Fearless (21 page)

Again Debby was annoyed, now at the late hour (it was past eleven at night) as well as by Max’s willingness to give up time with her for others. She wouldn’t admit that was the reason; she claimed she was thinking of Max, that he needed to rest. He had just gotten home from Nan’s, she pointed out; he had not had a minute to himself.

“Dr. Perlman said you need peace and quiet,” she said. Max laughed. Debby flushed, embarrassed. “You’re laughing at me.”

“I’m sorry, but that sounds ridiculous.”

“Don’t you want to be left alone?” Debby demanded.

“When did you talk to Dr. Perlman?”

“He called while you were at Nan’s. He’s nice. He’s trying to help.”

Max shook his head, dismayed by her eagerness to accept help without studying the giver’s motive. That was her vulnerable point. The back injury that threatened and eventually ended her fledgling ballet career was his prime example: she was too willing and too grateful to Max for nursing her through her attempted comebacks and finally comforting her over the death of her ambition. You’re so kind, she used to say. Actually he had been full of lust and selfishness. “Perlman is around to make the airline seem compassionate,” Max told her. “He’s paid to be nice.”

There was only half an hour to argue about it, or rather to sulk (Debby disappeared to take a bath), since Byron and his parents lived in Greenwich Village and were leaving immediately. Max went into Jonah’s room. He was still awake, lying under the covers fully dressed, a recent fetish that used to worry Max but now seemed unimportant, even benign. Max suggested they move into the living room and watch the end of the game on television. Jonah was surprised by this violation of normal bedtime regulations and happily agreed. Debby appeared in a huge terry-cloth bathrobe just as the doorman buzzed that Byron and his parents were coming up. She stayed in it, with her hair wet, an obvious statement that she didn’t want guests.

Max introduced Byron to Jonah, who had to be coaxed even to mumble a hello, and they shook hands with his parents, Peter and Diane Hummel. Both families sat down together and listened to Byron’s excited account of the crash. Some of it wasn’t accurate, Max thought; Byron was exaggerating Max’s actions. He said Max had wrested him out of a stuck seat belt and pulled him through flames and billowing smoke and “gross dead bodies” and found a way out when there didn’t seem to be one. He also claimed that Max had called to others in the plane and they had followed him to safety. “He saved at least twenty people!” Byron insisted. The child’s story dissipated Debby’s lingering anger at Max. She teared up, came by the couch where Max, Byron and Jonah were seated, and kissed Max on the top of his head, a hand squeezing his shoulder. Jonah reacted less sentimentally, at least on the surface. Although his face did flush, his shy brown eyes were clear; he watched Byron from under lowered and suspicious brows. Of course at that hour and given the tension of the past day and a half, maybe Jonah was just tired. As for Byron, he interrupted his narrative to hug Max several times with a kind of showy affection. He leaned his head against Max’s chest, bright face smiling back at his parents, posed for their benefit as if Max and he were a postcard he wanted to send home.

Byron’s parents, whom Max decided without any evidence other than their sloppy preppie clothes and their diffident manners were rich, weren’t embarrassed by their son’s emotional behavior. Nor were they emotional. What they said expressed thanks, but it was pronounced with a cool sophisticated manner.

“I guess there’s no way to express how grateful we are,” Peter Hummel commented after his son’s account was finished.

“I really didn’t do all that,” Max answered gently, ashamed to contradict Byron.

“Yes, you did,” Byron insisted. “I would have been fried if you hadn’t gotten me out. I watched. It got all burned up. A fireman said there were people still alive in there they couldn’t get out.”

“Oh,
that
could be true,” Max said.

“God,” Debby mumbled. She covered her face with her hands and sighed loudly. She quickly uncovered and looked at Max with shining wet eyes.

“I don’t know if talking about the danger helps make anyone feel better,” Peter said to his son.

“I think he needs to talk it out,” Diane said to her husband. She turned to Debby. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t seem scared,” Jonah said to Byron. He mumbled this comment to his knees. They undulated as he restlessly kicked his legs out and back.

“What?” Byron asked. His parents also glanced at Jonah inquisitively. Evidently only Max had heard his son’s statement. Max understood its origin. He had explained to Jonah that Byron was coming over because he was still frightened from the crash and his parents believed seeing Max would help. Max thought it was a good question. He wondered also—Byron seemed happy to him.

“Nothing,” Jonah mumbled, embarrassed to have everyone’s attention. He lowered his head more, hair coming down over his light brown eyes, covering their curiosity.

“What did you say?” Byron asked. He had an energetic body. He was beside Jonah on the couch. He twisted all the way around to ask, one hand touching Jonah’s thigh to prompt him.

“It was a good question, Jonah,” Max urged him. “Ask it.”

“I—” Jonah waved his hand and stammered, “I—don’t want to. Forget it.”

“He said, ‘You don’t seem scared,’ ” Max revealed his son’s remark. He wouldn’t have before the change. He was always supportive of his little boy, even of his weaknesses.

“Max…” Debby warned softly.

Byron blinked at Max for a moment and then said in a plain simple tone, the excitement gone, “I’m not scared when I’m with you.”

Diane appeared moved. Until then Max had thought her self-possession beyond upset. Her deep tan and shiny black hair, gathered into a demure bun, seemed to make her inscrutable and coldhearted. But he noticed her sharp chin pucker inward. She ducked her head slightly and shaded her eyes with one hand. Was she crying?

Byron’s father continued to be cool, although polite. “He’s been very upset,” he commented to Max. “You seem to make him feel safe.”

“I’m sure that’s temporary,” Debby said.

Byron and his parents looked at her. Max didn’t know whether she meant she hoped it would go away soon, or if she was consoling Byron’s father for losing his natural role toward his son.

“He also saved a baby,” Byron said to Debby, obviously concluding that she didn’t realize what a paragon she had married. “I told the mommy who you were,” he added to Max.

“Yes, that’s right,” Peter said. “Just before we called you, a woman called us, evidently the mother?” he asked Byron.

“Yeah! She’s the one you gave the baby to,” he said to Max, excited.

“You saw that? I thought you were with the Red Cross by then,” Max argued. He was worried by this child’s determination to reshape what they had experienced into something that couldn’t fit into his own memory.

“I was watching you from the ambulance!” Byron explained. He turned to Jonah to tell him this amazing fact: “Your Dad just walked out of the airport.”

“Um,” Peter signaled he had something important to say, “the mother, her name is Paula Pavod—I think that’s how you pronounce it—said she knew that you had also rescued Byron and so she was calling us in case we knew who you were. We gave her your name, or rather Byron did—I hope you don’t mind.”

And so, because of Paula Pavod and other survivors, by the next morning Max was considered to be a hero—and not merely the savior of Byron and the Pavod baby. He was also supposed to have played pied piper to another twenty or so passengers lost in the burning plane. Max found out that he was a public figure at seven-thirty in the morning on his way out to put Jonah on his bus to day camp. The doorman showed Max a
New York Post
that credited him with saving four children, an elderly woman, and a flight attendant. Max was surprised that the
Post
had assembled all these accounts of his rescue efforts without speaking to him. But the
Daily News
explained the lack of contact with its headline,
GOOD SAMARITAN SAVES TOTS AND DISAPPEARS
, again shown to him by the doorman. Max stopped inside the outer doors, reading the
News
to find out where the press thought he was. Jonah poked him in the side.

“Dad! Look who’s here.”

From their position they could see the Eighty-fourth Street corner. There a mob had gathered, at the center of which were two television crews interviewing, of all people, Byron.

Byron and his diffident father had been waylaid as they got out of a cab intending to visit Max again. The boy’s insomnia had continued even after last night’s get-together; he had refused to attend his day camp (a different one from Jonah’s, thank goodness) unless he saw Max first. Byron’s father had tried to call ahead but Debby had taken the phone off the hook before going to bed and he couldn’t get through.

Max was immediately sucked into being interviewed with an eager Byron by his side. And so he had his revelation that Jeff deserved to die while denying his own heroics. Besides, his revelation wasn’t irrelevant to Kaku’s questions; in fact, she provoked his silent verdict. She asked Max his reason for switching his seat to be with Byron, and that emphasized to him why his decision on Jeff’s fate was so important. Max had deserted his dead partner. He knew he was ashamed of his desertion because he had concealed it from Nan. That hadn’t been difficult; she didn’t ask about how Jeff died, presumably too upset to hear details. And now Nan would learn it from the tabloids, find out in big black type that her husband’s best friend had left him to die alone. This false life Max had returned to, this ghostly existence that he inhabited only in form and not in substance, was overcrowded with people, errands and moral ambiguities. While he said to the reporters, “No, I didn’t pull an old woman out from between seats. No, I didn’t rescue a brother and sister who were buried underneath dead bodies. No, I didn’t pull the baby out of a burning seat. No, I didn’t show the way out for dozens of people. No, I didn’t leap into flames to save Byron,” while he fended off their accusations of heroism he sagged at the dreary list of chores ahead: he had to go to the office; he had to call Nutty Nick; he had to get Jonah on the camp bus.

In fact, the bus had come and, atypically, was waiting patiently. Jonah’s campers peered in awe at the mob of cameras and celebrity television reporters. A friend called and waved to Jonah.

“Dad!” Jonah interrupted another of Kaku’s hostile questions. She was still convinced that Max wasn’t giving her everything. “Dad, can I get on my bus?”

Max bent over to give his boy a hug goodbye; he was immediately pushed back by his son’s hand. He escorted Jonah to the bus. The mob of reporters (led by Kaku) and gawkers inched along with them. He waved goodbye and felt he was alone, more alone than ever, more alone even than when he had showered in the Sheraton and understood that Jeff was gone and his life was forever changed. Once the bus drove off, the reporters crowded him again. He backed away a few feet. They moved after him in a carnivorous movement, a hungry herd. Max felt hot and he couldn’t breathe. His legs wanted to go. He abruptly turned the other way on West End and broke into a full run, ignoring the shouts from abandoned reporters and forgetting as well that he had promised Debby he would have a leisurely breakfast with her.

He remembered five blocks later. He saw a phone booth on Riverside and ran to it.

“Hello.” Debby was angry, prepared to hang up.

“Hi, it’s me.”

Her tone changed: anger to relief. “Where are you?”

“There’s a mob—I’m not kidding you—a mob of reporters downstairs—”

“Oh, the phone has been ringing nonstop. I tried to call my mother and it started. Really. I can’t even begin to dial. They say you saved all these people. Is that true? Why aren’t you telling me these things? You just say you got this boy out—”

“It’s not true. I did carry a baby out. But he was right next to me. Not—I don’t know—buried in the flames or whatever the hell they’re saying—” he sighed. The gray plastic receiver smelled of sauerkraut, a peculiar odor for eight in the morning.

“Max.” Debby had the irritation back in her tone. “Where are you?”

“Uh, I’m on Riverside Drive.”

“Max.” She said his name as if making a statement about his character, with a note of finality. “Come home.”

Last night they had lain together after Jonah went to sleep. They made love in slow motion. Her orgasm was as gentle and suppressed as a child sobbing into a pillow. Max, although he was fully erect and felt each detail of the pleasure of being inside her, couldn’t climax. He was embarrassed and annoyed. Debby pulled at him to continue but when he did it was she who was again moved into passion and release, this time bucking and moaning with joy. They stayed joined for a time in the dark, lying still while Max waited—for what he didn’t know.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He pulled out: stiff, alive, and unsatisfied.

“I’m frigid,” he said.

She held his penis and kissed him. “What can I do?” she said.

He laughed.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want you to save me,” he said.

But she didn’t know from what or how and he didn’t either. She got sadder and sadder as she asked questions that sounded straight out of a self-help book or from a therapist’s mouth. It seemed to Max as if his being alive made his wife sad. He tried to convince himself she was unhappy at the thought he had almost died, but he didn’t succeed. She was disappointed in him. She had been disappointed in him for years. He didn’t know why. Probably because he
was
her life, or a great part of it, and that life, the life of a thwarted artist, was a letdown. But what did these distinctions matter? The end was the same: she would be better off with him dead; then his absence, not his presence, would be what made her sad.

Think of Nan. She had never shown anything but annoyance or disdain for Jeff and yet last night, as his widow, she had been magnificent in her love.

“He was my big boy, my crazy boy,” she mumbled in Max’s ear. “We were just kids when I married him and we fucked it up,” she choked, her warm breasts palpitating against Max, her strong hands digging into his back. Nan cried on Max’s shoulder but the passion of her grief reminded him more of lovemaking than of sorrow.