Pandora by Holly Hollander

How I Heard Some News

After dinner when the news came on, I was right there waiting. One good thing about living close to a big city like Chicago is that you get a full hour of local stories from a station that can spring for mobile units and good reporters. My favorite’s Ben Jacobs, a good-looking Jew about thirtyfive or forty who doesn’t care what the hell he says or who the hell he says it to, and gets fighting mad about at least half the stories they cover. Naturally I was hoping tonight was my big night with Ben—if I couldn’t be in his arms, at least I’d be on his lips. But when they finally got around to “the Barton Bombing,” it was Gerri Corkeran. Gerri’s a pretty lady with big eyes and hair like a gold helmet, but she isn’t Ben Jacobs.

Besides, as soon as she started I realized I was really a day too late. All the big, exciting coverage had been the night before, when I was out of it. What Gerri had was follow-up. She interviewed Mrs. Munroe, who turned out to have one of those pushed-together faces and a couple little kids, besides a dumb-looking daughter about my age. And then, so help me, there were Molly and Megan and old Mr. Lief from the shoe store, all sitting side-by-each on the living-room sofa.

Gerri: “I might as well ask the inevitable question and get it over. How does it feel to have your son survive two tours in Vietnam, and then have him die like this?”

(Mr. Lief doesn’t answer—just shakes his head. He has one of those bent-down pipes in his mouth, but it doesn’t seem to be lit.)

Molly: “It was them! I know it was.”

(Megan nudges her, but she won’t shut up.)

Gerri: “It was who, Mrs. Lief?”

Molly: “The ones that used to phone. They haven’t called no more. Not since Larry passed on, not one call. They got him, but I’m goin’ to get them.”

Megan: “It didn’t have to be them. Everybody knows Larry’s dead now.”

Gerri: “Your husband was receiving threatening calls,

Mrs. Lief?”

Molly: “Yes!” (Cries.)

Megan: “No!”

Gerri: “Do you know anything about this, Mr. Lief?

Have you informed the police?”

Lief: “I personally only answered one crank call, and that was at least six months back. I’d practically forgotten about them. They weren’t actually threatening—at least the one I answered wasn’t.”

Megan: “The police know already. They’ve talked to us.” (Back to the studio, where Gerri’s sitting at one of those long lunch-counter desks TV newspersons use and nobody else does.)

Ben: “Gerri, what were those calls about?”

Gerri: “It took a lot of digging—Mrs. Lief was very upset, and Lawrence Lief’s father and sister didn’t want to talk, but whoever called told war stories, if I can put it that way.”

Ben: “War stories?”

Gerri: “Yes, from Vietnam. All this may’ve had nothing to do with the bombing.”

Ben: “But it might. Did it really end months ago, as the victim’s father implied?”

Gerri: (Shaking her head.)“Ben, the victim’s wife received one two days ago—the day before he was killed.”

Then off they went to look at a million white chickens that had gotten loose on the Dan Ryan Expressway. If I’d had Les or somebody there to talk to, I’d have bitched because Megan never mentioned my name or said I’d been hurt; but what I was really thinking about mostly were Munroe’s kids, kids that weren’t nice-looking or anything, and now no daddy.

Then I started wondering whether Megan knew it was me who told the cops about the calls, and if she did, whether she was mad. If she didn’t, sooner or later I was going to have to tell her. It wasn’t Larry that I felt sorry for, or Munroe either. Munroe had just been a guy in a loud shirt, like a million other guys; Larry’s troubles were over. I felt sorry for Munroe’s dim little wife and her three kids, whose troubles had just begun. And for Megan and Molly and Larry’s dad. Especially for old Mr. Lief, because although he wasn’t showing it, I had the feeling he was the one who’d never get over it.

Baseball then. You can’t get away from baseball scores on the news. The Cubs lost. The Sox lost. Watching the TV news, you’d think there isn’t one pitcher in baseball who can throw a strike. Every time they show somebody at the plate, you can bet he’s going to get wood on the ball, even if he’s thrown out at first, maybe. If I were managing the Cubs, I’d have a hundred curvy cheerleaders, like the Honeybears or the Dallas Cowgirls; and when a guy from the other team was at bat and they revved up the TV cameras for him to sock one, I’d signal my Cutecubs to shake their goodies to get his eye off the ball. All the other teams would have to sign gay players, and it would change the entire complexion of the game.

When we’d seen the run that beat the Cubs and the run that beat the Sox (there’s a joke there, but I wouldn’t want you to think I go after every one I see), the newsroom was back, with Cutter Williams, anchorman supreme, in one of his five-hundred-dollar suits. “Our city has been the site of many famous crimes and the home of many famous criminals. John Gacy lived here; so did Al Capone. But for each famous crime we remember, there are hundreds of others we forget. That, tonight, is the subject of Ben’s Commentary.”

Ben was always away from the lunch counter for this, turned around in a swivel chair, at a messy desk that might really have been his. “There was a terrible explosion in Barton yesterday,” he said. His face wasn’t Sad the way an actor’s face gets; just serious. “Today’s papers are full of it, and the televised news shows—such as this one—are full of it. Even the politicians are full of it, at least when we reporters are asking questions. It’s always safe, politically, to be against a mad bomber.

“Two men were killed in Barton, other people were hurt—”

Hey, that’s me! Lookit me, Ben!

“And many more might have been killed. But in the thirty hours or so since the Barton bombing, eight other persons have been killed on the streets and in the homes and bars of Greater Chicago. A famous poet, T.S. Eliot, once wrote, ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’ Those eight have hardly had the whimper, as far as the politicians and the news are concerned. We talk about a war against crime. They’re the casualties of the skirmishes of the war crime fights against us. Just before we went on the air tonight we got word that the body of an elderly man, as yet unidentified, had been found near a parking area in the northwestern suburb of Palestine. He had been shot in the chest with a thirty-eight, and his pockets were empty except for sixty-two cents in change and a torn artificial rose. Just like one of those poppies they sell on the street for the casualties in the VA hospitals—casualties that nobody remembers.”

Then Ben was gone and we were left with a couple California beach bums peddling beer. I started to yell and pound the damn whiter-than-white scratchy sheet, and after a while I remembered to turn off the TV and yell louder. It wasn’t very long before a nurse came running to ask what was the matter, and pretty soon an orderly came too and held my arms down until I shut up.

“I know him,” I said when they finally got me quieted down. “It’s got to be him. I want to see him.” And I told them all about it, just the way I’ve been telling you, only not quite so organized. And naturally they didn’t call the police or Aladdin Blue, or even my father in New York. They just made me swallow some kind of pill that had me out like a Cubbie in ten minutes.

When I woke up there was sunshine coming in the window. I had a visitor, too, but she didn’t look at all like the one I’d had the morning before, even aside from being a woman. She was little, with a big nose and frizzy hair and bright black eyes. Like the other one she had on a uniform, but hers was the white medical kind. When she saw my eyes were open, she said, “Hello. How are you feeling?”

Which was a switch. The nurses always said, “How are we feeling?”

“I feel great,” I told her. “When do I get out of here?”

“This afternoon, perhaps. It will be up to your doctor, and he’ll see you then. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to stand on that leg.”

“Is someone coming for me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think there’s a chance no one will?”

I noticed then that she had a clipboard in her lap, and she was holding a pen. Her fingers made just a little twitch with the pen, as if she had written, maybe, half a word. I said, “I guess they’ll have to send somebody. Maybe Bill.”

“Who is Bill?”

“Who are you?” I asked. “That’s what I want to know.”

“I’m Dr. Rothschild, and I’m a psychiatric intern here. You can call me Ruth.”

“So they’re afraid I’m crazy.”

Dr. Rothschild shook her head. “We’re afraid you may be emotionally shaken. After what you went through it would hardly be surprising.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be lying on a couch?”

“Not for me. I’m not a Freudian. Do you remember last night, when you began to scream?”

By then I was smarter; I didn’t try to tell her everything. I just said, “I was watching the news, and they had a story on it about finding an unidentified man dead. It was my uncle, and I started to cry.”

“You’re sure this man was your uncle? How did you know, Holly?” (My name was on the chart thing at the foot of my bed, naturally.)

“Because of something he had in his pocket. They told about it on TV. It was my Uncle Herbert.”

“What did he have?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, and I was sure she wasn’t.

“Try me.”

“A fake rose.”

“And that made you certain the man was your uncle?” The pen twitched on the clipboard again.

I tried to put it together for her in a way she’d believe. “In the first place, they didn’t find him just anywhere; he was found here, I think, near the parking lot of this hospital—one of the nurses came in last night and said a dead man had been found there; and later it was on TV, and they said it had been in Palestine, which it would be if it was here. He was coming to see me, I think. A rose was, well, a sort of secret signal between him and me.”

Dr. Rothschild smiled. She wasn’t pretty, but when she smiled that way she was beautiful. “I used to have a signal like that with my grandmother,” she said. “I’d wear a comb in my hair, and it meant that there was trouble at home, and she should stay or take me with her if she had to go. Usually it was Mother and Father fighting.” She stopped smiling. “So I understand. I’m sorry that your uncle’s dead, if it was your uncle.”

“You loved your grandmother,” I said. “I don’t want to fool you; I didn’t love my uncle.”

“Perhaps he loved you.”

“Yeah, maybe he did. I was scared of him, but you don’t want to hear about that. Would you do me a favor? It would make me feel a lot better, and that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Call up the police, or wherever they have his body. Ask if he’s been identified, and if he hasn’t, tell them he’s Herbert Hollander. Say I can identify him when I get there, or if they’ll send a picture.”

Dr. Rothschild went out and came back in about five minutes with a white phone that plugged into a jack in the wall, and a phone book. It took some calling around before she reached the right party, then she said who she was and that she was calling for a patient who might be a member of the family. She put me on, and I said, “Hello, this is Holly Hollander.”

“Detective Corning. Wait a minute.” I could hear papers rattle. “You’re the man’s niece?” (He didn’t say dead man’s.)

“Yes. How’d you know?”

“A guy identified him last night. He said he had a brother named George Henry Hollander, and a niece. You don’t sound like George Henry.”

“That would have been Aladdin Blue.”

“That’s the name. Listen, Miss Hollander, you wouldn’t know where he picked up a paper rose, would you?”

I said I didn’t have any idea, but that you could buy them in novelty shops.

“Sure. Listen, your uncle was, ah …”

“Emotionally shaken or something. I think that’s what they say.” I gave Doc Rothschild a look.

“Right. Miss Hollander, we traced him back to the place he got loose from—”

(Sure you did. Aladdin Blue told you.)

“That was probably why he didn’t have a watch or a wallet on him, or much money. Sometimes a mugger gets sore when the victim doesn’t have a lot of money, and that might’ve been why he was shot. Just the same, we wondered about the rose.”

“It’s not against the law to have a phony rose, is it? I used to have one myself.”

There was a long pause. Then Detective Corning said, “The thing is that it was in his side jacket pocket. He was shot in the chest. The bullet stayed in him, and it stopped his heart right away, so there wasn’t a lot of bleeding. But this rose we got out of his pocket’s got bloodstains on it. Would you know anything about that, Miss Hollander?”