Хлоя Бенджамин - The Immortalists

The only phone number Daniel has is Raj’s landline. Since they’re traveling, he clicks on Contact. E-mail addresses are listed for Raj and Ruby’s manager, publicist, and agent above a box that reads, Write to the Chapals! Who knows if they even check it – the box seems designed for fan mail – but he decides to try.

Raj:

Daniel Gold here. It’s been quite some time, so I thought I’d write. I noticed that you’ll be traveling to New York in the coming weeks. Any Thanksgiving plans? We’d be happy to host you. It seems a shame to go so long without seeing family.

Best,

DG

Daniel rereads the e-mail and worries it’s too casual. He puts dear before Raj , then deletes it (Raj isn’t dear to him, and neither Daniel nor Raj tolerate phoniness; it’s one of the few things they have in common). Daniel writes, Do you have before any Thanksgiving plans? and substitutes really like for be happy before to host you . He deletes the last line – are they family, really? – and then rewrites it. They’re close enough. He hits Send.

He figured he’d be up at 6:30 the next morning, despite his suspension – at forty-eight years old, he’s nothing if not predictable – but when his cell phone rings, the sun is high in the sky. He squints at the clock, shakes his head, squints again: it’s eleven. He fumbles around his bedside table with one hand, finds his glasses and flip phone, puts the first on and opens the second. Could Raj be calling already?

‘ ’Lo?’

He’s greeted by static. ‘Daniel,’ says a voice. ‘. . . t’s . . . Dee . . .’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Daniel. ‘You’re breaking up. What was that?’

‘It’s . . . Dee . . . here in the . . . son . . . ley . . . service . . .’

‘Dee?’

‘. . . Dee,’ says the voice, insistently. ‘Eddie O . . . hue . . .’

‘Eddie O’Donoghue?’ Even in its garbled form, something about the name jogs Daniel’s memory. He sits up, stuffing a pillow behind him.

‘. . . ’es . . . Cop . . . we met . . . cisco . . . your . . . ’ter . . . FBI . . .’

‘Oh my God,’ Daniel says. ‘Of course.’

Eddie O’Donoghue was the FBI agent assigned to Klara’s case. He attended her memorial service in San Francisco, and afterward, Daniel ran into him at a pub on Geary. The following day, Daniel woke with a splitting migraine and could not imagine why he’d shared so much with Eddie, but he hoped the agent had been drunk enough to forget it.

‘. . . pull over,’ says Eddie, and suddenly, his voice becomes clear. ‘There we go. Mother of God, the service here is shit. I don’t know how you stand it.’

‘We have a landline,’ says Daniel. ‘It’s much more reliable.’

‘Listen, I can’t talk long – I’m on the side of the highway – but would that work for you? Four, five o’clock? Some place in town? There’s a few things I want to share with you.’

Daniel blinks. The phone call – the entire morning – feels surreal.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s meet at the Hoffman House. Four thirty.’

Not until he hangs up does he notice the wide shadow in the bedroom doorway: his mother.

‘Jesus, Ma,’ Daniel says, pulling the covers up. She still has the power to make him feel like a twelve-year-old. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘Who were you talking to?’ Gertie is wearing her quilted pink bathrobe – how many decades she’s owned it, Daniel doesn’t want to calculate – and her thick gray hair looks like Beethoven’s.

‘No one,’ he says. ‘Mira.’

‘Like hell it was Mira. I’m not an imbecile.’

‘No.’ Daniel gets out of bed, pulls on a SUNY Binghamton sweatshirt and steps into his sheepskin slippers. Then he walks to the doorway and kisses his mother’s cheek. ‘But you are a busybody. Have you eaten?’

‘Have I eaten? Of course I’ve eaten. It’s almost noon. And here’s you sleeping in like a teenager.’

‘I’ve been suspended.’

‘I know. Mira told me.’

‘So go easy on me.’

‘Why do you think I didn’t wake you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Daniel, walking downstairs. ‘Maybe because I’m no longer a child?’

‘Wrong.’ Gertie sneaks out from behind him and takes the lead, sweeping magisterially into the kitchen. ‘Because I go easy on you. No one goes easier on you than me. Now sit down if you want me to make you coffee.’

Gertie moved to Kingston three years ago, in the fall of 2003. Until then, she insisted on remaining at Clinton Street. Usually, Daniel visited monthly, but that year, he had skipped March and April: work was chaotic due to the Iraq invasion, and Gertie assured him that she would spend Passover with a friend.

When he arrived on the first of May, she was in bed, wearing her bathrobe and reading Kafka’s The Trial . The windows were covered in brown packing paper. Where the wooden-framed mirror above her dresser once hung, there was now a lone nail. She had pried the bathroom mirror, which doubled as the door of the medicine cabinet, off by its hinges, exposing a cluttered pharmacy of prescription pill bottles.

‘Ma,’ said Daniel. His throat was dry. ‘Who’s been prescribing this stuff?’

Gertie walked into the bathroom. Her eyes had a stubborn Who, me? quality.

‘Doctors.’

‘Which doctors? How many doctors?’

‘Well, I’m not sure I can say. I see a man for my gut problems and a man for my bones. There’s the primary physician, the eye doctor, the dentist, the allergy doctor, although I haven’t seen her in months, the women’s doctor, the physical therapist who thinks I have scoliosis, which nobody once diagnosed even though all my life I’ve had back pain; there’s a little bone in my rib cage that I swear to you pops out when I do what Dr. Kurtzburg calls “heavy twisting”’ – she held up a palm as Daniel began to protest – ‘and you should be glad I’m being treated, cared for, looked after, an old woman alone, needing what care she can get in this world, and getting it. You,’ she repeats, keeping her palm aloft, ‘should be glad.’

‘You don’t have scoliosis.’

‘You’re not my doctor.’

‘I’m better than that. I’m your son.’

‘I just remembered the dermatologist. She’s keeping an eye on my moles. People think they’re just beauty marks, but beauty can kill you. Did you ever consider whether Marilyn Monroe died of a mole? That one on her face she was famous for?’

‘Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. She took a bunch of barbiturates.’

‘Maybe,’ said Gertie, conspiratorially.

‘Why did you take down the mirrors?’

‘That’s for your brother and your sister and your father,’ Gertie said. Daniel walked into the kitchen. A tall glass of wine, rimmed by fruit flies, sat on the counter. ‘And that’s for Elijah. Don’t touch it.’

When Daniel poured the reeking Manischewitz down the drain, a haze of flies rose and dispersed. Gertie huffed. On the other side of the sink was an aluminum tray of store-bought kugel, left uncovered: the noodles were shiny and hard as plastic. Here, as in the bedroom, the windows were covered with paper.

‘Why did you black out the windows?’

‘There’s reflections in there, too,’ Gertie said, her pupils dilating, and Daniel knew something had to be done.

Initially, Gertie refused, but she was flattered to think Daniel wanted her close and relieved by the end of her solitude. They moved her out of Manhattan in August. Varya had relocated to California to take a job at the Drake Institute for Research on Aging, but she flew east to assist. By evening, the apartment was so denuded that Daniel felt sorrow at having done it. Once they carried out Saul’s pea-green velvet chair, a hideous piece of furniture that the entire family adored, the only remaining task was to dismantle the bunk beds.