The Laws of Gravity (38 page)

The woman, with tears in her eyes, a face that the judge could see was constricted with pain, kept on making the crowd laugh. They were laughing and crying, but mostly laughing, a few people actually holding their stomachs. You’d have thought she was a professional comic.

When the boy, her son, stepped up to say a few words, everyone started sobbing again. If you were watching from another planet, you’d have thought these people were insane—laughing one minute, sobbing the next. There was a little girl hanging on to the boy’s hand even as he spoke. She looked so much like Abigail as a child from the back, the judge caught his breath. He felt rooted to the spot, a man gazing at his own past. Her bright hair caught the light, like strands of brilliant copper wire. He was glad he could not see her face; he did not know how much more of this he could bear. But he would bear it for the sake of the woman who had borne more, and he vowed again to perfect himself—and not to become a perfect asshole.

Ari had found a place above the graveyard in which to hide. It was a cliff overgrown with trees and brambles and high grass. He’d had to climb up the far side and claw his way through dense vegetation and buzzing insects to reach this vantage point, but it was perfect. He could see but not be seen. He could hear without being heard. He had worn a black suit in case he had the courage to show up at the funeral itself, but of course he had not, and now it was soaked with sweat, stained green with grass, all but ruined. Its blackness seemed to draw the sunlight directly into the fibers of the cloth. He envied those below who stood beneath a white tent, in its cool shadow. Hanging on to the trunk of a tree, edging as close as he could to the edge of the cliff, he felt like one of those wild outcast characters from the Bible. Esau. Ishmael. Cain. Am I my brother’s keeper?

The press had been relentless once Nicole died. They’d called his house a dozen times, till he seriously considered pulling the phone out of the wall. How do you feel about the death of your cousin? I feel terrible, I feel like throwing up, he told one reporter, till he’d decided to stop answering the phone altogether. How did they think he would feel—happy? Relieved? He was not a monster, even if he looked like one, in his ruined black suit, hunched over a cliff, gazing down on everyone he loved. His mother was there, in a ludicrous wide-brimmed black straw hat. His ex-wife, his son, even his daughter, since they had decided Arianna was too young to understand what was going on. He was not convinced. He had once read that by the age of four human beings have undergone every emotion they will ever feel for the rest of their lives—rage, joy, desire, abandonment, hope. He believed that was true. He had felt all these things and more. But no one consulted him. He had lost the only power he’d ever really cared about, the power to watch over the people he loved.

The rabbi was speaking in praise of the dead. A devoted wife and mother, a beloved teacher, valued member of her community. He did not especially recognize his cousin Nicole in any of these words. He remembered her best as Nikki, her childhood nickname. He remembered his red-haired cousin, beautiful, noisy, alive, skinny, unpredictable, brave. A child. His baby cousin. Not a grown woman. Never one of the dead.

The rabbi said, “In the words of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, ‘There are few things as crooked as the straight face of a con-artist. There is nothing blacker than the white garments in which a corpse is dressed. And there is nothing more complete than a broken heart.’ ”

The rabbi began to recite kaddish in Hebrew, the prayer for the dead. Ari knew all the words. He had been at the top of his Hebrew School class;
he still had a sterling-silver-and-blue-enamel circle pin somewhere to prove it. The teacher had said, Maybe you’ll grow up to be a rabbi, or at least a cantor, and even then Ari had thought, Yeah, sure. And live on less than nothing, and kiss the behind of every wealthy congregant. But he had nodded, as if he were giving it serious thought.

The words of the kaddish came to him automatically, words praising God. “Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted.” If ever there was a moment he was in no mood to praise God, here it was, at his cousin Nikki’s funeral. “Extolled, honored, elevated…” Ari wanted to throw rocks down at the rabbi, just to shut him up. He focused on the sound of the wind hissing through the leafy trees, blowing a burning breath through every desiccated blade of summer grass. He clung to the tree trunk and shut his eyes, listening. It sounded like waves, breaking and crashing on shore, the rhythm of a heartbeat. He saw his little red-haired cousin Nikki floating on one of those foam kickboards, at the edge of the vast ocean. It was decorated with hearts and dolphins. She was near enough to touch, and then she headed out, her slim legs vigorously kicking. None of the adults seemed to be paying any attention. Only Ari kept an eye on her. Nikki’s mother lay with her eyes closed, behind one of those shiny three-paneled sun reflectors meant to intensify the sunlight—before anyone knew how deadly that was. The reflector lay fallen on her chest like the shield of a warrior. Ari’s father was rubbing white sunscreen into his mother’s back.

“Nikki, be careful!” Ari called.

She glanced back at him, her eyes darker than the water around her, and waved with one hand. As she did so, the board skidded out of her reach, and she started to swim after it, awkwardly. She had only really learned how to swim that summer. Before that she would just pretend to swim, setting
her elbows down into the sand and poking her way along the shore like a crab.

“Let it go!” he called. He was nearly eight, she was not yet five. His bathing trunks were already dry from the wind, the water was cold, he didn’t want to have to go back in there so soon.

She shook her head and kept swimming. “I’m fine!” she called back. And she did seem to be fine. The kickboard teased her, bobbing within an inch of her reaching fingers, then lurching forward again, swaying back and swinging away. She followed it out, her strokes surprisingly strong for such a little girl. She was already a better athlete than he was. She swam for quite a long time, and finally caught the board. He wanted to applaud. She was amazing, she was beautiful, and she was his cousin, his own flesh and blood. She turned the board around and began to head back for shore. He stood watching with his fists on his hips. Then the board escaped her again, darted up into the air and bounced away. Nikki looked at it, then straight at Ari. Her expression was unreadable at this distance. She treaded water for about a minute, and then went under. She came up sputtering, her arms flailing in panic, tried to swim forward, went under again.

Ari ran straight into the water. He was not a great swimmer, but he was strong. He kept his head out of the water while he did the crawl so he could watch her. He’d taken junior lifesaving classes at summer camp, and his head was surprisingly cool and clear. He called, “Hang on, I’m coming to get you!”

He seemed to be swimming in slow motion, as if in a dream, it took so long to reach Nikki. He watched her go under twice more, each time taking a little longer to bob back to the surface, a cork in a blue-and-purple-striped bathing suit. He headed straight for her, pulling his arms through the water
with all his might, methodically slicing his way to her. His heart pumped so hard his chest hurt. When he reached her, he gasped, “I’ve got you!” and he caught her sharp little jaw in the crook of his arm and started to swim back to shore, the way he’d been taught. She did not struggle the way he’d been told drowning people do; she did not try to pull him under. She seemed to relax a little in his arm. He made sure her head was always above water, that she could breathe. He kept reassuring her, “I’ve got you, we’re almost there. We’re almost there.”

When she was only a few days old, and he was not yet three, they had taken him to the hospital and laid her in his arms. She writhed like a snake. “Good muscle tone!” her father had laughed. She felt a bit like that now, so light, but so alive, every part of her body rippling, half in and half out of the water. As if she wanted to return to her liquid element. Well, he would not let her go. She was his flesh and blood. He claimed her. He would drag her back to earth. He swam all the way to shore, and even when he was sure her feet could touch the sand, he carried her in his arms. He expected to see crowds cheering on the beach, roaring approval and amazement at their safe return, but no one even looked up—just one heavyset woman who seemed to see nothing more than a big cousin carrying his little cousin. She smiled benignly. None of the parents had stopped what they were doing. There were no lifeguards at this end of the beach. What had just happened could not have taken more than five or six minutes, though it felt to Ari like a lifetime.

He hunkered down at the edge of the cliff now, a sweat-soaked adult, holding the tree trunk as if he still held his little cousin in his arms. The sound of the waves and wind rustled all around. The sun beat down on his head. “I’m not ever going to let you go.” He pushed her wet hair out of her
eyes, long coppery strands out of the way of her mouth and cheek. She was gasping for breath, but she was looking up into his face, smiling. He bent and kissed her salty cheek. He rocked her back and forth in his arms. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he said. “I’m not ever going to let anything terrible happen to you, ever.” She nodded. He bent and kissed her wet bony forehead. “Never, ever.” The wind sang in their ears, a promise.

Photograph © David Bosnick

Liz Rosenberg was born in Glen Cove, New York. She has written more than thirty books for adults and young readers, including novels, poetry, and nonfiction. For the past fifteen years she has been a book review columnist at
The Boston Globe
. Liz teaches at the State University of New York at Binghamton where she won the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her first husband was the late novelist John Gardner, author of
Grendel
. She lives in Binghamton, New York, with her husband, David, her daughter, Lily, and two shih tzus. Her son, Eli, lives in New York City and works as an actor and magician.