Fire & Water (46 page)

At first nothing of Jake was recognizable. His hair was pulled straight back from his face, revealing the pale swath of his forehead. Sooty smudges lined his jaw. His face was more grotesque catcher’s mitt than human face: gray and misshapen, covered with abrasions. His nose bore cuts deep enough to reveal shining white cartilage. The lips I’d kissed a million times were no longer full and ripe, but colorless and twisted.

On his torso, beneath the feathery tufts of chest hair, was a sutured, T-shaped incision, starting at the hollow of Jake’s throat, disappearing beneath the drape that covered his lower body. Like it was her signature, I recognized the perfect evenness of Mary K’s surgical handiwork that closed the gash. Across his chest, where so many times I’d rested my head, Jake now wore a gaping wound that no stitching could disguise. The flesh was shredded and pulpy; its resemblance to the gashes in his New York exhibit caused me to feel lightheaded.

I hoped to see his wedding ring; the platinum wreath of twigs that was the perfect mate to mine, but Jake’s left arm had been severed at the elbow—lost to the sea.

Nothing of this body before me conjured Jake for me until I spied the fine white crosshatch of old scars over his arms, chest, and abdomen. I looked up at Mary K, whose expression told me that we were both looking at the same perversely beautiful pattern.

“That’s a fuckload lot of scars, Murphy.”

In the thick of his bushy, dark eyebrow, I found the single small scar, offset from the symmetry of the others. It was an insignificant white line—nothing by comparison to the gouges that now riddled his body, and miniscule in comparison to the elaborate mesh of self-inflicted scars. For an instant I was no longer standing in the morgue. Instead I stood beside an examination table in an ER, yellow wires protruding from Jake’s ears and the buzz of music, while I stitched his brow. A sideways smile. His cocky swagger. His penetrating gaze.

I reached out and touched the fine white line. His skin was cool, but I felt the warmth of recognition radiating through my fingertips.

Mary K looked over her shoulder. “Murphy.”

I jerked my fingers away and stepped back. After one last look I closed my eyes. Mary K picked up my silent signal and pulled the draping over Jake’s face.

“Let’s go up to my office,” she said. “You look a little green.”

* * *

Mary K pulled out her desk chair, inviting me to sit. She drew a plastic bottle of orange juice from the fridge under her desk. I welcomed its sweetness in my dry mouth.

“You gonna puke or faint?”

“I’m all right.”

“Look Murphy, I took a look at the tox results just before you got here. They’re going to release them to the media.”

My heart galloped. I had exhausted myself wondering if the cruel blows of the helicopter crash had been softened by a pillow of narcotic numbness. Was it a drugged haze that clouded his judgment and slowed his reflexes, causing the crash? Was it all just another colossally impulsive act that had gone awry? Or had Jake been fully conscious, fully intending all of this?

“Clean,” Mary K said.

Surely I had heard her wrong.

“Nothing?” I asked. It seemed impossible. “Not antipsychotics? Not antidepressants? No speed, barbiturates, heroin?”

“The boy didn’t have so much as baby aspirin in his system.”

I pulled in a great swallow of air.

“I double-checked the labs myself.”

“So did you conduct the autopsy?”

She shook her head. “Nope, wouldn’t be ethical. I know the deceased. Given the high profile, the brass wanted everything by the book with this one.”

“But the stitching—”

A shy look crossed Mary K’s face. “They usually staple up a body that’s going for cremation. I asked to close. Thought Bloom would appreciate being sewn up right, even if it will only be for a couple of days.”

This macabre act of kindness flooded me with gratitude and sorrow. I steeled myself, preparing for my friend’s answer to the next question. “Cause of death?”

Mary K looked at me, the directness of her gaze penetrating past my skin and looking deeply into me. “Massive impact to the chest,” she said. “The steering column crushed right through the sternum. He hit the bridge tower head on. Punctured the heart and lungs. I’m guessing he didn’t even have time to say
oh shit.
”

The moment it was lifted, I knew the weight of the worry I’d carried that Jake’s suffering had been prolonged. We sat together in silence while I absorbed the meaning of all that I’d just heard.

Mary K wiped her palms on the front of her jeans. “Kind of weird timing here, Murphy, but… you ready for some good news?” She lifted one eyebrow and gave me a slanted smile. “Looks like you’re going to be Auntie Kate. Andra’s got a baby on board. Found out today.”

Joy rose effervescent, like bubbles rising from the bottom of a deep pool. “Baby? You said
baby
, right? So you’re together?”

“What can I say, Murphy? She couldn’t live without me.” Mary K gave a low chuckle, then her smile faded. “Straight up? You and Bloom got me thinking. Maybe this love stuff is a pretty rare thing. You walked through hell for it. All I’ve got to do is say yes. We’re all only here for a little while, right? Who knows how long any of us has?”

I glanced around the room at the bulletin board plastered with grotesque photographs of mutilated corpses. “No kidding.”

“The tick of Andra’s biological clock just got too loud to ignore, with or without me. She went to a clinic, picked a daddy from a book, and got herself knocked up. Called me to let me know right before we went to New York. She’s kind that way. Didn’t want me to hear it through the grapevine. When I saw her… all happy and glowing, well—”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I planned to, but then things went haywire with Bloom. But things are good. She moved into my house last week. We’re fixing up a nursery. All that gooey mommy stuff.”

“Mary Louise Kowalski, in love and with a baby on the way. As I live and breathe.”

“We’ll be Mommy Squared, or something like that. I guess we’ll make like
Leave It to
Beaver
.” Mary K’s mouth twisted into a sly grin. “But with double the beaver.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“News of my impending motherhood ought to get me disowned for good by the rest of my family. Glad I’ve got you and yours. Takes a village, right? I’m going to need the help of some great moms. You and Alice will be my first line of defense.”

It felt like my heart was being knit back together. Mary K still regarded me as a good mother after everything she’d seen, and I could think of no better mother than Alice. “And the baby? Details, Kowalski. Details.”

“Due in mid-May. Don’t know the gender yet, but I’m hoping for a shortstop with a gun for an arm. Look, Murphy. I wanted to tell you, but I just couldn’t seem to find the right time.”

“And the morgue after viewing the corpse of my husband is the perfect moment, I suppose.” Mary K’s hoarse laugh joined mine.

Finally, my strength returned. “How about we go to Murphy’s? There’s a crew of people there that could use some good news. Ryan is going to flip. Alice will never stop crocheting booties.”

Mary K grabbed her keys from her desk drawer. “I’ve had enough of this tomb. What’s say we blow this pop stand?”

* * *

Three days later, two days before Christmas, San Francisco Bay’s gray waters matched the mood of all on board the luxury yacht, Latitude. The unseasonably warm day was a kindness. The captain cut the engine and dropped anchor just south of Angel Island. The Golden Gate stood luminous, cinnamon against a moody sky. A cold breeze blew to remind us that it was winter. All of us stood in a circle on the deck of Latitude.
Tully, Alice, and Dad together, as always, with Dr. Schwartz sitting in a deck chair beside them. Father Sean wore white robes of celebration as I’d requested. Mary K and Andra stood together, Andra’s lean body just beginning to soften with pregnancy. Dahlia de la Rosa gave me a small smile from across the circle. Beside her stood Dr. John Marshall and Maggie Simon, the nurse who had helped deliver Ryan, looking unfamiliar in street clothes. Burt, big as a redwood, held Ryan’s hand and she held mine. I was surrounded by a circle of friends and family that had been with me at every step, though I’d lost track of them along the way.

Father Sean spoke of God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness. “We are human,” he said, “endowed with the gifts of our humanity as well as its frailties. The God I know is big enough to understand it all and love us with all of our flaws.” He looked at me with kindness in his eyes. As he spoke on about understanding and forgiveness, I looked around the circle. These people had taught me so many lessons. They’d taught me about unconditional love. They’d taught me about devotion and generosity and gentleness. But my family had also taught me about secrecy—a lesson that, when combined with my pride, had become my worst flaw.

I let the soft warmth of the sun find my face, and with it I felt washed clean, the mistakes I’d made vanquished. I looked over to see Burt’s glowing face. I returned his smile and lifted Ryan’s hand to my lips, giving her hand a tender kiss. Burt repeated my gesture with her other hand.

Next to the urn that held Jake’s ashes sat a bundle of twisted willow branches wrapped in yellow flower petals, Ryan’s way of showing her dad that she’d forgiven him, too.

At the boat’s stern, outside the circle, stood Aaron Bloom, his gaze locked onto the bridge in the distance. As though gravity tugged harder where he stood, the distinguished man’s face was pulled downward. Despite an impeccably tailored suit and his enormous influence, this icon of a man was simply a father who had lost his only child. He appeared as destitute as anyone I’d ever seen.

Tully cleared his throat, straightened his clip-on tie, and stepped forward. “I don’t never know what to say at times like this,” he said. “But my old friend Ivan has been coaxing me to read some of his books now and then. And I read them sometimes, at least when there’s no good ball game on.”

Smiles cut through tear-stained faces. Tully cleared his throat again. “Ivan helped me out by marking some of his favorite poems to guide me along. This one might work for today. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases. It will never pass into nothingness, but still will keep. A bower of quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.’”

Tully pulled a small white stone from his pocket. “We always leave one of these on Elyse’s grave when we go to see her.” After a gentle kiss, Tully set the stone next to the vase of willow branches.

Burt’s eyes were hooded and red. He squatted down next to Ryan and smoothed her curls as they blew around her pale face. She leaned into him and stroked his auburn beard with her long, slim fingers.

Father Sean nodded to me. I lifted the urn and held it to my chest. I expected a rush of memory, an explosion of tears. Instead, I felt only the sensations of my body: the sway of the boat; the steady beat of my own heart; the smooth inhale and exhale of air through my lungs. Jake had been a flicker of brilliance, made more vivid by how quickly it had passed, but the fog-cloaked sun reminded me that my light and Ryan’s still shone behind this veil of sadness.

Burt walked forward with Ryan. She picked up the bundle of branches. Her eyes reflected the calm of the gray sky. “Now, Mommy?”

I nodded. “Now, baby.”

One at a time she tossed the branches into the water below. We watched as the current embraced them, stripping the petals from the limbs until they became a yellow ribbon winding through the water. I tilted the urn over the bow of the boat and poured. At first the ashes were a smoky cloud, but the breeze shifted again, letting them flutter to join the petals. The ash and petals wound their way across the water’s surface toward the west—toward the Golden Gate.

* * *

After the memorial everyone returned to Murphy’s. The pool table held a feast of ham, three-bean salad, and Bundt cakes provided by the ladies of St. Anne’s. The table was covered with a clean, white cloth, decorated with embroidered lilies, roses, and ranunculus. “Blooms,” Alice explained. “I thought Jake would feel honored.”

With his topcoat neatly draped over his forearm, Aaron Bloom and I found a quiet corner.

“Katherine,” he said, his voice muted and tender. “I’m grateful to be included today. Your family has been extraordinarily kind.

I wanted to reach to him, to soothe him, but something stopped me.

In his father I could see the face that Jake would have eventually worn; his eyes the same amalgam of grays and greens. And I could also see the flecks of gold, the lion lurking behind the mossy camouflage.

“There was a great deal that Jacob and I did not understand about one another.” His lips stiffened. “But I did love him, Katherine. Perhaps I loved him as much as you did, but not nearly as well.”

A swell of pity filled me for the man the world regarded as impenetrable. In the last weeks of Jake’s life, Aaron Bloom had done what he never had before. He had been present. Burt told me that Aaron Bloom had spent every visiting hour at the hospital, flying back to Manhattan in his helicopter to handle business overnight, then returning the next morning with
The New York Times
and fresh bagels. He and Jake had sat in the solarium solving crossword puzzles and sharing walks surrounded first by the falling leaves and then the first snow.