The Dismantling (12 page)

The next morning he heard that a car packed with six students had skidded off the road up from town as the driver, blind drunk, gunned it up the hill. The car had slammed into a tree. Four kids died, all freshmen; the driver chipped his front teeth on the steering wheel and walked away. The campus contorted itself into a frenzy of grieving, and for a time Simon felt as though his classmates had tuned themselves to the same pitch as his own private frequency of guilt and pain. The resonance rattled his bones, a bell struck inches from his ear. He applied a fresh dab of melted wax every morning, when he woke up, to ensure the bracelet's seal. Only when it was time to return to Rockaway for the summer did he take it off; he didn't want his father to recognize it. By the time he returned to school the following fall, the campus's grief had become formalized, had cooled and hardened into an object to be regarded at a respectful remove. The resonance was silenced. Back on his wrist, the bracelet looked idiotic; it had, after all, been made for a girl. He sliced through the wax with a penknife and dropped it back into the box, where it lay curled like a worm.

He sat on the bed now and looked at the three objects: diary, bracelet, drawing. This ritual of looking and handling took place in a realm somewhere parallel to everyday life. He tried not to think about Amelia in the daylight, in the company of other people. The brittleness he felt then, out in the world, the sense that he moved always across a field of thin ice beneath which lay cold black water—the sense that he
was
that field of ice—was replaced late at night, in private conference with these objects, but with what he couldn't exactly say. He conceived of it only as a
thickness
, a thickness of feeling. He needed this ritual because it reminded him of the pain that true feeling carried within itself—what intensities of pain were latent, buried like a land mine, within any love—and he thought that if he did not allow himself to touch pain in this controlled way, it might rush upon him at any moment in his daytime life and sweep him under.

And yet that wasn't entirely it. Within the pain flickered a sense of possibility. The pain told him that he was still capable of loving in the first place, capable of caring on a level deeper than the shallows of the everyday. The idea that he had exhausted or abandoned true and deep feeling—it could be disproven, reversed. There was an emotional stiffness to him, a kind of cramp, as though he'd twisted his capacity for love under the weight of his body and forgotten it there. He could extend the metaphor: the real suffering, and the real healing, would begin only when he untwisted the sleeping limb and allowed the blood, hot and screaming, to rush back in.

The drafting paper was growing brittle, the bracelet yellowing. The unopened diary, though, looked as new as the day he'd found it. He held it for a moment, rubbing its oily leather cover with his thumb. Then he placed it back into the box, closed the lid, and spun the lock.

A
LITTLE
less than a week later, Simon sat in the office, arranging a new pairing. The e-mails piled up, a steady stream of small miseries: a woman in Aurora, Colorado, facing foreclosure and offering one of her kidneys for “$100,000 (price negotiable)”; a man in a Phoenix suburb who wanted to know whether a case of gout precluded him from donating; a kid from White Plains who'd heard giving up a kidney might void the remainder of his National Guard commitment. They'd all found Simon's e-mail address on the sparse Health Solutions website. Most of them mentioned being directed to the site from comments and anecdotes on message boards like Living Donors Network and Transplant Friends. Some of these comments had been planted by Simon, some were left by actual former clients, and some, it seemed, were written by people with only secondhand knowledge of what DaSilva's company offered. Simon sifted through Cabrera's recipient waiting list and compiled the names Peter had marked with a “$,” the lucky few who possessed the means to buy their way to the front of the line. He arranged these names by blood type and then began to compose his responses to the most promising of the aspiring donors, hoping for a few quick matches. He was typing one of these messages—this applicant a furloughed Michigan machinist with a problematic mortgage—when the desk phone rang.

It was Cheryl Pellegrini. She asked, in a forced sort of way, how he was doing. Fine, he told her, trying to keep his surprise at hearing from her out of his voice. And how was Lenny? He was pretty good, she said. In fact, he'd made a suggestion, which was the reason she was calling: why didn't Simon come out to their place for dinner?
Their place
. Lenny thought it was too bad, she said, that he hadn't seen Simon since the operation; he wanted to thank him in person. Unless they'd given the man a brain transplant as well, Simon thought this extremely unlikely. But, still, it was his responsibility to ensure that Health Solutions' clients were satisfied after their surgery, so he told Cheryl he'd be glad to eat dinner with them.

The next evening, he hurried to Penn Station to catch the train, and an hour later his taxi pulled into Lenny's driveway. He peered through the windshield at the little house. He could see movement in the kitchen, a backlit figure—it had to be Cheryl—bending over the stove. He paid his fare and made his way up the porch stairs. The screen door was closed and latched, the front door half-open behind it. He paused for a moment, looking through the foyer and into the living room. Bright light from a half-dozen new lamps opened up the space, raising the ceilings, pushing out the walls. He was still standing there, his knuckles poised to rap on the door frame, when a little girl barreled down the staircase in the center of the foyer, pulling up short as she saw him. She couldn't have been more than three, a chubby child dressed in nubby lavender pajamas. She put her finger in her mouth and cocked her head at him as though deciding whether to be upset by his presence. She turned around and said, “Greggy.” A boy, a few years older, pale and doughy with a to-scale version of his father's squared-off head, joined her on the landing, saying, “I
told
you not to call me—” He cut himself off as he noticed Simon standing on the other side of the screen. “Mom!” the boy called out, not alarmed, just doing what he'd been told to do. Simon knocked on the frame—a formality now—as Cheryl Pellegrini rounded a corner into the living room. She quickly unlatched the screen door and waved Simon inside.

“You made it.” She sounded as though she hadn't fully believed he'd show up. He didn't take it personally; he assumed living with Lenny had conditioned her to expect disappointment. “Lenny's in there.” She jerked her thumb toward the kitchen. “Greg, Dani, stop skulking around and come say hello to Simon.”

The children regarded Simon warily from the landing. Greg stood behind Daniela, one hand resting protectively on his sister's elbow. They were glum, serious kids, Simon thought, something of the hangdog about the pair already.

“What's this, kiddos?” Cheryl said. “Pretending to be shy?”

They came down the remaining stairs, jostling halfheartedly against each other. Cheryl took hold of their shoulders, propelled them forward. “Simon, this is Gregory and Daniela. Greg and Dani, meet Simon.”

Simon started to squat down, then thought better of it halfway, ending up in a kind of tensed crouch. He never knew how to approach children, whether to address them as though they were dizzy, uninformed adults or to slip into kidspeak—“Hey, whatcha got there?” and so on—which he suspected even the kids thought was pathetic.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, nodding.

“Are you a doctor?” Daniela said around the finger still stuck in her mouth.

“Not really. No.”

“He's a friend of Daddy's,” Cheryl said.

“From the football team?” Daniela asked doubtfully.

“Uh-uh.” Somber Gregory shook his head with grim certainty. “You'd get killed.”

“That's not nice,” Cheryl said.

Simon laughed. “It's true though.”

She pointed up the stairs. “Bedtime for real now, okay?” The kids registered a brief complaint before dragging themselves tragically up the stairs and down the hall.

Simon followed Cheryl into the kitchen, which smelled strongly of garlic and stewed tomatoes. Lenny sat at the table. He'd cut his hair. The floppy black mop was gone, and now a buzz cut hugged the contours of his monolithic skull, making him appear younger, soldierly. He looked up as Simon entered the room, his face thinner, the skin slack over his cheekbones. He spread his arms wide, his torso hidden within a giant green sweatshirt with “Property of the New York Jets” emblazoned across the chest.

“The new me,” he said. “What do you think?”

“Looking good,” Simon said, somewhat more passionlessly than he'd intended.

“So Cheryl tells me. Feeling pretty fucking good too.” He nodded, vigorously, as though ready to prove it with a bout of arm wrestling or jumping jacks.

“He's still got some pain in his gut,” Cheryl said. “But nothing worse than what they warned us about.”

Simon wondered if she'd moved back into the house or if this was only temporary, a trial period while she helped Lenny regain his health. Both of them were behaving pleasantly enough, but he could sense tension in the room, the crackling of something left unsaid.

“The follow-up from Cabrera,” Simon said. “It's been all right?”

Lenny shrugged. “That guy, the coordinator, he's checked in on us a few times. I've made it to all my appointments, believe it or not. There hasn't been that much for them to do.”

“They've been fine,” Cheryl said firmly. She turned to the stove, stirred a pot of softball-sized meatballs. “How's the girl?”

“The girl?”

“My heroic second cousin,” Lenny said.

“She's back in California.” They waited for him to say more. “In Los Angeles,” he added.

“No, hey, I get it,” Lenny said. “Don't worry—we're not going to show up at her doorstep with a fruit basket. But it would be nice to know she's not bleeding to death in the basement of Cabrera.”

“Lenny!”

“She's doing fine,” Simon said.

“Are you going to talk to her soon?” Cheryl asked.

“Possibly. I could if you'd like me to.”

“If you do, tell her I'm sorry for how I was at the hospital.”

“What do you mean?”

“She didn't tell you?” Cheryl said. “I almost gave everything away. They brought her into Lenny's room, and I said something stupid and—”

“‘So this is her.'” Lenny flashed a hostile grin. “That's what you said.”

“Thank you, Lenny.” She poured the meatballs into a bowl and aggressively scraped the dregs of sauce out of the pot. “She barely blinked, so kudos to her. But it was very tense for a minute in there. The hospital people didn't seem to notice, thank God.”

“Maria looked pissed,” Lenny said. “Can't say I blame her.”

“So you've said. More than once.” Cheryl glanced over her shoulder at her husband, then turned back to the sink. “Look, I'm grateful for what she did, even if I know it had nothing to do with Lenny. That's not an easy choice to make, no matter how much money she got out of it. And her reasons for doing it don't really matter in the end, do they? Not to us anyway. Lenny got what he needed, and now he can start the rest of his life.”

“That's right,” Lenny said, again nodding mechanically, as though someone had pressed a button to activate his agreement.

 • • • 

D
inner was veal meatballs topped with sugary tomato sauce, Parmesan, and basil, with a side of sautéed asparagus and, for Cheryl and Simon, a bottle of juicy red wine. Simon chewed and sipped and talked, wondering why he'd really been invited here. It was Cheryl's idea, that much was obvious; Lenny didn't seem to feel the need to thank him for anything, and why should he? It was as though she'd wanted to put her husband on display. But why? He watched Lenny eat. The man cut the meatballs into tiny pieces, which he pushed around his plate and often abandoned before they made it into his mouth. He sipped his water. He spoke when spoken to, answering his wife always in the affirmative: yes, he was glad Howard had kept after him all those months; yes, he would be happy to return to the meetings at Don MacLeod's house in a few weeks; yes, of course, it was wonderful to be spending more time with Greg and Dani again. Yes, yes, yes, wonderful, wonderful said his mouth. His eyes said nothing at all.

They finished eating and sat in silence for a few moments.

“Well,” Lenny said, “I'm stuffed. Everything was delicious, honey.” He heaved himself up from his chair. “Hate to say it, but that's it for me. These pills knock you out. Simon, thanks for coming by. I appreciate it.”

Simon stood up and took the hand that was offered to him, Lenny's fingers the size of cigars, his palm calloused and sweaty. He squeezed Simon's hand, then let it go and slowly made his way out of the kitchen, his heavy steps creaking up the staircase.

“Come on,” Cheryl said. “I'll drive you to the station.”

She led him through the living room and out onto the front lawn. The maroon Honda was parked on a tongue of concrete in front of the garage. They drove the mile to the station in silence before she pulled to a stop near the tracks. She turned toward him, the skin under her eyes dark and shiny, like the skin of a plum. A crease slashed down and away from each corner of her mouth.

“Thanks again for coming out here,” she said. “I understand it probably isn't something you normally do.”

“I don't mind,” he said, “if you think it might have been helpful in some way.” He tried to leave a question mark floating at the end of this statement, hoping she might give him some idea of why she'd wanted him here.

“Sorry he went up so early. He's been sleeping a lot. He's still on a lot of medication and . . .” She trailed off for a moment, then said, “I'll be honest, I was worried about the painkillers they gave him. That's part of how we got here in the first place, you know? It seemed too much like the same crap all over again. But I guess there's no way around it.”

“I'm sure the hospital took his history into account,” he said, although given DaSilva's tinkering with the medical records, he wasn't sure of that at all.

“Yeah.” She stared out through the windshield. “How did he seem to you? Really.”

“Well, I'm not a doctor, but, physically, his recovery—”

“Come on, Simon.” She straightened in her seat, suddenly irritated. “You know that's not what I mean, they can tell us that at the hospital. How did he
seem
to you?”

“I think he's glad he went through with it,” Simon said carefully. “He seems happy to be with the kids again. To be with you.”

“Yeah, I know that's what he
said
, but do you—oh, Christ! You're making me feel like I'm fucking crazy.” She rubbed her eyes, then looked him straight in the face. Her expression was raw, overflowing with the need to be heard, to be understood. “Howard was over here last week, okay? I asked him the same thing, and he answered the same as you: ‘He's glad he did it. He's happy to have you back. It's all fine. It's all great.' You have no idea how much I want to believe that. After all the shit we've been through, after the years I've spent watching Lenny drink himself into oblivion, his organs crapping out on him one by one . . . You think I
want
him to be lying to me now?” She shook her head sharply, as though trying to rid herself of the thought. “I can't talk about this with anybody else. Everybody thinks—miracle of miracles—he got his new liver off the UNOS list, from some poor kid who crashed his motorcycle and smashed his skull or whatever. They don't know how hostile Lenny was to the idea of saving his own life. But you do. So, please, I'm going to ask you this one time, and then you can forget I ever said anything: Can you honestly tell me you didn't notice anything fake about the way he was talking? Can you honestly tell me you think he believed in what he was saying?”