The Ups and Downs of Being Dead (20 page)

She squinted her eyes at him. “You don’t like sightseeing,
do you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Why not? Did your parents drive away and leave you at the
Grand Canyon?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you go on vacations when you were a child?”

Robert shook his head.

Suzanne slapped at his knee. “Are you going to make me drag
a conversation out of you, one syllable at a time?”

“What do you want to talk about?”

Now her shoulders sagged and her eyes rolled up nearly under
her eyelids.

“Did you ever go to the beach with your cousins and aunts
and uncles? Or spend Christmas with your grandparents?”

Puffing his cheeks out, Robert blew a breath.

“Okay. I never met my grandparents on my mother’s side until
her funeral.” He bobbled his head as evidence that he found the conversation
annoying. “They weren’t really there to bury their daughter, though. They came
so my grandmother could retrieve some ‘family heirlooms’. Jewelry that had been
handed down through the generations.

“You should have seen the way she tiptoed through our house
like an old frump, turning her nose up at our furniture, even the drapes. She
had her hands balled at the waist so she wouldn’t touched anything and catch a
horrible disease, like poverty. She even used my grandfather’s silver pen to
lift the lid of my mother’s jewelry box.”

“My God!” Suzanne exclaimed. “What a bitch.”

“Yeah. The worst thing was they way she looked at me, like I
was dog shit on the bottom of her shoe. I was only fourteen, for Godsakes.”

Much to Robert’s dismay, his voice cracked. He turned and
peered over the railing of the bus at Macy’s gigantic department store.

“There you go,” he said without turning to look at Suzanne.
“You be sure and come back and check out the parade next Thanksgiving. You can
stand in the freezing cold with millions of tourists waiting for a giant
balloon to pass overhead.”

He didn’t feel it, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw
her lay her long fingers gently on his knee.

“Why was she so hateful?”

“She was mad at my mother and decided to take it out on me,
I guess. I can still see that pinched mouth, those wrinkles all around her
lips, while she spewed out the story of my mom. I’d never been told the whole
story, but evidently, she was a wild child out on Long Island where she grew
up. When she got pregnant at seventeen, her mother was too ashamed to let her
stick around. So they sent her to my aunt’s home in Kokomo where she was
supposed to have the baby, give it up for adoption, and be back in time for high
season the next summer.”

“But she didn’t,” Suzanne said.

He shook his head. “She wanted to keep the baby. Me. There
was a big row at the hospital, I guess. Screaming, crying, who knows? In the
end, my aunt told my mother she was on her own. I’m sure they all thought my
mom would come to her senses.

“Instead, she somehow met my dad and he made an honest woman
out of her.”

“Is that what he said?”

“He never said anything about it. But my mom told me bits
and pieces. I knew he wasn’t my real father. I think she told me as a way of
justifying why he didn’t seem to care about me as much as she did.”

“Do you think he loved your mother?”

“Oh, yeah. At least in the beginning. I remember when I was
just little, how he loved to brush her hair. You could see it in his eyes. But
not in hers.”

“She didn’t love him back.”

“I suppose she tried. Mostly, I think she felt obligated,
you know, since he’d practically taken her in, adopted her child.”

Robert tilted his head back, thinking through his past. “I
wonder when he finally gave up hope that she would love him back.” He chewed
thoughtfully on the corner of his lip. “What a putz. Here was this hick farm
boy from Indiana, hoping that this gorgeous brunette—a wealthy socialite from
the Hamptons—would fall in love with—”

He stopped. The photo of Amanda on the chaise lounge in the
champagne gown, her arm tossed overhead, slashed through his mind like a bloody
claw.

Standing abruptly, Robert muttered something about checking
out the Empire State Building, and slipped off the top of the double-decker
bus.

Suzanne ran after him, calling his name several times before
he stopped.

“What just happened?” she asked.

He turned and kept walking, his stride long and fast.

“I was a dumb putz, too.”

“What?” she asked, trotting to keep up.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

Inside the building, he waited at the elevator with a gaggle
of tourists, thinking she wouldn’t talk in front of other people. He was wrong.

“Whatever it is,” she insisted, “ it seems quite important
to you.”

As the crowd pushed to get onto the elevator, Robert rose
through the ceiling and sat on the edge of the elevator itself. He stared up
the shaft.

“Did you love your husband?”

Suzanne sat next to him. “Yes I did.”

“Did he love you?”

“Yes.”

Her quick answer irritated Robert. “How do you know?”

A slow smile rose on her face, with a flicker of sympathy
tucked behind it.

“I’d like to say ‘I just know’,” she said, “but I think that
would make you even more irritated. So…”

She rubbed her hands together as though she was searching
for a comment. The elevator wooshed up through the dull light, passing floor
numbers.

“Okay, here’s one,” she said as they shot by the seventh
floor. “Phil wasn’t great about complimenting me if I’d spent a lot of time on
my hair, or maybe I was wearing a new skirt. But he never cringed either when I
was dressed like an old bag lady. Or when my breath smelled. He loved me.” She
tapped her chest. “Not all this.” She swept her hands down from her head to her
feet dangling off the side of the elevator.

“If I was going to the grocery store, he wanted to come
along. If he was working in the yard, I grabbed my gloves and joined him.”

Robert shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like love.”

“Sure it is. If you’re happy being with someone, no matter
what they’re doing, that’s a big part of love. I mean, flip it around. If
you’re NOT happy being with someone, you do everything you can to avoid being
with them, don’t you?”

“You’re making it sound too simple.”

“No.” She pointed a finger at him. “You’re trying to make it
much more complicated than it has to be. What do you want me to say? That love
is passion, and hot, steamy sex, and candle-lit dinners?”

“Why not?”

“Okay.” She held her hands up in defense. “I agree that
nights like that can be a lot of fun. But it’s only a fraction of the whole
life you have together. Most of your time is spent earning money, and keeping a
house. And usually raising kids.”

The elevator reached the top of the shaft, but Robert made
no effort to stand. So neither did Suzanne.

“Maybe it’s easier to talk about love if you talk about
kids,” she said. “You love them even when they cry all night long, or when they
use a permanent marker on your walls. When Angie was thirteen, she screamed
that she hated me. It hurt my feelings, but I didn’t stop loving her.”

“What about Robbie shooting his mother?”

“Well, now, that’s up to you,” Suzanne said. “You made it
sound like the girl instigated the robbery and your son just got caught up in
it. So if you want to forgive him—”

“Fat chance of that!” Robert snapped. “I hope he goes to
jail for a long, long time. Maybe he’ll finally see what life is really all
about.”

Suzanne puckered her lips, like Robert was some cantankerous
old bastard, but she didn’t say anything.

“He’s twenty-six years old and he’s never done
anything
,” he complained. “I don’t mean
just a job. He’s never put a dirty plate in the dishwasher; he’s never picked
up a wet towel from the bathroom floor. And you know what’s really funny? He
just killed the golden goose that made it all possible.”

Once the elevator stopped again at the ground floor, Robert
pushed through the gray cement wall to the lobby, and then lumbered out to the
sidewalk. As he stood wondering which way to go, Suzanne slipped up beside him.
Now, he figured, she’d harp on him for not being a better father.

“That was fun,” she said cheerily. “Guess I can scratch the
Empire State Building off my list.”

He glowered at her, hoping she would go away and leave him
alone. But she just stood at the curb, her head jutting forward and to the left,
searching for the next bus.

He relaxed his eyebrows. Why was he taking it out on her? It
wasn’t her fault that his family was so screwed up.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

She gave her head a frivolous half-shake, like he hadn’t
offended her.

“Where to next?” she asked.

“How about the Statue of Liberty.”

Back on the bus, Suzanne babbled about every inconsequential
building they passed. When she saw a bar she asked if Studio 54 was still
around. All of the restaurants with sidewalk cafes made her wonder aloud what
the proprietors did in the winter.

Robert turned in his seat and perched his elbow on the bar
along the seat back.

“You think I should have done more to try and straighten
Robbie out.”

“Who am I to judge?”

“I did a lot to get Rachel on the right track. She was ready
to run away from home, but I put her to work at our corporate headquarters, I
dragged her to manufacturing plants and retail stores, anything to keep her and
Amanda separated.”

“Obviously that attention paid off.”

“But I couldn’t take on Robbie, too. He was just…so out of
control. From the very beginning.”

She gave a ready nod, like she was willing to believe
anything Robert told her. He knew it was all an act.

“Okay, here’s a great story.” Robert crossed a leg, leaning
closer to Suzanne on the narrow bus seat. “It was Christmas. The kids were out
of school. Robbie was probably in the fourth grade, Rachel in second. Amanda
wanted to make Christmas cookies. I guess she saw some Hallmark Holiday
Special, and decided that was the perfect thing for a family to do.”

Suzanne settled back against the seat and folded her hands
in her lap.

“I was home,” Robert continued, “so it must have been the
Sunday before Christmas. Amanda bought the cookies already baked: stars,
stockings, Christmas balls. All the kids had to do was smear icing on the
cookies and decorate with sprinkles, right?”

“And by the time they were done, the kitchen looked like a
war zone.”

“No, no. Robbie didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
I mean, what little kid doesn’t want to stick his finger into a bowl full of
icing and lick it off?”

“That does seem a little strange.”

“Yeah. But Amanda got it in her head that they had to
decorate cookies, so she bribed Robbie. Said she’d let him open one of his
Christmas presents if he helped. So he grudgingly picked up a cookie, spread
the icing on so hard that the cookie broke, stuck one—
one
of those silver candy balls—into the middle of the cookie, and
walked out of the kitchen.”

“And I suppose straight to the presents under the tree.”

“Oh, yeah. Meantime, Rachel is putting icing on her
fingernails and dipping them into the sprinkles. And she takes the little candy
stars and presses them into her cheeks. She’s having a ball. But Amanda sees
what she’s doing, drags her over to the sink and washes it all off her hands.”

Suzanne clicked her tongue. “Wow.”

Raising his eyebrows, Robert gave her a little nod. “You
thought I was exaggerating, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Remind me later to tell you about the only time I took my
family to the beach.”

A long line of tourists waited in a queue for the ferry to
Liberty Island. Robert strolled right past them.

“This should be simple,” he said to Suzanne. “Just stare at
the base of the statue, and we pop over.”

“No!” She grabbed at his arm. “I want to experience the
ferry ride and everything, just like they do.”

She pointed at the huddled masses in their heavy coats,
stripped scarves and woolen mittens.

“Then get back in line,” Robert said, making a motion to
shove Suzanne to the back of the queue.

She giggled, and stuck her tongue out at him.

They boarded the ferry even though passengers from the
island were still disembarking. Suzanne made her way to the wheelhouse with the
captain of the boat so she would have the best view of the approach to the
statue.

“Just like everyone else,” Robert mumbled as he stood by her
side.

“Well, after being in the cockpit of a 737, I’ve gotten
accustomed to elite status.”

An even longer line of visitors waited to get inside the
statue. And for what? Most of them couldn’t get any higher than the observation
deck on the statue’s pedestal. Only two hundred forty people per day were
allowed the privilege of climbing the spiral staircase up to the crown.
According to an information board near the dock, the statue was closed after
nine-eleven and no one had been allowed back inside until the Fourth of July
2009.

Among the privileged few was a family of four that didn’t
look like they could make it up a single flight of stairs. The dad had a ‘Chicaaago’
accent as thick as his gut. The mother was wheezing after the first spiral,
puffing out words of caution to her two little brats. The son insisted on
counting the steps, but after about seventy, he lost track and wanted to go
back to start over. Red-faced and gasping for air like a dying fish, his mother
could only shake her head no.

Robert didn’t stick around to see if the guide with the
group carried one of those portable defibrillators in his backpack. Forging
ahead, he craned his neck to see up between the swirling stairs and the
structure, at the wavy metal folds of Lady Liberty’s skirt. After a couple
flights, he simple shot up through the spiral to the top.