Safe Passage (7 page)

CHAPTER 3

    
AIfred
woke the instant the phone rang, before Cynthia had a chance to stir. He had been expecting a middle-of-the-night call for months—some emergency about his father's eyes. He was prepared to get up in the darkness and rush Patrick to the emergency room, even to Hopkins in Baltimore if necessary. He did not expect an incident in Beirut. When Simon gave him that and his father's eyes at the same time, a sharp pain cut through his belly—adrenaline probably—and settled into a knot that would not go away.

    
Cynthia turned over as he hung up. "What is it?" Her voice was hoarse with sleep and her large breasts moved beneath her gown. He did not expect to be affected by the sight of her just then, but she was wearing flannel against the cold, and the thick material made her seem softer, more vulnerable than she did in cotton or lace. For a moment he was filled with such a sense of her lushness that Simon's call made him feel like a man in exile—suddenly barred from his bed and what seemed, in retrospect, perfect happiness. He foresaw days of waiting, sorrow, tragedy, when happiness would be inappropriate and he would feel guilty even for his desire.

    
Her hand was on his wrist, and her breasts moved against his arm. "My mother overreacting again, I think," he said in a voice pitched to let her go back to sleep. "Probably nothing." Watching Cynthia roll back over, he felt exactly as he had as a boy in his grandmother's house in Maine, aware of the Lifesavers he'd stashed in his pockets to hedge against the skimpy meals, but too ashamed to eat them because his brothers were not similarly fortified and his father expected him to make do with Angela's cooking. Now he knew he wouldn't be able to touch Cynthia for as long as it took to handle this crisis, and was embarrassed for wanting her. The knot in his stomach grew tight. In the living room, dressed, he closed all the bedroom doors to shield Cynthia and her boys from sound. Then he turned on the TV to learn what was happening in Lebanon.

    
When he got to his parents house an hour later, his father was lying on the couch with a washcloth over his eyes, and his mother and Simon were sitting there soaked from delivering the papers, which gave some indication of their states of mind. The TV was on full blast, though for the moment no newscaster was on the screen, but rather an evangelist. Patrick never watched religious shows of any kind.

    
"Give the most you can, sisters and brothers," the evangelist was saying, "the most you possibly can to spread the word of
Gawd
."

    
They were all absorbed in it. Alfred had come in the front door, not silently. None of them said a word to acknowledge he was there.

    
"And tell us your want," the evangelist said. "We'll put your pledge to work and we'll do our best to pray over your want."

    
"Your
want
?" Patrick echoed.

 
   
Alfred strode across the room. "I can't believe you're watching this." He changed the channel.

    
"Oh …Alfred,"
Mag
said, suddenly aware of him. "The program comes on when they take off the news."

    
Patrick, still on the couch, said, "If God really cares how people act in the world, I have to believe He's pissed off at that guy."

    
"Patrick, don't,"
Mag
said. She never liked him to speak disrespectfully of God, just in case.

    
Alfred had anticipated their disarray. The first thing he intended to say was that, statistically at least, it was unlikely Percival had been killed or even hurt. Alfred wasn't sure it would help, but it was logical and they would all feel the need for logic.

    
"That dog went after Simon again," his mother said in an expressionless voice. "It bit him once already."

    
"Twice," Simon said.

    
"Twice!" his mother yelled.

    
Simon opened the Velcro leg seam of his
RipOffs
sweatpants, to reveal a dark bruise on his calf. "It didn't break the skin."

     
"He can handle the dogs,
Mag
," Patrick said. His voice was muffled under the washcloth.

    
"I called Camp
Lejeune
," Alfred told them in the calm tone he had prepared. Percival had been stationed at Camp
Lejeune
in North Carolina before he went overseas. "They say only one building was involved in the blast. There are a number of buildings."

    
Mag
and Simon stared at him. It seemed as if Patrick was staring, too, though the washcloth was fast against his eyes. The knot in Alfred's stomach contracted like a fist.

    
"Yeah, only one
building,
" Simon said. "Only the headquarters."

  
"They don't know much about the casualties," Alfred said.

    
"Does that surprise you?" Patrick asked.

    
"It's only been a couple of hours."

    
"A couple of hours."

    
"More like eight hours," Simon told them. "It was just after midnight here when it happened. That's more than a couple of hours."

    
"You should take your shower," Alfred said, noticing that Simon was hugging himself into his dripping sweatshirt, looking pale and ill.

    
His mother studied Simon, though she was equally wet. "You're going to catch a cold."

    
"That would be just some tragedy right now, wouldn't it?" Simon said. "Me catching a fucking cold."

    
Mag
ran her hand through her hair. "Simon, don't. No F-words. Not now." Simon stared at the floor.

    
A newscaster had come on. He was retelling what they already knew. Alfred turned the sound a little lower. He did not see the value in hearing such things over and over again.

    
"I called
Izzy
," he announced. "He's picking up the twins and bringing them home." Darren and Merle were freshmen at the University of Maryland; they lived in a dorm and did not have a car. As a graduate student there,
Izzy
had his own apartment in College Park and a car that had been in the family for years. "I thought we'd wait a little to call Gideon. It's two hours earlier in Utah. We might as well wait till he gets up.

    
His mother was not listening to him. She focused on the TV set. "Ironically," the announcer was saying, "casualties may be higher because on Sunday morning many of the men were asleep. Sunday is the one day most of them did not have to report for duty."

    
"I can't listen to this anymore,"
Mag
said. She rose and went into the living room. Her shoes were so wet that they made a sucking sound as she walked across the carpet. They could hear her flip through her record case. A moment later she turned the stereo on, loud enough to drown out the news on the family room TV…and also, Alfred suspected, the thoughts that must be racing through her mind.

    
His father shifted on the couch.

    
"You want me to say something to her?" Alfred asked.

    
"No. Give her a few minutes."

    
"Christ," Simon said.

    
"This would be a good opportunity to shower," Alfred told him.

    
"Not yet," Simon said.

    
The walls of the family room vibrated with the crashing music from the stereo. Simon watched the TV, though the sound was inaudible over the music. Patrick lay still on the couch and seemed to be asleep. Alfred didn't think he really was. It was unlike his father to abdicate in times of stress. After five minutes of the music playing at full volume, Alfred trailed his mother into the living room. She was curled into the corner of the sofa, knees up, chin resting on them, arms wrapped around her leg—a fetal position, catatonic, staring into the music. The position struck him as even more unbalanced than her wet clothes. He turned the stereo down so he could talk to her.

    
"Mother, don't," he said. "Everyone will be coming home soon."

    
"Every time the doorbell rings," she said, "we'll think
it's
bad news."

    
"It won't be. It'll be
Izzy
and them.
And then the neighbors.
As soon as they hear, you know they'll start coming over."

    
"A social event."

    
"They'll bring things to eat. It will be out of kindness."

    
His mother rose from the sofa and turned up the music again. It was Mussorgsky's
Pictures at an Exhibition
. He knew the piece well. It had been one of his favorites when he was a child—full of horns and cymbals, not too
violiny
. But his mother only played it when she was upset. Her music always reflected her moods: opera when she felt sentimental—
Madama
Butterfly
or
Aida
, always Puccini or Verdi; sweet ballet music when she felt nostalgic—
Swan Lake
in warm weather,
The Nutcracker
in cold; Chopin polonaises when she was restless. When he was in grade school she'd always played
Gaiete
Parisienne
on the nights his father stayed out late—wild, untamed-sounding stuff—and now that he was living with Cynthia, he felt he understood. But
Pictures at an Exhibition
she saved for when she was upset about the children.

    
The last section of the piece was playing—"The Great Gate at Kiev." He was six or seven when she'd told him about it. Each part of
Pictures
represented a picture at an actual exhibition, she'd said. One painting was of the city of Kiev, of the gate. The music was about the painting. "Try to imagine it. It makes it more fun."

    
So he'd tried. "Kiev is in Russia," she'd announced, setting the Q-R volume of the encyclopedia before him, opened to the section on Russia. He was too young to make out most of the words, but he'd looked at the photograph of the domed Russian church in Red Square. Afterward, listening to the music, he'd imagined tall wrought-iron gates leading into a city named Kiev. Beyond the gates he'd pictured a domed church like the one in the encyclopedia, but surrounded by a grassy yard and stone paths instead of sidewalks.

    
In the music, bells rang. There was a sound of stars falling, or maybe confetti—
star
confetti—and then a gong. The music sounded like springtime, so he'd pictured church bells ringing on Easter morning, summoning people from the countryside to the church inside the great gate. The sun was shining, and the grass was new green after the winter. The music grew larger inside his head. People in peasant costumes poured through the gates as the star confetti fell. He knew from the music that they had come to celebrate the Resurrection, a genuine Resurrection. Alfred didn't go to church, but his father had told him the story of Jesus. The star confetti fell on the people, and there was the possibility of perfect joy. This struck him now as strange, not only because he knew so little of religion then or because his mother was listening to the music now in anticipation of
Percival's
death, but because at six or seven he'd been too young, he thought, to get caught up in that kind of power. Later, when he'd taken piano lessons, it was the feeling inspired by "The Great Gate at Kiev" that he'd tried to recapture as he sat practicing.

    
A note of triumph, then a silence that let the mumble of the television through from the other room. Alfred turned the record off, annoyed for having listened, for getting involved in it again, especially right now. "You ought to get out of those wet clothes, Mother," he said. "Before anyone gets here."

    
"You have it all planned, don't you? This death watch."

    
"Chances are he's not dead."

    
"I woke up this morning with a premonition," she said.

    
"That doesn't necessarily mean anything."

    
"What about the time
Izzy
broke his ankle? What about Simon's tonsils?"

    
"They both got better."

    
She sighed. "Is Cynthia coming over?" she asked.

    
"She wasn't up yet when I left."

    
"I think most women would wake up if the phone rang in the middle of the night."

    
"I told her it was nothing. I didn't want to disturb her until we knew something."

    
"I see," his mother said.

    
But she did not see. She had told him his living with Cynthia was setting a bad example for his brothers, even though
Izzy
had several different female roommates a year while he, Alfred, was practicing fidelity. She objected to his raising Cynthia's sons even though she'd always demanded that he be responsible; she objected to his plans for marriage. Alfred felt no compunction to explain. It was none of his mother's business that he had said "I love you" to other women before but "I need you" only to Cynthia. His feeling for her was as powerful as it had been for certain pieces of music when he was younger. His mother had nurtured the one, why not the other? As a teenager he had tried to play Chopin's polonaises on the piano and she had not tried to talk him out of that. When the music refused to come from his fingers the way he heard it in his heart, he had gone instead to his mother's records, needing to hear them so badly that he could think of nothing else. She had not objected to that, either. She had watched as the music built and filled him—its teasing, its cresting, its great crescendos that he recognized with some embarrassment as musical orgasms. Later his mother had been sympathetic to his need for women, which drew (he believed) from the same underlying passions. But now with Cynthia—when there was both the yearning and pleasure the music had once inspired, and also solidity and permanence, his mother was immovable in her disdain.