Fearless (13 page)

“How do you feel?”

“Why did you run away?”

“Are you hurt?”

“Where did you go?”

They were at the door by then. The blond pulled Max relentlessly, interposing his body with quick adjustments to the constantly shifting positions of the crew and reporters. The PR man shouted at the doorman as they got inside: “Keep them out!”

The television reporter was an Asian woman, her smooth puffy cheeks so young and vulnerable she appeared to Max to be a lost waif. The doorman blocked her off. Max felt sorry about abandoning her to her bosses without a quote, so he called back: “I’m just happy to be alive.”

“That was great!” the blond praised Max in the elevator. “That was the perfect thing to say.”

And also upstairs, at home, everybody was so pleased with Max. As he made his beeline for Debby he heard a sigh of relief from someone and applause from others. Even Debby, who should have been angry, hugged him with a conviction and desire that was usually absent from their life together. Although she bit his earlobe and complained to the room about his not calling in a formal almost mockingly stern tone, she then hugged him again with welcome and passion. She felt him harden against her; her eyes were tearful and amused. “You seem to be in good shape,” she half whispered.

“Give your father a kiss!” Debby’s mother instructed Max’s son in a harsh and high-pitched tone. Max tried to separate from Debby to greet Jonah, but he succeeded only partly. His wife hung on to half of him, gathering his left arm and hugging it between her breasts.

Jonah had his head down, eyes averted, as he approached Max. This was the shy approach he took with his grandparents, or any adult he was strange to. Jonah was shy anyway; but especially with adults he radiated discomfort and distrust. Not with his father, however, not until now.

“My son,” Max called to him encouragingly, sounding for all the world like a biblical character. Jonah ducked his head under his father’s free hand and snuggled into Max’s stomach, a furtive embrace. Max bent over and whispered in Jonah’s ear: “Were you scared?”

Jonah shook his head no. Max felt Jonah’s nose rub against his belly. His son stayed silent and kept his face obscured.

“No?” Max prompted.

“No,” Jonah was muffled, talking from another dimension. “I was worried.”

“Aw…” said several relatives in the room. Someone laughed softly. Debby’s eyes flooded, big drops overflowing, but she smiled also, her head tilted sympathetically in the direction of her child.

“Who are you?” Max asked the half-shy, half-nosy man in the suit.

“Excuse me,” the man answered and came forward with a spurt of energy, extending a small hand. “I’m Steven Brillstein.”

Max had to untangle from the clinging growths of his wife and child to free a hand. “Nan asked me if he could be here when you arrived,” Debby said in a quick, confidential way to Max while he shook hands with Brillstein. The small hand was strong and energetic and quick to escape the contact.

“I’m an attorney,” Brillstein announced gravely. His voice was wringing its hands: “I’m sorry to intrude. Mrs. Gordon is frustrated. She’s gotten some conflicting information from the airline—”

“Jeff’s dead,” Max interrupted. Brillstein’s tone, agonized by seriousness and gravity, had irritated him. Max wanted to shut him up. What Max hadn’t wanted or anticipated was the reaction of the rest of the room. His bald statement had shocked them. His mother, whom Max realized with a pang he had so far completely ignored, gasped and staggered, until she was steadied by Max’s sister.

“Max!” his sister complained, not about the weight of their mother, but his cruel statement.

“He is,” Max insisted, although sheepishly. Jeff was long gone for him: he had forgotten that it was news to them. “I saw his—” Max gestured toward the floor, at his red Oriental rug, which he used to think was blood red, but he realized was nothing like the color on the man whom he saw stumble out of the plane, or the smears on the fractured metal, or Jeff’s blood-filled eyes. He never finished the sentence. They all waited for him to. Instead he said, “He’s dead. I’m sorry.”

“You know that for a fact?” Brillstein asked. “I don’t want to give Mrs. Gordon any false hope, but I also—”

“Who are you?” Max demanded. “Jeff doesn’t have a lawyer.”

“I’m a family friend—”

“Whose family? Not Jeff’s?”

“Max!” his sister repeated. She guided their mother to the couch, helped now by Debby’s father. Evidently his sister thought he should be helping.

“What?” Max asked his sister.

“Your mother!” his sister gestured to her. Max’s mother sat stunned on the couch, staring forward, as if beaten into idiocy by the blow of Max’s news.

“What’s the matter, Ma?” Max asked.

“It’s horrible,” his mother muttered.

“What’s the matter!” his sister repeated Max’s question sarcastically.

“I didn’t realize you felt so close to Jeff,” Max said.

His mother looked up at him. Her eyes were red, her cheeks sagging. She shook her head slowly, in an incredulous way. “Oh you didn’t?” she said rhetorically, with heavy disapproval.

“Well, he was
my
partner,” Max found himself explaining to them all, although he didn’t know what he was explaining or why he felt he had to.

Debby, no longer titillated or amused, walked back into Max’s arms. This time she was frightened. She leaned her head against his chest and tried to pull Jonah along with her. He resisted and then yanked free. Jonah was suddenly bold, his shy light brown eyes peering at his father. “How do you know?” Jonah demanded, not skeptically, but urgently.

Max separated from Debby and faced his son. “I just know,” Max said. He was suspicious of them all suddenly. He was no longer like them. Max knew that they felt what he said about Jeff’s death and how he said it were as significant as the fact. They were almost mystics, virtually believing Max could breathe life or death into Jeff with his choice of language.

“You saw him?” Jonah’s voice rang out, again demanding and hurried. But Jonah had reason to consider himself an exception and want an answer. Jonah was close friends with Sam, Jeff’s elder son. They had played together in the park as toddlers, had been given video games with synchronized forethought; together the sons of the partners had fought side by side, little fingers flashing on the game controls, conquering the villains of the Japanese computer. “Oh, damn it,” you could hear them cry out from rooms away, “I died again!”

So Max waved to his son to come close, and bent over to whisper, “I saw him die. He didn’t know it. He didn’t feel any pain.”

“How do you know
that
?” Jonah’s incredulity was so strong, he almost laughed.

Brillstein leaned over as well. His head appeared next to Jonah’s. They had formed a football huddle.

“Excuse me,” Max said to him.

“Can we speak privately?” the lawyer asked.

“No,” Max said to Brillstein. He returned his attention to Jonah. “He was killed instantly. I was right there. I know.”

“Okay,” Jonah agreed to the death. His bright eyes shone inward, worried.

“We’ll spend a lot of time with Sammy,” Max said.

“Okay,” Jonah said, very low, eyes going down, down to the floor, down to someplace in his heart unknown to Max. Was he afraid of his friend’s loss? Or embarrassed by his comparative good fortune?

“Excuse me,” Brillstein insisted. “In fairness to Mrs. Gordon, I would like to hear the details of what you saw in order to make sure before I tell her.”

“
I’ll
tell her,” Max said. He straightened, a hand still resting on Jonah’s head.

Brillstein straightened with Max, unfazed by his responses. “I understand,” the lawyer said. “But I have a problem. Mrs. Gordon asked me to call as soon as I spoke with you, so when do you think you’ll tell her?”

There was nothing for it: Max had to dance to their choreography for at least a little longer. “All right, we’ll go together to see Nan,” he told Brillstein.

“What!” Debby’s body was rigid. There had been only a hint of anger from her until then. And even with this release she seemed to be trying exceptionally hard to hold back more. Max was surprised: he wasn’t used to her being shy about that emotion.

“I’m going to see Nan and tell her. I don’t think she should hear from a stranger.”

“You just got home.” Debby let this furious remark escape and then returned to a self-imposed silence: lips together, arms folded.

“I’m going to be home for a long time. Jeff isn’t.”

“You could call her,” Debby said in a furious mumble, still a miser with her annoyance.

“I should tell her in person,” Max said.

“You should be here with us,” Debby insisted, forcing herself to speak in an unnaturally slow and reasonable tone. “You nearly died. After something like that you should be with your family.”

“Don’t scold me.” Under the terms of their marriage he was supposed to give way when she invoked his duty to the family. Not anymore. “Don’t make me apologize for being a good person just because this time it isn’t being good to you,” he said and he could have sworn someone, probably his in-laws, had gasped.

“Good to me!” Debby could keep it in no more. “Good to me!” She clenched her fists together and appealed to the others: “You didn’t tell me you were alive for twenty-four hours!” She looked at Max and released him with contempt: “You want to go to Nan, then go.” Debby turned and walked out into the hallway leading to the bedrooms. They all waited together for the inevitable noise of a door slamming. It didn’t come.

Instead Brillstein spoke. “I’m willing to tell Mrs. Gordon myself provided I know what I’m talking about.”

“Could you give these people a break?” Debby’s father protested. His interruption surprised Max in two respects. Harold was usually a mild man, almost timid with strangers; and as a prominent professor of American literature, he rarely spoke a colloquialism such as “give these people a break.” The change of character lasted for only one sentence. “My son-in-law has just been restored to us,” Harry continued. “It’s a shock for all concerned. We need time to ourselves.”

“Thanks for trying, Dad,” Max told him. Harry wanted to smooth over the quarrel with Debby. He had no son and Max had no father. Years ago they had decided—it was a willful act—to fill in each other’s family gaps. As a consequence Harry seemed to have more invested in his daughter’s marriage than the typical father-in-law. The rare—indeed, Max could think of only two—occasions when Max and Debby fought in his presence, Harry had become agitated and tried to distract them by comparing their argument with marital disagreements in nineteenth-century novels.

“Debby is frightened,” Harry murmured to Max. “She needs reassurance.”

“But I owe it to Jeff to tell Nan myself,” Max explained to Harry, sorry that he wasn’t sufficiently well read to find an appropriate literary allusion. “The sooner I do it, the better.” Max turned to Brillstein. The lawyer had his chin lowered, his arms folded across his chest, waiting without any overt sign of impatience and yet radiating a desire for speed. “Let’s go,” Max said to Brillstein.

“No!” Jonah blurted out. He had retreated to the far end of the living room, by the hallway where his mother had stormed out. When everyone’s eyes went to him, he lowered his head shyly.

“You want to come with me?” Max offered.

“No,” Jonah mumbled and looked horrified.

So his friend’s loss was scary, something Jonah didn’t want to witness. Max was disappointed in his son. He has his mother’s stingy heart, he judged harshly. Yes, there was a lot wrong with these people—things that would have to be corrected.

“Goodbye,” Max said coolly to the roomful of his family, no longer applauding his survival; instead they either glowered resentfully or looked away in embarrassment. Only the neutral and impatient Brillstein wanted Max. He had immediately moved into the small foyer to unlock the front door and now held it open for Max’s exit.

“Let’s do our duty,” Max mumbled and followed the lawyer’s lead.

9

The lawyer had come in his own car, a blue Volvo station wagon, complete with an empty infant car seat, the trash of frequent trips to McDonald’s, and wrappers that indicated a boy’s interest in baseball cards. Brillstein hadn’t expected to chauffeur Max. He apologized for the condition of the interior with a hasty curse. “Shit,” he said, pushing stuff off the front seat. “I’m sorry. I’ll arrange for a car to take you home.”

“This is fine,” Max said, pleased to see someone else’s kingdom ravaged by familial occupation. “You have two kids?”

“Doesn’t everybody?” Brillstein mumbled and pulled out of his parking spot with a cabdriver’s sudden, angry acceleration and violent steering. “Sure you want to tell Mrs. Gordon yourself?”

“I’m sure.”

Brillstein made a face: scrunching his chin and raising his eyebrows; at once impressed and doubtful. He nodded as they sped past Max’s block. “There were a lot of TV people when you got here?”

“Just one,” Max said. There had been none on their way out. “Got bored with me fast,” Max said. Brillstein drove madly, faster approaching yellow lights, running through the red if he didn’t make it in time, weaving around paused cars or tentative drivers. Max was relaxed; he even enjoyed the pace. The lawyer merged onto the West Side Highway at top speed. Brillstein was either unconcerned by whether there was conflicting traffic or gifted with extraordinary peripheral vision. Max asked, “You drive a cab to put yourself through college?”

Brillstein whistled. “Good guess. Yes. For two years. Don’t have any kidneys left. I think Mrs. Gordon is going to take it hard.” He added the non sequitur without any indication that it wasn’t a logical continuation.

“She must suspect.”

“I don’t think so. That’s why her father called my father to get me to find out. I’m not an aviation lawyer.”

“There are aviation lawyers?” Max asked, surprised.

“Oh sure,” Brillstein frowned, appalled at the prospect of there being such a lack. He rocketed over the West Side Highway’s bumps with pleasure, a happy cowboy riding his bronco. “In the New York area there are two law firms that specialize in crashes. Most of my practice is automobile accidents,” he explained as they took a pothole so hard that Max’s head grazed the car roof. “Or medical malpractice—wrongful death—but as I explained to Mrs. Gordon, I’m not, uh, I just don’t deal with this kind of thing. I would be happy to…” he added in a singsong, and even smiled at Max, “but as I say, there are two firms that pretty much have it covered in New York. Nevertheless, they wanted me to step in until we’ve at least confirmed Mr. Gordon’s death.”