The Executor Part 16

"I w-"

"You shall, because if you continue to argue with me, I shall sack you."

"With all due respect-"

"Enough," she said. "You will will leave, and you leave, and you will will cease to argue with me this instant, or else I shall call the police and have them take cease to argue with me this instant, or else I shall call the police and have them take you you away." away."

Silence.

"Is that clear?"

I was too startled to do anything but nod.

"The matter is settled," she said. She put her hand on her forehead; her body seemed to shrink a tiny bit. I could see how much the argument had taken out of her, and I felt awful for raising my voice. I started to apologize, but she shook her head. "I beg you, no more. I am tired and I should like to go upstairs, please."

This was her way of asking for help. I took her arm, and we walked to the stairs. It was slow going.

"Are you all right?"

"Come, now, Mr. Geist. Don't make me answer that."

As we climbed the first three steps, I felt her weakening, relying more and more on me to stay up. Midway up, she paused, breathing hard. "Perhaps I ought to remain here for a short while," she said.

With some hesitation, I said, "May I?"

She looked away. Then, to my surprise, she nodded.

Her body felt like straw, and as I picked her up, one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders, her head lolled against me, and her hair came loose, veiling her face. Beyond the perfume I smelled her, all eight decades of her, the commingled scents of a lifetime of activity and thought and movement and sorrow and joy and then, on the end, the bitterest finish. I feel no shame in saying that I wished she would fade away right then and there.

I had never been in her bedroom. As I brought her over the threshold, I was enveloped by a more concentrated version of that scent. I carried her to the bed, removed her shoes, and drew the blanket over her.

"Thank you." She sounded like ten percent of herself. "You are a good boy."

I told her I would be downstairs if she needed anything.

"Joseph ..."

"Yes, Ms. Spielmann?"

She didn't respond; she was already asleep. She had never used my Christian name before, and I stayed there for some time, watching over her.

16.

In the end I went. What choice did I have? I was afraid of what Eric would say to the police, and Alma's vehemence, however puzzling, was irrefutable. I had to trust that she was right, that I was being paranoid, and that if I wasn't, Eric would not be so stupid as to act now. One seldom truly believes that the worst will happen.

Before I left I apologized again.

She winked forgiveness. "Friends must be honest with each other, mustn't they?"

I told her I would call her once I touched down.

"Do not concern yourself with me," she said. "Put me out of your mind."

"You know I won't be able to do that."

"Do your best, Mr. Geist. Enjoy yourself. As the saying goes, we have only one life to live."

[image]

FATHER FRED was at the baggage claim to greet me.

"Welcome home," he said.

In the years since I had last seen him he had fallen straight into middle age: his face seamed, his eyebrows the color of Spanish moss. We embraced, and through his coat I felt bone.

"I was going to take a taxi."

"Your mother told me. That's why I'm here."

I'd forgotten what a crazy driver he was. We hit the interstate going ninety, giving us three quarters of an hour to talk. I asked after the church, after people close to him. When we got around to discussing the memorial, he employed his usual tact, never a bad word, although it was clear my mother had run him ragged.

"It's a blessing," he said, "if for no other reason than it's brought you back. I was afraid I wouldn't get to see you before I left."

"So," I said. "California."

He nodded.

"What's in California."

"This time next year, a lovely Catholic school near Santa Barbara will be in need of a princ.i.p.al. I'll be doing some teaching, too. They have an olive grove on the grounds. I went for a visit, and I'm pleased to report that the climate reminded me of Rome."

"... sounds wonderful."

"Joseph," he drawled, "you never were much of a liar."

Whatever ill will I'd felt upon getting the news from my mother had long since dissipated, certainly after I'd come through the revolving door to find him waiting for me. My urge to fix him in place was selfish, not to mention futile, and I wanted very much to be happy for him. I worked to muster more enthusiasm. "It won't be the same without you," I said.

"Oh, I don't know about that. One thing I've learned over the years is that it's impossible for a clergyman to overstate his own insignificance."

"And Mater Dei?"

"Father Martin's taking over. You've met him, I a.s.sume."

The other priest had freckles and blunted critical thinking skills. "Once or twice."

"He's extremely popular, as I'm sure you're aware. Almost every parish around here has been going downhill over the last five years. Ours is one of the few exceptions, and he gets all the credit for that. He has a background in computers. He made us a website, if you can believe it. I have an e-mail address now."

"I didn't know. I would have written."

"I've always had a phone."

"Mea culpa."

"At any rate, I'm very comfortable leaving the community in his hands. For all intents and purposes, it's already in them. What the Church needs now is new blood, people who can restore some of the trust that's been lost. I've had many good years here, and now things have changed. All part of His plan. I know you don't think there is a plan, but someday you'll see."

"You think?"

"I do. But either way, I believe G.o.d appreciates the fact that you've given Him a good deal of thought." He smiled, flicked on his turn signal. "Even if you came out wrong in the end."

As we left the interstate and headed along Riverfront, a light rain began to fall. We came to the place where my brother drove off the road, and Father Fred pulled over and cut the engine. Wet shadows streaked the interior of the car.

"I come here to reflect sometimes," he said.

"It's not very scenic."

"No. But it helps me remember."

I said nothing.

"I'll miss this place," he said.

"I never have," I said.

"You will." He started the car. "Someday."

THE MEMORIAL TOOK PLACE that afternoon in the church social hall. The aforementioned photo of Chris sat out on a stand near the entrance. Taken his freshman year of high school, it captured him in all his fresh-faced glory. There was a guestbook. I sat toward the front, where I wouldn't have to talk to people as they entered.

The turnout was much larger than I'd expected, close to forty, wives and children accompanying men my brother had grown up with. Father Fred spoke first, warmly recalling Chris's service. Then came the school friends, telling stories about the teenager they remembered and the good times they'd had-stories intended to be funny but that for the most part came across as elegies to adolescence. As per my mother's description, everyone had changed, few for the better. Tommy Snell was indeed as bald as his father; so was Kevin Connar, plus he had a gut the size and shape of a compost heap. I overheard someone whisper that he was gettin the gastric bypa.s.s.

My mother's friend Rita Green recited a selection from Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young." I was impressed by this until I realized that Father Fred had chosen the readings. She then presented, on behalf of the ladies' sewing circle, a check in support of Children's Hospital, and a wall hanging of a lighthouse, which, she explained, symbolized the presence of lost loved ones in our lives.

I glanced at my father. He, too, had aged. No longer the ox-like tyrant of my memory, but loose, soft, inert. He'd barely spoken to me since I'd gotten home, barely spoken at all. I wondered what he made of the people standing before him, evoking his dead son, singing of what had been and what would never be. If he heard an indictment, he did not show it. Sometimes I envied him: his was an unexamined life, and therefore a more peaceful one than I could ever have.

The ceremony ended, and I told my mother I'd see her back at the house. I asked Father Fred to drive me to the cemetery, where I could pay my respects in private, with words of my own, or in silence if I so chose.

STANDING IN THE KITCHEN, my ear plugged to block out the noise of the reception, I phoned Alma several times that evening. n.o.body ever answered, and each time I returned to the living room feeling incrementally more tense. By nine o'clock a handful of people remained, circling the crudites and a skinned-over bowl of onion dip. Tommy Snell did his best to engage me in a conversation about insoles. I told him it was good to see him and again made my way to the phone, sitting down alone at the breakfast table and trying to think of what I could possibly do for her from this far away. Most likely she wasn't picking up because she was in the throes of an attack-which, while upsetting to imagine, was far better than the alternative. I considered calling Drew, asking him to drop by. But she didn't know him, and moreover, if she was resting, she wouldn't answer the door any more than the phone.

"I'll be seeing you."

Father Fred was in the doorway, one hand up.

As I walked him out, we pa.s.sed through the living room-empty now except for my mother, who was stacking paper plates and stuff ing them into a trash bag. Father Fred kissed her on the cheek.

"It was a beautiful ceremony," she said. "Thank you."

"Thank you for suggesting it," he said.

She smiled tremulously. "I never do stop thinking about him."

"That's all right," Father Fred said. "You think as much as you want.

The katydids had begun their nightly riot. Father Fred regretted that a morning meeting kept him from driving me to the airport. I thanked him and wished him luck.

"I have e-mail now," he said. "No excuses."

I watched him peel out, debating whether I ought to try Alma one last time. It was close to ten P.M., eleven in Cambridge. I had left my parents' number with her-all but irrelevant if anything had gone seriously wrong. I told myself I was getting lathered up over nothing, and had just begun to believe it when a crash from inside the house brought me hurrying up the front walk.

My mother was standing in the center of the living room. Her face was dry, and the only way to tell she was crying was by looking at her stomach, which convulsed as she watched my father try to tip over the china cabinet. He'd had greater success with a gla.s.s end table, which now consisted of a circular faux-bra.s.s frame and a sea of shards. The cabinet didn't give in quite so easily. A good eight feet tall and loaded down with plates, it would raise up a few inches before my father lost his grip and the whole thing slammed back down, narrowly missing his toes. That this was such a tiresome and involved process spoke to the pa.s.sage of time; in his prime, he would have already dealt with the cabinet and moved on to something else. Now, though, he was sweating, bent over and putting his back into it, grunting swinishly.

And laughing. He was laughing like a maniac. That wicked sense of humor of his was intimately connected to his physical vitality. Both had attenuated with age, and watching him heave and oink and giggle, I realized what it was he was trying to achieve: resurrection through an act of destruction.

"Dad," I said.

He ignored me. My mother looked at me beseechingly, though I did not know whether she wanted me to go on or to shut up.

"Dad. Stop it."

He grunted, slipped, almost fell, steadied himself, began again to push.

I took him by the arm; he flung my hand away and turned on me, smiling c.o.c.keyed, stink rising off him in great brown waves.

"Joey," my mother said.

"Go to bed," I said.

"Let's dance," my father said.

He pitched forward into my arms. The smell was even worse from up close.

"Oh, how we danced," he sang.

I tried to hold him still.

"Dance, you little s.h.i.+tbird."