Fools die

Chapter 44

Something was waking me out of a deep sleep. Through the cracks of the shutters of the hotel room I could see the rose light of early California dawn, and then I heard the phone ringing. I just lay there for a few seconds. I saw Janelle’s blond head snuggled almost under the covers. She was sleeping far apart from me. As the phone kept on ringing, I got a panicky feeling. It must be early in the morning here in Los Angeles, so the call had to be from New York and it had to be from my wife. Valerie never called me except in an emergency, something had happened to one of my kids. There was also the feeling of guilt that I would be receiving this call with Janelle in bed beside me. I hoped she wouldn’t wake up as I picked up the phone.

The voice on the other end said, “Is that you, Merlyn?”

And it was a woman’s voice. But I couldn’t recognize it. It wasn’t Valerie.

I said, “Yes, who is it?”

It was Artie’s wife, Pam. There was a tremor in her voice.

“Artie had a heart attack this morning.”

And when she said it, I felt a lessening of anxiety. It wasn’t one of my kids. Artie had had a heart attack before and for some reason in my mind I thought of it as something not really serious.

I said, “Oh, shit. I’ll get on a plane and come hack right away I’ll be back today. Is he in the hospital?”

There was a pause at the other end of the phone, and then I heard her voice finally break.

She said, “Merlyn, he didn’t make it.”

I really didn’t understand what she was saying. I really didn’t. I still wasn’t surprised or shocked, and then I said, “You mean he’s dead?”

And she said, “Yes.”

I kept my voice very controlled. I said, “There’s a nine o’clock plane and I’ll be on it and I’ll be in New York at five and I’ll come right to your house. Do you want me to call Valerie?”

And she said, “Yes, please.”

I didn’t say I was sorry, I didn’t say anything. I just said, “Everything will be all right. I’ll be there tonight. Do you want me to call your parents?”

And she said, “Yes, please.”

And I said, “Are you all right?”

And she said, “Yes, I’m all right. Please come back.”

And then she hung up the phone.

Janelle was sitting up in bed and staring at me. I picked up the phone and got long distance and got Valerie. I told her what had happened. I told her to meet me at the plane and she wanted to talk about it, but I told her I had to pack and get on the plane. That I didn’t have any time and I would talk to her when she met me. And then I got the operator again and I called Pam’s parents. Luckily I got the father and explained to him what had happened. He said he and his wife would catch the next plane to New York and he would call Artie’s wife.

I hung up the phone and Janelle was staring at me, studying me very curiously. From the phone conversations she knew, but she didn’t say anything. I started hitting the bed with my fist and kept saying, “No, no, no, no.” I didn’t know I was shouting it. And then I started to cry, my body flooded with an unbearable pain. I could feel myself losing consciousness. I took one of the bottles of whiskey that was on the dresser in the room and drank. I couldn’t remember how much I drank, and after that all I could remember was Janelle’s dressing me and taking me down through the lobby of the hotel and putting me on a plane. I was like a zombie. It was only much later, when I had come back to Los Angeles, that she told me she had to throw me in the bath to sober me up and bring me back to consciousness and then she had dressed me, she had made the reservations and accompanied me onto the plane and told the stewardess and chief flight attendant to look out for me. I don’t even remember the plane ride, but suddenly I was in New York and Valerie was waiting for me and by that time I was OK.

We drove right to Artie’s house. I took charge of everything and made all the arrangements. Artie and his wife had agreed that he would be buried as a Catholic with a Catholic ceremony and I went to the local church and arranged for services. I did everything I could do and I was OK. I didn’t want him lying aboveground alone in the mortuary, so I made sure the services would be next day and he would be buried right afterward. The wake would be this night. And as I went through the rituals of death, I knew I could never be the same again. That my life would change and the world around me; my magic fled.

– -

Why did my brother’s death affect me so? He was quite simple, quite ordinary, I guess. But he was truly virtuous. And I cannot think of anyone else that I have met in my life that I can say this of.

Sometimes he told me of battles on his job against its corruption and administrative pressures to soften reports on additives his tests showed were dangerous. He always refused to be pressured. But his Stories were never a pain in the ass in the way of some people who always tell you how they refuse to be corrupted. Because he told them without indignation, with complete coolness. He was not unpleasantly surprised that rich men with money would insist on poisoning their fellowmen for profit. Again he was never pleasantly surprised that he could resist such corruption; he made it very clear that he felt no obligation to do battle for the right.

And he had no delusions of grandeur about how much good his fighting did. They could go around him. I remembered the stories he told me about how other agency chemists made official tests and gave favorable reports. But my brother never did. He always laughed when he told me these stories. He knew the world was corrupt. He knew his own virtue was not valuable. He did not prize it.

He just simply refused to give it up. As a man would refuse to give up an eye, a leg; if he had been Adam, he would have refused to give up a rib. Or so it seemed. And he was that way in everything. I knew that he had never been unfaithful to his wife, though he was really a handsome man and the sight of a very pretty girl made him smile with pleasure; and he rarely smiled. He loved intelligence in a man or a woman, yet never was seduced by that either, as many people are. He never accepted money or favors. He never asked for mercy to his feelings or his fate. And yet he would never judge others, outwardly at least. He rarely spoke, always listened, because that was his pleasure. He demanded the barest minimum of life.

And Christ, what breaks my heart now is that I remember he was virtuous even as a kid. He never cheated in a ball game, never stole from a store, was never insincere with a girl. He never bragged or lied. I envied his purity then and I envy it now.

And he was dead. A tragic, defeated life, so it seemed, and I envied him his life. For the first time I understood the comfort people get from religion, those people who believe in a just God. That it would comfort me to believe now that my brother could not be refused his just reward. But I knew that was all shit. I was alive. Oh, that I should be alive and rich and famous, enjoying all the pleasures of the flesh on this earth, that I should be victorious and not anywhere near the man he was, and he so ignominiously put to death.

– -

Ashes, Ashes, Ashes, I wept as I had never wept for my lost father or my lost mother, for lost loves and all other defeats. And so at least I had that much decency, to feel anguish at his death.

Tell me, anyone, why all this should be? I cannot bear to look at my brother’s dead face. Why was I not lying in that casket, devils dragging me to hell? My brother’s face had never looked so strong, so composed, so at rest, but it was gray as if powdered over with the dust of granite. And then his five children came, dressed in neat funerality, and knelt before his coffin to say their final prayers. I could feel my heart break, tears came against my will. I left the chapel.

But anguish is not important enough to last. In the fresh air I knew that I was alive. That I would dine well the next day, that in time I would have a loving woman again, that I would write a story and walk along the beach. Only those we most love can cause our death, and only of them we must beware. Our enemies can never harm us. And at the core of my brother’s virtue was that he feared neither his enemies nor those he loved. So much the worst for him. Virtue is its own reward and fools are they who die.

But then weeks later I heard other stories. How early in his marriage, when his wife became ill, he had gone to her parents weeping and begged for money to get his wife well.

How, when the final heart attack came and his wife tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he waved her wearily away the moment before he died. But what had that final gesture really meant? That life had become too much for him, his virtue too heavy to bear? I remember Jordon again, was he too a virtuous man?

Eulogies for suicides condemn the world and blame it for their deaths. But could it be that those who put themselves to death believed there was no fault anywhere, some organisms must die? And they saw this more clearly than theft bereaved lovers and friends?

But all this was too dangerous. I extinguished my grief and my reason and put my sins forward as my shield. I would sin, beware and live forever.