Sitting here, absent from them. Letting them close the circle.
Maybe, yes, it’s just pure selfishness. They did not notice the mezuzah on the door, the painting of Solomon, didn’t mention a single thing about the apartment, just launched right in and began. They even walked up to the rooftop without asking. Maybe that’s just the way they do it, or maybe they’re blinded by the paintings, the silverware, the carpets. Surely there were other well-heeled boys packed off to war. Not all of them had flat feet. Maybe she should meet other women, more of her own. But more of her own what? Death, the greatest democracy of them all. The world’s oldest complaint. Happens to us all. Rich and poor. Fat and thin. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons. She feels a pang, a return. Dear Mother, this is just to say that I have arrived safely, the first began. And then at the end he was writing, Mama, this place is a nothing place, take all the places and give me nothing instead. Oh. Oh. Read all the letters of the world, love letters or hate letters or joy letters, and stack them up against the single one hundred and thirty-seven that my son wrote to me, place them end to end, Whitman and Wilde and Wittgenstein and whoever else, it doesn’t matter — there’s no comparison. All the things he used to say! All the things he could remember! All that he put his finger upon!
That’s what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.
But no, not past, not him, not ever.
Forget the letters. Let our machines fight. You hear me? Let them go at it. Let them stare each other down the wires.
Leave the boys at home.
Leave my boy at home. Gloria’s too. And Marcia’s. Let him walk a tightrope if he wants. Let him become an angel. And Jacqueline’s. And Wilma’s. Not Wilma, no. There was never a Wilma. Janet. Probably a Wilma too. Maybe a thousand Wilmas all over the country.
Just give my boy back to me. That’s all I want. Give him back. Hand him over. Right now. Let him open the door and run past the mezuzah and let him clang down here at the piano. Repair all the pretty faces of the young. No cries, no shrieks, no bleats. Bring them back here now. Why shouldn’t all our sons be in the room all at once? Collapse all the boundaries. Why shouldn’t they sit together? Berets on their knees. Their slight embarrassment. Their creased uniforms. You fought for our country, why not celebrate on Park Avenue? Coffee or tea, boys? A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
All this talk of freedom. Nonsense, really. Freedom can’t be given, it must be received.
I will not take this jar of ashes.
Do you hear me?
This jar of ashes is not what my son is.
— What’s that now, Claire?
And it’s as if she is rising again from a daydream. She has been watching them, their moving mouths, their mobile faces, but not hearing anything they’ve been saying, some sort of argument about the walking man, about whether the tightrope was attached or not, and she had drifted from it. Attached to what? His shoe? The helicopter? The sky? She folds and refolds her fingers into one another, hears the crack of them as they pull apart.
You need more calcium in your bones, the good doctor Tonnemann said. Calcium indeed. Drink more milk, your children won’t go missing.
— Are you okay, dear? says Gloria.
— Oh, I’m fine, she says, just a little daydreamy
— I know the feeling.
— I get that way too sometimes, says Jacqueline.
— Me too, says Janet.
— First thing every morning, says Gloria, I start to dream. Can’t do it at night. I used to dream all the time. Now I can only dream in daytime.
— You should take something for it, says Janet.
Claire cannot recall what she has said — has she embarrassed them, said something silly, out of order? That comment from Janet, as if she should be on meds. Or was that aimed at Gloria? Here, take a hundred pills, it will cure your grief. No. She has never wanted that. She wants to break it like a fever. But what is it that she said? Something about the tightrope man? Did she say it aloud? That he was vulgar somehow? Something about ashes? Or fashion? Or wires?
— What is it, Claire?
— I’m just thinking about that poor man, she says.
She wants to kick herself for saying it, for bringing him up again. Just when she felt that they could be getting away, that the morning could get back on track again, that she could tell them about Joshua and how he used to come home from school and eat tomato sandwiches, his favorite, or how he never squeezed the toothpaste properly, or how he always put two socks into one shoe, or a playground story, or a piano riff, anything, just to give the morning its balance, but, no, she has shunted it sideways again and brought it back around.
— What man? says Gloria.
— Oh, the man who came here, she says suddenly.
— Who’s that?
She picks a bagel from the sunflower bowl. Looks up at the women. She pauses a moment, slices through the thick bread, pulls the rest of the bagel apart with her fingers.
— You mean the tightrope man was here?
— No, no.
— What man, Claire?
She reaches across and pours tea. The steam rises. She forgot to put out the slices of lemon. Another failure.
— The man who told me.
— What man?
— The man who told you what, Claire?
— You know. That man.
And then a sort of deep understanding. She sees it in their faces. Quieter than rain. Quieter than leaves.
— Uh huhn, says Gloria.
And then a loosening over the faces of the others.
— Mine was Thursday.
— Mike Junior’s was Monday.
— My Clarence was Monday as well. Jason was Saturday. And Brandon was a Tuesday.
— I got a lousy telegram. Thirteen minutes past six. July twelfth. For Pete.
For Pete. For Pete’s sake.
They all fall in line and it feels right, it’s what she wants to say; she holds the bagel at her mouth but she will not eat; she has brought them back on track, they are returning to old mornings, together, they will not move from this, this is what she wants, and yes, they are comfortable, and even Gloria reaches out now for one of the doughtnuts, glazed and white, and takes a small, polite nibble and nods at Claire, as if to say: Go ahead, tell us.
— We got the call from downstairs. Solomon and I. We were sitting having dinner. All the lights were off. He’s Jewish, you see …
Glad to get that one out of the way.
— … and he had candles everywhere. He’s not strict, but sometimes he likes little rituals. He calls me his little honeybee sometimes. It started from an argument when he called me a WASP. Can you believe that?
All of it coming out from her, like grateful air from her lungs. Smiles all around, befuddled, yet silence all the same.
— And I opened the door. It was a sergeant. He was very deferent. I mean, nice to me. I knew right away, just from the look on his face. Like one of those novelty masks. One of those cheap plastic ones. His face frozen inside it. Hard brown eyes and a broad mustache. I said, Come in. And he took off his hat. One of those hairstyles, short, parted down the middle. A little shock of white along his scalp. He sat right there.
She nods over at Gloria and wishes she hadn’t said that, but there’s no taking it back.
Gloria wipes at the seat as if trying to get the stain of the man off. A little sliver of doughnut icing remains.
— Everything was so pure I thought I was standing in a painting.
— Yes, yes.
— He kept playing with his hat on his knee.