Pam of Babylon (5 page)

Thankfully, both Marie and Nelda kept the crowd under control, asking people to keep the family in their prayers and telling them that the children would be home that afternoon, when they would need time alone to be together, to mourn.

Throughout the day, well-meaning friends and neighbors stopped by with cakes and pies, baskets of fruit, trays of cookies, and hors d’oeuvres. There would be no need for much food preparation. Anne did a great job organizing the dishes, refrigerating what needed it, keeping some food out for the family to snack on, and throwing away that which appeared indigestible.

When Pam appeared at last, she repeated what she knew about the tragedy to Bill and Bernice. Bernice seemed to shrink. Pam asked her if she would like to watch TV. They went into the den, and Bernice sat in Jack’s chair. His afghan was there, still smelling of his aftershave. Pam put the remote in her hand and shut the doors. Bernice would have some down time.

After the door closed, she buried her face in the afghan. She breathed deeply of the scent, a combination of something fragrant, herbal, and chemical, like a man’s deodorant or aftershave. It was her son’s scent just after he got out of the shower. She recognized it from the time he was a teenager. He would come in after a day of roughhousing with his buddies and head for the shower. He would then come down to the dining room, just in time for dinner, with clean sweatpants, a white T-shirt, and a towel around his shoulders to catch the drips from his just-washed hair. She loved seeing him like that, relaxed, sitting around the table with his brother and father, talking sports and school.
He was so vibrant as a teenager!

Harold worried about the boys. With so much written in the press about teenage suicide, drug use, and high school dropouts, he was vigilant, always inquiring about their activities, asking them if they needed anything or if he could help them in any way. He sat through more awful rock concerts than any parent could be expected to endure, and he drove the boys and their friends anywhere they wanted to go at any time of day or night. He made himself available to his sons. It paid off. Both boys were happy and successful, married to wonderful women, and devoted to their families.

When Harold died the year before, it was Jack who took it the hardest, even more so than she did. He was inconsolable, lost his appetite, took time off work, and hovered around her until she asked him to go home. It was really sad. He never seemed the same after that. He kept asking her if his father had done what he wanted in life, if he had met his goals, if he was satisfied with his life.

And now this. Two of the three most important men in her life were dead. Just Bill and Anne and the kids remained. She’d forgotten about Pam and her children. She knew she must be in shock, the unrealistic event of her son’s death hovering at the periphery of her thought.
But was it a dream? How could Jack be gone? Jack, who was larger than life, the maker of dreams, always strong, always on top of it, always dependable, wouldn’t he walk into the den any minute now and say, “Mother! Stay right where you are! I’ll pull up a chair here”?
And he would do just that, pull his desk chair over while she sat in the recliner, his chair. He would take her hands in his, gaze into her eyes, and make a horrible joke or ask her if he could pass gas, or some other inappropriate comment, all the while with the most holy look on his face. They would laugh, she almost screaming, her sons the only ones who had the power to make her relent her poise long enough to laugh at a joke.

She bowed her head, the afghan waded up in her hands, and started to cry. He would never walk through the door of this den again or come to her house unannounced, yelling as he slammed the door of the regal entryway, “Mom, where are you?” She would never again run into him at the hardware store on Amsterdam and 92
^nd
Street, suggest they have a cup of coffee together, and walk arm and arm to Columbus, going into their favorite coffee shop and sitting there for hours, forgetting the time, talking about everything. He used to ask her opinion of different political figures in the city so she made sure she read the papers every morning and checked the online news stories. She thought he might have done it on purpose to keep her on her toes. She would never know. He told her one time how proud he was that she was his mother and that she looked so good for her age. After that, she went to the gym every single day, even on Sunday. She must write all of these things down somewhere, have something to show for her relationship with him.
His own children, those two fabulous, intelligent beings, they would want to know someday, wouldn’t they? To know what kind of son their father had been?

She tried not to think about the past year, how her relationship with Jack had changed, unspoken events that would change them forever. No unpleasant memories would be allowed admittance that day.

She shook out the afghan and folded it into a neat square.
How long would this scent stay in it? A week? A month?
It would grow stale before long, and Pam would take it and throw it into the washing machine. She would ask her daughter-in-law if she could have it. It still had traces of his DNA on it, maybe a stray hair, a dried tear, or a skin cell. She thought of the sheets on his bed in the apartment.
Oh God, the apartment
. Pam had to deal with that as well. If she were smart, she wouldn’t sell it. She would keep it, just in case. But that was not her business. She must say nothing but loving comments. She thought Pam silly, shallow. But Jack had loved her, and she loved Jack. Her daughter-in-law must be feeling about the same way she did last year at this time when Harold died.

She worked her way to the end of the chair and struggled to get up.
When did I get so old?
She wanted to be with the rest of the family now, to hear what they were talking about. There was plenty time of to be alone. She had the rest of her life to be alone.

7

S
andra struggled with the key, willing the woman to leave, to get back to her cab and be gone.
How much could one person tolerate in a day?
She stumbled to her own door after slamming the hallway door shut. Once inside her apartment, the terror of the moment subsided. She took a deep breath. Here was safety. She smelled the clean smell of the house. The order around her brought her peace and she was glad she’d cleaned that day.
What could be worse? Jack was dead. Thank God we had last night together.
“Thank you, God. But why did her have to die? Why now?” she said out loud. Her momentary peace escaped her, and she fell apart. Sliding down the door to the floor, she crossed her legs and put her head in her hands. She was alone in the world. There was no one on earth who she could call right now and say, “Jack is dead,” who would understand, who would care. The impact of it brought her to tears again. No one knew. Well, not exactly no one. Those women who she had earlier wished be gone might know. They cared.

How lucky am I that the woman, Jack’s wife, was so lovely! Could it be she was under medication? Was she in shock?
Sandra certainly didn’t expect that sort of greeting, that much caring. Jack never bad-mouthed her, but he also didn’t go into a lot of detail about the kind of woman she was—a gracious, giving woman. One who could put aside her own feelings and embrace the woman who had been sleeping with her husband. Her grief, compounded by guilt, paralyzed her. She lay on the floor in front of her door in the dark for the rest of the night.

The next morning, stiff from the hard floor, Sandra got up, put her purse in the closet and walked to her bedroom. She pulled the shades up. It was a bright, sun-filled day. Picking up the bedside clock, she saw that it was eleven already.
How’d that happen?
She felt lightheaded, strange, probably from sleeping on the floor. She remembered that she hadn’t had dinner last night. But, first, she would have a shower. She gathered up clean underwear and a robe.

The hot water felt good on her skin. She couldn’t shake the lightheaded feeling. Hurrying to get finished, she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She was concentrating on the mundane tasks of her morning. It was Sunday. She would take care of herself and wait for the call. Her life would be in bondage to the funeral of her lover. That much she could do for him. There would be nothing else as important, nothing as eternal, as going through this process of burying her lover. Pam Smith was going to make it possible for her to have the experience, to be part of it—at least she said she would.

Sandra put a tea bag in a cup. She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic container of orange-frosted rolls she picked up the day before at Zabar’s.
Was it really just yesterday? Saturday morning?
Her life had changed overnight. The small tasks of her daily routine were comforting. She arranged a sliced apple on a plate and took her tea and roll to the small table set up in her sitting area, positioned so she could look out the window at the alley while she ate. The disadvantage to being on the ground floor was the lack of view. But seeing the way the sunlight shown on the brick and the tree of heaven, with her bird feeder in it swaying in the breeze, made her feel a sense of peace. Most things were out of her control. She was at the mercy of everyone else.
Just go with the flow.

She had made a poor choice. Getting involved with Jack was wrong and she knew it, resisting it from the onset. So did he. They should have taken drastic steps, asked for a transfer for her, anything to get them out of the same office. But the chemistry and the tug between them was more than either of them could ignore. They were human, after all. Flesh. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. They didn’t even flirt with each other. It transcended that sort of behavior. Now she realized that he was just lonely. He was at that dangerous age. He should have moved home with his wife or insisted she come to the city with him. It would have been worth it to protect their marriage.

She first saw him three years before. Prior to that, she was working in the Bronx office. It was closer to her home than Wall Street. She could walk if she allowed enough time, but usually hopped on the subway. She loved working far uptown. The shopping and the restaurants were fabulous. She tried so many different ethnic foods. Picking up something unusual for dinner each night got to be a habit, so much so that she actually put on weight, her straight figure taking on curves.

When she was summoned to the Wall Street office, she assumed someone there wanted her to do a temporary research project that couldn’t be done from the outside. Jack was in his office talking on the phone. She was standing in the hall just a foot from his door. Peter Romney was talking loudly to her, explaining what he needed from her. Jack walked to his door, smiled at her, and closed it. She wished Peter had shut up.

“Do you think we could go someplace and sit down while you tell me about the project?” she said. “I want to take notes.” He led her to an empty office and, pointing at the desk, said, “Welcome to Wall Street.” It was a long commute downtown. She had to leave the house earlier than before, giving herself an hour to get downtown and then walk to the building. The atmosphere wasn’t the same down there. It was darker, as the surrounding buildings stood tall around their office, blocking the sunlight. She really didn’t like it. Maybe having the interest of a man helped her settle into her new position. She may have used Jack to feel less lonely, less unhappy about her new digs.

It started innocently enough. They just worked together. He never asked her to lunch, never flirted with her. He seemed eager to get home on Fridays, occasionally going midweek. Sandra wasn’t attracted to him either. She had never dated an older man and he was twice her age.

And then her parents died within a few days of each other. He was so nice to her, so concerned, that they began talking and a real friendship developed. It wasn’t a father-daughter relationship, although there were enough years between them that it could have been. They were just coworkers.