Cleary squints, his expression bitter, as if Nathan has insulted his kid sister. "That woman looked death straight in the eye."
"She was Catholic," Nathan insists, as if that matters somehow, an emotional stand grounded on nothing.
"That doesn't have anything to do with it," Cleary says. "However she did it, she took death in and made it her own. She was in charge. She stopped breathing when she knew exactly who and what she was, what she accomplished."
"No one finishes all of his tasks," Nathan says, hateful, then gives Cleary a sharp nod, hoping he'll go away, or burn himself out.
Instead, a small inconclusive smile plays on the priest's lips. "You are, of course, talking about yourself."
But before Nathan can protest, Cleary's hand comes up. The priest isn't through: "You didn't know her, Nathan," he says. "You don't know what you had."
"I think I do."
"No, you knew her body. Understand me-she was stunning. I don't fault you for wanting her. But your women are piled high, one on top of the other. You know something about the way they look but what do you know of their souls? You've kept yourself busy like a rat in his little cage, running his treadmill, faster faster, wanting more and getting it, but in the end only standing still. You treat them all indifferently and only care where the next one is coming from."
Nathan holds fiercely to the cookie, sniffs it, and smells-now he expects it-nothing. She gave it to me, he wants to say, but Cleary has backed away and receded, just one tree in the forest now, and like the others-all the others-is blank with shock and horror. The crowd has hushed. The priest heads up the aisle toward Maria.
Where the hell is everyone? Nathan wonders, looking around. Where are my parents? Ruth? Even Schreck, the fuck? Where's their respect?
He sits amidst strangers, his face bunched and spotted like a baby's, poised to come undone. The long pews keep filling. Blacks, whites, Hispanics. Nathan is astonished Maria knew so many people, people of different stripes and heights and weights and ages, until he realizes she didn't, that these are merely church members, Cleary's recruits, commanded by some inner voice to show up to the unveiling of every coffin that comes through these smoked-glass doors, to fill out the audience, to loan their respect, so that no one, especially paying customers, should go out so alone. Women in pillbox hats, boys in powder-blue tuxedos, old men like storks in their black summer-weight suits, the blacks of this ruined neighborhood who drop their tithe into the mahogany box at the head of the aisle, below the church scoreboard, the letters and numbers replaceable from the back like an old baseball scoreboard, the church's 537 paying customers in attendance last Sunday, the scales tipping, last week's eighty-seven dollars and fifty-nine cents against Lucifer's untold millions, bottom of the ninth and the church needs one hundred and forty-five dollars to fix the pews, to fix the men's toilet, to replace the broken windowpanes, the colored cellophane-
The choir stands, its adolescent singers, jogging up the aisles to the front like the faithful rushing to the man laying hands and healing them of their limp gawkiness and their very youth. Here and there the cellophane sucks in and out in time to night's heavy breathing. The windows flash. The choir raises its voice over the volleys of thunder. All of it to Nathan like a final prayer meeting on a ship hit and sinking in battle. He wants out. He wants out of it, this, everything, and looks once to the casket, as if for permission. He is crying. He is, in fact, crying hysterically. And Maria, lying there in her plasticine stillness, willfully says nothing.
Claire watches from the door as Nathan pushes himself up from the front bench and slides awkwardly along the wall, to the exit, not surprised to see him running. Though she is taken aback by his tears.
She touches his arm as he passes. "I want to talk to you."
"What are you doing here?" he asks, quickly trying to compose himself. He glances over his shoulder, toward Maria in her casket. A reflex, Claire knows, by now as quick and natural to him as drawing breath. He will always try to keep his women apart, keep them from knowing about each other, even when they already do, and even in death when it wouldn't matter.
Claire smiles. Maria's death, somehow, is registering with her unexpectedly. Maria is taking with her a piece of Claire as well.
"You asked me to come, remember?" she says. "As your representative. Then I heard you got your little gift, your get-out-of-jailfree card, but I decided to come anyway. Out of respect, as you said yourself. That was a nice little trick, by the way, coming up with those tax returns. I thought the judge could have made the condition a moonwalk and you'd be as likely to fulfill it. I underestimated you."
"They weren't my returns, Claire. I'm being set up."
"You're being set up? Please, Nathan."
He nervously scans the room. "Someone sprang me. Someone wants me in the game."
"Don't flatter yourself," she says.
Nathan looks at her, uncomposed. "Thanks, anyway, for coming."
Now he is peering through her fearfully, toward the door, the weather out there.
"And too bad Errol missed you at your office. He has something he wants to say."
"My office, what? Errol?"
"Someone told him you'd gone to the office to pick up some brief. That awful little man, I think, that Krivit-"
Not a muscle on Nathan's face moves but the ones that work his mouth. "Krivit told Errol where I was?"
"But I beeped him when I saw you here. He's on his way, if you want to wait. Then again, you never wait."
"Krivit," Nathan says again.
Lightly, she touches his wrist. "But I have something important to tell you before you go."
"This sounds like a farewell speech," he says.
"You are the one who said you're going away."
"There's always the phone."
She takes his elbow and draws him down. "This seems a good time to tell you. I know about Isabel, Nathan. We all do.”
She can feel him twist to get away, but she tightens her grip, shocked to feel her fingertips hit bone. He is too weak to resist. This man who once lay atop her so heavily. She could hardly hold him with her arms, her knees, his wide hips bruised the inside of her thighs. "Errol's on his way. I really think he'd appreciate it if you waited. It'll be just a few minutes."
"I don t know what you're talking about-what about Isabel do you know?"
"I don't hate you, Nathan. I half pity you. I'd try to save you if I thought there was anything left. Errol agrees. But I will not spend another minute of my life trying to get over you." Squeezing him she draws him closer. "You should be doing more here than you know. There's something I want to say, Nathan. Benny's a beautiful kid. He'll be fine."
Nathan tries to look back. "Yes, he's-"
Her lips against his ear. "I hope he's young enough to forget you."
From his left ear she crosses his face, her lips brushing his, to his right, telling both sides now: "I want you to know that there's a funeral you missed. I never told you. We should have been there together."
Nathan again tries to pull free. She can smell it now: he has begun to scare, to sweat. A gurgle rises in his throat.
"We had a son, Nathan. It was your goodbye gift. You were so oblivious you didn't notice me at three months pregnant, at four. You should have. I was radiant. You didn't notice when I'd take. time off. You didn't see I was gone."
Again, she switches sides. Cruel, petulant. "I won't tell you what his name was. He didn't keep it long. He died in my hands. But he was beautiful, a beautiful baby boy. He had green eyes. He looked just like you."
Claire reaches up and cups Nathan's face. Her fingers, her palms, have him memorized still. She presses on the new divots, the crevasses. His skin, once robust, thick, florid, is now thin and brittle as carbon paper.
She rises up on her toes. "I loved you once. You would have loved our boy. He would have been brave, like you were once. You don't want to wait for Errol? I can see you're anxious to go. Okay, Nathan, then just do what you do so well. Say good-bye."