Im all right, though, he adds hastily. For now, anyway. But theres no sense staying here. Only
What? What, Jimmy?
I dont know which door to use.
Another beep.
I wish I knew which one Mrs. Corey took. Shes got my damn cards.
Are you She wipes her face with the towel she wore out of the shower; then she was fresh, now shes all tears and snot. Are you scared?
Scared? he asks thoughtfully. No. A little worried, thats all. Mostly about which door to use.
Find your way home, she almost says. Find the right door and find your way home. But if he did, would she want to see him? A ghost might be all right, but what if she opened the door on a smoking cinder with red eyes and the remains of jeans (he always traveled in jeans) melted into his legs? And what if Mrs. Corey was with him, his baked deck of cards in one twisted hand?
Beep.
I dont need to tell you to be careful about the FedEx man anymore, he says. If you really want him, hes all yours.
She shocks herself by laughing.
But I did want to say I love you
Oh honey I love you t
and not to let the McCormack kid do the gutters this fall, he works hard but hes a risk-taker, last year he almost broke his fucking neck. And dont go to the bakery anymore on Sundays. Somethings going to happen there, and I know its going to be on a Sunday, but I dont know which Sunday. Time really is funny here.
The McCormack kid hes talking about must be the son of the guy who used to be their caretaker in Vermont only they sold that place ten years ago, and the kid must be in his mid-twenties by now. And the bakery? She supposes hes talking about Zoltans, but what on earth
Beep.
Some of the people here were on the ground, I guess. Thats very tough, because they dont have a clue how they got here. And the pilot keeps screaming. Or maybe its the co-pilot. I think hes going to be here for quite awhile. He just wanders around. Hes very confused.
The beeps are coming closer together now.
I have to go, Annie. I cant stay here, and the phones going to shit the bed any second now, anyway. Once more in that Im-scolding-myself voice (impossible to believe she will never hear it again after today; impossible not to believe) he mutters, It would have been so simple just to well, never mind. I love you, sweetheart.
Wait! Dont go!
I c
I love you, too! Dont go!
But he already has. In her ear there is only black silence.
She sits there with the dead phone to her ear for a minute or more, then breaks the connection. The non-connection. When she opens the line again and gets a perfectly normal dial tone, she touches star-sixty-nine after all. According to the robot who answers her page, the last incoming call was at nine oclock that morning. She knows who that one was: her sister Nell, calling from New Mexico. Nell called to tell Annie that her plane had been delayed and she wouldnt be in until tonight. Nell told her to be strong.
All the relatives who live at a distanceJamess, Anniesflew in. Apparently they feel that James used up all the familys Destruction Points, at least for the time being.
There is no record of an incoming call atshe glances at the bedside clock and sees its now 3:17 P.M.at about ten past three, on the third afternoon of her widowhood.
Someone raps briefly on the door and her brother calls, Anne? Annie?
Dressing! she calls back. Her voice sounds like shes been crying, but unfortunately, no one in this house would find that strange. Privacy, please!
You okay? he calls through the door. We thought we heard you talking. And Ellie thought she heard you call out.
Fine! she calls, then wipes her face again with the towel. Down in a few!
Okay. Take your time. Pause. Were here for you. Then he clumps away.
Beep, she whispers, then covers her mouth to hold in laughter that is some emotion even more complicated than grief finding the only way out it has. Beep, beep. Beep, beep, beep. She lies back on the bed, laughing, and above her cupped hands her eyes are large and awash with tears that overspill down her cheeks and run all the way to her ears. Beep-fucking-beepity-beep.
She laughs for quite awhile, then dresses and goes downstairs to be with her relatives, who have come to share their grief with hers. Only they feel apart from her, because he didnt call any of them. He called her. For better or worse, he called her.
During the autumn of that year, with the blackened remains of the apartment building the jet crashed into still closed off from the rest of the world by yellow police tape (although the taggers have been inside, one leaving a spray-painted message reading CRISPY CRITTERS STOP HERE), Annie receives the sort of e-blast computer-addicts like to send to a wide circle of acquaintances. This one comes from Gert Fisher, the town librarian in Tilton, Vermont. When Annie and James summered there, Annie used to volunteer at the library, and although the two women never got on especially well, Gert has included Annie in her quarterly updates ever since. They are usually not very interesting, but halfway through the weddings, funerals, and 4-H winners in this one, Annie comes across a bit of news that makes her catch her breath. Jason McCormack, the son of old Hughie McCormack, was killed in an accident on Labor Day. He fell from the roof of a summer cottage while cleaning the gutters and broke his neck.
He was only doing a favor for his dad, who as you may remember had a stroke the year before last, Gert wrote before going on to how it rained on the librarys end-of-summer lawn sale, and how disappointed they all were.
Gert doesnt say in her three-page compendium of breaking news, but Annie is quite sure Jason fell from the roof of what used to be their cottage. In fact, she is positive.
Five years after the death of her husband (and the death of Jason McCormack not long after), Annie remarries. And although they relocate to Boca Raton, she gets back to the old neighborhood often. Craig, the new husband, is only semi-retired, and his business takes him to New York every three or four months. Annie almost always goes with him, because she still has family in Brooklyn and on Long Island. More than she knows what to do with, it sometimes seems. But she loves them with that exasperated affection that seems to belong, she thinks, only to people in their fifties and sixties. She never forgets how they drew together for her after Jamess plane went down, and made the best cushion for her that they could. So she wouldnt crash, too.
When she and Craig go back to New York, they fly. About this she never has a qualm, but she stops going to Zoltans Family Bakery on Sundays when shes home, even though their raisin bagels are, she is sure, served in heavens waiting room. She goes to Frogers instead. She is actually there, buying doughnuts (the doughnuts are at least passable), when she hears the blast. She hears it clearly even though Zoltans is eleven blocks away. LP gas explosion. Four killed, including the woman who always passed Annie her bagels with the top of the bag rolled down, saying, Keep it that way until you get home or you lose the freshness.
People stand on the sidewalks, looking east toward the sound of the explosion and the rising smoke, shading their eyes with their hands. Annie hurries past them, not looking. She doesnt want to see a plume of rising smoke after a big bang; she thinks of James enough as it is, especially on the nights when she cant sleep. When she gets home she can hear the phone ringing inside. Either everyone has gone down the block to where the local school is having a sidewalk art sale, or no one can hear that ringing phone. Except for her, that is. And by the time she gets her key turned in the lock, the ringing has stopped.
Sarah, the only one of her sisters who never married, is there, it turns out, but there is no need to ask her why she didnt answer the phone; Sarah Bernicke, the one-time disco queen, is in the kitchen with the Village People turned up, dancing around with the O-Cedar in one hand, looking like a chick in a TV ad. She missed the bakery explosion, too, although their building is even closer to Zoltans than Frogers.