— Mine did too.
— Shh.
— And then he just said, Your son is passed, ma’am. And I was thinking, Passed? Passed where? What do you mean, Sergeant, he’s passed? He didn’t tell me of any exam.
— Mercy.
— I was smiling at him. I couldn’t make my face do anything else.
— Well, I just flat-out wept, says Janet.
— Shh, says Jacqueline.
— I felt like there was rushing steam going up inside me, right up my spine. I could feel it hissing in my brain.
— Exactly.
— And then I just said, Yes. That’s all I said. Smiling still. The steam hissing and burning. I said, Yes, Sergeant. And thank you.
— Mercy.
— He finished his tea.
All of them looking at their cups.
— And I brought him to the door. And that was it.
— Yes.
— And Solomon took him down in the elevator. And I’ve never told anyone that story. Afterward my face hurt, I smiled so much. Isn’t that terrible?
— No, no.
— Of course not.
— It feels like I’ve waited my whole life to tell that story.
— Oh, Claire.
— I just can’t believe that I smiled.
She knows that she has not told certain things about it, that the intercom had buzzed, that the doorman had stuttered, that the wait was a stunned one, that the sound of his knocking was like that against a coffin lid, that he took off his hat and said ma’am and then sir, and that they had said, Come in, come in, that the sergeant had never seen the like of the apartment before — it was obvious just from the way he looked at the furniture that he was nervous but thrilled too.
In another time he might have found it all glamorous, Park Avenue, fancy art, candles, rituals. She had watched him as he caught a mirror glance of himself, but he turned away from his own reflection and she might have even liked him then, the way he coughed into the hollow of his rounded hand, the gentleness of it. He held his hand at his mouth and he was like a magician about to pull out a sad scarf. He looked around, as if about to leave, as if there might be all sorts of exits, but she sat him down again. She went to the kitchen and brought a slice of fruitcake for him to eat. To ease the tension. He ate it with a little flick of guilt in his eyes. The little crumbs on the floor. She could hardly bring herself to vacuum them up afterward.
Solomon wanted to know what had happened. The sergeant said that he wasn’t at liberty, but Solomon pressed and said, None of us are at liberty, are we, really? I mean, when you think about it, Sergeant, none of us are free. And the hat went bouncing on the military knee again. Tell me, said Solomon, and there was a tremble in his voice then. Tell me or get out of my home.
The sergeant coughed into a closed fist. A liar’s gesture. They were still collecting the details, the sergeant said, but Joshua had been at a café. Sitting inside. They had been warned, all the personnel, about the cafés. He was with a group of officers. They had been to a club the night before. Must have been just blowing off steam. She couldn’t imagine that, but she didn’t say anything — her Joshua at a club? It was impossible, but she let it slide, yes, that was the word, slide. It was early morning, the sergeant said, Saigon time. Bright blue skies. Four grenades rolled in at their feet. He died a hero, the sergeant said. Solomon was the one who coughed at that. You don’t die a fucking hero, man. She had never heard Solomon curse like that before, not to a stranger. The sergeant arranged his hat on his knee. Like his leg might be the thing now that needed to tell the story. Glancing up at the prints above the couch. Miró, Miró, on the wall, who’s the deadest of them all?
He pulled his breath in. His throat looked corrugated. I’m very sorry for your loss, he said again.
When he had gone, when the night was silent, they had stood there in the room, Solomon and Claire, looking at each other, and he had said they would not crack, which they hadn’t, which she wouldn’t, no, they wouldn’t blame each other, they wouldn’t grow bitter, they’d get through it, survive, they would not allow it to become a rift between them.
— And all the time I was just smiling, see.
— You poor thing.
— That’s awful.
— But it’s understandable, Claire, it really is.
— Do you think so?
— It’s okay. Really.
— I just smiled so much, she says.
— I smiled too, Claire.
— You did?
— That’s what you do, you keep back the tears, gospel.
And then she knows now what it is about the walking man. It strikes her deep and hard and shivery. It has nothing to do with angels or devils. Nothing to do with art, or the reformed, or the intersection of a man with a vector, man beyond nature. None of that.
He was up there out of a sort of loneliness. What his mind was, what his body was: a sort of loneliness. With no thought at all for death.
Death by drowning, death by snakebite, death by mortar, death by bullet wound, death by wooden stake, death by tunnel rat, death by bazooka, death by poison arrow, death by pipe bomb, death by piranha, death by food poisoning, death by Kalashnikov, death by RPG, death by best friend, death by syphilis, death by sorrow, death by hypothermia, death by quicksand, death by tracer, death by thrombosis, death by water torture, death by trip wire, death by pool cue, death by Russian roulette, death by punji trap, death by opiate, death by machete, death by motorbike, death by firing squad, death by gangrene, death by footsore, death by palsy, death by memory loss, death by claymore, death by scorpion, death by crack-up, death by Agent Orange, death by rent boy, death by harpoon, death by nightstick, death by immolation, death by crocodile, death by electrocution, death by mercury, death by strangulation, death by bowie knife, death by mescaline, death by mushroom, death by lysergic acid, death by jeep smash, death by grenade trap, death by boredom, death by heartache, death by sniper, death by paper cuts, death by whoreknife, death by poker game, death by numbers, death by bureaucracy, death by carelessness, death by delay, death by avoidance, death by appeasement, death by mathematics, death by carbon copy, death by eraser, death by filing error, death by penstroke, death by suppression, death by authority, death by isolation, death by incarceration, death by fratricide, death by suicide, death by genocide, death by Kennedy, death by LBJ, death by Nixon, death by Kissinger, death by Uncle Sam, death by Charlie, death by signature, death by silence, death by natural causes.
A stupid, endless menu of death.
But death by tightrope?
Death by performance?
That’s what it amounted to. So flagrant with his body. Making it cheap. The puppetry of it all. His little Charlie Chaplin walk, coming in like a hack on her morning. How dare he do that with his own body? Throwing his life in everyone’s face? Making her own son’s so cheap? Yes, he has intruded on her coffee morning like a hack on her code. With his hijinks above the city. Coffee and cookies and a man out there walking in the sky, munching away what should have been.
— You know what? she says, leaning into the circle of ladies.
— What?
She pauses a moment, wondering what she should say. A tremble running deep through her body.
— I like you all so much.
She is looking at Gloria when she says it, but she means it to them all, she genuinely means it. A little catch in her throat. She scans the row of faces. Gentleness and courtesy. All of them smiling at her. Come, ladies. Come. Let us while away our morning now. Let it slide. Let us forget walking men. Let us leave them high in the air. Let us sip our coffee and be thankful. Simple as that. Let’s pull back the curtains and allow light through. Let this be the first of many more. No one else will intrude. We have our boys. They are brought together. Even here. On Park Avenue. We hurt, and have one another for the healing.