Among the Dead (11 page)

Lowell felt the same way but wouldn't keep it to himself. ‘That's a little tasteless, isn't it, Ed?' He said the name as though only dumb people were called Ed, as though a man with the dignity of a full name, Edward, would be higher up in the company, wouldn't have to take the public's abuse. They teased him as a child. Mr Ed! Frank loved his brother for defending him like this, but he also heard the insinuated diminishment of his own loss, and had not reacted so quickly.

Dockery said, I don't know what you mean.'

‘I think you do,' said Lowell.

‘Lowell,' said Frank. ‘Forget about it.'

‘You know what he's saying,' said Lowell.

‘What am I saying?' asked Dockery.

‘The way you said that the man had seven children. You were telling Frank that the death of his wife and daughter was smaller.'

‘If I said anything that could cause you to feel like that's what I said, then let me apologize now. I had no intention of saying anything like that,' said Dockery. He was lying, anyone could see that.

Frank put a hand on Lowell's arm. ‘Forget about it.'

‘You have to understand how it sounded to me,' said Lowell. ‘It didn't sound right.'

Dockery said nothing. It was an odd ploy, this unassailable quiet; now the executive was the centre of their attention, he was the issue, his feelings and not the plane crash, and what could be done about something about which nothing could be done; the plane could not be pulled from the sky before the crash, but maybe he
had meant it as it sounded; in his frustration with Lowell he tried to say the worst thing that was on his mind.

Frank thought about the man on the plane who died leaving seven children. Was his wife in the room? He looked for a table with a woman who looked like she might have had a large brood, but he couldn't tell. And he imagined that there were small children, so he looked for a woman in her late thirties, but there was no reason that a supervisor couldn't have been with the airline for a full career, and have seven grown children, with maybe one still in college. So he could be looking for a grandmother. Anna had wanted more than one child, but he had resisted. She wanted three. She wanted a son, a big boy who would bring all of his big friends over to the house after school, to stand in front of the refrigerator and drink milk from the jug. Well, not the jug any more, although that was what she called it. The bottle. The container.

And what of the copper-haired woman? She was sitting with a rabbi (skullcap, forty, curly hair, eager and attentive posture), and she was shaking her head from side to side, saying no to him. If her daughter was the salvation of her life, was that equal to losing seven children?

And what of families that had been wiped out, mother, father, son, daughter, daughter? or sisters on their way to visit uncles? Who goes to the funeral of a family killed at the same time? Who arranges the funeral? Who gets the record collections, the books? Someone would say, It's better in a way that they all died, no one had to suffer the loss of the others, or now they're all together in heaven. But what if one of them went to hell? Would the others in heaven miss him? And if they did, if they felt the pain of loss, would that be heaven? If he had been on the plane, and had gone to hell for the sin of his adultery, and Anna had not read the letter, and had gone to heaven, and had found out, in heaven, that she was there with Madeleine and not with her husband, because she was saved while he was damned, what would she feel? If she felt a sudden hatred for him, would that slip (if it was a slip) consign her to hell? Would she feel sad? And for how long?

Maybe Dockery's line really was disgusting. After all, there was a woman with seven children mourning one husband, not one husband mourning the extinction of his family. The woman had seven anchors, at least! – and all I have, thought Frank, is my
brother and my parents, and he wanted to say, they will need me, I will have to be their anchor, and I will have to beg for comfort.

Then he thought of Mary Sifka. He had never called her to cry about the things that wounded him, because he felt – what? – that if he told her he was upset about his failed music career, or that he knew that his brother was more capable than he, she might see him in a new light, in his light, and come to share his bad feelings of himself. She sometimes talked about her childhood and alluded to things she wanted to keep hidden, but when he pressed, she always said she didn't like to talk about those things. Something bad had happened to her, beatings or worse. He had believed, listening to her when she said anything about her bad childhood, that abuse was the beginning of her intelligence, and having been set apart from her family by its cruelty, she was able to see into the nature of Nature, which was cruel. This had been his theory of Mary Sifka's special attraction, her bleak youth and the intelligence that had come out of it.

But what if she wasn't intelligent, the proof of which was her acceptance of Frank? What if she was a lonely woman, dulled by this soul-destroying childhood, whose affair with Frank fitted a pattern set long ago, something she needed to maintain her bad opinion of the world, by breaking the trust her husband gave her? What if she chose Frank not for his sensitivity, his humour, his sincerity? What if she liked him for qualities he despised in himself? In this case, abuse had not yielded to her any special insights; it had made her, not sardonic or cynical, but only distrustful, and what she might have liked in Frank was his lack of power, and his acceptance of the limits of his ambition, that he had made peace with himself. But if she couldn't see his frustration, then she was lying to herself, or else she saw it but didn't care, and her adultery with him fitted into the plan of her reprisal against her husband for things she never talked about with Frank. Frank knew almost nothing about her husband.

He thought of his own childhood, and the thing he wanted to name as his own intelligence might not be so grand. He envied Mary Sifka for the clarity of her father's crimes, since his parents had muddied it all up, never beating, but almost, never raping, but invading in other ways that had left him so confused. Lowell had escaped with a little more confidence, but then, thought Frank, don't they work together because they both feel too weird for the rest of the world, and doesn't that strained and peculiar character
they both share leave them incapable of feeling right with anyone except each other? In that case, aren't we really a team? Doesn't Lowell really need me? Don't I make a real contribution to the business? If Lowell, to escape the family's pressures, had launched himself beyond their gravity with his homosexuality, was he too, in his own way, a kind of failure by still having to work with his brother? Frank had never considered this before, that if Lowell were free, he would be free of Frank. Unless Lowell didn't share Frank's hatred of his parents, who, after all, had long ago accepted his homosexuality. It was something that they had understood about him, from high school. Unless they accepted his homosexuality as something that was just his
NATURE
, to protect themselves against the inescapable judgement on their failings as mother and father, if they looked for an interpretation for his nature in psychoanalysis.

It was too late to call Mary Sifka now. She was home, and he only called her at the office, where no one would suspect them. She would hear the news of the crash, probably not pay it any special attention, until she heard the destination and matched it with the time he had left. And even then, would she immediately think of him? She hadn't known his airline or flight number, but she could have called the office to find out if he had been on that plane, and the office would have told her yes. So she would think he was dead. A lot of people would think he was dead. Unless she called after he had talked to Lowell.

‘Lowell,' asked Frank.

‘What?'

‘Did you tell the office that I missed the plane?'

‘Not yet. It's too late now.'

‘So they must think I'm dead.'

‘I'll call tomorrow.'

Or not even something so defined as abuse, only a dulled tantrum for the sufferings of childhood injustices, smaller pieces of birthday cake, someone else's better bicycle. Or he didn't tell Mary his deepest troubles out of respect for Anna, that there was a limit to his infidelity. He thought that if Anna slept with someone else, she would not set up a boundary that would allow her the sin of adultery and then the sin of pride, for keeping her heart a little bit faithful. He thought Anna, if she had ever fucked someone else, would have given her lover everything, would have forgotten her husband.

Dockery apologized. ‘Whatever I said, however I said it, if it made you feel bad, I'm sorry.' He said this in a tone that declared he would not back down from them again. If Lowell pressed Dockery again, he would say what he wanted to say, and there was much to say to a man who took advantage of his brother's anguish and found a way to bully people who were just doing a job that could only be difficult.

‘OK,' said Lowell, not meaning to tell Dockery the event would be forever buried but to tell him that as long as Dockery was direct with Lowell, and did not embellish with his own foul thoughts what his job demanded he say, there would be no more little storms of rage. So there was a truce between them.

‘What's next?' asked Frank. He was tired of Lowell's condescension. He wanted to take charge.

‘Well, you're welcome to stay here at the hotel for as long as you need. There's a few psychologists here, and we'd like you to talk to one of them. They're experts at grief counselling. They do a real good job. Very compassionate people. Or if you'd prefer, a clergyman or rabbi is available, too.'

‘And then?'

‘Well, it's too dark in San Diego to really see what's on the ground. They have lights up, but the area of devastation is pretty big. Three blocks were pretty well taken out. Right now they've got the National Guard out to keep the looters away, and the sightseers. In the morning they'll go in and start cleaning it all up. I have to warn you, a lot of people think that in a crash, the bodies just disintegrate, but they don't. In all likelihood, every body will be accounted for.'

‘I thought there were fires,' said Frank. He was surprised with himself; he was leading Dockery into an area of gruesome detail, ashes, pieces of charred bone.

‘Well, the fires don't concentrate their heat in any one spot for a long enough time. What I'm trying to say is, even after a fire, there's a body. Those bodies will have to be identified. We do our best using dental charts and fingerprints, when we can get them, but sometimes we have to rely on visual identification. There's no other way. We've also found that photographs don't work, people get more upset sometimes looking at pictures of a body than at the body itself.'

‘I can do it,' said Lowell. ‘Anyway, I live in San Diego.' As though proximity made the gruesome job easier? Of would it be
harder to look at his sister-in-law's body if he had to drive a long way to see it?

‘They'll probably return the bodies to Los Angeles. That's the practice, going back to the point of origin.'

‘Whatever,' said Lowell.

‘I'm sorry to have to speak about these things so directly, but I figure you don't want me to pull the punches, and frankly, I appreciate that. A lot of people, and this isn't to say that they're not entitled to their feelings, but a lot of people in this room don't want you to say what has to be said. They want you to almost say it, they want you to give them a taste of what you really mean, and then they want you to back down and apologize for going even that far. But I say, if it happened a certain way, you're obliged to say that's the way it happened.' Frank saw Dockery win respect from Lowell for this, for separating Frank and Lowell from the others. And was this something he did with everyone, take them all into his confidence, show them all how much he trusted them?

While Dockery was talking, one of the men cruising the tables came to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. Dockery introduced him. ‘Mr Gale, I'd like you to meet Dale Beltran. Dale is one of our grief counsellors. If you don't mind, I think it would be good to talk to him.'

‘Frank Gale,' said Frank. ‘And this is my brother, Lowell.'

‘Dale Beltran,' he said.

‘Are you a psychologist?' asked Lowell.

‘Yes,' said Beltran. Frank hated the way he looked. His hair was too long for his curls, and the effect of suspended youth with his soft face and body bothered Frank terribly. Why am I threatened by this guy? Frank asked himself, but he had no answer. ‘Do you mind if I chat a bit?'

‘It'd be a good idea,' said Dockery.

‘Sure,' said Frank.

Beltran sat down. ‘How do you feel?' he asked.

‘Not great.'

‘Like you can't believe it's really happened.'

‘I believe it.'

‘Intellectually, yes, but emotionally?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, Mr Gale ...' He paused, and Frank knew why; he wanted Frank's permission to use his first name.

‘Frank.'

‘Frank. There are a few stages of grief, and I wanted to share them with you, to help you get through them, so you won't feel so alone. The first is denial, which is what you're going through now. And with that, you'll feel alone. That's the isolation stage. Then comes anger. And that's a hard one. After that, well, you'll feel pretty low. The experts like to call that the depression phase; I'd prefer to call it the period of sadness. And then, finally, after the storm, you'll make peace with it. And that's acceptance.'

‘And then what?' asked Frank.

‘Hope.'

‘That's the one that seems so far away,' said Ed Dockery. ‘And that's the one we have to live for.'

‘Good luck,' said Dale Beltran. ‘I'll talk to you again.' He left them with a round of handshakes and then walked away and introduced himself to the copper-haired woman.