Safe Passage (12 page)

    
And now he was wearing dress pants and a faded running shirt, and his hands were absolutely still.

    
At that moment an odd thing began to happen. The day began to take place outside of
Mag
. She had not felt this way for fourteen years, since her pregnancy with Simon, but she remembered the sensation well. Whenever she was pregnant, a fine veil would lower in front of everything beyond her, leaving her hazy except for her own workings. She would have preferred to concentrate on school, or later the jobs she had begun to take, getting down to the real business of her life—but she was helpless to stay the process. Each time, she drew back to her own center, monitoring the quickening in her belly, becoming absorbed. But then it had been births she was waiting for, and now it was a death. She was helpless before either of them. So without meaning to, she stood separate from herself, watching as if she were not really taking part.

    
The front door opened. She knew before she turned that it was
Izzy
and the twins, arriving after their ride up from College Park. She greeted them from her distance, having no power to propel herself nearer, yet noticing them with surprising clarity. As they crowded into the hallway out of the rain, she was struck by
Izzy's
dark beauty and the twins' homeliness, as if she were seeing them for the first time. She thought with perfect coldness that it was unfair her most brilliant son was also her most handsome. The twins' hair hung limp and almost white over high foreheads, while
Izzy's
dipped down onto a perfect dark brow—crisp, shiny hair, full of body and almost black.
Izzy
had a bright, intelligent gaze, too, while the twins had the vacant look of pale-eyed,
lashless
blonds—identical brooding Hamlets, though neither of them brooded much, and there were no Danish ancestors on either side. Then she recalled that the twins received attention because there were two of them, and she saw
Izzy
with his face contorted as it had often been when he took notes on suffering animals in the interest of science. From her distance she understood that
Izzy's
beauty did not help him, no more than
Percival's
ever had, coming so late—and she felt sad for all of them: the homely twins and Percival and
Izzy
all at once. And yet she felt removed from it, beyond it.

    
Izzy
kissed her, having grown to that level of maturity where kissing did not embarrass him; and the twins nodded and shuffled away. She saw that Merle looked different—worse—but before she could figure out why,
Izzy
said, "Heard anything yet?" and she forgot Merle, thinking instead, very objectively, that this question—"Heard anything yet?"
—was to be the refrain from now on, until they actually did hear something.
People would want to react appropriately to the news, though of course it was a matter of indifference to her how they reacted.

    
Neither
Izzy
nor the twins had brought laundry home with them. This had never happened before. She saw—in a cool, detached, probing way—that even in her grief, she was relieved they had brought no clothes for her to wash. She registered that as a strike against herself. And registered another: that in spite of the crisis, she still felt crowded by the boys' physical size as she always had since they had grown so large, and still hated feeling dwarfed, in her own house, by her own sons. She saw that
Percival's
death would make no difference in this regard—that she would not wish, even then, to have four or five grown boys so close to her. She was not capable of making even so small a sacrifice. And she was bruised by her selfishness.

    
When everyone had been greeted, they resumed their vigil in the family room. Patrick lay down on the couch again, listening to the TV with the washcloth over his eyes. Simon, immaculately clean in his odd clothes, sat at the far end of the couch on Patrick's feet. It was something he had done when he was a small child trying to maintain contact with an adult. His hands lay in his lap as if they had been paralyzed. The sight of them saddened her. Once, a few years ago, he had made a difficult basket in a game at the Y, and the coach had yelled in a voice that the whole gym could hear, "Nice play, Simon Singer." Trying to be nonchalant but unaware that he was giving himself away, Simon had walked down the court snapping his fingers. But now she feared the snapping was gone forever.

    
This seemed quite clear to her in her distant state. And not just that—but that all the boys would now lose something precious and irreplaceable. The joy in Simon's fingers might have been
Percival's
life. Or
Izzy's
occasional peace of mind when he was not worried about killing laboratory
dogs,
or Gideon glowing from exercise after a race.
As if, inside her, all of that was the same.

    
"Guess who, Dad," Merle said, sitting down on the couch so that Patrick had to move over to make room. She saw then that Merle had grown a mustache. A fine, bristly fuzz of hair above his upper lip. That was why he looked so terrible. The mustache seemed to be thicker on the right side than on the left—unbalanced—but the worst part was that it was spotty in places all the way across, pale and uneven, so that he gave the appearance of an unkempt animal. Odd that she hadn't noticed.

    
Patrick let his washcloth drop and felt Merle's face. "
M
for mustache," he said, smiling. "I didn't think you'd do it."

    
It was a sick joke. During a recent blind spell Patrick had noticed that the twins' voices were exactly alike. She had imagined the terror: of having your son speak, your own son, and not knowing who he was. But Patrick had said, lightly, "To tell the truth, one of my main concerns is

I'm going to tell the two of you apart if these eyes don't let up one of these days." As if there were no terror at all in the possibility of going permanently blind, but only practical matters to be dealt with. That afternoon he had made a show of reaching for the twins' feet, because often in warm weather Darren would put his shoes on and Merle would not. But both of them were barefoot that day, so nothing had been resolved.

    
"I guess one of us could grow a beard," Darren had said, in the high, thin tone their voices took on when they were upset.

    
"Nothing so spectacular, please."

    
"A mustache?"

    
"Let Merle grow the mustache. Then in case I go senile as well as blind, I'll have an easier time of it—
M
for Merle,
m
for mustache."

     
"God, Dad, don't be so morbid." But they had all laughed, and no one had expected, then, that Merle would actually grow the mustache. Now he sat on the couch, with fuzzy hair sticking out above his lip to please his father, and Patrick's face registered not his headache, not blindness, not Percival crushed…but delight.
Mag
saw herself in the Keys all winter, living under a hot sun, laughing at the sick humor he would require from her to deny the darkness: making sport of his
bumpings
into the wall, the crash of dropped dishes, the awkward journey through a rented cottage, unfamiliar terrain. If he would say simply, "Help me," then she would resent helping—another strike against her—but she would do it. And helping would be simpler than pretending that nothing had changed, just as they were pretending now that nothing had happened in Lebanon. Yet even those observations, much as they hurt her, seemed slightly distant from her, as if she were not quite there.

    
Merle got up from the couch, jostling Lucifer off Patrick's lap. The cat immediately climbed back up and draped itself around Patrick's neck instead. The sight unnerved
Mag
: of Patrick, looking cataract-eyed, acting as if he weren't, and the cat hanging over him like a shawl. For a moment the once-removed feeling vanished and she was filled with anger. "God, how can you stand that?" she yelled at Patrick. Ten years ago Simon had slung Lucifer around his neck when he was still a kitten, and the beast had never understood, later, that he was too old and too large for such a position.

    
"I'm putting him out, Patrick," she said. "I wish you wouldn't let him hang on you." She picked the cat up.

    
"Out in the rain?" Simon asked.

    
"A little rain won't hurt him."

    
She hated animals. Or rather, having seven boys, she hated the extra caretaking. They had had only one other pet, years before, and
Mag
regretted that one, too—a puppy who contracted distemper but instead of dying had recovered to a sort of listless invalidism, having convulsions every afternoon on the basement floor until she finally took it to the SPCA. Alfred had named the dog
Moanin
' after the sounds it made, and
Izzy
had taken notes on its condition for a science fair project. "That's a disgusting thing to do,"
Mag
had told him, but
Izzy
was so hurt by the dog's suffering and yet so intent on studying it for the sake of science that she hadn't pursued the matter. She had only outlawed pets entirely, and except for
Izzy's
snakes, which he insisted were scientific specimens, she might have succeeded.

    
Then Lucifer wandered into the yard the year Simon was four. Earless and
brotherless
six hours a day (the others were all in school), Simon had pleaded to take the cat in.
Mag
had relented. But she named it Lucifer to vent her feelings and grew more resentful as Simon lost interest in it and the cat transferred its affection to Percival. Years passed. Finally Percival left, Gideon was too busy running to pay it any attention, and the twins were absorbed in each other, so it began to cling to Patrick. She lifted the beast from Patrick's shoulders, carried it by the belly to the sliding glass door, and threw it out. "If he doesn't like getting wet, he can go into the garage," she said.

    
"Sadist,"
Izzy
told her.

    
"You're the animal lover, not me. Take him back to College Park if you feel so sorry for him. Put him in one of your labs." That was cruel, because
Izzy
really
was
engaged in animal research and had a horror of being dubbed a vivisectionist. But
Mag
did not regret saying it. A slogan came on the TV screen, announcing a newsbreak. They all turned toward the television.

    
"Because of the vast number of inquiries from families of the Beirut peacekeeping contingent," the announcer said, "the Marine Corps has announced that it will take the unprecedented step of preparing a list of survivors. However, spokesmen say that because rescue efforts are still under way and some units are scattered, a definitive list may take several days to prepare. For further information, relatives of those stationed in Beirut may call the following hotline number, which has been set up at Headquarters Marine Corps." A phone number was flashed on the screen.

    
"Alfred, call,"
Mag
said. But Alfred had already disappeared into the phone room. No one moved to turn down the TV, but they all strained to hear what he was saying beyond the door that separated the family room from the phone. There was only an unintelligible mumbling. When Alfred finally emerged, he had a deliberately blank expression on his face.

    
"It's just like he said—a list might take a couple of days to prepare. Each Marine has to be seen by a first sergeant or an officer. Then they'll make the list. Then they'll give the list to the hotline number and you can call in to find out who's on it."

    
Izzy
, scientific, said: "And what if they're hurt? What if they're dead?"

    
"Then it takes even longer. They don't announce it over the phone. First they make positive identification. Then they send someone to tell you—an officer or a chaplain."

    
There was a silence that touched
Mag
even in her distance. This was exactly what Beth O'Neal had told her. Everyone looked at the floor. A long moment passed. Then Patrick, as if to break the spell, said in a light, flip voice: "No chaplains, please." But he shivered as he spoke, and Simon rose from his position on Patrick's feet and covered his father with the afghan that was folded on the arm of the couch.

CHAPTER 5

    
Patrick had not meant to shiver. It was not at all what he'd intended. He only wanted to bring the situation back under control, what with
Mag
throwing the cat out of the house like a madwoman and
Izzy
bringing up the subject of injuries and deaths when clearly that was premature. They must not assume Percival was injured until they heard. But tending to that and his eyes at the same time… He had been having trouble all morning.

    
He thought his vision would have returned by now. It had been—what?—five hours? Six? The Valium had worn off and he hadn't taken more. Heart rate up again. He was full of the sensation of light having receded all around him, going dimmer and still dimmer, and of his pupils pulling shut, like
overtense
muscles clamping down, creating a charley horse in his eye. Then full darkness—five hours of it—and the sense of being trapped inside
himself
. His heart pounding like a kid's, slapping against his chest.
Imprisoned, blind, caged inside himself.
His head throbbed like a punching bag beneath a fist.