Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

“Why did you run away?”

“Are you hurt?”

“Where did you go?”

They were at the door by then. The blond pulled Max relentlessly, interposing his body with quick adjustments to the constantly shifting positions of the crew and reporters. The PR man shouted at the doorman as they got inside: “Keep them out!”

The television reporter was an Asian woman, her smooth puffy cheeks so young and vulnerable she appeared to Max to be a lost waif. The doorman blocked her off. Max felt sorry about abandoning her to her bosses without a quote, so he called back: “I’m just happy to be alive.”

“That was great!” the blond praised Max in the elevator. “That was the perfect thing to say.”

And also upstairs, at home, everybody was so pleased with Max. As he made his beeline for Debby he heard a sigh of relief from someone and applause from others. Even Debby, who should have been angry, hugged him with a conviction and desire that was usually absent from their life together. Although she bit his earlobe and complained to the room about his not calling in a formal almost mockingly stern tone, she then hugged him again with welcome and passion. She felt him harden against her; her eyes were tearful and amused. “You seem to be in good shape,” she half whispered.

“Give your father a kiss!” Debby’s mother instructed Max’s son in a harsh and high-pitched tone. Max tried to separate from Debby to greet Jonah, but he succeeded only partly. His wife hung on to half of him, gathering his left arm and hugging it between her breasts.

Jonah had his head down, eyes averted, as he approached Max. This was the shy approach he took with his grandparents, or any adult he was strange to. Jonah was shy anyway; but especially with adults he radiated discomfort and distrust. Not with his father, however, not until now.

“My son,” Max called to him encouragingly, sounding for all the world like a biblical character. Jonah ducked his head under his father’s free hand and snuggled into Max’s stomach, a furtive embrace. Max bent over and whispered in Jonah’s ear: “Were you scared?”

Jonah shook his head no. Max felt Jonah’s nose rub against his belly. His son stayed silent and kept his face obscured.

“No?” Max prompted.

“No,” Jonah was muffled, talking from another dimension. “I was worried.”

“Aw…” said several relatives in the room. Someone laughed softly. Debby’s eyes flooded, big drops overflowing, but she smiled also, her head tilted sympathetically in the direction of her child.

“Who are you?” Max asked the half-shy, half-nosy man in the suit.

“Excuse me,” the man answered and came forward with a spurt of energy, extending a small hand. “I’m Steven Brillstein.”

Max had to untangle from the clinging growths of his wife and child to free a hand. “Nan asked me if he could be here when you arrived,” Debby said in a quick, confidential way to Max while he shook hands with Brillstein. The small hand was strong and energetic and quick to escape the contact.

“I’m an attorney,” Brillstein announced gravely. His voice was wringing its hands: “I’m sorry to intrude. Mrs. Gordon is frustrated. She’s gotten some conflicting information from the airline—”

“Jeff’s dead,” Max interrupted. Brillstein’s tone, agonized by seriousness and gravity, had irritated him. Max wanted to shut him up. What Max hadn’t wanted or anticipated was the reaction of the rest of the room. His bald statement had shocked them. His mother, whom Max realized with a pang he had so far completely ignored, gasped and staggered, until she was steadied by Max’s sister.

“Max!” his sister complained, not about the weight of their mother, but his cruel statement.

“He is,” Max insisted, although sheepishly. Jeff was long gone for him: he had forgotten that it was news to them. “I saw his—” Max gestured toward the floor, at his red Oriental rug, which he used to think was blood red, but he realized was nothing like the color on the man whom he saw stumble out of the plane, or the smears on the fractured metal, or Jeff’s blood-filled eyes. He never finished the sentence. They all waited for him to. Instead he said, “He’s dead. I’m sorry.”

“You know that for a fact?” Brillstein asked. “I don’t want to give Mrs. Gordon any false hope, but I also—”

“Who are you?” Max demanded. “Jeff doesn’t have a lawyer.”

“I’m a family friend—”

“Whose family? Not Jeff’s?”

“Max!” his sister repeated. She guided their mother to the couch, helped now by Debby’s father. Evidently his sister thought he should be helping.

“What?” Max asked his sister.

“Your mother!” his sister gestured to her. Max’s mother sat stunned on the couch, staring forward, as if beaten into idiocy by the blow of Max’s news.

“What’s the matter, Ma?” Max asked.

“It’s horrible,” his mother muttered.

“What’s the matter!” his sister repeated Max’s question sarcastically.

“I didn’t realize you felt so close to Jeff,” Max said.

His mother looked up at him. Her eyes were red, her cheeks sagging. She shook her head slowly, in an incredulous way. “Oh you didn’t?” she said rhetorically, with heavy disapproval.

“Well, he was my partner,” Max found himself explaining to them all, although he didn’t know what he was explaining or why he felt he had to.

Debby, no longer titillated or amused, walked back into Max’s arms. This time she was frightened. She leaned her head against his chest and tried to pull Jonah along with her. He resisted and then yanked free. Jonah was suddenly bold, his shy light brown eyes peering at his father. “How do you know?” Jonah demanded, not skeptically, but urgently.

Max separated from Debby and faced his son. “I just know,” Max said. He was suspicious of them all suddenly. He was no longer like them. Max knew that they felt what he said about Jeff’s death and how he said it were as significant as the fact. They were almost mystics, virtually believing Max could breathe life or death into Jeff with his choice of language.

“You saw him?” Jonah’s voice rang out, again demanding and hurried. But Jonah had reason to consider himself an exception and want an answer. Jonah was close friends with Sam, Jeff’s elder son. They had played together in the park as toddlers, had been given video games with synchronized forethought; together the sons of the partners had fought side by side, little fingers flashing on the game controls, conquering the villains of the Japanese computer. “Oh, damn it,” you could hear them cry out from rooms away, “I died again!”

So Max waved to his son to come close, and bent over to whisper, “I saw him die. He didn’t know it. He didn’t feel any pain.”

“How do you know that ?” Jonah’s incredulity was so strong, he almost laughed.

Brillstein leaned over as well. His head appeared next to Jonah’s. They had formed a football huddle.

“Excuse me,” Max said to him.

“Can we speak privately?” the lawyer asked.

“No,” Max said to Brillstein. He returned his attention to Jonah. “He was killed instantly. I was right there. I know.”

“Okay,” Jonah agreed to the death. His bright eyes shone inward, worried.

“We’ll spend a lot of time with Sammy,” Max said.

“Okay,” Jonah said, very low, eyes going down, down to the floor, down to someplace in his heart unknown to Max. Was he afraid of his friend’s loss? Or embarrassed by his comparative good fortune?

“Excuse me,” Brillstein insisted. “In fairness to Mrs. Gordon, I would like to hear the details of what you saw in order to make sure before I tell her.”