Among the Dead (10 page)

‘Jesus,' said Lowell, to no particular end. It was just a thing to say, to finish the ceremony for himself.

Then Bettina Welch came over to Frank and gave him his own hug.

‘I think you need one too,' she said.

It was stronger than their brief intimacy would have deserved under other circumstances, but the hug she had just finished now granted her the franchise on mercy for the room. There was something unfairly demanding in the hug; Frank could not hate the airline as much as he wanted to now that this woman from the airline was telling him that they shared something so powerful each would forever recognize the wounds of this day in the other, that they were now both initiates in the same clan. We are not, he wanted to tell her. We are not the same. We do not suffer the same disaster.

Against his will, he returned the hug with force. She set the rhythm, forcing him to sway with her. The belligerent sweetness of the hug, the unrequested familiarity of it, gave way, and he could feel her spine, her breasts, her belly, and he began to judge them, to think about how firm or soft she was, whether her stomach was flat or a little round, and what her breasts would look like. So there was sex, finally, the moment of awareness of difference, and the hug ended.

He introduced her to his brother.

Lowell said, ‘Did you lose someone on the plane?'

‘I knew two of the girls real well.' Bettina's friendship implied something at least equal to the loss of Frank's wife and young daughter.

‘Do they know what happened yet?' Lowell asked.

‘We probably won't know for a few days,' said Bettina.

Lowell persisted. ‘Do they have any ideas?' Frank could see that his brother wanted to be angry with Bettina, since she represented the airline. Lowell's secretary once told Frank that he wasn't an easy man to work for. Frank had then said to her, pointlessly, as though her intimacy breached something significant, ‘We're equal partners, you know.' And she looked at him and he saw she thought he was a fool. Did everyone in all the stores think of him in the same way? Yes. And now his boss was trying to find Bettina Welch's breaking point, so he could make her cry.

‘It's too soon to know,' said Bettina. ‘And it's dark now, so the crews can't search for clues.'

‘They have voice-recorders on these planes, don't they? And wasn't the plane in contact with the ground? What were the pilot's last words?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Somebody does.'

‘Sir, I'm here to help the survivors, I'm not here as a spokesperson for the airline.'

‘You can help the survivors by telling them what the airline knows. Otherwise, the lawsuits are going to be even bigger.'

‘Mr Gale, I can promise you the airline is doing everything in its power to help the survivors.'

‘You're a fucking corporate whore, you're a fucking corporate liar,' said Lowell. Lowell was used to making those who worked for him unhappy, but Bettina Welch worked for something else, not a man but a company with thousands of people on the payroll. Bettina Welch was not frightened of Lowell.

‘Lowell,' said Frank, ‘don't.' Meaning: don't be your usual posturing, difficult self. Meaning: you have put this woman in an impossible position, she can't tell you what you want to know, you have to speak to someone higher up. Meaning: apologize for your language.

Frank had no real power; he was everyone's buddy. When he was angry, when he yelled, there was a gracelessness to his rage, his energy was not contained, and he threw his arms into the air, awkwardly, and lost whatever little presence he had.

‘Frank, she's not on your side, she's working for the airline. You can't trust her.'

‘I understand how you feel, Mr Gale.' Bettina Welch was in
harmony with the gods of public relations now, and she read her line perfectly. The way she said
1,
weighted with a penny, just enough to register her own ego but not so much as to compete with the corporation. And then
understand how,
a small break in the first word dropping as she spoke it, to say, I can't possibly feel all of your grief, of course, but I know that your grief is making you not responsible for your actions, and so I cannot take your actions personally, and so I cannot take your promised threats seriously, because no one cares to listen to a lunatic, which is how I am treating you now, and which is how you will see yourself when you think about the awful things you said to me. And then after
understand how,
she said
you feel,
telling Lowell that the crash was not a matter for metal, flame, and flesh, but opinions.

‘No, you don't understand how I feel,' he said, but he sounded nasal; the anger had drifted out of his belly into his head.

‘Mr Gale, both of us are under a lot of stress right now, and I have to talk to some other families. If you want, we have psychological counsellors, and as I said, we also have religious counsellors here in the ballroom. Would you like to speak to one of them?'

‘Forget it,' said Lowell, backing away from the fight as though he hadn't lost it. ‘I guess I am getting a little out of control here.'

‘Let's sit down,' said Frank. Frank took Lowell by the arm and led him to a television set.

‘I feel terrible,' said Frank.

‘I know.'

‘I hope they didn't suffer too much,' said Frank.

‘Well, if the plane blew up in the air, if there's any consolation, they probably passed out.'

‘If they weren't killed immediately,' said Frank.

‘It's probably a good idea to let yourself have all these feelings right now. Whatever images come to mind, I want you to talk about them with me.'

‘I wish I didn't feel so numb.'

‘Would you mind if I had a drink?' asked Lowell.

‘Are you giving up the lawsuit?' asked Frank. He meant this to be taken lightly, and his brother smiled.

‘What the hell,' said Lowell, but Frank didn't know what he meant by this. Was he throwing the lawsuit away, or was he just taking a vacation from his anger, in which case, was he also taking a vacation from his grief?

‘Go ahead,' said Frank. ‘Get me one.'

‘What do you want?' Lowell looked relieved that Frank was joining him. Frank began to make a silent vow not to get drunk, but checked himself. He would try to have only one drink, without making any sacred promises. He asked for a beer, then changed his mind and said he wanted a scotch.

‘You're sure?' said Lowell.

‘No, give me a beer.' He was worried about the headache he might get from scotch, since he hadn't tasted any in months.

When Lowell went to the bar, Frank regretted asking for beer; beer was not a drink for comfort but celebration. Nothing here had been achieved except an accidental massacre. And what of the beer he drank in the airport bar, before the news broke? He had been celebrating two things, his thirst and the inevitable fight he would have with his wife, now that she had read the letter.

Lowell came back with the beer in a glass in one hand and a scotch in the other. Lowell gave him the beer, and he took a sip. It was all wrong, the way he had expected it to taste; it was like having a beer in the morning when he didn't want a drink at all. Even the pleasant kick of the alcohol annoyed him, an inspiration to relax that made him hate himself, but he finished the glass.

‘That guy over there, at the bar' – Lowell pointed to a man in a T-shirt and running shorts – ‘his next-door neighbour lost her parents on the flight. She was screaming when he heard her, she was on the phone, and he drove her down here.'

‘Her parents,' said Frank, dumbly.

‘He heard someone say that it was a bomb on the plane.'

‘Terrorists?'

‘Not necessarily. Maybe someone who worked for the airline.'

‘Does it really make any difference?' Frank snapped. It was the beer; he was feeling gloomy when he should have been miserable, and the gloom led him to sulk.

‘Why are we here?' asked Lowell. Meaning: we are sitting in this awful hotel conference room like students detained by the vice-principal who caught them running in the halls. We don't have to be here. And more: we are better than these others in the room, we have more money. Even more: we can get better lawyers, lawyers as good as the airline will hire.

‘Where would we go?'

‘Home.'

‘I don't want to go home. I don't want to see the house.' He thought this was sloppy of him, cowardly not to face his daughter's
dolls, books, blocks, and his wife's French shoes, her make-up, their bed.

Ed Dockery was crossing the room, and Frank knew he was going to have to talk some more about what couldn't be changed. Frank Gale was Ed Dockery's assignment. There were other men in the room, with the same sober respect, who moved among a few tables, sitting for ten or so minutes, talking, making notes on legal pads, and Frank guessed that each had been assigned to only a few families, not to spread the airline's attention so thinly that in the inevitable lawsuits the surviving relatives could add corporate indifference to the list of complaints. ‘We lost our family, but as if that weren't enough, the airline couldn't find the time to talk to us for three hours, because they only had two people in charge.' Like not enough waitresses in a crowded coffee shop.

Dockery introduced himself to Lowell. Of course Bettina Welch had warned him that Lowell was difficult.

‘I'm his brother,' said Lowell.

‘There's been a new development here, and we wanted you to know before it goes on the ten o'clock news.'

Frank's heart began to pound, unreasonably he thought, as if he were guilty, and about to be caught for the thing he had done. Or was it just the fear that he would learn something dreadful, and the foundations of his control would erode in the space of a few seconds, however long it took to hear Dockery's revelation?

‘What happened?' said Lowell. It was a challenge to Dockery: he should stop playing the part of the saddened messenger; he should tell the story and not act as if there was anything eternal in Lowell's disdain for him.

‘We think that the plane went down because one of our employees, I should say one of our former employees, sneaked a gun on to the plane and killed the pilot.'

He told this story quickly, and directly.

‘Thank you,' said Lowell.

‘For what?' asked Dockery.

‘For telling us the truth.'

Frank wanted to say, Yes, that was kind of you. Something between the two men went unspoken; it had to do with integrity, and Frank didn't understand it. Instead he asked, ‘Why?' although he didn't really care. So they died for nothing. If a Palestinian had blown the plane out of the sky, Frank could always warm himself on the fires of history, he could tell the world that his life had been
touched by the terrible events of this awful century, that he was now a part of history. Their deaths, however tragic, would have been given some meaning. He would have had an enemy too, a movement, an ideology. He saw himself, letting the fantasy roll ahead to its conclusion, as someone who could even
RELUCTANTLY ACCEPT
a role as the public spokesman for the victims of terrorism, as the great champion of innocence. Of the innocent victim. But a
FORMER EMPLOYEE
? Where was the glamour in the fatal radiation from the decaying misery of a
DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
? Was there anything to gain from the death of his wife and his daughter if a nutcase had killed them? What if their murderer had been released from a mental hospital, or had been denied entry to one because the state had no money to take care of him? All the boring editorials! How they would add the name of the nutcase to the list of the victims of his unhealed rage! Surely he was as much a victim, blah blah blah. And until we solve the problems of the blah blah blah ... And all the predictable anger at the government, at the social workers who will defend themselves for not having seen the danger lurking in this unhappy man! I will be forgotten in all of this, thought Frank. I will be abandoned. Emptiness surrounded him.

‘We don't know why, not yet,' said Dockery.

‘Did you know him?' asked Lowell. Of course it was a man.

‘Just to say hello.'

‘What did he do?' asked Frank. ‘What was his job?'

‘He was in the freight office.'

‘Why was he fired?' asked Lowell. Frank was glad his brother was asking all the obvious questions. He didn't want to seem too curious – what would they think if they saw how this interesting development submerged his grief? Lowell could ask any questions, because Lowell had charm; he could make a person happy to answer a rude question. People liked to talk to him. And these questions weren't rude, they were just obvious. Anyone would want to know. Frank thought he should have been able to ask them. I have a
RIGHT TO KNOW
! Now he wanted another drink.

Dockery was uncomfortable with the question. ‘All of this was very recent.'

‘Why did he take down the plane?' asked Lowell. Implied in the way he stressed the word ‘plane' was the thought that something was out of scale, that the man's murderous anger and need for revenge, if justified, should have satisfied itself with the death of
whomever he was angry at. Because it was routine news for people to get fired and go back to their offices and kill the person who fired them. There was no revelation in that kind of news. But a whole plane? And a neighbourhood?

‘Now look, I'm not supposed to be telling you this,' said Dockery, and Frank thought that were the situation reversed, were he the one whose brother had suffered the loss, the airline executive would not confide in him, if Lowell was overcome by his sorrow and couldn't talk for himself. The man who fired him was on the plane. And he had seven children.' Three feathers on a delicate scale tipped the weight on the word ‘he' and then again on ‘seven'. Is this, Frank wondered, a dig at me, a way of diminishing by comparison my grief for my one child, Dockery's retaliation for Lowell's tirade at Bettina Welch?