Life
Mendl Feinberg sighed over his newspaper and coffee. In the world, things were not going well. Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea... Was it lack of wisdom that set men perpetually at each other's throats? Or was it something else? Flawed psychology? Flawed political organization? In his own household it was the same - the quiet, retired life he sought for himself was under persistent attack. Did he not deserve a little peace? His whole life had passed in a whirlpool of suffering. His mother died when he was ten. His son, his only child at the time, was killed at fourteen by a drunk driver. His wife - dead of cancer after years of agony. His father, God rest his soul, was also dead, the ravages of Alzheimer's having made a mockery of the last decade of his life. He, Mendl, had been mourner and nurse all his life. He was not angry, not resentful - but he was tired. At fifty-seven he looked and felt ten years older. He craved peace. Happiness he laid no claim to. He did not want it. He would tend his store, tend his daughter, the years would pass in quiet contemplation, and though he in no way longed for death, he felt that whenever death came knocking he would greet it as he would any other visitor, with a hospitable invitation to enter.
He folded up his newspaper and, crossing one leg over the other, lit a cigarette. Queen Esther was forever after him to quit smoking. She herself had. That proved it was possible, with a little willpower. Willpower and desire, he had retorted, somewhat self-consciously smiling away the sharpness in his tone. "I have no desire to quit smoking." He knew she meant well. She was his sister, after all. "Queen Esther" - he had called her that as a boy; then they had grown up and childhood resentments were forgotten, only lately to resurface as she swept in, uninvited, to take charge of his widowerhood.
Seven years older than he, she was convinced she knew what was best for him. He should quit smoking; he should remarry; above all, he should get rid of that lodger of his. What had possessed him to take a stray off the streets, a total stranger, and install him in his household, with a young daughter growing up and reaching that most vulnerable age between girlhood and womanhood? Was he mad? Had his troubles unhinged him?
Here, he had to admit, she had a point. What had possessed him? Something about the boy, some fleeting facial expression, some quality he could no longer put his finger on, had reminded him, at their first meeting, of Philip. It was at the store. Diffidently self-effacing, the boy approached the counter and inquired about the Help Wanted sign in the window. Under the spell of that peculiar impression, Mendl engaged him immediately, and when, in answer to a question about where he lived, the boy shrugged and mumbled "Nowhere, really," Mendl impulsively volunteered to become his landlord as well as his employer. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the spell was broken; the resemblance vanished; he would have given anything to retract his invitation, which already he felt had been a blunder. He was touched by the boy's gratitude, however, and, stifling his misgivings, led him upstairs. "It is very cluttered," he said, more to himself than to his lodger. The boy - Brian, Brian Spohr - mumbled something about liking clutter. "Well," said Mendl, also mumbling, "I'll leave you to yourself."
He proved a quiet, agreeable sort, helpful in the store, amiable around the house - so much so that his presence came to seem natural. He had a gift for being there when wanted and vanishing when not. He wasn't Philip, not at all - how could he ever have suggested the dead boy to his father, who had never gotten over the loss? - and yet Mendl could not help feeling vaguely paternal towards him. Katie, normally sullen around strangers, soon accepted him as one of the family. The only sibling she'd ever had was one who had died before she was born, a circumstance which ever so subtly set her apart from everyone she knew, and which in some elusive way predisposed her to accept the lodger, if not altogether as a brother, at least as something like one.
And then he had turned out to be Lawrence Spector's son, a fact which, when Lawrence pointedly turned his back on any responsibility his suddenly discovered paternity entailed, deepened Mendl's interest in this bland and yet somehow attractive newcomer. Lawrence he did not blame, though he judged his behavior blameworthy. Lawrence was not like other men. He had standards of his own. You either accepted that about Lawrence, or else you gave him up as hopeless and had nothing to do with him. Most people had the latter response to him. Queen Esther, having met him once in her life, declared later that she "shuddered at the very thought of him." Yes, there was that in him which might make a person shudder. What did Mendl see in him that overrode that impression, that seemed to turn his very obvious faults into... not virtues exactly, but mysteries? He himself could not have said.
The night Brian disappeared put Mendl's feelings towards him to the test. A scrawled note on a torn piece of paper read, "Thanks for everything. Brian." Was he relieved? To his own surprise, he was not. A greater surprise still was in store for him as he recognized, in the wave of emotion that swept over him, something rather like - not identical, but like - the feelings associated - uniquely, he would have thought - with Philip's death. Katie came in, and he showed her the note. She shrugged and, without a word, went to her room. He heard the door close.
He knew so little about life! He was fifty-seven years old, had lived through a great deal, had read much, and yet, it seemed to him, it was his ignorance rather than his knowledge that deepened with age and experience. Who was this Brian? What was the mysterious link he seemed to have with his dead son? Why had Katie reddened the way she had? Most important of all, what should he do now? Did a total stranger who came out of nowhere into his life and then casually left, as of course he was perfectly free to do, merit a search? Clearly not, and yet his first impulse was to call the police, though he knew it was not a police matter.
Katie came in to prepare supper. He studied her as she slipped into her apron and began chopping vegetables. She was not a child any more. Soon she too would be leaving, her need for him outgrown. And his for her? "Katie." He had spoken before he knew it; he fairly started at the sound of his own voice. "What?" she muttered, still intent on her vegetables. Was she angry at him? Annoyed? She was his daughter, and yet - a teenage girl, a young woman, a stranger. Something of his ancient adolescent terror of adolescent girls resurfaced in his relationship with her.
Maybe Queen Esther was right. Maybe he should marry. The girl needed a mother. If nothing else proved the fact, his tongue-tied silence now was sufficient; he simply did not know what to say to her. Of course, he wanted to ask her about Brian, but was that wise? Had not his bringing him into the family in the first place, without so much as a word to her, as though she were not involved, as though it were none of her business, suggested to her a desperate search on his part for the lost son whose place she could never take? True, she had been noncommittal, even friendly to the newcomer, but then she was not one to show her feelings, and what you saw of her was no more than what she wanted you to see - he sensed that. Yes, that was a foolish thing he had done. A wife was what he needed - a wife, not a son.
***
But the son came back, and the conversation he interrupted in doing so was one which touched on the deepest matters: life and death, Katie saying in her emphatic way (how deplorable it is that knowledge, burning so bright and clear in the young, fades and flickers with age!) that mama could have been spared years of pointless misery if only people would learn to see things as they are and act accordingly.
"How do you mean, child?"
"You know what I mean. Euthanasia. What's this big deal everyone makes about death? When life's over, it's over, and death - "
"Well?"
"Death is rest, release. What's the point of devoting all that technology, spending all that money, keeping people alive when all there is to their lives is pain?"
"Katie, how can you say that about someone you love?"
"I say it because it's someone I love!"
"Life - "
"On TV the other day there was this movie. A man horribly wounded had been captured by the enemy. He was in agony. 'Kill me! Kill me!' he screamed. But his captors refused, because they wanted to torture him, they wanted him to suffer."
"Life, Katie, I was about to say, is a mystery, a miracle - "
"Oh, please! Spare me that 'miracle' stuff. Life is biology and pain is pain, and mama spent years in agony that I would have spared her!"
"You would have spared her how? How? What do you mean?" He knew, of course, what she would say, and how it would horrify him. Why was he pursuing the conversation? Why didn't he do something fatherly, like rise and say, "It's time for bed" - which, he thought, glancing almost furtively at his watch, it surely was. But horror - is there not something compulsively, horribly attractive in it? Katie was a brilliant girl, a top student, her ambition was to be a doctor. Was Katie's thinking an aberration? Or did all the next generation's doctors think this way?
Partly out of fear, partly out of compassion, she withdrew from the brink. "All I'm saying, daddy, is that as a society we need to cultivate a saner attitude towards death. Our terrified recoil from it is unworthy of civilized people. Life is a miracle, you say. No. Life is a chemical process. Period. Awesome in its complexity, but in nothing else. The good life, maybe, is a miracle, if you want to use that kind of language. The good life. When the good life is no longer possible - "
The doorbell rang. "What on earth - ?" She pushed her chair back. Mendl stood up and padded in his slippers to the door. "Use the intercom, daddy! The intercom!" Katie did not share her father's boundless trust in the goodness of the human race.
A moment later Brian stood before them, grinning awkwardly. "I went back to my father, but he's busy..."
"Come in, come in," said Mendl.
"You can see he's in already," snapped Katie. To Brian she said with a smile, "Daddy's a little slow."
"Yes, a little slow," said Mendl gravely. "The world moves too fast for an old man like me."
Katie yawned extravagantly without covering her mouth. In Brian's presence, it seemed, she went from older than her age to younger, from premature adult to slightly backward child. "I'm going to bed."
"Wait."
She looked at him in astonishment. Never, ever before, she was sure, had he dared address her in the imperative mood. He lowered his eyes behind flashing spectacles. "Kate, I - " His prepared speech fled, leaving his mind blank. "Mr. Feinberg, you... you took me in, knowing nothing about me..." He faltered, not knowing himself, it seemed, what followed from that.
Katie rolled her eyes. "Daddy, if you don't put an end to this scene, I will! Goodnight!" With that she flounced out of the room. Poking her head in the doorway five minutes later, she found them seated over cups of steaming green tea. "Just do me one favor, daddy. Don't tell him the story of your life, okay?"