Among the Dead (8 page)

The gate attendant's tears were the deepest he had seen today. Some of the tears around him in the lounge were unconvincing, exaggerated, theatrical. A woman in front of him, screaming out loud and looking at the cameras, was she a bad version of herself, or was she connected to the people who had blown the plane up, and therefore acting the part of the mourner, or was she secretly, even from her unsophisticated self, relieved about the death, and already counting the money from the insurance settlement? But I cannot cry, thought Frank. This hurt him, that he couldn't find a grief large enough to extinguish the world, that the mundane distractions of life were still so close, so much a part of the moment.

How much money would this be worth? he wondered. Frank was insured for $2 million, Anna for $1 million. Because he was worth more to the marriage. What will the airline pay? How quickly will the money come? They'll want to settle, of course, avoid the lawyers, that has to happen soon. Someone will approach me and say something about how difficult it is to think about insurance at a time like this, but lawsuits can take years, and the lawyers claim
a third, and this is what we've settled for in the past, and this is what this kind of crash has traditionally brought, and wouldn't you rather get over the tragedy and get on with your life, knowing that you'll never have to go to court and face the story all over again?

And it all depends on fault.

If the wing fell apart because of bad maintenance, how much? Ten million? A wife and a child. A wife and a child. Think about that.

And will there be a funeral? Will I have to go to a funeral with all these strangers? People I don't know?

And how do I claim the bodies? Will there be bodies? An explosion. They could have been launched into the air as the plane broke up in the sky, and when they hit the ground, or a roof, or a tree, what happened? Does the body keep its shape?

And if they stayed in the plane, strapped to their seats, and there was a fire when they hit, what would remain? Drop a melon from a few feet, a mess of seeds, flesh and rind. A body from four miles? Does the body maintain its integrity falling from twenty-eight thousand feet? Thirty-two feet per second per second. Thirty-five pounds, and 122 pounds. The body is made of mostly water. Water balloons filled with blood and bone. And the fire on the ground. And houses. Someone told him, he'd forgotten who said it, that sixty people died on the ground. I am a part of the news.

There was a television, and people were watching it. A squad of airline executives was in the room now, taking down names, making phone calls to relatives, arranging for rooms at a nearby hotel for anyone who wanted them.

A man with a large belly came to ask him questions. He looked like a drinker and a fisherman, something about his confidence, he knew he wasn't ever going to be rich, or running the company, and he knew he had as much sense as any executive, but it didn't gall him. Frank wondered if he had ever been twenty-seven and unhappy. His unhappiness would have come only from immediate dramas in the family, he wasn't a man to change jobs, or even think of anything like a career.

‘Mr Gale?'

‘Yes.'

‘Bill Modell.' He said it Moh-
dell
, the way he would before he told people over the phone how to spell it. ‘I'm with Customer Service. I've been asked to pitch in and help out with this, and they'd like me to ask a few questions, if you don't mind.'

He smiled at the end of each sentence. This annoyed Frank, but he didn't want to say anything, although he thought that the event had given him sanction to say anything to anyone today.

How can I use it? he wondered. So much money. A rich widower in Los Angeles.

‘How can I help you?' asked Frank.

Modell sighed. Frank thought that this was a man with genuine emotions. ‘It's important, as we put this all together, to know as much as we can about every aspect of the crash.'

‘What do you want to ask me?' Frank was losing patience, he had hoped that Modell would have presented a way to manage grief, but he was floundering.

‘Do you know what your wife and daughter were wearing?'

‘I came from work, from lunch, a business lunch, sort of, a friend, an old friend, but it was business.' There was no reason to say this, but he felt a compulsion to explain why he missed the flight, why he was something of a ghost. ‘I don't know if Anna changed for the flight. She was probably wearing something black, probably expensive exercise clothing, you know, sweatpants and a sweatshirt – she liked to be comfortable when she travelled. Maybe she wore a skirt, I don't know, I doubt it. This was a vacation. And Madeleine, I don't know. I'm sure Anna changed her outfit. She was wearing these green overalls in the morning, but I doubt she had them on for the flight. I can go home and look in her closet for what's missing, but I don't know her clothing that well. I'm sorry I can't be of any help.'

‘The reason we ask is that clothing, even pieces of it, can be tested for traces of chemicals, explosives, if it was a bomb, and by tracing back to a particular seat, we can figure out what kind of device was used, how big it was.'

‘Was it a bomb?'

‘We don't know. These questions have to be asked, Mr Gale.'

‘How many people were on the plane?'

‘A crew of ten, and a hundred and thirty-nine passengers.'

‘How many children?'

‘Six or seven. There may have been an unregistered infant.'

‘And on the ground? How many were killed in San Diego? Sixty?'

‘We don't know yet.' He paused. For a moment he stared at the floor, and then his shoulders relaxed. He looked back at Frank. ‘Mr Gale, I want you to know how sorry I am about this.' There was a tone of personal responsibility in his voice, he emphasized
the first
I,
as though others might not want Frank to know about their sorrow, as though by expressing himself, he was already violating the company's orders. If Modell had bitter children, and they saw him now, trying to be honest, would they regret their contempt for him? He asked if Frank wanted to stay at a hotel.

‘Where is it?'

‘The Sheraton. Two minutes by car. We think it might be a good idea – it gives all of you a chance to help each other through the first hard days.' And keep us from the press, thought Frank, but he liked the idea of a hotel room. He could tell the desk not to let through any phone calls. He could watch a movie on television. He could order room service. Lowell would be here soon, and they could stay up late and talk and get drunk. If Modell was around the hotel Frank supposed that he could be invited in for a drink, but he thought that Modell would be interesting only in the loose way that all people are sort of interesting if you ask the right questions and find out about their obsessions, even if all that keeps their minds going are a few old insults and family squabbles elevated to the central facts of their lives. But if he started to talk to Modell about music or movies, he knew that the fat man would disappoint him, and with his stupid opinions try to hog the conversation at the same time. So he wouldn't talk to him once this little interview was over.

Modell asked him what kind of luggage Anna had taken, and what she had packed. Frank described it as best he could. He thought that these interviews were a clever device; he was talking about the crash in a way that was strictly controlled, and even if this was just the expression of a sinister corporate protocol for disaster management, something developed by psychologists as a good way to get the person with the potential lawsuit to think of the airline as a friend, there was comfort in the process.

No one had yet introduced any of the survivors to each other, and there were now about fifty in the room. Frank thought that he was the only one who was alone, since everyone else had brought someone for support.

Ed Dockery got up and called for everyone to listen to him. For those who wanted to go, it was time to move to the Sheraton. They were to board a bus and would be settled in at the hotel in twenty minutes. Frank stopped Dockery after the announcement and told him that his brother was coming, and Dockery told Frank not to worry, they'd tell him where to go.

Lowell called from the lobby, and Frank gave him the room number. He had a few minutes to think about things while his brother found the elevator. He worried about his brother, how his brother would try to take over the situation and tell him how to suffer and tell others how to treat him, how to give them both respect.

There was a knock. Frank opened the door, and Lowell was there. The expected hug. Frank patted Lowell's shoulder, as though Lowell needed the comfort more than he did.

In the family's mythology Frank had one respected attribute, his role as peace-maker. Lowell, for all of his brilliance in business, brought his attack to the dinner table, and what had been, in childhood, to his mother, a lawyer-like precocity was now sometimes exhausting. The only times their mother was ever really impatient with Lowell was at dinner, when Frank was the least indignant. But Frank knew, and he told himself, too often, as a kind of punishment, that to face the truth, any truth, he had first to admit to himself that Lowell really was his superior, emotionally, morally, intellectually. Let their parents pretend they were equal, because they owned equal shares in the business, but Lowell had the better ideas. Did their parents always know that Lowell was better? Or did they believe that the business started as a true partnership? He imagined better parents had the courage to see the differences between their sons, and then act on this knowledge, help them, help the one who needed help. And is this why I was so reluctant to have two children? Fear of the pain of their competition? Fear of having to distinguish between them?

And did their parents ever admit to themselves what they so obviously thought of the partnership? Or did they pretend that it was a kind of unspecific soup of ideas, no separate areas of expertise?

What did they tell their friends? Lowell is the businessman, but
Frank is the one closer to the artists. And did the friends think, how odd, since Lowell is the homosexual, and by rights should be closer to the artists than dull Frank? Or did their parents avoid the topic?

It was Lowell who found the locations for the stores, and moved near them as they opened. He kept a condominium in Santa Monica and came to the city for a few days every two or three weeks.

Frank worked with the record companies and distributors, keeping up to date on the schedule of new releases, because he was supposed to be the more musical of the two, but that was a convenient lie the brothers told themselves, an accommodation to this: if Lowell died, the business died; if Frank died, the business continued. The business was not about music, but about making a profit selling records.

‘My God, Frank. My God.'

‘Yes,' said Frank. He felt a wave of shame for having called his brother to his side. If his brother had a family, and the family had been killed, and his brother called for his help, Frank thought that he would have been annoyed at the interruption of his daydreams.

‘Fuck God, Frank,' said Lowell.

Frank wanted to leave God out of this. Frank felt that it was important to protect God right now and not blame Him for the crash. He might need God soon and didn't want to give Him an excuse to bargain with his prayers.

‘This is a terrible question,' said Lowell, ‘but I don't know how else to ask this. How do you feel?'

‘I guess I'm in shock. It's hard to feel anything.'

‘Of course, of course. It's Nature's way, I guess. It protects you.'

‘I'd like to feel more.'

‘Have you cried?'

‘Not really.'

‘If you want to cry, go ahead.'

‘Thanks, Lowell. But if I don't cry, don't think I'm not unhappy.'

‘Have you called Mom and Dad?'

‘Not yet. I was hoping that you would make the call.'

‘I thought about it, but I decided to wait. I wanted to see you first.'

‘Do you want to call them now?' Frank asked.

‘You don't want to speak to them, do you?' Lowell, with this question, had just left the deaths and entered the arena of gossip
about their parents, which was, more than business, the real event that united them, and that had brought Lowell close to his now-dead sister-in-law. What he meant was: Frank would have to use whatever energy he had to keep his parents from falling apart and devouring him with their own drama.

‘Tell them I can't. Tell them I'm too broken up.' Later he would recognize this as the moment when he began to create his grief for public consumption.

‘They'll want to speak to you.'

‘Lowell, call them.' He insisted, coldly, relieved for a moment of his grief, happy for the right to tell his brother what to do, and Lowell went to the phone.

Lowell started to dial, then stopped. He took a breath and dialled again. ‘Mom, it's Lowell.'

She was used to Lowell calling, probably more often than Frank. Lowell said he was fine and then asked for his father. He asked so abruptly that when he said, ‘No, I'm fine,' Frank could tell that his mother was wounded, she must have had something to say, and here he was, on the phone to talk business. Perhaps she had called him early in the day about something, and when she heard his voice, she thought he was returning the call. And where was Lowell's courtesy, to ask something personal of her, ask after her health?

Lowell covered the receiver with his hand and said to Frank, ‘She has to get him. I want to tell him and let him tell her.'

Then their father came to the phone. Frank watched his brother give him an inappropriate wink. What did it mean? That everything was in control? ‘Hi, Dad. I'm fine. I don't know how to say this ...' He started to cry.

Frank felt betrayed by his brother. The tears were real, but his brother was showing weakness. Why couldn't he just say, calmly, that Anna and Madeleine were on a plane that crashed and they were dead? He wanted to take the phone from Lowell, but then he would have had to speak to his parents. He didn't want to have to offer support to them; he wanted their support.