“We gather in sorrow,” said the Right Reverend Andrew Simmons, “but sorrow is not the final word for us.” The reverend was a small and pinkcomplected man, with a face that seemed to call the word “cherubic” irresistibly to others’ minds. Many times on such occasions he had explained patiently that the cherubim were not winged infants but fearful warriors, but the correction did not take. Nor could he do anything about those who applied the term out of his earshot, and eventually he’d given up and decided to accept it as a compliment. Harold Fineman, the reverend thought, seemed a man to whom the description would better apply, but he had resisted the temptation to make that point in his remarks. The temptation had been real, for little else was offered him. His custom was to speak to the bereaved, to offer support and take in exchange bits of information that could be blended into his homily. He did this not merely to personalize his remarks but to make them a representation of the transition over which he presided: the Church’s message of comfort and hope wrapped personal reminiscence just as God’s love enfolded the soul of the deceased.
That had proved difficult in this case. Those facts of Harold’s life he knew, he had gathered mostly from the firm’s promotional biography, and they were but the trappings and carapace of the man himself. Still, even cast-off clothing retained impressions of its wearer. Even shrouds permitted surmise. “Strength,” said Reverend Simmons. “Strength such as Harold had, such as we must try to have without him, comes not from despair, nor from personal power, but from committing ourselves to the incomprehensible mystery of life and death. From the hope we have
been given, that death is not an end but the door through which we pass into grace and reunion with the one who loves us best of all.” His voice was somber and reassuring, but he felt a momentary flicker of annoyance. This is what comes of pandering to the alumni, he thought. I don’t even know when the poor man converted.
Harold’s funeral was a small affair. It was not intimate, though, not when almost everyone in attendance was a lawyer. The whole Morgan Siler partnership turned out, marching two by two into the chapel and making a full circuit before taking their seats. The ritual procession, called the Morgan walk, was performed for each fallen partner. “It’s right that we should be there, right with the family,” Peter Morgan had once told a curious journalist.
Indeed, it is right, he thought now, seated in the wooden pews. One of us is gone, and still the firm endures. But where was the family? His eyes scanned the small audience. There was no one at all, as best as he could tell, from outside the firm. No wife, no children, just lawyers in their dark suits and Harold’s secretary, her tears suggesting an unglimpsed devotion. Plenty of flowers, to be sure; the firm could do that much. But it couldn’t provide mourners.
Well, it could, Peter thought. Perhaps it should. He fingered the cue cards in his pocket and considered making a note of the idea. Most of the organizational demands had fallen upon him, or his secretary, and he felt he’d risen to the occasion. He’d prevailed upon his prep school to allow the use of their chapel, a small and tasteful building in the shadow of the Washington Cathedral. It had proved impossible even to locate a friend to speak, so Peter himself had taken the responsibility of saying a few words before yielding to the reverend. He’d done it without consulting the notes, which pleased him, though in truth they contained precious little. “The firm will miss a great litigator,” Peter had said. “And we who knew him will miss Harold Fineman.” That was workmanlike, but appropriate. He’d considered opening with a joke about how it was usually only plaintiffs’ lawyers who showed up at funerals, but in retrospect he was glad to have omitted it. Harold deserved better. The firm would miss him, that much was true.
But with no complementary family presence, the Morgan walk had a different significance. The ceremony showed nothing, except that the
firm continued. It did not commemorate Harold so much as deny him; deny that he was essential, deny that his death could change things. And for those in attendance, thought Peter Morgan, that should be a potent reminder. Live all you can. There would be more people at his own funeral. The children, certainly. Maybe a wife. Maybe two.
“Death is not the final word on the human condition,” Reverend Simmons said. “The resurrection is. Our lives do not end as we leave this world. They change, and change into something better.” Peter Morgan bowed his head to hide a slow smile. He was accustomed to taking the words of religion figuratively, if at all, and when properly interpreted, the message today was apt indeed. Things end; arrangements change. But life goes on, as long as we have the will to believe, as long as we have the strength to take.
“Amen,” said Katja softly, glad it was over. The service brought back her father’s funeral, his illness before. She had been six, young enough to think that love or promises could save him. In the church she’d kissed his cheek, almost surprised that he didn’t awaken. She had felt guilt then too, but this time she deserved it. This time the childish impulse had been rewarded, but it had only made things worse. And then she had run too fast, feeling herself in danger, letting reflex substitute for thought. There was a lesson there, the same lesson, the one it seemed she couldn’t learn.
You’d never know anyone was missing, she thought, watching the partners parade out. If Harold were there, he wouldn’t even look like he belonged. Involuntarily she was remembering the peculiarities of his gait. His tightrope walker’s pacing; how the heels of his shoes had worn down, no longer touching the floor, and how this had made him appear to rise perpetually on his toes, an eager child seeking approval.
Now he was gone, and the gray ranks had closed over the gap. Interrupting Harold had seemed the safest thing to do, avoiding the risk that she would hurt him with rejection, the risk that he would try to hurt her in return. But those things seemed less terrible compared to the total erasure she was seeing now. There was a lesson there too, a new one. This is what happens to the risk-averse.
“Amen,” echoed Mark beside her.
“This is unreal,” Katja said. “Couldn’t they find anyone who knew anything about him?”
“I guess not,” said Mark. “All I really knew was that he liked opera.” And that stuff about children, he thought, which probably didn’t bear repeating. That line about the travel mug. What a horrendous set of memories to leave behind. There was a little bit more. Once, he recalled, Harold had told him a story that centered on a sandwich containing an unexpected complement of jalapeño peppers. Perhaps that had been his way of reaching out.
“And this chapel. Can you believe it?”
“I thought it was nice.”
“No,” said Katja. “Can you believe it didn’t occur to anyone that he was Jewish?”
Mark tilted back a bottle of beer and took a reflective swig. He didn’t usually drink in the evenings, but it seemed to be what people did when they were troubled, and after a couple of beers he was starting to see why. A pleasant dullness enfolded his senses, the sort of relaxation that would let you fall from a second-story window and rise, unharmed and vaguely puzzled, while those who went rigid with fear shattered their bones on impact. You needed that, he was realizing; you needed something to take the edge off. Life doled out experience in inhuman portions, as though it expected us to be able to take much more, as though in some distant past our souls had greater compass.
It had done that to him with happiness once, in the nostalgia and folly of incipient college graduation, when he’d spent the remnants of a May night in the bed of a girl he’d long admired. Six hours or so, his arms wrapped around her naked body, his hands on her breasts while he thought, Too much, too much. I can’t absorb more than about ten minutes of this; I don’t need it more than every couple of months. Properly paced, the happiness of that night could have lasted him until their fifth reunion, when they’d greeted each other with the calm enthusiasm of old friends and she was engaged to someone else. But rapture was not to be rationed; it overflowed to meaninglessness and was gone.
Then with boredom, in his time at the firm, great waves of tedium coming one behind the other and long after his initial enthusiasm had
drowned. And now it was catastrophe’s turn. The ruthless generosity of the world, that always gives us more than we bargained for.
So it all falls apart, he thought. All my work is for nothing because there was some other test that I didn’t ask for explicitly enough. And Walker leaves, and Harold dies, and I’ll go into court and take the hit for some guy who, it turns out, is actually guilty. Nothing to get upset about. It’s just the reality of big-firm practice.
The conclusion didn’t ring entirely true, but it seemed possible that another beer would convince him. He rose and padded in stocking feet to the refrigerator. I’m open to all reasonable arguments. Let’s see what this bottle holds.
Wallace Finn placed a leather bookmark between the pages of Gibbon and pushed his glasses up on his forehead. He’d had more time, these past years, so much more that he’d struggled to find ways to fill it. Books had been a blessing, an antidote to the evening, companions to take away the quiet hours.
He doubted he needed them now. The hours seemed to go so quickly. The years had grown shorter, celluloid flickers of night and day. It isn’t really fair, Wallace thought. Not only do you have less time left, but it goes by faster. And what at the end? Wallace looked at his bedroom window, which reflected a wall of books. Dark was coming, turning glass to mirrors, infinite vistas to solitary reflections. The yearning possibilities of the night were waning, its promise of a permeable future turning ominously solid. The threat was real now, as the black wall approached each evening: this time there may be no other side.
Nothing to fear, he supposed. We’ve all known oblivion before. Not death, quite, but unbeing, the same absence from the world. That sleep, rounded with a birth.
But we didn’t know that we knew it. We didn’t anticipate it, late at night, alone.
I don’t want to be left alone, Wallace said quietly to himself. At his age, he found, that was all one ever thought about. His wife had remarried; his children had grown. The people in whose minds he’d lived were gone, lost to the years that bore them ever further away. It would be easier, wouldn’t it, with someone else? Someone to validate the hours that pass, to mark and measure transient time. Someone who knows who you
used to be, who holds what trace you leave in this world, passes that blind impress on. None of that for Harold, who like an expert diver broke the plane without splash or sound.
It could all be different, Wallace thought. He shook his head. That’s what’s unfair, the persistence of hope. It clamors: Just one person. Just one other and life is boundless. Even now, so late in the day. Power wanes, not the ability to feel. Wallace studied his hands, the skin thin and spotted, the bones moving beneath. A bag of sticks, roped with vein and tendon. The body ages, we all understand. But the heart stays unforgivably young.