“You’re right,” she said, testing him. “I don’t want to be kissed. I don’t want you to do anything — but — but I want to go with you the next time you go for a drive.”
He was not offended. He smiled with his lips shut. He was as sweet and brave as an angel. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Carla,” he said.
18
Max found Debby in her black tights, sweaty and beautiful, seated in a chair near their bed, a wing chair that was usually draped with her clothes, but rarely sat in. He stopped a few feet into the room and readied himself to tell her. He hadn’t said hello.
Nor did she. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, as if it were a warning.
“I took Carla Fransisca for a drive.”
Debby smiled, a private look of amusement. “Again?” she said. “How’s she doing?” The edges of her hair were sleek and dark from perspiration. So were the tops of her tights. The fabric seemed to cling even tighter for it, a new skin for her tall lean body. In the black fabric she was a lovely panther.
“I’m in love with her.” He had hurried home, chased by this feeling. Keeping it secret even for the ride uptown had felt corrupting.
Debby sighed. She reached for a towel that Max hadn’t noticed before, lying on the floor beside the chair. As she stretched for it she groaned. She hooked it with a few fingers, flipped it up, caught it with her arm and stood. All in a single movement, a graceful talented movement.
She was a living work of art — that was what he had fallen in love with. He had been wrong. It was unfair to her.
“You’re in love with her?” Debby asked, more as a wondering repetition than a protest.
“Yes. Nothing’s going on. But I’m definitely in love with her and I didn’t want to lie about it.” He knew he sounded idiotic. And mean. “I’m sorry. Not that I’m in love with her, but that I have to hurt you.”
“I don’t think I can live with this much longer, Max.” She was upset. Her face showed only a little tightening, but that apparent calm meant the wound was deep and fresh. She walked toward the bathroom door and said loudly as she sought its refuge: “It’s too crazy.” She shut the door hard as if she had made a final decision.
She was right: her response was how the world ought to work. If he didn’t love Debby then living with her was crazy.
And Jonah?
Max had come straight to the bedroom on entering his apartment. He hadn’t glanced down the hall to check if Jonah was home. Would he be at this hour on a Wednesday? Was today after-school computer? It used to be that Max knew where and what his son was doing at all times.
Going into the living room Max heard the overture of one of his son’s favorite video games playing faintly from the hallway leading to his son’s room. Should he tell him that he wanted to divorce his mother? He was afraid of that, more afraid than he had felt of anything since the crash. Yet keeping it secret might be impossible. Could he spend time with Jonah and not reveal it somehow?
But Max wanted to see Jonah no matter how awkward or risky. Get him to take a walk over to the computer store and see their new games; or maybe to the bookstore to buy him a science fiction novel; or throw a football in Riverside Park, fighting the wind and broken glass.
Max had reached Jonah’s door when Kenny, Jonah’s closest friend at school, came out and nearly ran him over.
“Hi, Mr. Klein,” he said as he went past. There was a black stripe of ink running down his cheek, as if he were a scholarly Apache warrior. “I need a drink before we fight the Meka Turtle.”
From his room Jonah called out: “The dreaded Disguised Meka Turtle.”
“Hi, Jonah,” Max said, looking in. Jonah was sitting only a foot or so from the small television in his room, a set used more for video games than watching programs.
“Hi, Dad,” Jonah said fast and melodiously, as if he were a bird chirping. “Mom’s in the shower. She said to tell you he’ll be here at four.”
“Who?” Max said, wondering at his child’s sudden competence with the world, its errands and relationships.
“Byron,” Jonah said.
“He’s coming here?”
“She said you were expecting him.” Jonah made a helpless hands-up-toward-the-sky gesture — a miniature of one of his mother’s mannerisms. “I don’t know. Anyway that’s the message.”
Jonah was a three-quarter-scale man, freed of Max, and yet always bound to him. Max’s heart ached for him. What will he get out of my survival that my father’s death robbed me of? he thought. Nothing but what living parents bring — harassment, and soon, disillusionment.
“I forgot about it,” Max said. “I don’t want to see him,” he added, almost calling it out to Jonah.
Jonah studied the frozen image on his television screen — a video game paused. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t blame you.”
“I’d rather do something with you,” Max said, painfully aware of how self-conscious he sounded, perhaps even dishonest to Jonah’s ears, although Max was telling the truth.
“It’s okay,” Jonah said casually. “I’m busy.”
Kenny returned, brushing past Max in a hurry, carrying two glasses of seltzer, spilling them a little. “Magic elixir to kill the Turtle,” Kenny said.
Jonah took one of the glasses and sipped it, watching his father. “Dad…?” he asked after a swallow. He gestured at Max, his mouth open wide, almost pleading.
“What?”
“Do you want something else? We’re playing here. Do you want to watch?”
“Do you want me to watch?” Max asked, feeling as simple as a child.
“I don’t care,” Jonah said.
“Makes me nervous,” Kenny said in a low but audible tone.
“Okay,” Max agreed and left. He returned to the living room and listened to hear if Debby’s shower was still running. It was. They would have to discuss living arrangements. Carla didn’t want him anyway, so why should he move out unless Debby really couldn’t stand him being around? They could maintain the illusion for Jonah, like the joke about the Jewish couple who suffer through sixty-five years of loveless marriage before consulting a divorce lawyer because they wanted to wait until the children were dead.
But if I’m not afraid of death, why should I fear my son’s pain?
The intercom buzzed. The doorman told him Byron was coming up; the front door bell rang a moment later. Byron bustled in with a large portfolio made of handsome black leather, an item so expensive and fine that Max would never have had the nerve to buy it for himself.
“I brought my new design for a shopping mall and a school. They’re really good, I think, and you know what? I think they’re more like your stuff.” Byron had walked into the living room. He knelt beside the large square coffee table (too awkward for the space. Max had told Debby, but she insisted) and was unzipping the case. “I don’t mean they look like your buildings. I mean they could really get built.”
“Why don’t you ask your father to build them?” Max wasn’t sarcastic — he believed Byron’s father had the necessary resources and vanity.
“He doesn’t like my new stuff,” Byron was matter-of-fact. “Well, he sort of likes the school.” Byron let go of the top of the portfolio, allowing its spine to break open, spreading the contents across the entire surface of the table. He lifted one of his computer printouts from the scattered mess. “He says he doesn’t approve of malls. Here’s the school. It’s a high school. This is my really cool idea—” Byron spread himself over the drawing to reach a far corner of it.
“But your father could build them, couldn’t he?” Max went over to the windows, the new single-pane windows that the co-op had put in. They had not been refitted with anything like the seamlessness of Manny’s work. Carla had told Max she was angry at her husband but she was also loyal to him. That was sad for Max and yet in spite of what he should feel about a rival he was struck again by Manny’s skill and meticulousness. Manny had done all that work on their apartment by himself, Carla told Max while they were driving on the Newport Mall’s elevated parking lot. As she explained that Manny had taught himself those skills to be promoted to handyman, Max noticed the vibrations of the mall’s concrete, fairly severe vibrations that were due to shoddy engineering.