Interstate

INTERSTATE 6

Guy pulls out a gun. What do you do when someone does that? You can’t duck; you’re driving in the center lane of a huge highway and there’s nobody in the front seat with you to grab the wheel. You’ve kids in back. They’re the first things you think of, right? — first ones, but you think of yourself too almost at the same time because of whatever’s self-preserving in you or something but more important that if he gets you he gets the kids. He shoots at you and hits, car could go off the road left or right and at the speed you’re going and if he hits you good, there’d be a terrific crash. Car could go across the median strip and into traffic coming the other way, if it first didn’t hit the guy’s car or another one in that lane, or go across both roads, if it missed all the cars on them, and hit some trees in the woods on the other side. Or it could turn over on the strip because there’s a little dip in it, or on the right side past the shoulder because there seems to be a trench there, or just turn over without any trench or dip because of your car’s speed and that you lost all control of the wheel. One way or the other, if you get shot so bad where you immediately lose control of the car, kids won’t have a chance, and guy’s so close, his arm straight out and gun maybe three feet from your face, there’s almost no chance he’ll miss. So what do you do, for christsake, what do you? You yell, your first reaction, at the man “What the hell you doing, please don’t, put it back, the gun,” and to the kids right after that “Duck, kids, duck, guy in the next car’s got a live gun on us.” They scream, you’re screaming, guy’s laughing, driver’s laughing so hard he’s choking, and slapping the dashboard with his hand and steering with the other and gun’s pointed at you and then slowly back to the kids and their car’s still beside yours and keeping up with anything you’re doing to get away from it, dashing forward, braking and fading back, and you’re yelling “Don’t, you can’t shoot,” your window’s open, sonofabitch tricked you into it, signaled something amiss with your car and wanted to tell you what, “please get away, there are kids there, don’t aim that at them, have a heart, oh my God,” and then you think, what do you think? “Think, think,” you think, “think quick,” and you think “Off the road fast as you can, off, off, don’t cut across to the strip as you can get killed doing it, get on the right shoulder right now,” and quickly check the rearview and right side mirrors, no cars anywhere near but theirs, swerve into the slow lane and they get in the lane you just left, onto the shoulder and they get in the slow lane and stay close beside you, gun still held straight out but now back at your head, and you’re screaming and kids are screaming and their car keeps going when you start stopping and just when you think they’re gone for good and you’ve come to a complete sudden stop and say “Kids, stay down,” gunman starts shooting. Youngest kid’s dead, that’s it. You know right away when you hear no sounds from her but plenty from the oldest. All your shouts for her to say something don’t produce anything but more screaming from your other girl. Know when you then jump around and look back and down and see her on the floor in her blood, looking as if she were playing dead. Whatever you might have done it could have ended up same way or worse, right? What could you have done, and what could have been worse? You know what. Not you getting killed. Your own life for years has been just so much shit and will be infinitely worse after this. Nah it hasn’t been that bad but for years you have been feeling frazzled and short of breath, there’s been just brief stretches of pleasure and leisure and fun every now and then and some every-now-and-then semiserious satisfying rumination and work but for the most part it’s been pressures and stresses and a lot of disjointed to coordinated running around at your job and for your wife but mostly for your kids, and now there’s this, essentially ending it. What would have been worse is if both kids had been shot dead instead of one. Better than that but much worse than what happened, one dead and the other maimed for life. Both maimed like that? Better than one dead and the other maimed or okay, so better than the rest. Easy to say what would have been the best. You’ve thought lots of times before this about both kids dying at the same time, usually after you went through a new near disaster with them. Most of it regarding cars: couple of near collisions; also the time your car spun around on an oil slick on a narrow bridge and wound up facing a car bearing down on it. Driving them down the hill to school just after starting out but with the antitheft steering-wheel bar still locked to the brake pedal and you thought you were all going to die and screamed it out before you came to your senses in about five seconds and switched the ignition off and stepped on the emergency brake and turned the wheel to the right far as it would go and guided the car as best you could to a stop against the curb. Street corner where a truck climbed onto the sidewalk where the three of you were and came within inches of clipping them. When the three of you were on a plane to Europe to hook up with your wife — not a near disaster but a thought as the plane took off. In a rowboat when it capsized about a hundred feet out in a sound and for a while when it was getting dark you didn’t know how you were going to get to shore without dragging them there. Opened windows in your in-laws’ apartment — again, just a thought till you closed or lowered them all. Times you pulled out of a parking spot without first checking the left side mirror or turning around and looking at the street and though no cars had ever shot past at that moment, at least when the kids were with you, you wondered what if one had and crashed into you? Better, with those men, to have rammed their car with yours — this is what you could have done — and then veered right into the slow lane or, if that was the lane you were already in, onto the shoulder, but what good would that have done? Maybe sent their car out of control and where it might have gone into a ditch and rolled over or just scared the shit out of them, making them think “This prick means business, let’s get the fuck away,” or maybe it only would have knocked the gun from the guy’s hand when the two cars suddenly hit. Or maybe you could have slammed their car exactly where the gunman was, one sharp left into it that smashed the guy’s hand, and then sped right to get off the road, or dropped back and, after checking your mirrors, cut across the road to the median strip and over it to the part of the highway going north or just stayed on the strip honking and your emergency lights flashing and you outside the car shouting for passing cars and trucks or a state trooper to stop and your free hand flagging them down, and if the men came back for you on the road going north or just across the strip, you could have got off it one road or the other and tried to do something else to escape them — made straight for a state police station if there was a road sign saying one was coming up. You don’t remember seeing one when you drove south but maybe you missed it or there’s one further on or is north on the highway a few miles or so but on the other side of it, like the station. But it could have ended up worse than what happened or you imagined so far. The guy could have shot you in the eye when he saw you making a sharp left at their car and yours could have gone off the road with you already dead and it could have been hit by their car or another one coming from behind or just crashed on its own because you were no longer controlling it, rolled over and exploded or caught fire, kids dead before the car stopped rolling or before it exploded, or dead in the explosion, or worse, trapped in the car and burned alive.

What do you do the moment you know your kid’s dead? You say to yourself you don’t know, she isn’t dead, she might look it but she’s not, all that blood around her and the expression she has and no signs of life anywhere can possibly be, can only mean, they have to be just that she’s deeply unconscious, hit hard on the head when the car suddenly stopped and she was thrown against the front seat, cut in the head too, gashed, torn, scalp bleeds like hell, but not dead, in no way is she. So you think you should do everything you can quick as you can to help her if she’s hurt and save her if she’s close to being dead. That’s what you should do, that’s what you do, even if you think when you look at her again on the floor in back with all that blood around her and her expression the way it is and still no signs of life anywhere, that she’s probably dead, could be, no, isn’t. So you rush her to a hospital in your car. Before that you breathe into her mouth and pound her chest to get her lungs and heart going again if they’ve stopped. You don’t pound her chest. You wouldn’t know how. You’d hurt her before you helped her or chances of hurting her and maybe finishing her off, if she has any life yet, by pounding her chest are greater than not. And her chest has a bullet hole in it, or what you think looks like one — and that was a gun the guy shot — and probably a bullet inside. There’s blood coming out of the hole and has to be the reason for all the blood around her, for she has no other cuts, gashes or tears you see after quickly scanning her from head to foot, and you press your hanky on the hole and when the hanky’s soaked through you pull your shirt off and press it on the hole and then, when that doesn’t stop the bleeding, a little into it, while you breathe into her mouth. Things you don’t think will work but one chance in a thousand or tens of thousands or a million they might. You once heard — you don’t think this then but it probably influences your actions in some underlaid way to do everything you can to help and save her, to do both at once, help-save, help-save, for you don’t know how badly off she is but feel she has to be very badly off since she still isn’t moving and doesn’t seem to be breathing and still hasn’t given a single sign of being alive. Anyway, to do everything you can for her right away and not just give up because she looks dead and start screaming and wailing and beating your head or think the only thing you can do for her is drive her to a hospital, if you can find one or in time. For where are you on this road? What exit was last, which one’s coming up? Are you a mile or ten or even twenty miles from one? And you didn’t hear this but got it from a friend in a letter he sent you more than twenty years ago, or a phone call. He’d settled on the other coast and was in a van with his son around Julie’s age at the time and was high or drunk, he said, when the van got stuck and then stalled on the tracks at a railway crossing when a train was coming — no. He was going too fast around a sharp turn, he said, and the van went out of control and slammed into a wall. It was in fact a motorcycle they were on, boy holding on to him in back, neither in helmets — they weren’t compulsory in that state then, not that he would have worn one himself if it had been the law, he later said, though he would have put one on his son if only because his wife would have made him or she wouldn’t have let the kid on the bike, as he called it — and he hasn’t ridden one since because of that accident and can’t even get himself to be a passenger on one — when he lost control while trying to take an almost ninety-degree curve about thirty miles over the posted speed limit—“I was young, dumb, cocky and sloshed and thought I could make it with mph’s to spare and give the kid one of life’s biggest kicks and make him think his dad was great”—and flipped over a highway barricade and landed in some bushes though the kid hit a tree. The railway-crossing accident was a few years later when he was alone. He leaped out of the front seat when he heard the train whistling at him and the van was demolished. The boy had a hole in his head the size of a lacrosse ball, he said, and he could see the brains and bones it was so deep. There was no breath, wiggling or heartbeat and he blew air into the hole after he gave up trying to revive him by breathing into his mouth and pressing down on his chest. When people tried tearing him off the boy he yelled “Don’t touch me or him, I’ll kill anybody who tries,” and blew and blew into his son’s head and after about a half hour of this the boy opened his eyes and, his friend swore, smiled and said “Hi.” It was a miracle, he said, or a million-to-one shot defying all laws of science and biology and everything any expert knows about them and he only thought to do it because after he stopped trying to resuscitate him in normal ways a fingernail scratched through his shirt into his back and he said “Ouch, whoever, get the fuck away,” and then turned around furiously to see who was still scratching him and there wasn’t anyone even near but he heard the voice of his dead mother say “My dear, the trick’s not to lick or quit but to freshen his intellect with your breath without letup.” So what’s your point? The point’s that though your friend didn’t think this then he went against all odds and didn’t give up when everything seemed hopeless for his son and people were even trying to pull him away — but you’ve said that, so what’s next? What’s next is you do it too, not into the bullet hole but her mouth, not thinking what your friend did but only remembering it weeks later and thinking it must have had an influence. Thinking now that it’s a million-to-one shot she’ll survive but chances of getting her to a hospital in time are even less, so if anything’s going to save her it’ll be this, though you don’t know why. So you breathe into her mouth almost nonstop for about fifteen minutes while Margo, not close to the road because you don’t want her getting hit by anything or the air suck of a truck or bus to pull her onto it, tries to wave cars down though maybe most of them think she’s waving them away or just waving hello at them, when a car pulls over and driver asks what’s up, anything he can do? and takes you in your car, for you don’t want to stop your mouth-to-mouth breathing into her, to what he thinks is the nearest hospital though you have to know, he says, he’s not from around here but has driven through it a number of times. Says he sees an H sign, follows it, no hospital or other H signs after a few miles, stops at a gas station for directions, parks at the hospital emergency entrance, you run in shouting for someone, help, your daughter, shot in the chest, maybe dying, please, anybody, it’s an emergency-emergency, come quick, doctors and emergency equipment to your car outside, feeling by now they won’t be able to do anything for her and maybe you should have tried finding a hospital yourself right after she was shot instead of spending so much time trying to revive her with your breathing but also that there just may still be a chance they will.

What do you do when two doctors or a woman and man in white hospital coats who look like doctors or hospital officials approach you with what you know, by their expressions and slow walk and shoulder slump of the man that you know’s unnatural for him except in situations like this, is the worst news possible? Not “news,” just the worst information — not that, either. Just with the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, could happen to you unless they were about to tell you that both your children died or couldn’t be saved. Seeing your kid shot and then being told she’s dead by someone in a position to know, are two of the — the two worst things that can happen to you, or hearing she was shot or in a terrible car crash or a fire, for instance, and hurt very bad and might not survive and then later that she couldn’t be saved and died. Those two; those are the worst. Or that she’s got an incurable disease and has only two weeks to live, three, a month but no more — two, but that’s all: those might be better to hear, compared to the others, but maybe not. You haven’t experienced those so you don’t know. You say to them “Don’t say anything, I can tell it’s the worst news possible. Not ‘news’—not ‘information,’ either. Just the worst thing, period. I don’t want to hear. See my ears, see my eyes?” You clamp your eyes shut, cup your ears. “For it can’t be, right? Please, for God’s sake say anything to me but what you’re about to, if you have to say anything.” “Well, we…” the man begins. “Look at me in a different way too. That she’s okay — that kind of look and words. Or she’s going to be or chances are still okay to good for her surviving or some other things from you like that,” and the woman says “We wish we could, sir, all of us,” and the man says “We did everything humanly and technically possible for her, Mr. Frey, and with the best medical equipment and professional expertise available in any hospital in the state. And there exists no better equipment and staff anywhere, and they all just happened to be here for a staff meeting at this particular time. But when it comes down to it”—“Didn’t you hear me? What’d I just say?”—“we got her much too late, I’m sorry.” “Much too, much too,” the woman says. “We all share your grief.” You raise your hands — you want to pound the walls with your fists, get down on the floor and bang it, throw things, push people around, scream some meaningless sound loud and long till your breath gives out — wiggle your fingers and keep wiggling them faster and faster in front of you while saying “Oh, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?” They look at your wiggling as if they’ve never seen this kind of reaction to what they’ve just told you. Your daughter, you think. Where’s the other one? “Where is she?” and the woman says “She? The one who succumbed? Still in the room down the hall but we seriously advise you not to go to her just yet. Things need to be done with her, and you’re not—” and you say “Not she, not Julie, but my other daughter, the older one. Why can’t I remember her name all of a sudden? Starts with a what? — I can’t even remember that, the first letter. I’ve never forever — I’ve never forgotten it ever. I’ve called her ‘Julie’ by mistake lots of times when I was intending to call her by her own name. And ‘Lee,’ I’ve called her, which is my wife’s, just as I’ve done to Julie and Lee with Margo’s name and Julie’s for Lee’s and vice versa—‘Margo,’ that’s who. So where is she?” Then “Oh no, I can’t take this, it’s the worst truth imaginable, possible, portable, execrable, inexcusable, none of those, call it quits,” and your head’s dizzy and stomach feels sick as if you’ve got to shit, bowels hot and knees weak and your legs, arms, fingertips, every part of you hurtles and whirls and you want to collapse and spill, when you hear someone yell — your eyes are closed now and you’re going—“Guy’s absolutely green, catch him,” and you’re grabbed as you fall, hit the ground anyway and black out and next thing you’re lying on a soft bench, head up into a metal dish, you’ve made in your pants, kaka, vomit, piss, you don’t care but the mix stinks, smelling salts held close to your nose, your head bolts and chin clips the bottle, “Get it away,” you think and slap at the hand holding it. “Leave me be. I’m all right. I just want to stay passed out for good,” and a man says, not the doc, “Sir, Mr. Gray? Listen to me if you can. Your daughter Margo’s fine, being attentively looked after by the staff. The police, who think this urgent, would like you to answer some very important questions about the crime. I’m only doing what they ask, sir, so may I help you up?” and you say “Get me pants, get me pants, I can’t see people like this.”

How do you sit and answer questions from the police? How do you just listen to them when they’re talking, know what they’re saying, understand what to answer, provide them with details, descriptions, an account of, facts? What the fuck stops you from jumping up and running out the room and beating your head against a wall? Pulling at your hair till it comes out, smashing your nose with your fist, scratching your scalp till it tears, breaking some mirror or glass — just running through a glass door or hurling yourself through a window or just at one and slashing your neck and wrists with a sliver the shattering makes? They’ve brought you to a room—“This is a doctors’ conference room,” a police detective says, “but it’s all right for us to use it long as we like, though we want to be brief, faster we get after the bastards the better — have a seat, sir — is that one comfortable enough? — would you prefer mine? But we’re wasting time. Let’s get right to business.” You wondered when they escorted you here “Is the room she’s in anywhere near? Could it be right next door and I don’t know it? Is someone with her? She shouldn’t be left alone. Suppose she awakes? Don’t be ridiculous.” The doctor from before had pointed at a hall when he talked about her but you’re all turned around in this hospital, this corridor might only be for conferences and offices and a common staff room for breaks, that corridor for surgery and dissections. “Autopsies” is the word. You sat. Big as she is, they wanted her there for what she could offer, and she sat on your lap. You mean, big as Margo is, and she’s also big for her age, second-tallest girl in her class — Julie was small in both categories — she sat on your lap. But how do you just sit there without wailing, talking to yourself, going crazy? Because it’s too soon for you, right? Too soon to say “Yes, no, that’d be an accurate assumption, they were this feet tall, weighed in about six-eighty.” But you’re expected to answer, aren’t you? You agreed to come in here to, didn’t you? They…you…they made it seem essential, you felt you had to. You’ve always been obedient to the police. This goes way back when you were a boy, afraid of them, and you know what you’re here for — to answer things that’ll help catch the bastards, as the detective who’s asking keeps calling them. “I’m sorry, young lady, but it’s hard to keep back what I feel about them, and it’s not such a dirty word.” And to you: “We want, as you must, to catch those filthy bastards and roast them, fry their behinds good, which we can now do in this state, thank goodness, unfortunately only with lethal drugs.” Margo asks what’s “lethal” and you say “Later.” “So, we need your help, sir, young lady,” when just about all you can do right now is think of Julie and important things you haven’t done yet. Like what? Like call your wife about your girl being shot dead. So, so, what’re you going to do, call soon? Right after this? Before you see Julie? For another thing you must do is see her before she’s taken away to be examined by the police doctors and perhaps changed irresomethingly. No, they’ll do a clean job and there’s no reason for them to touch her face and you won’t see the incisions they make for they’ll be under her burial clothes. But you don’t want to see her again after you see her today, do you? No, no open casket, but at the last minute you probably will ask for it to be opened, even if your wife doesn’t want to look, so you can take one last quick one, or a long one, so long that the funeral people will tell you they have to close it now so they can start the ceremony. “Please, Mr. Frey, your daughter Margo’s answering us just fine, but can you concentrate a bit more on our questions, we want to go after those hyenas tonight.” Possible height and weight or let’s say, since you never saw them not seated, size and shape of the men and definitely their skin color and complexions and shades and any particular marks, scars, smudges, tattoos on their faces and hands and arms or anywhere and distinguishing features like big ears and fat lips and slanty eyes and large Adam’s apples and anything around their necks or on their chests, crosses, stars, ankhs, jewelry of any kind and on their fingers and wrists like watches, rings, bracelets and ID’s, cuffs up or down and with cufflinks, and their ages, hair, voices, facial fuzz of any sort including sideburns, eyeglasses, sunglasses, mannerisms, gestures, whatever seemed even minutely unusual to you or the norm, clothes, color, style, design, buttoned, zippered, tight, loose, good condition or bad, hats, ties, gloves, even — suspenders, epaulets, earrings or studs, maybe something through their noses, bandages anywhere or adhesive strips, patches on their clothes, hair curling out of or above their shirts, big foreheads or like pushed in, what kind of smiles and laughs, any obvious dental work or tooth gaps or decay, some of these creeps have front teeth with diamonds in them and platinum- or gold-trimmed which if they had smiled right at you you would have seen, any chance of recalling the color of their eyes? They want them to remember everything about the men and their car, the make, shape, if raised like dune buggies, logos and stripes, how many doors, were the windows clean, rolled up electronically or by hand, radio music or just boppy patter from a radio or tape, overhear any station’s call letters, you never know but that can pinpoint where they were heading or coming from, anything hanging from the front mirror like baby shoes or oversized dice or lying on top of the dashboard like a Mary or Christ statue or even a paperback and if so, title or what the cover looked like, tires: white-rimmed, fancy hubcaps, license plate of course, anything on the roof or attached in back, their car hauling a trailer, you wouldn’t believe it but some people have even forgotten to tell us that, scratches, dents, horn sound, and the gun: color, shape, report the shot made, did it look like this, or this, this, showing photos of handguns, then of cars, none of them is it though the car’s color is like this one, as if just painted a bright white, was the muffler noisy or any other parts of the car not seem all right, the men’s or just the gunman’s accent, any speech impediments or problems and any special phrases and foreign words and obscenities repeatedly used? While you periodically drift to ways of dealing with those guys if they’re caught. “And they will be,” the detective said, “make no mistake about it. I mean, I can’t give you my word on that, but they have to be, don’t they, but not without your full help.” You’ll get them during the trial. First day of it before you have to testify yourself about what happened, but how will you be able to do that? “There they are, I recognize both of them, they killed my little girl, I could never forget their faces, except when they were driving alongside us they had sinister grins or big smiles,” though who knows if they won’t have them at the trial? In other words, you’ll deal with them soon after they’re brought into the courtroom. How? You’ll wear a fake mustache or by then grow a real one and maybe a beard and comb your hair in a different way or let it grow long or cut it very short or maybe get a wig or just a hairpiece to cover your bald spots. In other words, disguise, so you won’t be recognized, by reporters, for instance, for there’s sure to be a news story or item about Julie today and they may want to follow it up, and people in the prosecutor’s office who will have probably interviewed you by then or at least seen you for various reasons a couple of times, and any of the police here who might be at the trial. You’ll sit in the spectators’ section, but fairly close to the front, and then, right after the judge’s call for a recess or a five-or ten-minute break for some legal question to be settled, when a lot of people will be milling around — in other words, when there’s a little confusion or commotion or just movement and everyone doesn’t have to be in his seat — you’ll walk up front with a hidden gun, if you can get one, and you should be able to with so many illegal guns around and your willing to pay ten times the street price for one, or just legally in another state if you have to, and shoot them both in the head. Bing bing, like that, one shot each through the middle of the skull if you can do it or inside the ear and then, when they’re on the ground or staggering, though one in the head should knock them flat down, and if the gun hasn’t been wrestled away from you, more shots into them but only if you’re sure, as you should be when you first shoot them, that nobody else will get hit, and closer to the head or heart the better. If a guard or someone else approaches you when you’re walking down the aisle or tries to stop you by saying something like “That’s as far as you’re permitted to go, sir,” you’ll run to the front, dodge the guard or whomever and maybe several others some way and jump over the barrier separating the trial area from the spectators’ section, if there’s one, and the men will probably be turned around by now to the uproar, and you’ll shoot them in the head if you can or the face. If you can’t get a gun on the street and there’s no time to go out of state and wait the mandatory period for a legal gun, or you get one one way or another but metal detectors prevent you from bringing it in the courtroom or courthouse, and you’ll check all that out before, you’ll get two icepicks or something long, spikelike and needle-sharp and do the same thing during the recess or break and quickly stick them into their necks or backs or one after the other into their skulls or anywhere you think would be the best place to kill them with one jab or if that doesn’t work out then at least to maim them for life, killer first, driver next, for you hate the killer most and want to make sure to get him if you’ve only time to get one. Or you’ll wait for them outside the courthouse after the first day of the trial, if you get a gun but can’t get inside with it and know they’ll be coming out at a certain place — you’ll check on that too, pay someone for the information if it can be done without raising any suspicion to you — you’ll say you’re an amateur or art photographer who specializes in candid crime photographs — and when the men come out with their police escorts you’ll go up close as you can to them, but in disguise, and say “Hey, Joe,” or whatever the killer’s name is—“Sly” or “Zippo” or something if he’s got a street name — to get him to stop for a few moments and maybe turn all of his body to you so you can get a clearer shot, or “Hello, I’m a reporter”—of the New York Times, of the Wall Street Journal—and if you can you’ll pay for some kind of phony press credentials and display them on your jacket or better yet, since a reporter from one of those papers may be there or from any other you got credentials for, wave them—“and I’d like to ask these gentlemen some quick questions if the police don’t mind.” Or you won’t say anything. You’ll just stroll up to them and their police escorts as if you’re a curious observer, with a “Hey, what’s happening?” kind of face, or just as some idiot who gets a kick out of gawking at celebrities, even murderers, and shoot them in the chest or head. If they’re brought out separately you’ll wait for the killer, if he’s not the first to emerge, and aim the gun at his head, or at his heart and downward if someone’s behind him, since if the bullet goes through him you don’t want it hitting anyone else but his friend, and shoot several times till you’re sure you got a couple of good shots in. Then when he’s on the ground and if you’re not overpowered by the police yet, you’ll fall on top of him and shove the gun barrel into his mouth or against his ear or into it far as it’ll go and shoot again. If you can’t get them inside the courthouse or right outside it that first time you try, you know you’ll never have another crack at them again. Bumper stickers you can remember, the police say, decals on the windows or anything else like that you saw? Special beaded seat pads that some people use for back comfort on long drives. Scratches, dents, paint discolorations, but they’ve said that. Then they show you a book with many more car pictures and you identify what you’re almost sure’s the right one. Margo says it’s not and you say “If this one’s not it then it comes as close to looking like the car those guys were in as I can get. Just that ought to be of some help.”

Police say they have all the information they need for the time being and you can see your daughter now if you like, what do you do? When they say that your stomach and limbs get all sick and weak again and you feel as if you’re going to pass out. “Margo, please, get off me, I feel ill,” for she’s still sitting on your lap. She jumps off and you put your hands over your face and try to think what to do. Police have said “So long, lots of luck, we’re very sorry, we’ll be speaking some more to you, I’m sure,” and it’s just you and Margo in the room with a doctor who’ll accompany you to where Julie is if you want to go now and a nurse to look after Margo till you get back. “If you’d rather not see her this minute,” the doctor says, “we’ve a private room you can rest in and we can also get a cot for Margo.” You haven’t told your wife yet and you don’t know how you’re going to. Margo may want to go in with you to see her dear sister and you don’t know if you won’t let her. It might be easier for you if she were there and it might be right for her to be there. Your wife would know what to do about it but that would mean you’d have to tell her about Julie. Then after you told her, the question whether should Margo go in with you to see Julie wouldn’t ever come up. You’d be dealing just with Lee’s despair and she with yours. Despair, that’s the word, you don’t think there’s another one that gets it as well. The feeling: it’s utter dejection, total disconsolateness, out-and-out grief. Maybe “grief” gets it as well, so maybe there are two. But what’s that got to do with it, just part of the stall. So what do you do? Or maybe Margo will think she should go in but say something like, or not say it, just look it, that she’s too sad and scared and sensitive to. She is, you don’t want her in, not till your wife’s with you. You haven’t seen Julie since they rolled her away from you in front of the hospital when you first got here. “Out of the way,” they screamed, and maybe at you, and they could, they were right, for what’s your grief and despair compared to them having a second or two more to save her? And they did, what are you talking about, they didn’t. How do you see her without cracking up? Going mad and getting as sad as anybody can get — complete grief, that kind of cracking up. Both, all. They no doubt have her all cleaned up and everything like that by now, presentable, and she’ll be looking — oh stop it, but you’re only trying to give yourself reasons — not “reasons” but some word that means you’ll be able to face going in to see her — like a sleeping child. What like a sleeping child? She, she’ll be, that’s how she’ll look. But that’s how she looked on the car floor so she’ll look, they’ll make her look with all that cleaning her up and setting her on the bed in a just-so certain correct way, or whatever she’ll be on and whatever way, even more like a sleeping child. And you’ll look at her and remember her sleeping peacefully at home other nights or just recently when you went into her room at your in-laws’ or fitfully, even, like a week ago when she had fever from an ear infection till your wife gave her some junior Tylenol and you’ll want to kiss and hold her and breathe into her mouth which is probably not now like her mouth was or any live mouth is and kiss her skin which won’t feel like skin either, you don’t know how it’ll feel but not like live skin or even like her skin when she was dead in the car. It’ll be hard, you think, it’ll be greasy, sticky, pasty, scaly, something like that, one of those, two, three. And you’ll want to kiss, not kiss but talk to her quietly as if she’s asleep or just coming out of sleep — yes, kiss, kiss, no matter what her skin and lips feel like — and tell her to lie still, don’t get up, no need to, she’s weak, you’ll do everything for her, you’ll sit her up and get her dressed and other things, you’ll carry her and get her out of here, into the car, home. You’ll go crazy, that’s what, face it, out-and-out completely crazy, so how do you go in and see her, how, you’re asking, what the hell do you do, do you know, do you? If you got Margo to go in with you and you held her hand when you went in and throughout it, even when you were touching Julie with your other hand, leaning over, kissing her, always one hand holding Margo’s, it’d be easier for you, you know that, but you can’t do that to Margo. It’ll be bad for her, maybe devastating, more chance it’ll be devastating than bad, something she might never recover from, nightmares for weeks at least, a great chance of that you’re saying, later in life: “Why’d you force me to go in there with you, even allowed it if I’d asked you to? You should’ve known what it would do to me, do to anybody my age. It was cruel, stupid, I don’t care what state of mind you were in then.” She shouldn’t go in, you know that now, but you have to see Julie, don’t you? They want you to positively identify her — their words — but you’re afraid to see her. Seeing her like that not breathing, and you’ll immediately check to see if she’s not — her mouth, heart, wrists, temple, neck, ankles, you’ll feel, listen, look — will mean she’s definitely dead, not coming back. Of course not coming back, you don’t believe in that, you mean she can’t ever be revived, resuscitated, she’s dead, just dead, something you know now but it’ll hit you worse then and drive you crazy with despair, crazy with grief, you’ll go crazy in there, crazier than you are out here, fall to your knees, fall to the floor, bang your head with your fists, your chest, dig your nails into your skin, your face, claw into it, you’ll feel sick, faint, you’ll scream scream after scream, you won’t be able to talk to your wife on the phone after about what happened to Julie, just that it happened, you won’t, you won’t even be able to say “Julie’s dead, our daughter, murdered, I can’t speak anymore,” you won’t, they’ll put you under some sedation, they’ll have to, you won’t be able to look after Margo, take care of her for she’s going to feel as bad as you, you know that. She feels it now, it just hasn’t come out. She loves her sister, adores her, if they’re on the street or in a mall or someplace and Julie suddenly can’t be seen she says “Where’s Julie?” and if you both don’t know she runs around shouting her name and looking frantically for her even when you say “Don’t worry, she can’t be far, she’s probably wandered into one of the stores, or she’s hiding.” She’ll go crazy over it too, you know that and it’ll probably be soon. Will you let them sedate her? Yes, you will, but little, little, just enough to tire her so she can fall asleep on her own, but you you’ll want them to put out. No good, she’ll probably wake up before you and then who’ll deal with her? And you’ll also have to deal with your wife soon, not “deal” and not “deal” with anything to do with Margo either, but “speak” to her, your wife, and then deal with what comes after from her and between you two and also what to do about Margo and the possibility of sedating her when she starts going crazy over Julie, but you don’t know how you’ll be able to tell your wife and just deal with it all. For instance, when, what’s the best time, what words, so on? Before you see Julie? — you mean “after” you do, so you can say “Yes, she’s dead, I’ve just seen her,” or “I saw her just before in the exam room after the doctors were through with her, absolutely dead”—not like that. No “absolutely” or “doctors through with her,” but problems, questions like that. You say to Margo “Margo, listen to me, this is absolutely important, I know how you feel about Julie — how you felt about her before and how you feel now, ‘before’ meaning all those years before and ‘now’ meaning now about her and just before — and you know how I do too with all those.” She’s standing, you’re sitting, and you hug her from behind — you can’t see her face, she might be crying — kiss her shoulder and head, press your nose into her back. She’s not heaving, but heaving might only be a sign of heavy sobs, and it wasn’t why you nuzzled her. You want to turn her around but don’t want to because looking at her, even if she’s not crying now, you both might crack up. Well, maybe that’s good, what you need, but you don’t know if it is right now, or for her right now too, especially for you when you have so many things to do including looking after her, and cracking up like that you might not come back from it for hours. So you’ll let her turn around when she wants and you shouldn’t talk about Julie anymore to her now either, you’re too confused to, you might say the wrong thing and make her feel even worse than you’re sure she’s eventually going to, but you will say more, it’s that craziness pushing you. “But, you know,” to her back, still holding her, “I think I’m doing — I’m going — I don’t think I want to — I know I don’t but I think I’m going absolutely crazy over this, sweetheart, that’s it, crazy with sadness and everything else that’s the worst about it, and if I do go completely that way, well, I don’t think there’s anything to stop me from it, much as I want not to, as I don’t want to, no words or cures, no person, nothing, not even my deepest strongest feelings to stay well and sane long enough or just sane and well enough to take care of you now.” You didn’t say this. There was no response from her, but that’s not why. You are holding her, nose to her back, and have been for minutes, but you didn’t say any of that. For a few moments, minute or two at the most, you were sitting here thinking you did. Rather, you saw yourself talking, heard yourself too, but you didn’t, not a word, you think, maybe another sign of your craziness over Julie or whatever it is. How do you know you didn’t speak? It just came to you, sort of like waking up and after a brief bit of befuddlement you suddenly know where you are. “Margo,” you say, you actually say, you think, for her head moves around so she can hear better, or that’s what it looks like, “I’m speaking to you now, sweetheart, aren’t I?” and she nods. “Just say ‘Yes you are,’ or just a ‘yes’ so I know for sure, it’s important to me,” and she says “What do you mean, Daddy?” “Good, now I’m convinced. You see, before I only thought I was saying, but now I really am, that I think I’m going crazy over this whole thing with Julie, and I can’t help it, it’s the last thing I want to do right now, but it’s killing me, for what happened to her’s the worst thing in the world that could possibly happen except if it had happened to you and then it also would have been the worst. The two of you, if it had happened to, would have even been worse, but that didn’t happen. In other words…in other words, I’m not making much sense, you can see that — hear it, I mean, which is just an example of my state of mind now, this state of mine. Listen to me: ‘state of mind.’ Oh no, this is too awful, I don’t want to be alive for it, at least not awake,” and she says “Daddy, you’re hurting me, you’re hugging too hard,” and you say “Am I? I’m sorry, I didn’t know, dear,” and release her and the doctor says “Mr. Frey, is there anything I can do? I’m here to help you both as well as take you to your other daughter when you decide to go, and it’d be better if it were soon,” and you break down and she pats your shoulder while you bawl and the doctor, you don’t know what he does, and the nurse who was here for Margo, is she still in the room? Is the doctor just looking at you, at his watch, nurse too? That’s no rebuke of them; they’ve been through these things a lot, in various versions, kids going from brain tumors, kids cut down on bikes, pieces ripped, parts split, parents wailing in the hallways, and they’re both probably tired as all hell and they have their jobs to do, right? their jobs, and they want to get them done but do well at them and then go home. This isn’t all there is, right? So what are you saying? Ask yourself, what? You don’t know. No no, you do, what? No, you don’t. You forget where you started off from, and it doesn’t matter that you don’t know, does it? At this time? What are you, kidding? Of course no. You feel a hand on your wrist. Maybe it’s Margo’s, maybe it’s the doctor taking your pulse or just feeling your wrist. No, they just don’t feel it, they take. Or the nurse, maybe he’s instructed her with some gestures to go feel the guy’s pulse, see if it’s too fast, slow, whatever that’s bad or shows a sign that he should be watched for something worse. But after this, you think, after this, while Margo’s patting your back — you should be patting hers, shouldn’t you? Hugging her softly too, but you don’t — after this, what do you do? There’s got to be a next step. It all doesn’t become blank after this. This thing happened, this damn no-words-or-curses-for-it thing happened, and you’ve got to deal with it — yes, deal, deal, so start. For even if it’s blank for a few days right after this, there’s got to be a next step soon as the blank ends. You making sense? You don’t care if you’re not. You have to do something, that you know, and around now, but what? Your wife to know, but when? There is no best time, a doctor said, or one of the cops, but so what? In fact now might be the best time for whatever you say and however you say it, for it’s all going to be bad or close to it, right? But this way, in the state you’re in or will be for the phone talk, you can blame your terrible way of saying it on that: you’re distraught, out of your head, altogether crazed over it, you can say. But that’s fake, and the best time has to be when you’re in better control, for she’s sure to be in worse shape than you on the phone for this’ll be the first she’s heard it, so she’s going to need you somehow. You don’t know what you’ll be able to do but just to be there for whatever you might be able to, even to say “I know, I’m insane over it, want to die myself,” might be enough. Forget it, there is no right or better way, you’re in control or out of it, there’s no way of saying how you’re going to say it or react to what she does, you can feel you’re in control one moment and then suddenly blow it, you know she’s going to be out of control and that if you start off without any yourself you’re not going to suddenly get it. Anyway, it’s all whatever’s the word or words for whatever the worst’s going to be. Thing to do is get it over with, and who says it has to come from you? It can come from the doctor here, or the woman doctor from before or someone new, or a police officer trained in this or the minister who tends to the patients. One of them can say you’re simply in no shape to tell her what you and they think should be told her and then he can tell her and deal with what comes best as he can. Is that the best way? No, just another. If you had years to just think about it you wouldn’t know. So what do you do? Maybe the best thing is to see Julie first. That again, but to get it done. That way, well, you’ve gone over it. Because if you plan to tell your wife before you see Julie, she might say “Why you so sure she’s dead? You haven’t seen her since they took her away from you. Even if they say she’s dead, they could be mistaken. There was that case in the papers not long ago where the paramedics pronounced this man dead and then a few hours later the hearse people sticking him into the hearse to go to the funeral home heard him gurgling. The doctors might have Julie mixed up with another girl, one around her age and who has the same hair color and is her race. Even one from a car accident or a shooting, all of which made them make the mistake. She might be on breathing equipment now, our girl, and getting better even while I speak to you, and perhaps even looking around for you now, wondering why you aren’t there. Just your not being there now might be enough to sink her if she’s barely holding on. So you have to go to her. I won’t believe anything till you say you went in with a doctor to see her and he checked her again and she’s dead.” “Best to have a doctor beside you when you call your wife,” a doctor said, “so he can answer any questions she may raise. And better if you tell her everything in that phone conversation.” “I can’t speak to her,” you said, “you do it,” and he said “I will if you wish but I feel strongly it’s best it come from you, hard as that will be. One of us will be close to support you in every way in addition to treating you immediately if you collapse or anything like that.” So what do you do? “What should I do?” you say to Margo, “about telling Mommy about dear Julie or my seeing Julie before I tell her?” and she says “Seeing Julie dead?” and you say yes and she says “How should I know? You decide, Daddy; don’t bring me in it. I have my own problems, you know,” and you say “I know, I know.” So, what? You look at your watch: no time, just tick tick tick; you turn it around so the face is at the underside of your wrist. The nurse says to you “If you’d like, Mr. Frey, I can take Margo for some dinner now.” Margo says she is hungry and would you mind? and you say “No, please go with her, my darling, it’s right. We’ll meet back here in a half hour,” and the nurse says “We’ll look for you in the lobby,” and you say “Even better, I guess; easier to find.” So Margo leaves with the nurse, looks back as she goes out the door and you think “Should I have offered the nurse money for Margo’s food? Even for both of them, since she’s taking my kid.” The doctor says “So, Nathan?” and you say “Should I have given Margo money for dinner? I don’t want that nice nurse spending all her hard-earned money,” and he says “Not to worry. She’ll get it back, if she wants, from petty cash. So, Mr. Frey?” and you say “So, you want me to choose what I’m going to do, right? See Julie, that’s probably the best thing, the right one, right? See her right away, then call my wife. And I’ll try not to collapse. Just, if you can come with me, or another doctor or a nurse, and wait outside her room.”

So you go with the doctor to the room Julie’s in and the doctor says, right outside it — door closed, no little window in it, legs so weak while you walked that the doctor had to hold your arm, you said “I think I’m going to fall, grab me,” and he did, while you walked you thought “It’s like an execution I’m going to, mine, hanging, shooting, injection, gas; fear, weakness, feeling you want to heave,” sign on the door saying “Do Not Enter, Medical Staff Only, Permission Required”—“She’s in there on the bed. It’s not really a bed, we call it something else, but for our purposes we’ll call it that.” “What do you call it normally, meaning the technical calling — the word, you know?” and he says “‘Bed’ will do.” “But I’d like to know, if you don’t mind. I’m not sure why, peculiar reasons probably, but just, could you?” “An examination table, that’s all it is, but now it’s made up to look like a bed — sheets, a pillow.” “For under her head.” “Under her head, yes.” “You’re giving me a lot of your time, I’m sorry.” “It’s okay, what I do.” “I’ve been thinking of her head, only before, I think, on a pillow when she was alive. Everybody’s sure she’s dead?” He nods. “Then I’ll see her in there. I mean, I would, of course, if she were alive, but I’m saying for now.” You put your hand on the door. It has no knob or bar, only needs a push. Which side of the room will the bed be? The left, you guess. But it’s a table, so may be in the middle. “Yell for me, ‘Dr. Wilkie,’ if all of a sudden you need assistance. Or if you want, I’ll come in with you.” “You’ve seen her?” “Uh-huh.” “No, I want to see her alone.” “I can go in and leave when you want. Or with a flick of your finger, if you can’t speak, or point to the door.” “Nah, I want it to be now just me and her. ‘Me and she’ sounds better but it’s ‘me and her, me and her.’ Meaning, they go together, correctly, though in that case it could be ‘she and I’ for all I know. Why do I bring these things up? Delaying.” “No matter what, I won’t budge from here unless there’s an emergency I’m absolutely needed for. Chances of that are minimal, and I’ve asked another doctor to fill in for me. But you never know.” “You never know,” you say. “And I suppose I should go in now, get it over with. Somehow I imagine her in the middle of the room on that table-bed, head on the left side of it, so, perpendicular to us,” and you show with your hands in a T what you mean. “I believe that’s the way it is.” “So there. And all my life, you know, I’ve been getting things over with — no window in the room, probably.” “None.” “Lots of lights, some side tables with instruments and things on them, and so on. In fact, there’s a standard joke, a running one, rather, around my household — no, it’s no time for lines or jokes. This isn’t one, what I was about to say, but might sound like it. I haven’t told you it yet?” “If you mean now or before, not that I know of.” “I think I’ve told everyone else in the world. I have so few things to say. Of interest. Though it always had a serious degree to it. Side. It borders. Straddles.” “Go on, tell me if it’ll help relax and prepare you for going inside. Remember, here and now, anything you do or say is okay.” “Right, better I feel that way, relaxed, prepared, so I don’t crash first thing on seeing her, my dear kid, truly the dearest little girl-child-kid there ever was,” and you start crying and you cry and say “Everybody says ‘ever was,’ I bet, everybody, in a situation like this, and I should stop all this kind of talk. Just saying it, of course I know what it’ll do, so I have to wonder if I didn’t say it just to go to pieces and delay some more my going in. There,” patting yourself under the eyes, tears, “these goddamn these. Stop, stop, stop,” slapping your cheeks. “But my nonjoke. Nonintended for one, the something I was going to say and will probably say it that I said might sound like a joke, and other times it could be. Now it’s just a fact. An insight into me. So I’m telling it as an illustration of my always wanting to get things over with — trips, books, days, work, housecleaning, even sex sometimes. Cooking, quick, quick, quick. A joke to everyone I know, I can tell you, as if work to get rid of to clear yourself for the real or more important work, stuff that’s killing you for you to do and which turns out to be the same thing, get rid of it, clear yourself for something else, and so on. So say it. Or do it. My hand’s on the door again but I’m not pushing it even a quarter-inch. I can’t seem to get in there. Whyever why? The example’s this. That I want on my tombstone for it to read — Rather, that I want my epitaph to say on my tombstone, chiseled in — Rather, for ‘tombstone’ sounds so Western western — in other words, fake — that I want my head- or footstone — my gravestone epitaph to say, you know, under my name, birth and death dates — anywhere on the stone—‘So, I got it over with.’ Just that. You see the point; message is clear, isn’t it? It’s not funny now. Of course, nothing is, goes without saying, and long way I told the story, end of it was dead before I got there,” dropping your head, crying again, hand off the door. “This is too hard. Impossible. Why does it have to be? Her, I mean. I know, old question, but couldn’t this all somehow be a wake-up dream? All that’s done-before crap too, everybody must say it in a situation like this, and especially to you, true?” “But any other time your epitaph line would be humorous. I understand that. You got it over with — you’re a man who likes getting things over with, and the big thing, the biggest, life, you’re saying in this fictitious epitaph, you did.” “Maybe it was ‘Well, I finally got it over with’ what I told my wife and friends countless — endless amounts — countless times. Or no ‘well,’ but a ‘finally.’ So just ‘I finally’—and no ‘so’ either, so just i finally got it over with.’ I think that’s it. It is. Anyway, what’s the damn difference? One of those. And I should get it over with, finally. I know I have to see her, I want to.” “You’re right when you imply I know how difficult it is,” he says. “I’ve been through this with plenty of other people.” “Other fathers? But ones who adore their kids? Love them, adore them, worship them; if there was one word for those three, then that?” “Fathers, mothers, husbands, children for their sisters or brothers — everyone close.” “Okay. You close your eyes, you hold your breath, you push open the door and walk in. That’s all you have to do, just those.” You do them, push the door shut behind you without turning around, let your breath out and smell; nothing unusual, something medicinal; and open your eyes. She’s as you imagined; on her back, sheet up to a little below her shoulders. Okay, you imagined it’d be up to her neck. Everything, whole room, sheet, her hair, neat. Eyes closed; of course, so nothing unusual to imagine; if they were open you’d leap at her and say “You’re alive, you’ve opened your eyes, don’t do anything, say anything, stay still, I’ll get help. I knew, I knew. My God, this is the happiest moment of my life.” Arms by her sides. Someone put them there. Imagine, arms were somewhere else, they almost had to be, across her, above her, twisted in some dead position, kept out of the way somewhere so they could examine her, and someone straightened them out and put them by her sides. This is all done for me, you think, has to be, and anyone else who comes to see her but not to work on her or take official notes. And then when I’m gone, what will they do? They’ll have to lift her arms up, maybe one at a time, there might be some resistance, to pull the sheet down to do what they’ll be doing to her later on. And under the sheet, what? Little skimpy hospital gown, you can see, and you’re sure not tied or fastened in back, and holes, some exploratory, one from the gun, maybe some stitched or just pinned or taped closed for the time being so the medical examiners from the hospital or county can resume looking into her later on. Ah what do you know? You know this, that she’s there in this very white room with you, a room for sure not for sleeping or recovering, palms up. But you’re not feeling, you thought by now you’d break down and drop. You’ll feel, plenty, after this; for now, you want a good look first. They place the palms that way too? They were able to? That resistance. Put the arms down, turn the hands up if they weren’t, even separated the fingers so they’d look natural and not gnarled? Pinky so much distance from the second finger and so on? What do you think, nature did it on its own? Please, these are experts you’re talking about here, every big hospital has to have them, a series of them on duty or call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, must be hundreds of them in the state, maybe tens of thousands in the country, a hundred thousand in the world, trained to do these things, think of it, and like the doctor said they’ve been through it plenty of times. Hell, if he has, so have they. So? So, she doesn’t look as though she’s sleeping. Isn’t that what she’s supposed to be? Maybe they were in too much of a rush to fix her up for you or that’s a job the funeral people do, not the hospital’s. Here, just make her presentable for the hospital viewing. And you, what are you doing? You’re not feeling, you don’t even look as if you are, you can feel that in your face and the way your body’s so straight, not bent from suffering, also your legs not weak or knees buckling. I told you, this is how I’m approaching it now. I want to take in everything while I have the chance, not miss a trick. And all for myself, to steep myself in it after, for I won’t tell anyone else. Later I’ll have plenty of time to fall to pieces and I’ll be doing it every way, body, head and face. She looks as if she’s about to nod off to sleep and was only waiting for your kiss goodnight. Oh, all the stories you’ve read and made up for her then. A fairy tale come true? What do you mean? There’s something in that thought that means something and seems intriguing and you’re not getting it. It can’t be the prince kissing his future princess out of death or interminable sleep, for you’re the king in this parallel and he usually dies from despair when he sees his daughter like this. Then a fairy tale in reverse? Again, seems intriguing but you can’t come up with a meaning. Listen, this is all coming too fast and think of it, you’re in here at last, and you’re in mourning, so you’ve a right to be incompetent, stupid and confused. “Oh my darling dearest,” you say, “dearest” because she’s dead, for both your daughters were your dearest—are, were, you want to punch the interloping verb, stick it in your mitt and mash it, dash it, grind it to air — and you go to her and take her hand. You think the regardful part’s going; something tells you. But don’t goof, left hand will feel left out and unloved and you take that one and lean over and say to it “Don’t worry, I love you too,” and hold and kiss them both. Now the flood will come or soon. “Now come alive,” you say; “anything the king says, goes. This is that kind of kingdom. This room’s my reign. You’re my obedient subject. Do you know your king? Try to sit up when he speaks. The one who told you tales in bed, you and your sis, and got you into this fucking mess. No he didn’t. Excuse the language. He did the best he could even if it came to nothing. None of us is great. Put in a predicament like the one we were in, what could any king have done if he also didn’t have magical powers—‘Away car, guy’s gun to suddenly become gum, vanish, road home now clear!’” You think: If you were alive, my darling, you’d laugh; any pun with “gum.” “But the king’s wish. This is it. Hear me, I’m speaking for the king. If I only have one, here it is. I only have one and this is it. If we have to trade places to get it granted, so be it, he’ll do it eagerly, immediately, me. Come alive! I’m and he and all of us are ordering you to. But slowly, you don’t have to jump right up. Go easy on yourself, my little princess, you’ve had an unbelievably tough time. Or no fooling around. It’s not working besides. Julie, you are — no princess or king or plenipotentiary, the minister who stands in for him — just come alive.” You can’t believe your eyes are still dry. Must be something physiological, brain-body, you were an inch away from it, now you’re rock bottom, a place where tear ducts don’t produce. You also don’t shit there, piss or sweat. You certainly don’t get hungry, thirsty or hard-ons. It’s a place like death but where you’re breathing and can still fart. It’s the next step over from not. In fact, you just laid one. “Oh my gosh, my darling, I’m so sorry if what you’re smelling now is foul.” Where your skin continues to shed and hair and nails grow, but so slowly — as in death, so in life — that you don’t see their ongo-ingness. You’ve no clue as to what you’re talking of or alluding to but you do know why. And your eyes, they’re still dry. Of course her hands are cold, not to your mouth as much as to your hands, and they don’t get warmer the longer you hold them. Should you now say aye, is it finally time to face up and snuff out the royal blather and brain-body stuff, enough of all this wishing-fishing-blaming-talking-to-the-dead such malarkey: cold hands, in a heated draft-free room, that can’t even get a touch warmer when you keep them folded over in yours for so long, proof she’s dead? But never said out loud. Good God, she might hear, be once again on the edge between life and death — bordering it; rather, straddling — and one line like that might be all it’d take for her to give up and die. Her quick last thought: “If Daddy doesn’t believe I’m living, I’m dead.” Daddies have that sway. This one perhaps with this kid in this situation anyway, so you don’t say a thing. You hold, enclose, rub her knuckles, you look, you can barely see her now because of the water in your eyes, she does seem so peaceful, she does look as though she’s sleeping, that’s a bad sign, at least people in comas, you’ve heard or at least you saw with your father nights before he died, seem fidgety or in pain or get that way every so often, so it’s coming, ducts functioning, entire head’s sweating, you might even end up shitting and pissing in your pants, the whole works of you might go. It’s possible you might just fall into many pieces, no center hold. But you want to see your little baby so you wipe the water away. What else do you do now? These little fingers, a little puffy now, same with her little face. That little long neck, slim like a slim kid’s before, now blotchy and purple or red. Those shoulders, her big brainy forehead. You can’t stand it. There are altogether too many signs. Probably same with her whole body, the clotting and swelling and slime. But come on, what more do you do when you’ve been standing by your dead daughter’s bed for so many if not way past the maximum allowable minutes and sense the doctor’s getting impatient waiting and they want to come in and take her out so they can do what they have to with her or just to the room with her out of it so it can be reused? It’s just that something tells you there’s something you can do for her that you haven’t done and you don’t want to leave her till you’ve found out and tried and you also don’t want to go because if you do it’ll really be as if she’s gone. So you stay, but what do you do while you’re here? You hope that whatever that something is comes to you. And you look, you hold, you enfold, you bend down again and kiss her big forehead. Where do all the thoughts and stuff go? Just puff, cut? So you also think dopey, not dopey but preposterous hard-up thoughts. And you speak. You say “My little darling”—or does some of it stay in her head or around her awhile or even around you in the air, maybe trying to reach you some way with a last message or word or just anything in the little time it might have and feeling, like you trying to reach her or bring her back from wherever she is, that it can when it knows it can’t? — “what more can I actually say, I mean do for you now but say ‘my little darling’? If I knew, about what I could do, I’d do it, you know so, and if you could tell me — tell me if you can, make a noise, give some sign — I’d do it faster somehow, I swear,” water all over your face till you can’t see her, so even if there is some visible sign now you’ll miss it — is there? can there be? just one and then it’s gone for all time? — your lips touching her face in different places till they find what feels like her mouth and with your fingers you touch it and your lips on it and it is. Then someone’s behind you. You jump up; must be the doctor. Does he think what I was doing peculiar? you think. Well if he does, so what? I’m allowed, he said, I’m allowed, but maybe it’s a different doctor or an aide or even with the same doctor you’re only allowed to go so far. Door opened so quietly you didn’t hear the person come in. Or it opened normally but you were so absorbed in what you were doing and thinking that you didn’t hear it. Or it opened loudly. Loudly for the doctor or this other person, by accident perhaps — he pushed the door harder than he wanted and it slammed the wall. Or he pushed it harder than he normally does because he was angry or impatient or just tired of waiting outside and he wanted you to hear, but you still didn’t or hear even other things he might have said trying to get your attention. You turn around, she’ll be okay for a second, wipe your eyes, same doctor, doesn’t seem to be in any of the moods you thought he might if he’d slammed the door, and he says “Excuse me, Dr. Frey, but don’t you feel it’s around the time you should come away from here?” “What makes you think I’m a doctor? Wish I was; bet she would’ve got twice the activity on her if I’d announced straight off she was an M.D.’s daughter, not that it would’ve…well, it wouldn’t’ve hurt. I should do that next time — why didn’t I think of it for this? I could kill myself for not,” and he says “I thought you were a Ph.D. doctor at a university; I thought somebody told me that, excuse me. And as we said before regarding our efforts for her—” and you say “‘if you were a doctor or a plowman’—where’d I turn up ‘plowman,’ how, why? — ‘she would have got the same rigid’—not ‘rigid’ but…but something, oh fuck it — excuse me, my darling,” turning to her, she’s still the same, such a darling, as if cold-capped, cold-cocked, knocked out cold, but warm, lying, sleeping, and then to him “‘care,’ just ‘attention and care.’ No, I work in a grade school, or did, years, years ago. Not her age but junior high. I was called ‘teacher,’ most times ‘teach.’ Now I don’t know what I do or am going to. Wait!” and he says “Anyway, sir—” and you say “No, wait, one more thing. Don’t push me out of here. Maybe something you said or what we were talking of set it off. But it’s what I was looking for before to try when I was by myself, with her, here, I mean. And maybe I already found and tried it but I don’t think so.” “I don’t know what you—” and you say “But not here in this room with her do I remember trying and finding it after everything else had failed or just didn’t take place, and with a feeling — listen, I have to be quick about it so you have to go — as deeply as I have now. Not ‘fervently,’ I don’t want to use stupid words to something my argument, but that it could be possible, work. So I have to,” and he says “Excuse me, you’re talking so fast, I’m confused — you have to what?” and you say “Out, please get out, just another few minutes, you have to let me and leave me alone,” and push him out the door, you don’t actually push him but put your hands on his chest and by walking forward you make him move back a step and then he looks at your hands flat on his hard chest — maybe he’s even flexing his pects to warn you to back off — with this, ironical’s the word, expression where you don’t know if he’s not going to surprise you and suddenly haul off and sock your face, and then at his watch and says “Fine, a few minutes, but only a few—please, sir — I’ll wait outside, but you know there are many other important things other than seeing to you that I have to do,” and walks backward out the door with his hand on it and shuts it. You run to her bed and drop to your knees facing her, cup your hands and say “Dear—” and then “No, another direction, not to her but to You,” and swivel around on your knees till you face the bare wall between the bed and door and say “Dear God, dear God, please make her alive again, please, please. I’ve never been religious, to my knowledge not since I was a boy. And then only because one of my parents wanted me to and I fell for it, you can say, a little bit — I don’t think I truly believed in it but was just scared if I didn’t. Nor have I ever asked You for anything and I don’t think I did even then. If I did, only for boy things and that Mommy and Daddy never die at least not while I was alive, and so forth, and also myself, to never die, for like everyone that age I must have been afraid of death. But now it’s father things I’m asking — father, as in dada, daddy, me, and a father thing. The deepest most deep most asking thing I’ve ever asked for or could and ever will, unless the same thing happened to her again or to my other child. And if I’m only allowed to ask it once then this is that time. If You give it, this little girl here, my daughter Julie alive, I’ll do whatever You want. I’ll become a believer again, a believer in You but this time as an adult, not out of fear and not knowing anything but from this experience here and belief. I will believe and believe in You, tell others what You’ve done, I’ll work for You in ways I’ll find out about, through religion if that’s the way or one of them and every day or any way and anything You want from me for the rest of my life. And by doing anything for You I mean even to killing myself if that’s what You’d want, though I’m not saying it is. I’m in fact saying it probably isn’t — it isn’t, I know it, and I know You know everything I’m saying and I mean before I even say or think it. Or I will know that and never have any doubts about it or You again if You give back her life and make her well again or well enough, full of life enough, for the doctors here or anywhere to make her normal again. Or well enough for her just to continue to live and if this is what has to be, then disabled and sickly, but I would hope to the way she was before those men killed her today. If we can make this arrangement, whatever the word for it is — please excuse me — and I go back on my word to You, dear God, please strike me dead. But give me this and I’ll not only become a believer in You and work for You for the rest of my life but I’ll be devoted, devotional, devout — please don’t be disturbed or put off, set me aside, not listen to me, brush me off as ridiculous and no consequence, my plea for her of no consequence, feel I’m not saying what I most deeply believe and feel, because of my trouble with words now, for especially at this time You can understand why. All that goes without saying, as I said before, if You exist, and up till this time from the time I was a kid You mostly didn’t for me. But You will forever if You give me — give her — us both — do this. I’ll go to whatever kind of church or synagogue or mosque or place of worship You want me to or just be this way without that, but never be anything but a believer in You. I know I’m repeating myself, excuse me for that too. Repeated myself repeatedly but I don’t know what else to say to You when everything I’m talking about is aimed at the same thing: that all I want is for her to be alive and what I’ll do for it. In other words — and more repetition, I think, so excuse me again — but besides becoming and being a believer in You for life, whatever else You want from me or that I can see will show my belief in You, I’ll do, and ‘want of me,’ not ‘from.’ So what more can I say or do, dear God, what more to get this, tell me? Or maybe I should just think about it myself — think quietly, let me think,” and you close your eyes and think, you think “This is very good, I truly believe in what I’m saying. If He’s here I can only hope He’s hearing me, for I swear I mean every word I’m thinking and I’ve said so far. I do, I’m not just thinking and saying it to get what I want; I mean it as deeply and unspuriously as anything I’ve ever thought, said or done. And now I’ve thought some more about it and I’ll be silent in my head awhile and see if anything else comes,” and you’re silent awhile and nothing else comes, “so there doesn’t seem to be anything more now I can think to say to show how deeply and sincerely I mean it and what I can do for Him.” “So please, please, dear God,” you say, opening your eyes on the wall and keeping them there, “if You give me this and after You do I never hear from You again, or there’s no other sign from You, like giving her life back now, from that life-giving moment on, I’ll still never stop being this, doing it, being a strong and deep-as-conceivable-and-possible believer in You. I just need, want and am asking for this one thing from You and that’s it, all I’ll ever ask of You again, so I’m making that promise to You too. So give back — give her back her life, dear God. Make a miracle for her, please. I didn’t think anything like that was possible till I started saying this to You — till before when I dropped to my knees to You, or really from the time the doctor left and shut the door and I ran to her side and dropped to my knees to You, and I know You know I didn’t believe it before, but if it is possible, and I believe it is, there is no better, sweeter, more wonderful, good-natured, intelligent child in the world, I swear to You, no one who loves life as much and who has as much to live for and who is as loved by her parents and sis as much and who deserves her life back more and You can see, You can see, by everything she’s done and said and just the way she’s acted so far, that she’s going to be the most giving and loving kid and adult there is. If that displeases You, my going on about her like that, giving an argument for her which You already know whether it’s so or even close to what I said, as if all those things were reason for her to be chosen for this miracle, and they’re probably not. But putting her up before let’s say another dead child her age who this moment, and this probably happens around the world to some family every single second of the day, one of her parents might be praying as deeply to You to make her alive, and a parent who had always been a believer, no less, then I’m sorry, I very deeply apologize. And now there is nothing — but it’s just, what I said about her, an example of how I feel about her — not an example but just how I do, which You of course also know. But now there is nothing, I was going to say, and You must know that too, nothing else I can say now. Her being alive to me — I mean just her being alive is everything to me, everything. So I beg You, I love You, I will worship You, I will truly believe in You, I will continue and continue to be a believer in You, I will do anything and everything for You, again and again and again I’m saying it, but make her live. Thank You…Oh, those were terrible words or at least many of them were and inept and almost all of it terribly spoken though I swear to You none of it previously thought up or planned, but please hear me and do what I ask. Thank You again, dear God, thank You. There’s nothing more I can say but that there isn’t and You know that and what I mean and how I feel about her and all this, so thank You again. Yes, that’s it, finished.” You shut your eyes and cup your hands tight. You know nothing’s happening to her and you don’t look. Nothing but normal slow decomposing that comes when, well, that comes. But you don’t open your eyes because you don’t want to break the spell or whatever it is and by looking at her before it happens, this is what you mean, maybe that’ll stop it from happening. Or maybe these things take time. The miracle doesn’t have to happen or even begin to the moment you stop asking for it. So don’t move, keep your hands cupped, eyes don’t have to be shut so long, for you’re looking at the wall and not her, but keep them shut anyway to be safe. But you mean it, you meant every word of it, you will become a believer, you will. If it happened, everything for you from that moment on or from the time you got the doctors in to work on her to keep her alive and you were told to wait outside, would be for God. Of course also for your family and day-to-day things too. You wouldn’t become a zealot or an ascetic but you would go along with anything else that came from deeply believing in Him. What do you mean by that? It means — well, He knows what it means and this is what you’ll do for Him and you will never stop believing as you said, which should be enough. But nothing’s happened, you know nothing has or ever will. You mean by that “which should be enough” that He wouldn’t want you to give everything up and do nothing else but work and think of Him from then on. But you never know, about that and that nothing can ever happen. For if that’s what He wants from you for Him to bring her back, you’ll do that too. And there are recorded miracles, ones comparable to what you asked for and more, but recorded — looked into and authenticated, you mean — by the church or group the people these miracles happened to were members of, so in a way questionable because these miracles ended up benefiting that church or group. But miracles today, yesterday, since people began believing in God, or even before so they would believe in Him. So many miracles that it’d seem some of them would have to have taken place. For could there be ten thousand church-validated miracles in the last five hundred years, let’s say, and not one of them was true? And millions, billions of people believe in God, so you’d think He’d probably have to exist. It can’t be this gigantic sham for centuries on end, millenniums, and if He exists it’s also possible He can make miracles as all or almost all the religions have said and He heard you and did or will do soon what you asked. You don’t know why she should be chosen for this miracle nor why it should happen because of your pleading. But if it can happen to someone, why not her? Who could be as worthy of it, as you said? Thousands, perhaps, millions, but nobody more worthy, is what you’re saying. That without question has to be true, for how can one really compare the worthiness of children her age when you’re talking about goodness and virtues and such? She’s as good and virtuous and so on as any kid — how can she not be? — which is why you think, when you stick it in with all the other things about God’s existence and the possibility of miracles and that praying to Him for one can work, that she has a chance. A minute, two have passed since you stopped praying. Maybe you shouldn’t wait any longer to look. It might turn out to be dangerous for her. She may already have been brought back and have only two minutes for you to rush out and get the doctors to come in and work on her, before she dies again. That could be what God gives you without saying so — some kind of rule regarding miracles like this — two minutes, at the most three. Just think how you’d feel if you opened your eyes in a minute and saw her giving her last breath. No, you’re being crazy. It can’t work, this whole thing; she’s dead forever, you dumb fool. Yes it can work, it’s possible, you’ve shown how it can. You open your eyes and look at her. She looks the same. You stand up and put your ear by her mouth, you feel her head, cheeks, you put your ear by her nose and don’t breathe, just listen. You feel her wrist for a pulse, then the other one. You put your hand on the sheet where you think her heart is, your ear to that part and then several places around it where you think the heart can be if it’s not there and don’t breathe, listen. Then because you think that ear maybe doesn’t hear as well as the other one, the other one at several places on her chest. You would pull the sheet down and put your ear and hand on her chest and feel around and listen for a heartbeat but you know nothing’s happened, nothing could. No, you don’t do that because you don’t want to feel and see her there. It’ll be ugly, bloody; it’ll show gouging, probing, big holes. But you did do everything you could for her, you did try for her, you did, no body could say you didn’t, from start to finish you tried, you did, you tried. No, it’s still possible, still. It has to be. You don’t know about God and time, you don’t know about God, period, or very little, but her life can’t be taken, that’s all, she has to become alive, goddamnit, and that’s final. You cover your eyes, bend your head forward and think “Fuck the cupping-of-hands crap, this should be enough,” and say to yourself “Dear God, I’m sorry, for cursing, for whatever. Maybe You do exist, I am hoping You do and You hear me and help her and in some way make this whole thing a fantastic mistake. Maybe it takes longer than three minutes — You know what I’m talking about — longer than five, ten. Do it when You choose to, I beg You. If there’s something I left out, didn’t do, forgot to promise or didn’t know to promise or offer You, please forgive me for that too, all of which I’ve said and said. But You have to know by now that anything You want of me I’ll do and everything I already said I’d do for You and become, I will. Maybe You weren’t listening before, maybe You are now; my daughter here, make her alive, please.” You look; nothing. You pull the sheet up above her feet and feel around an ankle where the pulse would be. You feel the other ankle there, then re-cover the feet. You shut your eyes. Yes, do it, you think. You pull the sheet down and see a long incision down her chest, two short slices across the incision, dried blood around them, no bullet hole, piece of clean gauze on her stomach over her belly button. You lift the gauze and it’s just clear skin and the button underneath, so you don’t know why it was left there. You put your ear where you think her heart is and then around there, feel around your chest till you feel your heartbeat and then put your hand on the same part of her chest, then your ear on it and don’t breathe, just listen. You hear the door close with your other ear. Doctor’s in the room again, you know it without looking. Or maybe someone else, sent by that doctor to get you out of here, for he could have been called elsewhere, an emergency someplace or his workday’s over, and you say without looking up “Shh, don’t move or speak, I’m listening,” and stick a finger in your free ear and listen some more. You put your ear to her mouth, part her lips with your fingers and listen at it some more, feel both her temples at the same time this time. He takes the gauze off her, drops it in the waste can by the bed, covers her up, straightens her arms, takes your arm and pats your hand he’s holding and leads you out. Last thing you did wasn’t to kiss her. You want to. But you can do it at the funeral chapel a few minutes before the funeral or in some crematory room if she’s going to be cremated or at the funeral home in some room they keep her if the only ceremony for her is going to be at the cemetery.

You call your wife. You first asked the doctor if he knew a good place to. “You want privacy, naturally,” and you said “That, a door I can close, place that doesn’t look out on anything and have people coming through and no one can look in.” He said his office, “cubicle’s more like it, where I do my more complicated paperwork and phoning and can catnap sitting up,” and that he’d leave you alone in it. Margo wanted to speak to her mommy but you said “After, another time, when I call next and I’ll be calling a lot, I promise. But you see, I’ll be talking to her for the first time since New York,” and she said “So?” and you said “So, I have to be more unmistakable?” and she said “I don’t know what you mean. It’s just I have to speak to her.” You said “After I tell her some things I’ll see if she wants to talk to you. She might not. Or she probably will want to but not be able to, so don’t be offended if she says no. But I will ask her for you, if I’m able to, since by that time I’ll probably be in terrible shape too, but she may be too broken up — let’s say she will — to talk to anyone after that including me.” The doctor unlocks the cubicle door, says “I can’t give you the key, it’s my only one and I have to go through all sorts of bureaucratic rigmarole to get another one, and the door locks automatically when you close it and there’s no way to keep it unlocked if you leave the room. That is, if the door’s firmly shut. Please don’t, if you leave the room and want to return, keep the door ajar with a chair or shoe or anything. There’s been thievery in the hospital, some we think by staff, and I have important papers and possessions in the room, though they even take thermoses and telephones.” “A shoe?” and he said “Why would I have one in there? It’s one of two. I keep a pair handy for jogging — running shoes. If you get locked out, ask the nurses’ station to summon me over the public address system and I’ll come fast as I can to unlock it.” Margo was taken to a room with a TV. The doctor suggested it. “We have several spare private patient rooms. We can move in a TV if one isn’t there, get her soda and snacks, she can sit in the chair or even on the bed — it’s okay, we’ll remake it, plenty of linen here — and she can watch her favorite shows with a remote control. Of course, all this depending on how long you’ll be.” “I’ll need some time to prepare, to think; you know, and then to get over it after I call. And Margo doesn’t know how to use one of those control things, that I know of. And I don’t think she has any favorite shows or watches any TV except for some popular two-hour one on Friday nights and maybe a nature film and occasionally, it doesn’t count though, a video movie with us or for them if it’s gentle and clean.” “Strict about it, that it? Feel it’ll hurt their intellectual and moral development?” and you said “In a way. But she doesn’t especially like TV and I think even those two Friday-night hours and nature film are for our benefit, to show she’s so-called normal, one of the kids. And because she didn’t, the other didn’t, or at least that’s the way it worked.” “Oh, she likes it all right but I bet is only trying to please you, your obviously being book- and high-minded people, to think she doesn’t. But she’ll change soon, or would have if this thing didn’t happen today — now for a while everything will be out of whack — and go at it avidly, I was going to say,” and you said “Maybe. But I hate TV for them; hated, hate. All that violence and emphasis on money and beauty and body and the commercials one-two-three and in all of it kittenish to what I now hear, even in the ads, is semiexplicit sex. Suppose she sees a show now with violence in it, what’ll I do? The sex and stupid stuff I don’t mind for her at this moment, but the violence? Suppose it’s about one or two deranged men who kill a person cavalierly, or even a kid or even a kid in a car and even from a car this kid’s killed? But a random smiling crime on the run, even if the killers get it at the end or repent. She’ll fall apart. I will too at hearing she saw it. Maybe someone can watch the TV with her. To clear the programs and just to be there to talk to if she suddenly wants to. Or maybe you have some family-movie videos, movies from thirty-forty years ago when there wasn’t as much blown-out brains and blood in them,” and he said “We don’t have VCRs here. She’ll be all right, really. It’ll be a good distraction. Look, I have kids too. And I know, for they’re around the same age as yours and a third who’s a bit older and also because of the patients I see and talk with, that what happened to her today and what she sees on TV and the movies are two distinct things. One’s fantasy and entertainment, the other’s real and repulsive, but for some reason, even if they haven’t seen a lot of it on TV, they’re able to separate the two more easily than me or you.” “You’ve kids my age — my kids’ age? And two — three? You seem so young to — too young to. Maybe I started too late. Anyway, I’ll try to get her away from the TV soon as I can. I won’t try to get through with the phone call to my wife soon as I can, but over it after, and maybe sooner to it.” You shut the door. Just before you did you said “What happens now to my younger girl? More slicing up? I should ask my wife first if she wants Julie to go through with more of that, but I wouldn’t know how to go about it. With both of us so uncollected, there can’t be a way,” and the doctor said “I’m afraid you haven’t a choice, sir. Someone’s been killed. We only did an exploratory on her, to see what could be salvaged if you’d agree, though nothing could. But first a few holes for tubes and other medical procedures to try to resuscitate her, even if everything was predetermined the minute we saw her. The county medical examiner will perform a thorough examination of her because foul play’s been suspected,” and you said “Foul play? She was murdered in front of me, or by two guys in front of me, she was right behind me or to the side in back. Now I forget where she was sitting but she had to be because Margo was right behind. I mean—” and he said “The term’s a technicality. He’ll also trace and then locate the bullet if it didn’t exit. Our preliminary exam indicated it didn’t, but it’s easy to miss the exit hole. Or even a second bullet, since the entry and exit holes for it may be in some more unyielding areas of her body or they closed. Then his office will contact you to arrange for a funeral home to pick up your daughter. If he can’t reach you — before you leave here you’ll want to give me all the phone numbers where you think you might be. In fact, let me have them now, I might miss you later,” and you gave your home phone number—“I think that’s right, I’m so confused now, but up till last year I think I was the only Nathaniel Frey in the phone book”—but couldn’t remember at all the numbers of your in-laws and your wife’s sister. “This is her folks’ names and address: they’re listed in the Manhattan book as a couple, his name first, and here’s my brother-in-law’s name in New Haven. I might just drive north — not drive, take the train or hire a cab or something — to be with my wife, and she might go to her sister’s or stay at her folks’ or even fly home to be with me and Margo. I’ll have to make sure to coordinate it, so we don’t get, you know, that’d be terrible, wouldn’t it? But I guess it’ll all depend where Julie’s taken to. And where would we? I don’t know of any home where we are, but that shouldn’t be tough to find. Several are nearby, not next door but within blocks, and by then friends or my wife’s family will help if I want to bring them in. But if he can’t reach me?” and he said “The coroner? Then he’ll get instructions from one of those close relatives or place her in a home here and tell you when he does contact you. He has a small office and no facilities for storing the subjects he’s worked on, excuse me for putting it like that. He should be done tomorrow afternoon, since he’s probably picking her up right now.” “Maybe I should go to him, help him put her in his truck or van if he didn’t come with anyone and you’re short-staffed, and go with him to provide information he might want. And to stay with her, but in another room while he’s working on her, till she has to go to a home, and maybe even there’s where my wife can meet me — the coroner’s — but I have to make that call to her first and what would Margo do all that time?” and he said “It’s also not necessary; he has all the data he needs from us and the police.” “But there are little specific health details he might want to know about her that only her pediatrician and parents know, and my wife ten times better than I, and he doesn’t have her records, does he? Did you call her pediatrician for them? I don’t remember giving anyone her name and phone number. That one I could never remember — it didn’t have to take something like today — and would always ask my wife for, who’d produce it on the spot. Among other things she has a head of a thousand phone numbers and all our Social Security numbers, but I can give you the doctor’s name or the group practice’s,” and he said “He won’t need any of that for what he’ll be doing,” and you said “So, that means I’m done here. I can go whenever I want with Margo after I make my call. It’s hard to believe. There must be something I haven’t done, attended to, that sort of thing — answered,” and he said “Outside of the call to your wife, if you’re still up to it, and what you want the police to do with your car after, I can’t think of anything. You will want to contact them before you go if they’re through with the car and you’re planning to leave it behind, as I don’t know how long they’ll want to take care of it before they park it in a private lot. Perhaps you’d like me to deal with them, you shouldn’t be bothered,” and you said “I can call them from where I end up or in a few days, send them the title and registration and tell them to sell it or give it away if they want. Maybe for the hospital; you’ve all been very kind. But it’s almost an old car, lots of miles and stains and banging up and now even worse. It might get a couple of thousand if the buyer isn’t repelled by what happened or think there’s a curse attached. Though even if it were new and worth umpteen thousands it wouldn’t stop me from never wanting to have anything to do with it again or anything we left inside it or even file an insurance claim, other than for going what I probably have to go through, like signing the ownership papers with my wife’s and my name, to get rid of it,” and he said “It’s a generous offer, one you or your wife might have a change of mind about later, but I’d think it’d be too complicated for the hospital to get involved in something like an auction or sale, though thank you.” It’s a little room, a cubicle as the doctor said. As they were walking to it he said “It’s something, isn’t it, those floods down South. With only a slightly stronger wind or high pressure — something blown in from the ocean or up from the Gulf — and then a similar weather pattern that stopped the clouds over the South for so long, we would have got a huge dose of it ourselves,” and you said “What, because of the rains? I wish we had. I wouldn’t have driven back today, or yesterday if I had heard it was on the way, or tomorrow if it happened today, if we started to get what they did or anything near. That is what you mean, right?” and he said “There’s never been anything like it in the weather annals there. We’ve had periodic heavy wettings recently, nothing for several days. But they’ve had, Virginia on down, twenty-six straight days of rain and five to seven inches of rain in some places for six consecutive days. You can understand why the rivers wouldn’t hold — the levees. A few billion acres of land covered over, I read. Entire towns and one capital city under water, or to the first or second story, and one of our oldest universities totally flooded. What a catastrophe. Six states have already been declared federal emergency disaster areas and a seventh is on the way. Municipal water systems knocked out for weeks, the pestilence that can occur if people so much as brush their teeth with tap water in thousands of homes. Billions in property damage, not acreage loss. Maybe a few million acres covered or totally saturated. And to top it off, it’s continuing to rain in biblical proportions with no end in sight. What was it, eighty days, forty days, forty-eight? You can almost begin believing that it happened because of something horrific the region’s done, for why was every other region spared? Just think what’s going to happen to fruit and citrus prices the next year and traveling this summer if some of those major bridges go and highways are ruined,” and you said “I’ve been listening to it on the radio now and then and seeing it in the papers the last few days but for some reason I haven’t paid much attention. Could be it’s just too big a calamity to imagine or care about as a whole or there hasn’t been enough reporting of individual tragedies about it except for things like ‘My family farm’s gone,’ ‘The homestead where my ancestors grew up is finished,’ I can’t get to work and I need the money, now even more so to pay off this damage,’ ‘My car and camper both destroyed along with the carport they were in,’ ‘Our only family tree’s on my mother’s computer that floated away,’” and he said “Picture I get is different, sir. Seventy-one deaths so far overall and thousands of livestock, if you care about animals the way I do. An entire Boy Scout troop lost while spelunking, quarter-million people living in shelters now, but all that neigh-bor-aiding-neighbor attitude down there, with some people driving hundreds of miles to help and even coming from other states when the call went out for sandbaggers to work twenty hours straight. One man who sandbagged for a storeowner he hated like hell, he said, but in times of crisis like this, he added, what else can you do but pitch in?” and you said “Then I must be wrong, didn’t read enough or not the right newspapers and wasn’t listening to the radio at the right times. I didn’t mean to sound heartless about it.” Little room, little cubicle, normal-size cubicle, how big do you suppose? Big as three old telephone booths, some height. Big as your second-floor shower-bath at home plus connecting linen closet, same height. Big as two cars of your model and make, one on the other. Your car. What things of hers you leave behind in it? Dollies, clothes, games, toothbrush, you’ve said all this, her own special toothpaste gel with an unusually large flat cap so the tube can stand on it, books from your local library, let it all go. To the library you’ll say, well, you’ll say nothing. You’ll just pay by check sometime after the bill comes for all your overdue books and never if you can help it go near that library again. No windows, so, windowless, diplomas on the walls, bookcase full of medical books, papers neatly stacked on the narrow desk underneath, pencils, long yellow writing tablets, couple of coat hooks on the door with medical jackets on them, hanger with street clothes on a wall hook, tie on another, running outfit and athletic shorts on a third, running shoes and hightop sneakers so maybe he also plays basketball, towel on another wall hook, under it a long black rubber tubing he probably exercises with. You pull out the drawers looking for what? Phone book because you forget your area code and don’t want to dial Information and speak to anyone for it. It’s a new one, changed the past year when the state divided into two codes, and all you can think of is the old. Shaving gear, bottle of aspirins, pint bottle of rye or whatever the smallest size is that isn’t the souvenir kind, half pint. A glass. You shouldn’t, it’s not yours, there’s barely a quarter-bottle left, which means around two shots. He may be saving it for a bracer, after this difficult shift with your dead daughter, for instance, or right after you go. But he wouldn’t mind, he’d understand, not mind that much, you might even tell him if you see him again and a few months from now send him a fifth or liter of one of the best Irish whiskeys, if you remember his name, and pour a finger of it, two fingers, practically emptying it, and shoot it down and put the bottle back in the drawer. Glass was clean when you picked it up, no sink in here so unless you wash it he’ll know you drank from it. But again, you’re almost sure he won’t mind. He’s a nice guy, you can tell by what he said and the way he smiled and all the time he gave you. What doctor do you know would do that? Maybe all of them, in this situation, if they weren’t called to another emergency, and anyway by the time he finds the glass, which could be today if he takes that bracer, you’ll be gone from here though you don’t know where yet, and you look for your hanky, no hanky, you must have used it on her in the car and left it there or thrown it away, and dry the glass with your bloody, dirty shirt — even worse than stealing his liquor, as the hanky would have been, but here he won’t know and he’ll probably, since he’ll also probably smell the whiskey on it and notice the bottle almost empty, wash the glass before using it. Framed photo on the desk of him and his wife and two sons, or you assume they are, and who else could they be? Framed photo on a bookshelf of him and this same woman and now three children, so you know they’re his. But he said two were around the same age as yours and one a bit older, which isn’t so here. Was he saying that to show something, do something? What’s the difference what it means if he was only trying to help? All facing the camera, posed in a way you never would with your family, and by a professional it seems — cloudy blue backdrop that doesn’t exist in real life except as a photographer’s prop or maybe it’s just worked into the print, but to you it looks like life after death, to them maybe it’s heaven on earth. Anyway, something else you’d never do, pay a pro to photograph you, doctor and his wife sitting on a red Victorian loveseat, three- or four-year-old girl squeezed between them with a hand on each of their closest knees, same two boys behind them and looking about three years apart but several years older than in the desk photo, so that one probably taken before the girl was born, doctor serious, wife looking giddy to almost delirious, both seemingly unaged since the earlier photo and doctor looking even younger in this one, must be the more youthful haircut and the jogging and exercise or the photographer touched them up. Do you have family photos where you’re all in them? Maybe only one, or two or three, but one you remember and is inside a plastic sheath tucked away in your billfold and which used to be pinned above your desk at home but you haven’t looked at since you stuck it in there: first time Julie was taken outside, when she was a couple of weeks old. Your mother-in-law had come down to help out and took it. On the grass in front of your apartment building then, Margo seated between your wife’s spread legs and waving a lolly, you kneeling beside them holding Julie who’s crying hysterically while everyone else is smiling. Diaper pin or rash, soiled diaper, stomach bubble or hunger, any one of those could be it, your wife used to say, but here it might only have been her first airing. So: outside air on her face and street sounds — cars, trucks, maybe birds, a dog barking, passerby shouting, motorcycle passing — and all your excited chatter at having her out. Even a plane overhead. They often flew by and sometimes it seemed pretty low. Think what the first one of those must have sounded like. Impossible. The phone, and you sit at the desk. Got to get it over with. No, that’s not the attitude. The attitude should be what? You don’t know. The attitude, my friend, the attitude! Sorry. How do you call out from here? Same as from your office: dial nine, then one, area code and phone number? The area code, you were looking for a phone book, and you go through the drawers again and look on the bookshelves but don’t find one. Some people in tight quarters keep them in corners on the floor and you look at all four of them, none’s there. Someone’s playing loud music with this thumping beat, probably in a nearby cubicle. Area code you suddenly remember and write it down along with your phone number. But you’re not dialing home, you’re calling your wife at your in-laws’, and you jot down the New York City area code. Their phone number, even after years of calling them now and then, you were never able to remember. You don’t know why. You like them and they’re easy to speak to so it isn’t that you wanted to forget the number and by forgetting it you forgot them or your difficulty in talking to them, et cetera. You even tried to find some memory device to remember it but it was such an odd assortment of numbers, the lower ones all mixed up with the higher ones and none seeming to join another, that you couldn’t come up with one. It’ll be hard calling your wife — speaking to her with what you have to say — with that music — and then dealing with everything else after it — going on. “Stop, please stop that racket,” you say, “if there’s a God in heaven, stop it now.” But you don’t want to try and find the room it’s coming from and ask that person to turn it down or off, if anyone’s there. You might lock yourself out of this room and you also don’t want to confront anyone. You want to get it over with, that’s all, done, done, and don’t want any more interferences and distractions, and then get on to the next thing and the next thing and so on till ten years from now it’s somewhat out of your mind or not in it all the time. Something like that. Just speak, when you do speak, with a finger in your free ear. Which kid did that recently? Not one but with two: Julie, in the car; no, Margo, here. Both — all kids likely — did it with both ears plugged: don’t want to hear what you’re saying when you’re remonstrating, that sort of stuff. You get up and put your ear to the walls till you find the one it’s coming from and yell “Stop it, will ya, shut the fucking music up,” banging the wall. You listen for about half a minute and no one says anything, music stays; they had to have heard you so probably nobody’s there. There’s no other way, you’ll have to get New York City Information, and it isn’t as if you’re talking to your wife yet, and you dial nine, one and the Information number there. Man says “Mr. Lewis, what city please?” and you say “Yes, thank you. Listen, this is very tough for me, Mr. Lewis, speaking. I do want a number but there’s been — please stick with me through this quick spiel — a death in my family—” and he says “I’m sorry, sir, what can I do for you, what city?” and you say “Manhattan. It was just before, a few hours, and I’m still a little crazy — a car accident — all upset about it and I have to call my wife and need her parents’ number there,” and he says “The name and address?” and you say “That I have,” and give them and he says “Hold on for your number please,” and a recorded voice gives it. The music, another piece, almost the same screeching and beat but faster, is that supposed to be relaxation, diversion, rest, something to think with or listen to on your dinner break, maybe just good for sex, but not here, though could be, on the floor, put a jacket underneath, or both on a chair, perfect place with only one key, but if not what is it then, what’s it serve? It’s so goddamn ignorant, why do people who like serious music keep it low and those who like this kind turn it up so? That true? You don’t care what the answers are, but in a hospital, in this part, where people are dying or recently dead, or maybe that’s not in this part, you walked a long way, but still, and instead of a bracer, this? What am I missing? Oh that’s a lark. Oh shit, forget it, don’t let it get to you, it’s not going to go away by your praying and raving against it, so are you ready? As I’ll ever be. What are you going to say? I’ll just see what I’ll say. Not good enough, this is the most emotionable of human instances which calls for the rarest most fastidious kind of sensitivity, equableness and self-control. Stop it, stop the words and bullshit, speak to me in plain language, I can’t stand any fanciness like that and for sure not now. Okay, so just how will you? How will I? How will you and what, yes, how? I’ll say, I’ll say, I’ll say I’m at a hospital, here, this one, I’ll give the name and state, Margo’s with me, Margo’s all right, nothing’s wrong with her, don’t worry about that, but there’s been an accident, a terrible one, so terrible, couldn’t be worse, listen, hold tight, it’s a shooting, Julie’s been shot, Julie’s shot, Julie’s dead, I’m at the hospital, Margo’s with me, she’s okay, unhurt, is anyone there with you, if anyone is, please get that person to the phone or just someone to help you. You’d break the news to her like that? So fast, right off the bat? You wouldn’t first ask if anyone’s there with her before you tell her, so that person can sort of be there to help her when you tell her or tell her himself? And also, for this is such shocking news, get into it slower and easier with this person before you say what happened? Yes, I’d do that. I’d say to my wife “Hi, dear, how are you, is anyone there with you, your folks, they around? May I speak to one of them, it’s something about something, a secret, nothing wrong, don’t worry, and one I’m sure they’ll give away the moment I get off the phone,” as if it were something like a surprise party I was planning for her, and then I’d speak to her mom or dad the way you said. I’d do it quietly, wouldn’t break the news quickly, even start off with a bit of small talk. If she said “Which one?” I’d say “Oh, I guess your dad,” since I think, though it’d be the worst thing he’s ever heard or had to deal with, he’d handle it better. Or I’d just ask for him straight off, “Let me speak to your dad, please, if he’s there,” and if he wasn’t then I’d ask for her mom. But suppose neither parent is there? Or suppose she then says, after I made that pitch, “Sure, I’m at their apartment, why wouldn’t they be here? But something’s wrong, you’re holding it back, don’t try to act like you’re not, so what is it, tell me, the kids, one of the kids, both?” She might have picked up by my voice, not what I said, that something’s wrong, very wrong, couldn’t be worse. I might only have to say one word for her to notice. Or one word before I start crying. I might start crying second I finish dialing her folks’ or be crying while I dial. Be sobbing, be bawling. I might have to hang up while I’m dialing, try to collect myself and then dial again when I feel composed enough to speak to her and then might start sobbing the moment she lifts the receiver and says hello. Or I might never get that control. I might try very hard, clench my teeth, bite the insides of my cheeks, do some mental preparation—“Now don’t cry, don’t cry, too much is riding on your staying composed”—think I have it, heart’s not beating wild, throat’s not tight, and so forth, and dial again and start crying while I’m dialing or the moment my wife picks up the phone. Or when some other person, it doesn’t have to be she, lifts the receiver. Though most times I’ve called her at her folks’ place she’s been the one to pick up the phone, maybe because she’s faster, more energetic or it’s just a habit of racing to the phone there from the time she was a kid and they don’t even bother trying to answer it while she’s there. But if her mother does answer the phone, what then? Do I ask for her husband? If she says “What’s it about, Nate, anything I can do?” which she usually does when I ask for him, what do I say? Something like “Something to do with our income tax forms last year, he told me to call him about it if I got the letter from IRS I had anticipated would be waiting for me at home, and we’re home, by the way, good trip, everybody’s safe, kids say hello, and of course after I speak to him I’ll want to speak to Lee.” But if I do get her dad, or only her mom if her dad’s not home, what then? I don’t know. No, you have to know, it’s absolutely essential. You’re priming them for your wife, right? and the call’s to be made momentarily, so you have to think now what you’ll say. I’ll say something like, I’ll say something like, I’ll say “Hi, it’s Nate, Nat, Nate, but you know that, you know my voice, but there’s something you don’t know, some very important thing to tell you, some very bad news to tell Lee too but first I have to prepare her through you, prepare you to prepare her for the absolute worst though I wish there was some way to prepare you for it too.” I might then say “It isn’t Margo, it’s Julie.” I might put it this way: “Margo’s not hurt, Julie is.” I might then add “Julie’s very hurt, in fact. Extremely. There’s been an accident. Not an accident. Listen, I’m going to go nuts with crying if I don’t tell you right away and if I do start crying I’ll never stop and you’ll never find out what it is I have to tell you and you have to, you see, for I have to tell Lee. It’s this: Julie’s dead,” I might say, “Margo isn’t. Julie’s been wiped out clean, Margo isn’t even scratched.” No, not like that, not any of it, I have to go back. Why? You’re on to it, you are, and almost over it with her folks, so go on, what else? I’ll say, or might, “Listen, Julie’s been killed, killed, by a freaking mad gun shooter from a car.” No, some other way. If I tell them that way I’m sure they’ll break down and be unable to prepare my wife for what I have to tell her, what do you say? What do I say? I say you’re right but that whatever way you tell whichever parent you tell it to, they’ll break down, how can they not? They might be strong, father stronger than the mother as you said, but no one can be that strong if they’re not the same type as the guys who killed your child. But even those guys would probably break down the same way if let’s say they heard one of their kids was just killed, even if they’d done it to someone else’s kid the same way and not long before, but we won’t go into that. Or both you and one of your wife’s parents might break down the same moment after you say it about Julie and then the other parent might get on the phone after the first one broke down or ask his or her spouse what’s wrong. And you might then have to repeat it because the one you told it to would be in no shape to repeat to the other one what you just said. So? So I’m saying you’ll now probably have two of them broken down, if you were able to tell the second what you told the first, and you still haven’t really begun to get the news to your wife. So? So stop saying “so?” for you don’t see that as a problem? I see it, my wife. Where would she be all this time? If she’s not home, that’s one thing, and it might even be easier that way, for her parents would have calmed down enough to tell her or prepare her by the time she got back. But if she’s home and in the room with them, one of her parents breaking down during the call would in a way be a way of telling her something’s very wrong. In other words, that might be all the preparation I need, through the crying and probably the hysteria of her parent or both of them, if I was able to tell the second, but not the way I want to begin telling her. What way do you want? That could be the key to how you go about telling her. I’m not sure. I don’t know. No, I’m just not sure. I’d love for her to just hear it from me in whatever way I tell it, soberly, hysterically, something in between, either of the three or some other way but no matter what way for her to then say something like “This”—soberly, unhysterically, no in-between—“is the worst news of my life, dear, the worst thing that has ever happened or could ever happen, but we have to begin dealing with it the best way we know how. And I know how it is for you now, Nat, and how hard it was to tell me, just as I know you know how it is for me and how hard it was to hear. But we can’t let it overwhelm us where we can’t function for each other and Margo, especially for Margo, so that’s what we have to do.” “What do we have to do?” I can then say if it’s not really clear to me and she can say in the same way what she means till I understand. Do I want her to say something like that in the way I had her say it? I do, for if she doesn’t there’ll be nothing but sorrow and we’ll just sink in it and Margo will go down with us too. One of us at least should stay in some kind of control like that, either Lee or me, and I should because she might not and also because I’ve known of it longer than she and probably because of some other reasons, and maybe that’s the approach or attitude or tactic I should take now, to take care of them both in their sorrow or despair, but how do I do it, how do I even start? First step is to try to composedly tell one of her parents, second is to try to tell Lee the same way, and so on and so on, and maybe only at the funeral I can crack up for the length of it and then recover till we get to the cemetery, if the entire service isn’t at the cemetery, and then crack up for most of the burial ceremony and recover for the ride home with Margo and Lee. And maybe later I can crack up in moments when I’m alone but where I know I can come out of it just about when I want, and then months from now — a month, weeks, even — when Lee will be a little better adjusted to Julie’s death perhaps, I can crack up with her when Margo’s asleep or out of the house or can’t hear, or just on my own when Margo isn’t around or can’t hear and Lee for those minutes can take care of me. In time in front of Margo but when I can quickly recover again, and maybe even with Margo if it comes to that, and much later on, whenever it happens and in front of whomever happens to be there. Anyway, better to take that approach than total breakdown or any but a momentary breakdown on the phone with Lee now. Certainly if she’s in the room when I tell one of her folks about Julie she’ll see from their face that something’s very wrong — did I say all this before? That something catastrophic and possibly tragic has happened but she wouldn’t automatically know it was one of us her parent was screaming and sobbing over. It could be about one of her relatives — an uncle, a cousin — or a good friend of her folks: sudden stroke, someone keeled over and died, news that the husband of the woman on the phone has terminal cancer and only a month to live, that sort of thing. For if my name isn’t mentioned — for instance, if my father-in-law doesn’t say right away “Nate, how are you, how was the trip?” or Julie’s name isn’t mentioned—“No, not Julie, oh my God!”—she probably wouldn’t know who her parent is crying over or that I was on the phone. She might think it’s a call from her sister or brother-in-law about her brother-in-law or sister or one of their kids. Lee’s parents would break down if anything tragic happened to one of them too — not to the brother-in-law as much as their other daughter and three grandchildren from them. Lee might say “What is it, what happened?” and if her father or mother continued to sob and scream or acted any way like that, take the receiver away, if she thinks it’s about her sister or one of her nieces or her nephew or even her brother-in-law and say “Hello, this is Lee, who’s this, what happened, why’s my mother (or father) crying so?” and I might be crying. She might recognize my cries. Of course she would. I’ve cried and sobbed before over the news of people’s deaths or the memories of some who were dead. She might say “Nat, what’s wrong, tell me, one of the kids? It’s one of the kids,” and I might be able to say yes or I might not be able to say anything I’d be crying so hard. She might then say — she’d probably then say—“Come on, what is it, one of the girls like I think? Which one, and what, what — a car accident — on the highway — something at home? Is she alive, is she dead? Both, one? Which, which?” Her parents would still be crying — one would probably have told the other by now if both were home — and she might then say to them or just to the one who’s home, since I might not be able to speak — I probably wouldn’t—“What is it, what did he tell you?” and they might, one might, blurt out “Julie.” “Oh no, Julie what? It’s the worst, I know, I can tell by your face and that he can’t speak. What? Oh no,” and they might not be able to say anything and she might get back on the phone and say “What’s wrong with Julie?” or if they told her what, “Dad (or Mom) said Julie’s dead — he (she) has to be wrong, she can’t be, she isn’t,” and I still might not be able to speak, and then what? She might turn to her folks again, or one of them — whatever — and say “I’m wrong that you said that, right? She’s not dead, isn’t that so? Nat didn’t tell you that, true? It’s something bad, I know, but nothing as bad as that, right, right? So what did he say, what exactly did Nat tell you?” and one of them might nod that yes, she’s dead, or mouth “Yes, dear, she’s dead,” or say it, whisper it, or just in a normal voice “Yes, dearest, Julie’s dead,” both of them could say it, he could be saying it on the phone while they’re saying it or just calling out for her, “Lee…Lee…,” but whatever way she’s told she would then scream, there’s no question she’d scream and become hysterical and cry hysterically and yell and tear at her hair and scratch her face probably and stick her fingers in her mouth maybe and bite down on her fingers and pull the corners of her mouth apart till they hurt and even after, maybe till they bleed, but things like that and I’d be on the other end listening but not knowing what to do and she wouldn’t get back on, by this time she wouldn’t be able to, though I’d stay on, it might take minutes but then one of her parents might be able to get on and say “Nathan, you still there?…tell me what happened, Lee’s hysterical as you can hear, we all are, but if you can, just some more information, tell me and I’ll do my best in conveying it to her, or withholding it from her, whichever I think best, but please, don’t keep us in the dark.” That might be a phrase her mother would use, her father would just say something like “What is it, Nate, before we lose our senses again and I can’t hear what you have to say? Where you calling from? Home, a hospital, a police station, the morgue?” “Hospital,” I might manage and he could say “Did you say it was a car accident?” “Shooting,” I might be able to say. I would then probably say I can’t speak any longer, for I probably couldn’t, but that I want to, to be as cooperative as I can—helpful—to do anything I can to help Lee and them now, but I’m unable to, I’m crazy with grief because of the whole thing, out of my gourd, my head, but in control enough to take care of Margo through all this, who as they can imagine is as distraught as anyone but sort of okay, holding it in, I don’t know when it’s going to come out in a kid’s way and if it does if I’ll be able to handle it, but so far she and I are okay, and maybe I can get the doctor closest to this to talk to him (or her) if he’s still around, but before I get off to get him I’d want to give the doctor’s name and name and phone number of the hospital so they don’t lose contact with me, for if I do lose contact with them — I could, I’m holding it in too but am underlyingly that overcome — they won’t be able to reach me since they won’t know where I am. I could be at any hospital from there to where I live, right? “Oh, if we were only home, all three of us, girls and me, dinner done, dishes washed and traveling things put away, place tidied the way I like it, neat piles, rug under the dinner table swept, getting ready for bed, maybe in bed — the kids; if I were that tired from the trip and cleaning up and things, me — for I don’t know what time it is, maybe long past their normal bedtime when tomorrow’s a school day,” I’d probably say if I’d said all the rest of what came before it. So I’d say “Hold on, the doctor’s and hospital’s name have to be here someplace,” and I’d look on the desk for personal stationery or an envelope addressed to the doctor — you do that now, look, nothing there with the doctor’s or hospital’s name on it, open the top drawer — wait a minute, the diplomas on the walls would have his name on them — but in it there’s a manila envelope with the doctor’s name and hospital address — and I’d give this information to whichever parent I was speaking to and say the phone number they can get by calling Information in this state, for it’s not on the phone — and then I’d say “Okay, stay on”—say it if I was able to—“I’m going to look for the doctor, he might be outside the door here or down the hall but in hearing distance — I’m in his cubicle in the hospital, his private room, office, calling from it, I wanted privacy for this call, and if you’re not on when I get back, don’t worry, I’ll call back soon as I can, so if you do get off, keep the line clear, or if you want to get me, ask for this doctor’s private number when you call the hospital, say ‘His cubicle,’ they’ll know…so I’m going,” though I’d probably say before I go — I’d definitely say if Lee was home and they told her or I somehow had before but she wasn’t the one I was speaking to now, “How is Lee now, what’s she doing, what are you doing to help her, how much help does she need? Maybe you should call your own doctor right after this to see what he can do for her and for you too, for advice, who can give you a psychiatrist to call and possibly come now if you don’t know of one, she might need medicine, something for sleep, I don’t see how she couldn’t, someone professional there like that with those things to help you with her and also to help the two of you,” and then after they told me I’d say “So I’m going, I’ll try to be quick,” and put the receiver down and look outside the door and if the doctor was there or down the hall I’d ask him to speak to my mother- or father-in-law and tell them what he thinks they should know about Julie and answer any questions they may have, or by now even Lee if she was there, maybe she’d want to talk to him, and if he wasn’t there and he probably wouldn’t be and there was no one from the hospital around I could ask to get him, for I now have his name down, I’d race back to the phone — before I left the room I’d have done something to make sure the door wouldn’t close and lock — and if one of my in-laws was still on the line — I don’t know what I’d say if I said hello on the phone, “anybody there?” and Lee was the one now on, though maybe by now I could say something clear and sound and also maybe she’d by now be somewhat calm—“The doctor’s not around, what more can I say, or maybe I should look for him more, how’s Lee now?” and if it was Lee there, “Lee…Lee…what more can I do for you from here, what can either of us do? We’re devastated, but we got to control ourselves somehow, for our sakes for Margo’s sake, meaning that we don’t want to destroy her by destroying ourselves, there’s no point in cracking up — not that, it isn’t a question of a point or not, but if one does, you do, I’ll take care of Margo and you, crack up if you have to and nothing can stop it, I’ll be there forever for you, I swear, though try if it’s possible to wait till I get there or you’re here or we’re together somewhere soon, please.” Anyway, that’s some of what I’d do on the phone. Not the best, no great plan, but the aim’s good. It probably is the best you can muster under the circumstances and considering your limitations and if you’re alone on the phone doing it. What’s that mean — the last? It means maybe you should, after all, have the doctor beside you while you call or have him be the one calling Lee and her parents about it with you beside him, and you think about this and you think and think and think and you think no, best it comes only from you when you’re alone. You can’t say why. You could if you really thought about it perhaps. The doctor might inhibit you somewhat to a lot. It just wouldn’t seem right in a way, saying the deepest most grievous thing possible to the person closest to you and who’d be most affected by it, with a medical professional you didn’t know till an hour ago standing next to you and in so small a room, or having someone like that say it for you to her or one of the two persons closest to her and who’d almost be as affected by it. And such a small room, barely a cubicle. Or rightly named one: desk, chair, but narrower than usual desk and chair, even the bookshelves seem narrower than usual or is that some sort of illusion because the room’s so small, and so many things hanging from hooks and pegs on the walls and door, probably because there’s so little space in the room. There was a comedian, when you were a boy, who used to say either on TV when you still watched or the Paramount Theater stage, so you would have been high school age, “Our apartment’s so small the furniture’s painted on the—” no, zero in on the phone. You ready? Yes, and you lift the receiver. “To get around we had to walk sideways once past the door.” You start to dial. Stomach nervous pains like when dialing girls thirty years ago, forty, or with your hand on the receiver ready to pick it up to dial. Girls you wanted to date but didn’t think they’d be interested even a first time. Or girls you’d dated once and wanted to again but didn’t think they would. What would you say to them on the phone? You’re stalling again and you know it but what would you say? And what digit were you on when you stopped dialing? and you put the receiver down. “Hi, my name’s Nathan Frey, you wouldn’t remember me,” this for the first date but they’ll find out you’re not that smart or sharp or with it in a way they like or you don’t come from a family with dough or go to a private high school or one of the elite public ones, or something else or they already found that out the first time you met or that you’re just not their type. You’d thought a lot about what approach to take and what might be the best weekday time to call: around nine, after they might have their homework and house chores done, maybe had a shower or bath, were feeling clean and relieved and relaxed, sort of the start of the quiet time of night and when your mind seemed a bit sharper and line cleverer and voice lower, so you felt more confident, but not much later than nine for they could use the excuse that their parents thought it a little late for someone to call them, even a good friend, especially when the conversations tended to go on for a while, and not earlier because their folks might want to use the phone or were expecting a call. Nine-fifteen to — thirty and if you could swing it, for you didn’t want anyone interrupting you and stopping your concentration, when no one was home or wanted to use the phone. For a second date: “Hi, it’s Nathan Frey, or Nat, okay, but never Nathaniel, how you doing, what’s been happening, have a good week?” Or the first time: “We met at the Dalton dance last week…at the Jew ish Center party…coming out of RKO last Saturday, you were with a friend, I was with a pal who knew her…curly brown hair kind of unkempt, about five feet eight without shoes,” later “five feet nine…ten…almost six feet…let’s say six feet flat though not with flat feet but with shoes that were recently heeled…slim,” always slim but actually skinny, “in a blue V-neck sweater…blue windbreaker…blue button-down-collar Oxford-cloth shirt,” and if it was a dance, “three-button brown tweed jacket” for about four years, sleeves let out till the lining showed, “dark” or “light gray flannel pants,” for a while “scuffed white bucks…you mentioned Frankie Laine…Johnnie Ray…some English singer Vera Lynn and this moving wartime song she sung that’s now a big hit…Menotti’s new opera on Broadway we both said we wanted to go to, about Little Italy, lovers’ quarrel that ends with the girl getting stabbed or shot to death but sung in a language you can understand and where there are words in it like, you know, ‘bitch’ and ‘shit,’ we both heard about it and agreed better at a regular theater than the Met, well, if you still want to see it…” Sweating now as you used to do then before and during the call. Hands, face. Stomach, as if you’re going to have the runs. Dizzy too but little did you know. What a jump. One kind of call to an entirely different kind but some of the same physical feelings or symptoms or manifestations you think or whatever the word for it is and push-button now or whatever they call it instead of rotary dial then or whatever it’s called. Stop. Dial. Doctor might be knocking on the door soon and you want to get it over with before. Not “get it over with” but — Then to use as an incentive then. Not that either. But ready? Never, of course. There is no right — Just stop all that crap and dial. You dial.