • •
In the cocoon of the room, created by blackout shades, we are caught in a bubble of time. Sometimes I wake up holding Sage; sometimes she wakes up holding me. Sometimes all I can hear is her heartbeat; sometimes her voice wraps me as tightly as the tangled sheets.
It was my fault, she says, at one point.
It was after graduation, and my mother and I, we ’ d packed up the car to go home. It was so full she couldn’t see out the back window, so I told her I ’ d drive.
It was a beautiful day. That made it even worse. There was no rain, no snow, nothing else to blame it on. We were on the highway. I was trying to pass a truck, but I didn’t see the car in the other lane, so I swerved. And then.
A shudder runs down her spine.
She didn’t die, not right away. She had surgery, and then she got an infection, and her body started to shut down. Pepper and Saffron, they said it was an accident. But I know deep down they still blame me. And my mother did, too.
I hold her tightly. I’m sure that’s not true.
When she was in the hospital, Sage says, when she was dying, she told me, I forgive you. There’s no reason to forgive someone, unless you know they’ve done something wrong.
Sometimes bad things just happen, I say. I brush my thumb over her cheek, tracing the topographical rise and valley of her scars.
She catches my hand, brings it to her mouth, kisses it. And sometimes, good things do.
• • •
I have a thousand excuses.
It was the red wine.
The white.
The stress of the day.
The stress of the job.
The Storyteller Page 44
