Middle Age (2 page)

But it was in a good cause, certainly. And I gave, for whatever it was worth, my
word
.

The injustice of the world depressed him, he must do his part to help.

Driving the traffic-slowed highway W north along the wide glittering Hudson River to Jones Point thirty miles above Salthill-on-Hudson. A town Adam didn’t know, had never before visited. A riverfront home, quite splendid, contemporary glass-and-redwood split-level overlooking the river, with a dock, at which
The Albatross
was moored.

ADAM BERENDT, who lacked all capacity for the supernatural.

Who could believe only in man. Not God.

ADAM BERENDT, without wife or children. (Yet there would be speculation: surely he’d been married at one time? Surely he, the most masculine-paternal of men, had sired children? Somewhere?) ADAM BERENDT, who was known to be a “partner” of some ambiguous kind with a woman named Troy, Marina Troy of the Salthill Bookshop on Pedlar’s Lane. (What was the relationship between Adam
Middle Age: A Romance

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Berendt and Marina Troy? Were they lovers, or only just friends? Or only just partners in the bookshop? And how much could Adam have invested in the doomed little store? For Adam had no income, no holdings except his house and land—did he? The subject of money, finances, business of any kind made him restless, uneasy; if he couldn’t escape, he became irrita-ble; roused to repugnance.)

ADAM BERENDT, who’d unconsciously taken for granted he would live forever.



T H R at Jones Point was wide, rough, slate blue in reflected light, its surface like something metallic, shaken. The wind was ideal, steady at about fifteen miles an hour. There were clouds high overhead but these were not storm clouds. There appeared to be, late in the afternoon, no threat of lightning or rain. The men intended to sail to West Point and back, and this was a reasonable goal—wasn’t it?

No, Adam Berendt hadn’t been drinking. Amid many others who were. His quick stoic smiling response when drinks were offered:
Thanks,
but no! Not for me. Club soda?

Possibly his host, the owner of the sailboat, had been drinking. The other men on the sailboat had been drinking. Everybody on the river! It was that kind of festive American holiday.

Firecrackers detonating like maniacal laughter.

Adam Berendt gave his companions on
The Albatross
the impression, as they would afterward recount, of being a capable, calm sailor. He’d told them he lived on the river, at Salthill. He was a thick-bodied muscular man, very self-possessed, with powerful shoulders, arms, legs; of only moderate height, but he’d seemed taller. He wore a white visored cap, a navy-blue pullover sport shirt that fitted him tightly at the midriff, rumpled khaki shorts, and rubber-soled canvas shoes. These shoes, and the bulky shorts, would immediately become water-soaked when he dived into the river, the weight pulling him down. Pulling at his heart.

The medical examiner at Jones Point Medical Center would confirm that Adam Berendt had no alcohol or drugs in his blood at the time of his death.

After a delay, the four men set sail at about five-thirty. The sun still high in the sky. Just enough wind, edged with a taste of something cool.



J C O

Of course, a sailboat on the Hudson River, there’s always some measure of danger. What pleasure would there be in sailing, otherwise?

What pleasure in life, otherwise?



T     at the home of L—, a lawyer attached to the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. L— was also a successful litigator in private practice. Adam Berendt had met L—

once or twice previously, the men had shaken hands but no more, they’d scarcely spoken before that day.

S—, another ACLU lawyer, a woman in her mid-forties who wore, that day, a youthful red halter-top sundress, told of how she’d been talking with Adam Berendt, whom she’d only just met, and he drew her aside and

“on the spot” made out two checks for the cause, each for $,. One to the ACLU, and the other to the National Project to Free the Innocent.

S— stared at the man in startled gratitude, and impulsively hugged him, kissed his coarse-skinned cheek; felt a sharp frisson of sexual attraction between them; and drew back blushing fiercely. “Adam, thank you! This is much appreciated.”

S— determined she would be seeing Adam Berendt again, soon.

S— determined she would be seeing a good deal of Adam Berendt, and intimately, soon. Or so she hoped.

The checks to be cashed on the day of Adam Berendt’s cremation.



I  Adam distrusts lawyers, why’s he with lawyers?

Speedboats rushing noisily past. Treacherous as giant wasps.

Rap music from a passing yacht. Dazzling white like
The Albatross
.

Adam has strapped on a life jacket like the other men. His left eye is leaking tears from the wind.

On the river, seen from a distance, boats appear graceful and swift as paper cutouts in the wind; but when you’re in one of the boats, on the water, there is little grace involved, there are clumsy maneuvers, shouted commands, trying to get along amicably with bossy strangers. The river, beautiful at a distance, is without color; composed of ropy strands of water; frothy, smelly. A mild taste of panic, imagining the underwater world.

Middle Age: A Romance

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What it is, beneath the surface, in that dense, dark place. What it is to drown.

Not now. Not today. Don’t think of it
.

He isn’t thinking of it. Nor does he allow himself to think as
The Albatross
lurches north along the river amid a discordant flotilla of other craft.

Why the hell am I here, why am I doing this?

Hoping he won’t throw out his back.

He’d been such a tough kid. A young man in his twenties, built like a steer. Now he’s grown a gut, he’s short of breath. Worried about his back.

God damn: a man should have more dignity, ideals. Helping his host good-naturedly with the sails. And damned heavy sails they are.

“Some life, eh?” one of Adam’s cheery new friends shouts at him, except Adam hears, “Some strife, eh?”

Thinking of Marina. Suddenly, guiltily. He should have called her that morning. She’s been waiting to hear from Adam for several days, she has a question to put to him.
Yes. I love you. But no, I can’t.

Don’t make more of me than I am. Forgive me!

It’s then that Adam begins to hear screams. Not certain at first what he’s hearing, the noise of waves and wind. For a moment his brain fails.

He sees the terrible fire leap. The first flames, and the soft explosion. Liquid flame flowing from his outstretched fingers rising to the low ceiling of the trailer, like lightning in reverse. And the screams. The screams! His mother, his six-year-old sister Tanya. Trapped by fire you scream, scream until you have no more breath to scream. Strangulated cries of pure agony, animal agony.
Help! Help us! Save us! Don’t let us die like this!
Adam is dazed, his consciousness gone, obliterated. He’s telling himself he can’t be hearing screams, not here, it’s firecrackers, chains of firecrackers like gunfire.

But no. These are human screams. Children’s screams, on the river.

About thirty feet from
The Albatross,
which is rocking in the wake of a careening speedboat, there’s a small orange Day-Glo sailboat rocking more dangerously, violently, the boat is swamped and capsizing. A boy of about twelve, skinny, in bathing trunks, and two younger children, helpless, screaming, suddenly in the river.

Adam, squinting, sees, or thinks he sees, that the children are not wearing life jackets.

Within seconds, Adam Berendt is in the water.

Swiftly, without taking time to think, to register wariness, or caution, or



J C O

fear, Adam dives into the water and begins swimming. His dive is a slap-dive, clumsy, awkward; he’s an overweight out-of-condition middle-aged man; in the adrenaline-rush of the moment recalling his young self, a vanished self, a boy lithe and wiry-strong and as expert in the water as a water rat, and as reckless. Now, he has time to register only
Something’s wrong
.

The water is damned unyielding, thick and sinewy as snakes, resistant, surprisingly cold, Adam senses he’s in trouble, he has overestimated his strength. Lifting his head, tries to keep the children’s sailboat in sight.

Glaring fluorescent orange, the mainsail floundering in the water. He tries to shout, “Hang on! I’m coming—” but swallows water, sputters and chokes. The other men on
The Albatross
watch in alarm, but only watch.



A   what a damned good swimmer. In the swift-flowing creek behind the trailer camp, after heavy rains. Rising to the girders of the bridge.

The cattle and lumber trucks rattling past into Helena, over that plank bridge. The raw smell of water and sewage mixed. But you didn’t mind the sewage, didn’t give it a thought. Just breathe through your nose. Don’t swallow.

Though Adam weighs now possibly one hundred pounds more than he weighed then. Aged eleven, twelve. The angry animal-happiness of that time. Before the other, the time to come. As a boy he’d been afraid of nothing. His name was Frankie: he was admired, he was feared, even older kids respected him. Certainly he hadn’t been afraid of the water, of swimming. Of diving from the bridge. A boy had drowned in the rushing water but not Frankie, who dodged and swam like a water rat, his limbs suffused with a powerful radiant strength, his sleek glistening combative soul shining like reflected light on the mucky, mud-colored water.

Always you believe you will live forever. Though others may fall away from you, and sink into death, oblivion.



A   in the direction of the capsized sailboat, arm over arm as always he’d swum, a pulse beating in his good eye, his blind eye useless. No reason for his sudden fear—is there? He can’t drown, that’s impossible. He’s wearing a life jacket, he can’t drown. But it’s difficult to
Middle Age: A Romance

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swim with the life jacket on, it’s difficult to swim
(he knows now: this is a
mistake)
with his shorts, his shoes, soaking wet, heavy. Sodden. Like concrete weighing him down. Like trying to swim uphill. (How, pedaling up the steep hill before entering the village of Salthill, passing the old Salthill Community cemetery, where weatherworn, mossy stone markers tilt in the mossy soil like tossed-away playing cards, etched with the faint fading numerals of the s. So long ago, Death couldn’t have been very real.

Adam, pedaling his bicycle, begins to feel his breath shorten, just perceptibly, a quick strange tightness in his chest he doesn’t acknowledge. Though remembering, since the previous April, how sweat breaks out on his forehead when he ascends this hill, when he hikes too briskly uphill, and Apollo trotting eagerly before him. What is it but weakness, God damn he will not give in to weakness.)

“Hang on—I’m almost there—”

Only a few feet away there’s a small blond girl in the water, her hair streaking down her face, face very pale, contorted in terror, she’s buffeted by waves, sinking, rising, clawing at the edge of the boat. The older boy, who’d been the sailor, has disappeared. Maybe he’s on the far side of the boat, maybe he’s under the boat, maybe he’s drowning, or swimming to shore to save himself. Adam sees only the little girl. He swims to her, he’s got hold of her. At last! He’s got hold of her. Grips her small shoulder, meaning now to wrest both himself and the child away from the sailboat, so that he can swim freely to shore, or to a dock, must be a dock nearby, except—Adam’s vision is blurred, he has only the one eye, streaming water. And he’s breathing hard, panting. And the child is kicking and struggling, panicked as a terrorized animal. Adam shouts at her, he’s got her, he will save her, Christ! he’s exhausted suddenly, an old man suddenly, the terrible leaden weight in his muscular legs, his arms, he has always depended upon his strength, now his strength is ebbing from him. Hours have passed, in less than three frantic minutes. Splotched sunlight moves like fireballs in the waves. He’s confused about directions. Which way—?

There’s another boat, a rescue boat, approaching. A swelling fiery ball in his chest. He’s wanted to hide it, this shameful fact, but it will no longer be hidden. His mouth opens, gasping for breath like a dying fish’s. His left eye, like his right eye, now blind. Except for the life jacket keeping him afloat he would sink, he’s useless now. The hysterical little girl is being lifted out of his arms into a boat. Into the arms of strangers? But where has this boat come from?



J C O

Adam doesn’t see. The fiery ball in his chest will not be placated. Pain, paralyzing pain of a kind he’s never felt before in his life, except the pain of that original fire, perhaps it’s the identical pain, and something strikes the crown of his head with such violence he’s beyond pain. Not thinking
At least—the girl is safe
. Not capable of thinking
I succeeded in this, at least
.

He has no breath. No strength. His left eye has gone out like a burst light-bulb. Adam Berendt, dying. The life jacket keeps the moribund body afloat like sodden laundry.

He will not know the name of the blond child for whom he has given his life.

 

If You Catch Me . . .

R

S  . . .



H  your life.A telephone ringing.

And maybe you’re still waiting for Adam Berendt to call.

And maybe you’re confused, your heart already pumping absurdly, when a stranger’s voice utters the name
Adam Berendt
and you answer eagerly, hopefully.

“Yes? I’m Marina Troy. What—what is it?”

That instant before fear strikes. Fear like a sliver of ice entering the heart.