Safe Passage (15 page)
Authors: Ellyn Bache
"Yes, Percival Singer is over there,"
Mag
heard one of the twins say from inside the phone room. The voice was
wobbly,
the thin whine the twins always lapsed into when they were upset. "No, no—you better talk to my mother," the voice said. Then Darren poked his head out and handed her the phone.
"We understand you have a son in Lebanon," the reporter said. "Have you any word….
What nerve! She knew why Darren sounded so upset. To call at a time like this…She knew what Patrick would do: He would keep his voice firm, deep, as if to say, "Listen, fellow, I'm in charge here." He would talk the reporter into finding out what he could and calling them back, saying that if you were clever you could even turn their curiosity to your advantage. But
Mag
could only stand there with a sour rage burning in her throat.
"I'm sorry, we don't know anything," she managed finally.
"Of course, Mrs. Singer. In the meantime…" The dramatic pause. "We'd like to come out and speak to you. We know it must be difficult…."
A fine thread of pain wended its way through her skull. "No. We couldn't do that right now." She wanted to say something tactful: This is difficult not just for us—for all the families. She wanted her voice to sound inscrutable, especially since Darren had sounded so terrible. But nothing came. She put the phone back on the hook.
Darren was staring at her. "You'd think at a time like this, at least they'd leave us alone," he said.
"Are you kidding?"
She intended to put her music back on. But the doorbell rang. The
Jacobis
, the
Haverfords
, neighbors from blocks around, saying, "Oh,
Mag
, how terrible. What have you heard?" Bringing casseroles, banana bread, cloth-covered jars of jam made last summer for Christmas but ferreted out now in October: offerings in exchange for information. Alfred took the food and ushered them back out, but Patrick did not appear.
Mag
had to talk when his old Aunt Kay called from Maine, had to explain to his entire staff from the plant…. Her own parents and sister phoned too—she didn't mind that—and she told them there was no need to come just yet (where did they think she would put them?), but she felt abandoned when she had to deal with people she didn't even know.
Where was Patrick?
Two more small newspapers called wanting interviews and finally the
Washington Post.
The local TV station offered to send a reporter any time the family deemed convenient; a talk-show host from Radio 63 called, claiming to be an old high school friend of
Izzy's
.
"Not me. Never heard of him,"
Izzy
said afterward.
"This is ridiculous,"
Mag
said. "I'm not talking to them anymore."
So the twins dealt with the media people, though it seemed odd, what with their upset-sounding voices, which usually embarrassed them but now did not seem to. The only sense
Mag
could make of it was that somehow they had taken over because they had been attached more to Gideon than Percival all these years and therefore would be less emotional. But she felt selfish for thinking that, and of course their voices gave them away. After more than an hour Patrick finally appeared, shaved and showered and dressed as if he'd never been blind. She wondered why she had missed him.
"We should eat," Alfred said, though by now it was well past lunchtime. They had not eaten all day, had only had endless cups of tea and snacked on a coffee cake a neighbor had brought, so that crumbs now lay all across the family room carpet. Alfred put one of the casseroles in the oven to warm.
Izzy
got out paper cups and plates, and Patrick opened a jar of homemade pickles someone had put on the counter. Everyone seemed awfully calm, unaffected by the phone calls and visits and lack of information on TV—calm in the face of crisis.
Mag
would have preferred them to scream and cry and pound on the table.
When they all sat down, Simon began digging dirt from under his fingernails with a steak knife.
"Don't do that, it's disgusting,"
Mag
said. She did not actually care that it was disgusting or have any real reaction to it. She was looking at his missing ear—or rather the hair that covered his missing ear. She would not forgive Patrick for trying to talk Simon out of plastic surgery just because he thought Simon was making one of those infamous deals with God. She herself had no such objections to such deals, if they did you some good. Sometimes they were all that was left, though in her mother-in-law's case they had been carried to an extreme.
Alfred dished out the casserole—a glop of different cheeses, holding together noodles and chopped meat. Simon ignored his plate and dug harder under his index finger until a little line of blood appeared beneath the nail. She wondered if he would always mutilate his fingers now, instead of snapping them.
"Put the knife away, Simon," she said. "I mean it."
"Better take it to have it disinfected," Merle said.
"Yeah, boil it for a couple of hours," Darren said.
Simon got up and dropped the knife in the sink. He did not wash his hand. Blood seeped out from beneath the nail and reddened the tip of his finger. The sight of it made
Mag
turn away, though she was not usually squeamish. Something terrible occurred to her. If Simon had the ear fixed, it would be bloody like this. If Simon had the ear fixed, he could die.
"I think Dad's right," she said suddenly. "I wouldn't make any grand commitments about having the ear done right now.
"I thought you wanted me to," Simon said.
"Yes, but not like this. You don't make a decision like this during a crisis.
"Your mother's making sense for once," Patrick said. He had no right to make it sound as if she was normally unreasonable. She saw with perfect clarity that the situation was beyond reason. Simon's difficulties after the tonsil operation had been a warning for him never to have surgery again. That was why he was so afraid. He thought he was trading his own life for
Percival's
. It might be true. Or Simon might die and Percival, both. The punishment could be two sons. Three. All seven.
"You're the one who's been pushing the operation," Simon said.
"I know, and I'm not saying don't do it,"
Mag
said, although of course she was. "I just don't want you to decide right now.
"Well, I'm having it done," Simon said.
Alfred was watching her, as if he expected her to eat. She was so far from eating noodles and meat and cheese.
"Mother, I don't understand you," Alfred said, trying to lighten the mood. "I'm not condoning Simon's methods, but you have to consider that when Percival comes home now, you've got Simon on the spot. He'd never back down on something he says he'll do for Percival. You should exercise your advantage while you've got it."
Simon wiped the blood from his finger with a napkin. It was Simon's blood and also the blood of Marines, sinking into the dusty soil of the Beirut airport. "Percival might not be coming home," she said.
"
Mag
, don't start that," Patrick said. He put some of the noodle glop into his mouth, to show how irrational she was being, to stress the need for calm. They were all eating.
It was possible at this moment, while Patrick was chewing
noodles, that
Percival had been under the rubble for more than twelve hours. The weight of it would have been bearable at first and then not. Breath squeezed out little by little, and no strength to draw more.
"Please, Simon, I don't want you to decide right now,"
Mag
said. Her voice was strained, almost hysterical. Patrick looked at her with disgust.
"I told you, I've already decided," Simon said.
She saw him dead on the operating table—a slow numbness—and Percival crushed. She saw everything. Her heart being cauterized one-seventh at a time, annihilated, leaving the flesh dead and useless and the pain spreading out and out. And Patrick continued to eat.
CHAPTER 6
At four P.M. Mountain Time (six Eastern Daylight Time), Gideon was sitting in the Denver airport waiting for a plane to Chicago, where he would get a flight to Baltimore or Virginia or D.C. and find his way home over land from there.
He was having considerable difficulty moving his limbs, but even so, he made himself walk to the pay phone a hundred feet across the concourse to call the hotline number they'd been posting on the television. He'd watched the news in the airport snack bar long enough.
"Major Williams," a voice said. Gideon's immediate thought was that if a major was answering, the situation was at least as bad as they said on TV, maybe worse. It was a lot more serious than his father had made it out to be.
"My name is Gideon Singer and I have a brother, Percival Singer, stationed in Beirut," he said. "I wonder if you have any word on him yet." As he spoke, he felt he ought to know
Percival's
unit number or other details—and that the lack of them made him sound foolish and suspect. But the major did not seem to care.
The major gave him a long explanation of the procedure they were following to identify the surviving Marines—how each one would have to be seen personally by a first sergeant or company commander before his name could go on the list, and how fragmented the units were at this time, and how this made the procedure painfully slow.
"What if he's wounded?"
"He would be moved out. Again—it could take time."
"And if he's dead?"
"Son," the major said, "you might not hear anything one way or another for a couple of days."
The heaviness in Gideon's limbs became something he could see, not with his eyes but with his muscles. It was an odd sensation. He made his way back to his chair.
The day had started out like any other Sunday, which seemed quite ironic now. The most ironic thing was he'd thought about Percival while he was running this morning, which was something he never allowed himself to do. Sitting in the plastic airport chair, his legs felt heavy and he was afraid. Until now he'd always been able to count on his body reacting a certain way, even when he couldn't count on his father or his brothers or anything else. Now his legs might have been full of lead. He thought this morning's run over again because he was afraid it would be the last one he would actually be capable of making.
Sunday was the only day he ran alone—twelve miles, on the road. "Long slow distance," his coach always said. "Very good for endurance." He always reviewed his Saturday
crosscountry
races as he ran on Sunday because they were fresh in his mind and gave him something to do. If he waited for the week to begin, his thoughts would be too jumbled, what with his three-hour physics labs and running workouts twice a day—pace work with the team, barriers, hills, speed training. But on Sundays he ran alone, and he could think clearly.
He'd started out in his usual way. After sleeping a little later—a gift he allowed himself—he rolled out of bed into the chilly air. He put on shorts and a top and a pair of
RipOffs
over that and went downstairs out of his apartment onto the road.
Maybe it was the landscape that started him remembering. After a year at Weber State, he usually didn't notice it, but this morning the stark Utah autumn seemed strikingly different from Maryland's, where humid green Septembers gave way to wine and gold Octobers before the trees went bare. Here, the colors had faded quickly to yellow and then were gone. Cold from coming out of the warm apartment, Gideon wondered if the leaves were still on the trees in Maryland and thought they were. He remembered running home with Percival when they were much younger, on an October day just like this, after their mother threw them out of the car. The main thing that had kept him going, he remembered, was looking at the leaves.
It was one of the first times he had run with Percival. He'd gone because he felt his mother was unfair to put only Percival out of the car when he himself was equally responsible for the fight they were having. Percival was noisy and had attracted her attention, but Gideon had started it by silently pinching Percival on the arm.