The Street Sweeper (69 page)

‘Hello?’ Charles said blearily.

‘Is this the home of Mrs Michelle McCray?’ a man asked.

‘Who is this?’

‘I’m sorry to bother you at this time of night, sir. I’m a police officer. Is this the home of Mrs Michelle McCray?’

‘Yes, it is, I’m her husband. What’s this all about?’ Michelle stirred. Her first thought was of her clients. But she didn’t give out her home number so that couldn’t be it.

‘May I speak with Mrs McCray please, sir? Again, apologies for –’

‘It’s for you,’ Charles said, handing the phone over to Michelle.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s the police.’

‘Police? Hello? Who is this?’

‘I’m very sorry to trouble you at this hour, ma’am. Am I talking to a Mrs Michelle McCray?’

‘Who is this?’

‘This is Officer Brooks, NYPD. Am I talking to Mrs Michelle McCray?’

‘This is Michelle McCray.’

‘Sorry to bother you at this hour, ma’am. My partner and I were called to a disturbance in the north Bronx and we have a pretty severely distressed man here who has asked us to call you to confirm his story. The gentleman in question has no ID on his person and we have reason to believe that he might be under the influence of a prohibited substance … Ma’am, are you there?’

Sweating, unable to catch his breath and with a heart rate he felt was only a few beats away from flatlining, he had an urgent need to get himself outside no matter how late it was, no matter how cold it was, no matter how many floors down. As he leaned against the side of the downward moving elevator his only desire was to breathe the outside air. But when he reached the ground floor of his apartment block and went into the street he found that the cold air didn’t help. Unsteady on his feet, he was terrified. He was losing control. Hot and cold and stumbling, under-dressed for the night and for the season, he mouthed something unintelligible to some passing kids coming home late from a night out. They thought he was tripping, possibly crazy, possibly dangerous. Not wanting to get involved, one of them called the police from a mobile phone and then at the end of the call used the phone to record scenes of the man as he spiralled out of all normal human ways of being. Now Officer Brooks was putting him on the phone to Michelle McCray.

‘’Chelle?’

‘Hello?’ The man was panting furiously. His mouth was dry, and his tongue, stuck to the roof of his mouth, made the sound of consonants as he tried, unsuccessfully, to speak. Painfully, he forced out a few words.

‘’Chelle, it’s me … It’s Lamont.’

‘Lamont? What’s –’

‘’Chelle, she’s dead. Grandma’s dead.’

S
ONIA
M
C
C
RAY WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD
when she stood a few feet from the grave, slightly behind but with one foot edged between both her father Charles and her grandfather, William. This was the first funeral she’d ever been to. Before this, death had been confined to stories in books, on television, in the movies and sometimes in songs in which the singer would suggest that without the person being sung to, the singer would die. It was a feeling she had never experienced. But here was a gaping gash in the cold earth containing someone Sonia had known, even loved in a way, someone she had never had enough time for, and yet someone who had loved
her
beyond reason. Standing there, almost hiding, behind her father and grandfather, she wanted to apologise for not visiting her more often, for not sharing more of her life with her great-grandmother, for rejecting the apple juice she always offered her. When had she last been to her apartment?

In front of both Sonia’s father and her grandfather stood her mother Michelle, and next to her mother, also at the mouth of the grave, stood a man she had no memory of ever having met before. But apparently she had met him when she was very young. Her father and her grandfather were dressed in dark suits under their winter coats while her mother wore a black skirt with a black shirt and jacket under her coat but the man was dressed unlike all of them, completely informally. He was wearing jeans with a flannel shirt and a sweater under his coat but she understood
that it did not reflect a lack of respect for Sonia’s great-grandmother nor was it evidence that he felt any less grief at the loss. In fact, he was the most visibly moved. Sonia could not bear to look at the man any more than she could bear to look at the grave. As he rocked before the mouth of the grave, Sonia’s mother, who was holding on to him, rocked with him. The man was her mother’s cousin, her, Sonia’s, great-grandmother’s grandson, Lamont.

From the way they shared their grief Sonia pieced together that her mother had once been very close to him but that he’d been away and they hadn’t been in touch again till now. He had been the one who had found Sonia’s great-grandmother. She had died in her sleep. Sonia wondered whether she was meant to comfort her mother or whether she could leave that to her father and her grandfather. She looked at her grandfather standing bundled up in his coat. He was older than her great-grandmother had been. How would the funeral have made
him
feel? she wondered. Thank God he was still there. He hadn’t changed. She vowed to see a lot more of him. Where was Lamont’s family? she wondered. Then she realised that her mother and now Sonia herself were probably all he had. No wonder he rocked that way. How long before they could leave?

Were they going to have to go on comforting the rocking man? Things were worse for him than Sonia knew. He had lost the person who had brought him up, who had felt emotionally responsible for him for as long as he could remember. He owed her so much and now he would never be able to pay her back. His grandmother died just two weeks before he finished his six-month probation period as an employee at the hospital. He was going to get benefits. She wouldn’t be there to see him leave every morning to go to a job with benefits. They send employees to college, he’d told her. First things first, he was going to find his daughter. Now his grandmother would never get to see his daughter, no longer a toddler any more but an eight-year-old, almost nine. He’d imagined showing the little girl his room, the room where he grew up, the room where you could still see the pencil marks his grandmother had made on the wall to chart his height. At ten he was already as tall as his grandmother. At thirty-eight he was back sleeping in the same room. He didn’t know
whether he would be able to go on living in the Co-op City apartment and, if he couldn’t, he didn’t know where he was going to live.

Sonia McCray watched her mother propping up the man who didn’t wear a suit to his grandmother’s funeral.

‘Your grandma prob’ly outlive
you
, Lamont,’ a man called Numbers had once said to him back in Mid-Orange Correctional Facility. ‘Highly good chance, highly good! Nothin’ as against you, just statistics, understand? No offence meant, I’m talkin’ ‘bout the science of statistics as it pertains to an African American man of your raw data and general … geneology.’

‘Wouldn’t bother me if she did,’ Lamont had answered. Sonia watched this adult man trying to pull himself together as her grandfather, William McCray, stood tall and quietly thanked the minister. She was determined to spend more time with her grandfather but now she listened to her cousin Lamont clear his throat and try to speak.

‘Mrs Martinez, thank you for coming. Really appreciate it. She was very fond of you. Always said what a good neighbour you were. Always there for us. You remember my cousin, Michelle … from the old days?’ Sonia heard the man say. Lamont Williams was desperate for people to remember other people. If they didn’t, what did anything mean, what had anything been for?

The fourteen-year-old girl stood with her gloved hands in her pockets and looked around the cemetery, so many tall Christs in the north Bronx, all of them under-dressed for early winter. You could see them from the overpass. Car horns let off steam in the distance. How few people had come.

*

Lamont Williams was sitting on a long bench in a corridor on the ground floor of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He’d been asked to wait for a moment before his scheduled appointment. A message had been passed on to him from his supervisor that the Deputy Head of Human Resources wished to see him. In just under two weeks his six-month probation period was due to expire. His grandmother had
been buried only days earlier. He’d told his supervisor and D’Sean, a colleague. Was that what this was about? No, probably not. It probably had something to do with the necessary paperwork that had to be completed when he transferred from probationary employee to the category of permanent employee.

People in suits walked past Lamont. Who were they – doctors, nurses, physicians’ assistants? No, they couldn’t be. These people looked more like business types, fundraisers and administrators. Lamont considered how much non-medical effort went into running a hospital like this. He read the titles on people’s doors as well as on the strategically placed brochures. There were people who worked only in research, all different kinds of research. There were people who worked only in education; continuing medical education, continuing nursing education. There was someone in charge of PhD graduate education, someone in charge of post-doctoral training and even someone in charge of a high school outreach program. There was a library and there were administrators who had his name on file somewhere, probably on a computer somewhere; Lamont Williams, Building Services, on probation as part of a pilot program for ex-convicts. If the right people had known about his grandmother they might even have someone offer him grief counselling. That’s what his cousin Michelle had said.

Michelle was a social worker, a senior one, and she knew about that sort of thing. What did it mean, ‘grief counselling’? Do you tell a therapist what it’s like to lose someone you love? Lamont wondered. Do you lie on a couch? Does the hospital pay the therapist money to hear about the grief of a man from Building Services who had lost his grandmother? She was like a mother to him, always had been, the only ‘mother’ he’d ever really known. He hadn’t been able to sleep since finding her, not for more than a couple of hours at a time.

‘Do you have any other family?’

‘I have a daughter. She’s eight. I’m going to find her.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘I have a cousin. We were close as kids … drifted for a while but now … We’re in touch now … since my grandmother’s passing. We were real close as kids and it’s kind of funny that it’s taken the passing of my grandma … I don’t mean funny that way but –’

Lamont was woken from his daydream by an administrative assistant, a young woman who worked for the Deputy Head of Human Resources, Mr Juan Laviera.

‘Mr Laviera will see you now,’ she said without affect.

Mr Laviera had an office with a desk, a big chair for himself and two smaller chairs on the other side of the desk, one of which Lamont was invited to sit in. Lamont sneaked peeks at the photos of Mr Laviera and people in his life that had been placed around the office. From the other side of a door that seemed to lead to an adjoining office Lamont could hear the muffled sounds of a radio.

‘Mr Williams,’ said the Deputy Head of Human Resources, ‘you might have some idea why you’ve been asked to come here today. One of our patients died recently, Mr …’ Juan Laviera clicked the mouse on his desk and squinted at his computer terminal, ‘Mr Henryk Mandelbrot. Did you know Mr Mandelbrot before he came to us?’

‘Before he came to the hospital?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ Lamont answered.

‘It seems that after his passing his family members came to collect his possessions and they allege that something was missing. Do you know anything about that?’

All at once Lamont Williams understood why he had been asked to come down to see the Deputy Head of Human Resources. It had nothing to do with the preparation of the paperwork necessary upon his completion of his six months as a probationary employee and nothing to do with grief counselling.

‘I think I know where you goin’ with this,’ Lamont said quietly.

‘Where am I going with this?’

‘This is about the candleholder, the Jewish candleholder.’

‘Yes, the candelabrum. Do you know anything about this?’

‘They call it a
menorah
. That’s what he told me. Yeah, I know about it.’

‘Did you … I’m sorry, I have to ask you this, Mr Williams. Did … You don’t deny – ?’

‘I have it but I didn’t steal it.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying he gave it to me.’

‘The patient?’

‘Right. Mr Mandelbrot gave me it.’

‘He
gave
you it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘As … like a gift?’

‘Right.’

‘Would you excuse me a minute, Mr Williams?’

‘Sure.’

‘No, I mean, would you mind waiting outside for a moment?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

It was early afternoon and, unusually for him at that time, Adam Zignelik was not teaching or in his office or anywhere else on campus but some two and a half miles uptown in his Morningside Heights apartment waiting for a van to come and deliver the contents of boxes he had packed. The boxes contained his career to date. He had emptied out his office of all but a few items. There was room on the bookshelves for much of its contents now that Diana wasn’t there. Where the hell was the van driver?

On the ground floor of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Lamont Williams got up from Juan Laviera’s office as requested and walked outside to where he had waited before. He had closed the door to Mr Laviera’s office but it had not shut tight. From the hallway Lamont heard Mr Laviera knock on and then open the door to the adjacent office. From the tone of his interaction with its occupant, theirs was an easy relationship.

‘Sorry to bother you, Dan.’

‘No, what’s up?’

‘I got him waiting outside.’

Lamont could hear the radio playing louder now that the two doors were slightly ajar.

‘He says he didn’t do it, didn’t steal it. Says the old man gave it to him.’

Lamont looked at the name on the outside door of the office next door to the Deputy Head of Human Resources. It belonged to the Head
of Human Resources, the man Mr Laviera was now talking to. It read, ‘Daniel Ehrlich, Head of Human Resources’. Where did Lamont know that name from? He used to go to school with a kid called Danny Ehrlich. It couldn’t be the same one.