Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

Woozy, now. Take a breath.

Who needs a master’s degree to boil water?

She steps unsurely along the corridor and back to the kitchen. Marble countertop, gold-handled cabinets, lots of white machinery. The others had made a rule early on in their coffee mornings: the visitors are the ones to bring the bagels, muffins, cheese Danish, fruit, cookies, crullers. The host makes the tea and coffee. A nice balance that way. She had thought about ordering a whole tray of goodies from William Green-berg’s up on Madison, rainbow cookies and pecan rings and challahs and croissants, but that would be oneupmanship, womanship, whatever.

She turns the flame under the water high. A little universe of bubble and burn. Good French roast. Instant satisfaction. Tell that to the Viet Cong.

A row of tea bags on the counter. Five saucers. Five cups. Five spoons.

Perhaps the cow-shaped creamer for a touch of humor. No, too much. Too whimsical. But can I not laugh in front of them? Didn’t Dr. Tonnemann tell me to laugh?

Go ahead, please, laugh.

Laugh, Claire. Let it out.

A good doctor. He would not let her take pills. Try each day just to laugh a little bit, it’s a good medicine, he said. Pills were a second option. I should have taken them. No. Better off to try laughing. Die laughing.

Yes, move wild laughter in the throat of death. A good doctor, yes. Could even quote Shakespeare. Move wild laughter indeed.

Joshua had written her a letter once about water buffalo. He was amazed by them. Their beauty. He saw a squadron once tossing grenades by a river. All merrily laughing. Throat of death indeed. When the water buffalo were finished, he said, the soldiers shot the brightly colored birds out of the trees. Imagine if they had to count that too. You can count the dead, but you can’t count the cost. We’ve got no math for heaven, Mama. Everything else can be measured. She had turned that letter over and over in her mind. A logic in every living thing. The patterns you get in flowers. In people. In water buffalo. In the air. He hated the war but got asked to go while out in California at PARC. Got asked politely, of all things. The president wanted to know how many dead there were. Lyndon B. couldn’t figure it out. Every day the advisers came to him with their facts and figures and laid them down on his desk. Army dead. Navy dead. Marine dead. Civilian dead. Diplomatic dead. MASH dead. Delta dead. Seabee dead. National Guard dead. But the numbers didn’t compute. Someone was messing up somewhere. All the reporters and TV channels were breathing down LBJ’s neck and he needed the proper information. He could help put a man on the Moon, but he couldn’t count the body bags. Send a satellite spinning, but he couldn’t figure out how many crosses to go into the ground. A crack computer unit. The Geek Squad. Quick initiation. Serve your nation. Get your hair cut. My country, ’tis of thee, we’ve got technology. Only the best and brighest came. From Stanford. MIT. University of Utah. U.C. Davis. His friends from PARC. The ones who were developing the dream of the ARPANET. Kitted up and sent off. White men, all. There were other systems also — how much sugar was used, how much oil, how many bullets, how many cigarettes, how many cans of corned beef, but Joshua’s beat was the dead.

Serve your country, Josh. If you can write a program that plays chess you surely can tell us how many are falling to the gooks. Give me all your ones and zeros, heroes. Show us how to count the fragged.

They could hardly find uniforms small enough at the shoulders or long enough at the legs for him. He stepped onto the plane, trouser legs at half-mast. I should have known then. Should have just called him back. But on he went. The plane took off and went small against the sky. A barracks was already built out in Tan Son Nhut. At the air force base. A small brass band was there to meet them, he said. Cinder block and desks of pressure-treated wood. A room full of PDP-10’s and Honeywells. They walked inside and the place hummed for them. A candy store, he said.

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It’s all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you.

But he stood, buzz-haired and red-cheeked, in front of her, and she said nothing.

Say something to him. That shine to his cheeks. Say something. Tell him. Tell him. But she just smiled. Solomon pressed a Star of David into his hands and turned away and said: Be brave. She kissed his forehead good-bye. She noticed the way the back of his uniform creased and un-creased in perfect symmetry, and she knew, she just knew, the moment she saw him go, that she was seeing him go forever. Hello, Central, give me heaven, I think my Joshua is there.

Can’t indulge this heartsickness. No. Spoon the coffee out and line the tea bags up. Imagine endurance. There’s a logic to that. Imagine and hang on.

How is it being dead, son, and would I like it?

Oh. The buzzer. Oh. Oh. Spoon clang to the floor. Oh. Stepping quickly along the corridor. Return and pick up the spoon. Everything neat now, neat, yes. Give me back his living body, Mr. Nixon, and we will not quarrel. Take this corpse, all fifty-two years of it, swap it; I won’t regret it, I won’t complain. Just give him back to us all sewn up and handsome.

Control yourself, Claire.

I shall not fall apart.

No.

Quick now. Doorwise. At the buzzer. Her mind, she knows, needs a quick dip in water. A momentary cold swell, like those little buckets outside a Catholic church. Dip in and be healed.

— Yes?

— Your visitors, Mrs. Soderberg.

— Oh. Yes. Send them up.

Too harsh? Too quick? Should have said, Wonderful. Great. With a big swell to my voice. Instead of Send them up. Not even please. Like hired hands. Plumbers, decorators, soldiers. She engages the button to listen in. Curious thing, the old intercoms. Faint static and buzz and some laughter and door close.

— The elevator’s straight ahead, ladies.

Well, at least there’s that. At least he didn’t show them to the service elevator. At least they’re in the warm mahogany box. No, not that. The elevator.

The faint mumble of voices. All of them together. They must have met up beforehand. Prearranged. Hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t let it cross my mind. Wish they hadn’t.

Talked about me, maybe. Needs a doctor. Awful gray streak in her hair. Husband’s a judge. Wears implausible sneakers. Struggles to smile. Lives in a penthouse but calls it upstairs. Is terribly nervous. Thinks she’s one of the gals, but she’s really a snob. Is likely to break down.

How to greet? Handshake? Air kiss? Smile? The first time around they had hugged good-bye, all of them, in Staten Island, at the doorstep, with the taxi beeping, her eyes streaked with tears, arms around one another, all of us happy, at Marcia’s house, when Janet pointed to a yellow balloon caught in the treetops: Oh, let’s meet again soon! And Gloria had squeezed her arm. They had touched cheeks. Our boys, you think they knew each other, Claire? You think they were friends?

War. The disgusting proximity of it. Its body odor. Its breath on her neck all this time, two years now since pullout, three, two a half, five million, does it matter? Nothing’s over. The cream becomes the milk. The first star at morning is the last one at night. Did she think they were friends? Well, they could have been, Gloria, they certainly could have been.