A Fine and Private Place

Chapter 7

They were all looking at Michael. Mr. Rebeck, Laura, the raven—they were all looking at him. He felt as if he had told a joke and they had missed the punchline and were leaning to him, waiting for the kicker, the all-illuminating kicker that is found only in jokes; or as if someone had asked, "How you doing?" and the spring-and-strap arrangement in him that always answered that question for him had rusted and broken and he would never again be able to answer perfunctory questions the way other people did. He hoped that Mr. Rebeck would say something, and then he thought he had better speak to the raven before Mr. Rebeck did say something. So he shook his head slowly to show that he was amazed and more than amazed and he said to the raven, "She says I killed myself?"

"Uh-huh." The raven had found another grasshopper. "She says you had a nightcap together and you went to bed, and when she woke up, there you were."

Michael tried not to look at Laura. "That's crazy! Why should I have killed myself?"

"I'm not your mother," the raven said crossly. "Look, all I know is I read the papers. So here she is and they say did you? She says no. They say ho-ho. So she goes on trial August eighth." He turned to Mr. Rebeck. "I got to pull out. Anything you want me to take?"

Mr. Rebeck produced a half-pint milk container. "Thank you very much for the sandwich."

"Pleasure was mine," the raven said. "Also the flying around. See you." His wings began to beat.

"Wait a minute," Michael said. "Could you find out?"

"Find out what?"

"Don't act stupid," Michael said shortly. "About Sandra. What's happening in court. Could you keep an eye on the papers? I'd like to know how the trial's going."

"Guess so." The raven took off lightly, swung in a long ellipse, and came soaring back over their heads. Skidding on a thin breeze, he banked and banked again, trying to keep within earshot.

"I'll keep an eye out. Maybe bring back a paper, if I can get one."

"Thanks," Michael called. And then the raven was gone, flying at right angles to the wind. The milk container swung from his claws, and sometimes he did a sideslip for no reason that Mr. Rebeck could see. But his wings beat easily and strongly, carrying him higher than the trees.

Michael watched the raven for as long as he could see him, and did not turn even when the bird was out of sight. To his right, he knew, Mr. Rebeck sat and looked at him, with his chin on his fist and his eyes puzzled. He would ask no questions, Michael knew; he would be very polite and wait for Michael to open the subject. And if Michael didn't, he would talk about something else and never mention Sandra again. There might be strain and awkwardness between them for a while, but it would all come from Michael. He would be placed in the uncomfortable position of a man whose privacy is genuinely respected, and he hated Mr. Rebeck a little for it.

But behind him he could hear Laura's laughter rushing and tumbling in her throat long before it spilled into the space between them, and he spun on her as she laughed and said, "Something's funny?"

"Everything," Laura said happily. She laughed the way the few ghosts who remember how cry: quietly and incessantly, because there are no tears to dry up, no threats to ache, and no faces to be spoiled. There is nothing really to stop that kind of crying, that kind of laughter, and Michael thought that the slow force of it might bend him until he snapped.

"Stop it," he said angrily. "She has to plead something."

Laura kept laughing at him. He looked over at Mr. Rebeck. "She can't plead guilty—and she wouldn't if she could. They'd put her in jail for life."

Laura stopped laughing quite suddenly, and where her laughter had been there was the glossy silence that hangs in the air after a train has gone by. "And if they find her guilty now?" she asked.

But Michael was thinking of Sandra in prison, and he said nothing.

"They'd kill her," Laura said, "the way they do. It's quite a gamble, if she's guilty."

Michael still said nothing, and Mr. Rebeck stirred and got up. "Maybe she'd rather be dead," he said slowly. "She might not want to go to prison."

"Nobody does," Laura said impatiently. "But women don't just throw their lives away like that. Women are real gamblers. They only bet on sure things."

She looked again at Michael, who would not look at her. "Wouldn't it be funny," she said thoughtfully. "Here we've got Michael Morgan, running back and forth in his grave, stamping his feet, telling everybody he loved life so much that they had to amputate him from it. A murdered man, crying for justice. Everybody within the sound of his voice is suitably impressed." She laughed again. "Me, too. I thought he was a fool, but he howled so loudly and made so much fuss that I began to wonder. And now, after all—"

"Shut up!" Michael said. "Just shut up. You don't know what you're talking about."

"And after all," Laura went on, "it turns out that maybe he performed the operation himself. Well, fine. Hurray. Good for him. A consummation devoutly, and so on. You done good, boy."

"Sandra," Michael said huskily, "I mean Laura, shut up and leave me alone. I didn't kill myself. Before God, I didn't kill myself."

But Laura's voice skimmed on, not laughing now; even shaking a little, but clear and pitiless, and he could no more stop it than the strongest wire fence can stop the most casual breeze. "And now he's terribly embarrassed about the whole thing. He wants out. He figures if he shouts loud enough, maybe he'll wake himself up." She essayed to laugh again, but the quaver in her voice tripped it up. "God damn you, Michael, for a little while, maybe only a few minutes, you really had me going. You were a symbol of the indestructibility of life or something. A real Greek challenge to death. Man Against The Night. Wherever you go, darling, I'll be with you. Curtain. Everybody files out, uplifted, and the orchestra plays the big tango number from the second act." She sighed. "Oh, well, never mind, Michael. You just locked yourself out, that's all."

She got up and brushed her hands down the sides of her dress, although no grass clung to it. "Good-by, Mr. Rebeck. Thank you for talking to me. Good-by, Michael." She began to walk away, and sometimes her feet touched the ground and sometimes they didn't.

"Woman!" Michael's shout bounced, burst, and bloomed inside Mr. Rebeck's head and hurt a little. "Damn and blast it, I didn't kill myself! I had no intention of killing myself. I was too bloody arrogant for suicide. It would have been like murdering God or drawing mustaches all over the Sistine Chapel. Why should I have killed myself? That's what she can't get around, that's what they'll get her on. We had a nightcap, we went to bed, and I woke up dead. That may be indigestion. It's not suicide."

Laura had stopped walking when he first shouted, but she did not turn. Michael made an abbreviated gesture of head-scratching and said suddenly, "Anyway, my grave is in church ground. I was a Catholic, you know. Not a very good one, but I never left the Church. I think I was too lazy. Would they have buried me here, in hallowed ground, if they thought I'd committed suicide?"

Then Laura did turn. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I hadn't thought of that."

Michael took a few steps toward her and stopped. "I didn't kill myself. I know that as well as you can know anything in this place, where all your thoughts crumble and go. It's just not the sort of thing I'd do."

"As the mother said when her son ran amuck and chopped up two old ladies, a bus driver, and the head of the fire department."

"No, not like that. Listen to me, Laura. When I was eighteen or twenty, I knew everything except what I wanted. I knew all about people, and poetry, and love, and music, and politics, and baseball, and history, and I played pretty good jazz piano. And then I went traveling, because I felt that I might have missed something and it would be a good idea to learn it before I got my master's degree."

He smiled a little at the silent Laura and turned slightly to get Mr. Rebeck in too. "And the older I grew, and the farther I traveled, the younger I grew and the less I knew. I could feel it happening to me. I could actually walk down a dirty street and feel all my wisdom slipping away from me, all the things I wrote term papers about. Until finally, before I lost everything, I said, 'All right, I'm sorry. I was young and I had a girl and I didn't know any better. It's not easy to stay properly ignorant. I apologize. Leave me a few things to know, just enough to get home on, and I'll be content with these and not bother anybody. I've learned my lesson. Maybe I'll write a book.'

"And then the little went too, and I found myself alone in the middle of the world, without a doubt the most stupid man that ever scratched his head. All the things I thought I knew about people, about myself, they were all gone. All I had left was a head full of confusion, and I wasn't even sure what I was confused about. Nothing stayed still. So I said, 'What the hell, I'm a fool,' and that seemed reasonable enough. So I went home and became a teacher."

"Because you couldn't do anything else?" Laura asked. "I've heard that before. I never really believed it."

"No, because I felt safe. It was nice being back in college. I knew about colleges. I figured that I'd stay for a while and teach and try to learn a few things. And when I was whole again, and wise, why then I'd be off again to wherever it was I was going.

"Only I got to like it. I liked it very much. And so I stayed. I compromised, I suppose. You can say that, if you choose. But I felt comfortable, and after a while I felt wise enough to find my way home at night. There were always books to read and plays I hadn't seen, and in the summer Sandra and I—" he caught himself, hesitated, and went on—"we'd drive up to Vermont. I used to write articles during the summers, sort of historical essays. I was going to make a book out of them. And sometimes I'd make up poetry in the bathroom."

He waited for Laura to say something, but she was silent, and he continued, "So I had something to do, something I'd done, someplace to go, and something to look forward to. That's a reasonable way to live. I enjoyed myself living. I had a good time. How much else can you ask for?"

"A lot more," Laura said softly, "if you're greedy. I was greedy once."

"So was I, but that was a long time ago. You're greediest when you're born, and after that it's downhill all the way. Live to be two hundred and you wouldn't demand anything.

"Live to be two hundred and you couldn't use anything."

They were looking directly at each other now and paying no attention to Mr. Rebeck. But he leaned against a tree and watched them. He dug his fingernails into the bark of the tree, and little shreds of it came away under his nails. An ant ran over his shoulder and disappeared into a crack in the bark.

"I'm going to say something a little cruel," Michael said. "I don't mean it that way, but that's how it's going to sound. Do you mind?"

"What difference does it make? Go on."

"Well, here you are," Michael began. He tried to cough, but he had forgotten how it felt and it came out as more of a whistle. "I mean, you seem happy. Happier than you were. Or, putting it another way—what I'm getting at is, you didn't have the hell of an exciting life, did you?"

"No," said Laura. Her smile was too tolerant, Mr. Rebeck thought, too wise, too tout comprendre est tout pardonner. "Not very exciting. Dull, if you like. It doesn't hurt."

"Well," Michael said. He tried again. "Well, but just the same, you didn't kill yourself, did you? You didn't go running to meet that truck as if it were the mailman—or a lover, for that matter. And when you saw it coming, no matter how bored you were, no matter how damn dull everything was, you tried to save yourself, didn't you?"

The smile was sliding off Laura's face, like mascara in the rain. She started to say something, but Michael went on, without noticing. "You threw yourself away from death, not at it. That's the human instinct. You didn't make it, but that's not the point. The thing is, when it came down to die, yes, or die, no—and you had time to choose—you tried not to die. With less reason to live than a lot of other people, you chose life. Right?" He winked triumphantly at Mr. Rebeck and would have jammed his hands in his pockets except that he had long since forgotten what pockets were like.

Laura stood quite still. She seemed, Mr. Rebeck thought, a little less sharply outlined than she had been, a little fainter to the eye, a little more wind-colored. She turned away, pivoting on one foot the way a bored child will, and now there was nothing in her moving of the skipped stone or the paper airplane.

"I don't know," she said. Michael could barely hear her. "No. I wouldn't—I don't know."

"Let it go, Michael," Mr. Rebeck said under his breath, or perhaps he only thought the words and did not say them. Michael did not seem to hear him at all.

"You wouldn't have killed yourself," he said. "Oh, I'm sure you thought about it. People think about everything in their lives. But you put it off until morning, and in the morning you had to get up and go to work. People do that. Me too." He made a sweeping, generous gesture with his arms. "But I never found myself alone at the right moment. And neither did you."

"I don't know, I don't know," Laura said. There was a moment in which she and Michael stood still, poised and waiting but immobile, like weathervanes on a bland summer morning, and Mr. Rebeck leaned against the tree and felt the rough bark under his light shirt and willed them and himself just so forever. Then forever passed and the enchantment expired, and Laura began to run.

There was no sweep to her flight, and nothing feathered or hoofed about it. She ran like a woman, from the knees down, her hands a little in front of her, and her shoulders slightly stooped. And as she ran she seemed to grow fainter, like a soap bubble blown at the sun.

Michael shouted her name, but she kept running until the foliage of a cherry tree caught her up. Then he was silent. His right hand kept closing and opening, and he stared at the cherry tree.

Presently he went over to Mr. Rebeck's tree and sat down. "All right. Be fatherly. What did I do?"

"I don't know," Mr. Rebeck said. "She's very upset."

"That's fine. I'm upset too." He thought of the Thurber cartoon and grinned. "We're all upset. But how come she's more upset than I am? She didn't kill herself."

"Are you sure? She isn't."

"Of course I'm sure. That kind don't kill themselves. They live in hope, waiting for a phone call, or a telegram, or a letter, or a knock on the door, or running into someone on the street who will see how beautiful they really are. They think about killing themselves, but then they might not be able to answer the phone."

"I wonder," Mr. Rebeck murmured. "Surely some of them—"

"Oh, sure, some of them do. They get tired of second-class mail with the address mimeographed and pasted on. But not that one. She wouldn't kill herself. She can afford to play with the idea because nobody's trying to prove she did. Now me, I've got troubles. If anybody's got a right to be upset, I do."

Mr. Rebeck turned his head to look down at him. "Michael, are you still sure your wife poisoned you?"

"Sure? Hell, I'm just surprised she used poison. Sandy always impressed me as the meat-cleaver-type."

"What happened? Do you remember?"

"Up to a point," Michael said. "We went to a party that night, I think. I don't remember who gave it, but I'm pretty sure there was a party. I don't think it went too well. When Sandra and I got to snapping at each other we didn't care where we were. Once we had a real throat-grabber at the Met and they threw us out. Very politely."

"Why did you fight so much?"

Michael shrugged. "Anyway, we came home from the party and maybe we made peace and maybe we didn't." He grinned suddenly. "I think we did both. I remember Sandra made us a couple of drinks, and that was usually a kind of peace offering. But then she went off to the bedroom and I slept in the living room, so there must have been a real shooting war on." He drew up his knees and looked across the clearing where the path ended. "We weren't what you might call a twin-bed family."

"You loved her very much," Mr. Rebeck said.

Michael took it as a question. "Uh-huh. At odd moments. She wasn't the sort of woman you could love for any extended period of time." He shook his head sharply. "So. I went to my celibate couch and I fell asleep fast. That must have made her sore. Then—and this I remember very distinctly—I woke up and I was sweating frog ponds. My stomach felt as if I'd swallowed somebody's hot plate."

He looked up at Mr. Rebeck. "Right away I knew Sandra'd poisoned me. I didn't think I'd eaten a bad egg or something. I tried to sit up and I couldn't, and I thought, The bitch did it. The bitch really did it. Then I passed out—died—and when I came to they were singing 'Gaudeamus Igitur' or something over me. The rest is here."

Michael rose and paced a few steps with the peculiar stamping gait that Mr. Rebeck had noticed earlier. "I remember everything as if it were happening now. I tried to forget it, the way I forgot the poetry and whether I ever got to be a full professor, but it stays. She may get away with saying I killed myself. I wouldn't be too surprised if she did. But I know she killed me as surely as I know I'm dead."

Mr. Rebeck straightened up slowly. "Well, we can follow the papers and see how the trial comes out."

"I don't care how it comes out. If they find her guilty, fine. It won't bring pleasant old me back to life, but fine. If they decide she's innocent—well, I know better, and that's always a consoling feeling." He was standing in the middle of the clearing now, with his back to Mr. Rebeck. "Still, we might as well see how it goes. What the hell."

He turned around suddenly. "But I'd like to know what sort of reason she'll give for my committing suicide. She's a fertile-minded wench, but this is for the big money."

"Could she say you'd been—oh, depressed lately?"

Michael snorted. "That was what we fought about. I wasn't depressed. She thought that any man in my position ought to be depressed. My position—she made it sound as if I were tied to some Indian rotisserie." He swung away again and prowled restlessly to the foot of the mausoleum. "Maybe I was, in a way. But Sandra was dancing around the stake, yelling like hell and pouring on the kerosene."

For a moment Mr. Rebeck thought he winced. His image rippled slightly and seemed to fade. Then it was whole again, as if it were a reflection on water and a stone had broken it.

"She didn't mind me being a teacher. Don't think that. She just wanted me to be an important teacher. She was getting a little bored with cooking dinner for me and a few students, and playing the Threepenny Opera record in the living room afterward. A hungry woman, my Sandra. Wanted me to realize myself, to be everything she knew I could be. A hungry woman. Very sexy, though. She had beautiful hair."

He was silent then, standing in front of the dirty white building, throwing no shadow on the barred door.

What a fine spot for a few words, Mr. Rebeck thought, from a wise and understanding man. I must write away for one. Perhaps I could put an advertisement in the paper. The raven could figure out something. We could have a wise and understanding man in residence. Somebody ought to.

Michael was looking straight in front of him. Now, without turning his head, he said quietly, "Your lady's coming."

"What?" Mr. Rebeck asked. "Who's coming?"

"Way the hell down the path. Can't you see her?"

"No." Mr. Rebeck came slowly to Michael's side. "No, not yet. Tell me."

"You know the one. The widow. The one who's got a husband buried around here."

"I know her," Mr. Rebeck said. He stood on tiptoe and strained his eyes. "Yes, I do see her."

"Probably coming to visit her husband again," Michael said. He glanced sideways at Mr. Rebeck.

Mr. Rebeck bit a knuckle, "Oh dear," he said. "Oh. Lordy."

"You seem nervous. Anticipatory, one might say. Shall I go away somewhere and count my toes?"

"No, no," Mr. Rebeck said quickly. "Don't do that." He began to take shuffling steps backward, still watching the small figure that approached.

"Taking rather the long way around to visit her husband, isn't she?"

"Yes. I was just thinking that."

"If you're trying to hide behind me," Michael said, "it seems a little pointless."

Mr. Rebeck stopped moving backward. "I wasn't hiding. But I wish I could think of something to say to her. What can I say?"

"Something beautiful," Michael replied carelessly. He began to drift off slowly, like a lost rowboat. "Something crippled and beautiful."

"I wish you'd stay," Mr. Rebeck said.

"I thought I'd go and see about Laura. You've got company. She may want some." He grinned at Mr. Rebeck over his shoulder. "Just be darkly fascinating."

Mr. Rebeck watched him wander along the path. His head was high, higher than he usually carried it. Sometimes he kicked lightly at a pebble or a spring-rotten twig, but not as if he expected them to move. Mr. Rebeck found himself holding his breath as Michael approached Mrs. Klapper, half expecting to see the woman blurred for a moment, as when a thin pulling of cloud passes over the sun. Later he did not remember having had this feeling, but he was to have it several times more and not remember those times either.

But the two figures met on the path that was only wide enough for one, and neither gave way; nor did the woman become bleared or the ghost less transparent. He thought that Michael said something in Mrs. Klapper's ear as they passed each other, but he had no time to wonder what it might have been. For Mrs. Klapper saw him then and waved. She began to walk faster, smiling.

Michael also waved to him, a casual gesture like the flicker of a distant flag, and then vanished beyond the cherry tree. Mr. Rebeck waited for Mrs. Klapper and thought, Maybe she will just say hello and isn't it a fine afternoon and go on to where her husband is buried. That would be the best thing, certainly the best thing for you. He leaned against his tree with his hand behind him and one foot braced on a root and tried to look sanguine, that having always been one of his favorite words.

Mrs. Klapper stopped at the edge of the clearing and peered at him a little uncertainly. Then she came a few steps toward him and said, "Well, hello!"

"Hello" Mr. Rebeck replied. "I'm glad to see you." That was true, but he wondered immediately if he should have said it, because Mrs. Klapper hesitated before she spoke again.

"We keep bumping into each other all the time, don't we?" she observed finally.

"It's our habits, I think. There can't be too many people who spend their summer afternoons in cemeteries."

Mrs. Klapper laughed. "So where can you spend an afternoon now? The parks are full of kids. They play around, they yell, they set off firecrackers, they fight; it's better to take a nice quiet nap in a washing machine. A cemetery is the only place you can hear yourself think."

"I used to go to museums a lot," Mr. Rebeck said. He would have made it "I go to museums a lot," but he was afraid that she might ask him which museums he went to, and he couldn't remember their names any more.

"Morris again." Mrs. Klapper saw the puzzlement on Mr. Rebeck's face. "I mean Morris was also crazy about museums." She sniffed. "For twenty-two years I went to museums with Morris. Once a week it was 'Gertrude, let's go to a museum; Gertrude, it's a beautiful day, let's go to the Metropolitan, they're having a big exhibit; Gertrude, here's a museum, let's stop in for a minute.' Excuse me, I have been to museums. I don't want to see any museums for a while yet. Maybe later."

She was looking up the hill to her husband's tomb, and her voice had become a little softer and slower. Mr. Rebeck looked down and concentrated on his right foot, which pressed hard on a mound of root. The light rain of the night before had made the root a little slippery, and Mr. Rebeck's foot skidded a trifle. Suddenly angry, he threw all his weight on his right leg, stamping his foot against the dark, slick bark. For a moment only he remained balanced; then his shoe squealed off the root and he lurched forward. Mrs. Klapper took a few quick steps toward him, but he was on his feet, muttering, "No, no, no, I'm all right," and waving her away.

"Woops," Mrs. Klapper said helpfully. "You slipped a little."

"I lost my balance." Let that be a lesson to you, Rebeck, he thought. You are not debonair, and it's a great mistake to pretend that you are, a mistake that may hurt you the way it has hurt other people who thought they were graceful and sanguine. Sanguine. He sighed briefly for the word, as for a vagrant love, and then let it go.

He wished that Mrs. Klapper would say something. She looked very nice in her spring coat. Not beautiful, he thought; beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne. Mrs. Klapper was handsome. Striking. As striking a woman as he had ever seen. But he knew that she had dressed up to please the memory of her husband, and, admiring, he was a bit wistful. She had probably looked forward for days to her tryst with her husband, planning what to wear, what time to come, how long to stay; wondering if the weather would be good and how bad it would have to be to make her stay home; carefully counting out the subway fare, whatever it was now, into her coat pocket before she left the house; keeping track of the subway stations the train passed, because each one brought her that much closer to where her husband was. He wondered how many stations away she lived.

She had not brought flowers. He wondered about that too. Most people swamped the headstone in flowers until it was completely hidden.

"I was coming to see my husband," Mrs. Klapper said then, as if she had known what he was thinking.

"I know," Mr. Rebeck said. Mrs. Klapper turned away from him again to look up the hill, and he thought she would leave then. Indeed, she began to move slowly toward the hill and she did not turn back.

She might at least say good-by, he thought, and he was about to say something like "Don't let me keep you," when Mrs. Klapper turned around. She stood with her legs planted solidly and she held her purse with both hands.

"You could come," she said, "if you're not doing anything."

"I wasn't," Mr. Rebeck answered. "I was just wandering around." He could feel the sudden sweat on his wrists and he wondered if he was frightened. His stomach felt cold.

"Visiting your friend," Mrs. Klapper said.

Mr. Rebeck remembered his supposed acquaintanceship with the Wilders and nodded. "Yes," he said. It's a quiet place, and we were good friends." He wanted something to lean against, but he stretched his arm behind him and could not find the tree.

"If you're going to see your husband," he went on, "maybe you'd rather go alone. I mean, I wasn't doing anything"—might as well get that in—"but maybe you'd rather go by yourself."

"I don't like going by myself," Mrs. Klapper said. "A little company never hurt anybody." She smiled, her mobile mouth as quick as a whitecap on the sea. "You're worried Morris would mind?"

"It isn't exactly that," Mr. Rebeck began. "I just thought—"

"Morris wouldn't mind. Come on." She half extended her hand to him and then let it drop to her side. "Come on, we'll talk like two friends and make a little noise. Quiet is all right, but enough is enough. Around here it gets too quiet sometimes."

The cold feeling was suddenly gone from Mr. Rebeck's stomach, and in its place a small but earnest thimbleful of wine radiated warmth, like a sun born unexpectedly into a frozen universe. He felt unhooked from himself, dislocated, and he listened with interest to himself saying, "Thank you. I'd like that very much."

Together they walked slowly up the gradual hill beyond which the white house over Morris Klapper loomed and dwarfed the scrubby trees that surrounded it. Neither spoke, nor did they look at each other. Their bodies walked on, while their minds stood a few minutes behind them in the clearing before another house and mused over a still moment when one offered and another accepted.

The building grew great before them, pillar and scroll, marble and iron, far bigger than the Wilder mausoleum, and still the foundation could not be seen. Mr. Rebeck, having just made the pleasant discovery that Mrs. Klapper was smaller than she looked, was practicing looking down at her.

"It's very big," he said. He had never learned to like mausoleums, especially large ones, but he tried hard to get an admiring tone into his voice.

"I wanted it big," Mrs. Klapper answered. "I wanted everybody should know who's buried here." She stopped for a moment to shake a pebble out of her shoe. "You know, I didn't have to give him a big funeral. I mean in his will it didn't say anything about it. His partner said to me—Mr. Harris, his name is—he said, 'Look, Gertrude, all Morris wanted was a little tiny funeral, with maybe a couple of friends and no speeches, please.' He said, 'Gertrude, believe me, we used to talk about it and he didn't want you should fire cannons over his grave or hire a Grand Rabbi.'" She raised her eyebrows at Mr. Rebeck. "Down on his knees, practically. So I said, 'Mr. Harris, I want you to know I appreciate your efforts in Morris's behalf'—just like that—'only I think I knew my husband a little bit better than you did, excuse me, because I was married to him. Morris is going to have a big funeral,' I said, 'with a lot of people, and he is also going to have a big house, marble, the way he wanted it. Maybe you don't want to pay for such a big funeral, Mr. Harris—all right, I'll pay for it. Don't tell me how to bury my husband,' I told him. 'When you die, God forbid, you can have a little tiny funeral and not invite anybody and have a house the size of a cheesebox, but don't tell me how to bury my husband.'"

She was walking faster as she finished, and breathing a bit harder. Mr. Rebeck had to take three short steps to fall into the rhythm of her stride again.

"We could walk a little slower if you're tired," he suggested. Mrs. Klapper looked at him for a moment as if he had suddenly stepped from behind a bush and grabbed her arm. Then she smiled.

"No," she said. "I'm fine." But she did slow her pace, seemingly as unconsciously as she had quickened it.

When they finally topped the low hill they met a man and a woman who greeted them as saviors and asked if they knew where a particular grave was located. And Mr. Rebeck made a mistake, as far as his role of quiet-seeking visitor was concerned. He told them.

He gave the directions carefully, never once noticing the sudden wonder in Mrs. Klapper's eyes. The couple were tired, and angry with each other, and quite lost, and it pleased him that he could help them. So he was quite thorough: he told them the road they must take and the paths they would have to take to reach the road, and he told them to count the marble angels along the way and turn right at a certain angel, and he told them that the grave they sought was very close to the path and would be easy to find. The man and woman were very grateful, and the woman turned around as they walked away and waved at Mr. Rebeck. He waved back.

When he turned around again he met Mrs. Klapper's eyes and knew that he had made a tactical error. There was speculation in her stare, compounded with wonder and a certain amount of awe. She had never looked at him like that before, and the fear that is never far from the hearts of affectionate people returned to his own. He had not considered the effect his casual knowledge of the cemetery might have on her, because he had not even thought of it as knowledge. Someone had asked him for directions, as they had occasionally over nineteen years, and he had known the way. Now, at best, she would mark him as unusual, a freak perhaps, at all events a man with a gimmick memory. She would be amused—she seemed easily amused—but from that time on, she would think of him as a little less than human. That would be the best that could happen. At worst, she would not be amused. She would ask questions, and he would have to lie to her, as he had once before. This depressed him; he did not want to lie to her again, and he knew how poor a liar he was.

He turned away before the couple were out of sight and looked at the mausoleum with his hands in his pockets and his head tipped back. "Well," he said with what he hoped was a calculating but quite unprofessional air. "Well, this certainly is a big house." That was safe. That wouldn't take nineteen years of living in a cemetery to figure out. A man could just look at it and see how big it was. "It certainly is," he said again.

Behind him, Mrs. Klapper said, "I hope they find the place they were looking for."

"Me too," said Mr. Rebeck. "I may very easily have given them the wrong directions. I wasn't at all sure."

"Oh?" Mrs. Klapper was standing at his side now. "You seemed pretty sure."

"Well, you know how it is." Mr. Rebeck smiled hopefully at her. "A man hates to have people think he doesn't know his way around."

Mrs. Klapper smiled back. "Believe me, I understand."

There was a long silence, during which Mr. Rebeck looked at the Klapper mausoleum with frantic admiration and Mrs. Klapper rummaged for a handkerchief in her purse. It took her a while to find it because she was looking at Mr. Rebeck, and when she did find it she held it in her hand for some time and then stuffed it back into her purse.

"One headstone," she said quietly. "That's what gets me. A mausoleum, all right, a mausoleum I could see. But one headstone out of a thousand, five thousand, this takes a very good memory."

"I've got a very good memory," Mr. Rebeck said. It was to be the living-room sorcery then. "I can take a deck of cards and—"

"I know you've got a good memory," Mrs. Klapper said absently. "This must be a real blessing. Me, I'm always forgetting things. Did you ever find your watch?"

The question was asked in such an expressionless tone of voice that it took Mr. Rebeck a moment to realize that it was a question at all. When he did realize it, he answered hastily, without looking at his forearm.

"Yes," he said. "I found it right along Fairview, about a mile from the gate. It must have dropped off while I was talking to you and I didn't even notice it."

As he spoke he looked down at his wrist. It was brown, like the rest of his arm, and covered with fine black hairs. He did not look up immediately.

"I left it home today," he said softly. "It had to be fixed." He raised his eyes very gradually and looked at Mrs. Klapper. "Something was wrong with it."

Mrs. Klapper looked at him for a long time, and he looked back at her. There is nothing marvelous about meeting a person's eyes, he thought. Your eyes may start to water after a bit and you may get a kink in your neck, but the soul is far behind the eyes and doesn't even know what's going on up front. So he stared back at Mrs. Klapper, directly and with dignity, until she began to blur and go out of focus.

It was Mrs. Klapper who looked away at last. She walked to the steps of the mausoleum and sat down. "All right," she said. "Forget it. Forget I asked anything. A woman shouldn't play detective. It makes people lie to her, and then she catches them lying and feels proud of herself. Forget I asked. I'm a nosy old woman and I want to know too much. Don't tell me anything."

Mr. Rebeck rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and felt the sweat there. "Mrs. Klapper—" he began.

"Don't tell me anything." Mrs. Klapper made a cutting motion with the edge of her hand. "It's better I shouldn't know. I got a very bad habit."

Mr. Rebeck rubbed his neck again and looked down at her. Quite suddenly he grinned. "Move over," he said.

Mrs. Klapper blinked at him a little bewilderedly. She moved over slightly on the mausoleum step.

"I have to think for a moment." He sat down beside her and looked at the ground. He could feel her eyes on him, but he did not turn his head.

Rebeck, he thought, you have reached one of those Crossroads people write about. As it is your first Crossroad in a good while, I think you ought to take very good care of it and examine it carefully. Not too long, though, please. There is a hypnotizing quality about Crossroads. You can stand and look at them long and long, as Whitman insisted on putting it, and forget the Cross.

He looked down at his wrist and thought, If you had been wearing a wrist watch for any length of time, there would be a white band around your wrist where the sun could not reach. Hurray for you, Jonathan. You and Mrs. Klapper ought to form a detective society.

Should I tell her now? he wondered. Why not? I've been telling everybody lately. Don't exaggerate, Rebeck. Who is everybody? Michael and Laura. Michael and Laura hardly count. They're ghosts. They know what's possible and what isn't. This woman is alive. Make no mistake about that. She is alive, and that means she can hear the truth. It does not mean that she will know it when she hears it.

You'll have to tell her sooner or later. She'll be just as incredulous whenever you do. At worst, she'll run screaming out of here, which might be very interesting to watch, but lonesome later on. At best—what would she do at best? Probably say something like "Okay, but isn't it a little silly?" What will you do then? Maybe it is a little silly.

Get off the Crossroads, Rebeck. You are beginning to turn around in small, neat circles. A car might hit you.

Maybe it is silly, he thought again. That has nothing to do with it. A lot of serious things are silly, even to the people who do them. That's no way out.

Look at it another way. If you don't tell her, she won't ask you again, but she won't like you very much because you've made her feel nosy. Oh, she will be friendly and cheerful and all that because she is friendly and cheerful. She'll simply stop coming. Even to see her husband, if it means running into you. On the occasions you do meet, you'll smile and wave furiously at each other, the furious-ness increasing in direct proportion to the distance between you. Right there you have the nucleus of one of those fifty-year friendships.

Is she that important to you? Privacy is important too, and there is less of it.

No. She is not that important. Not yet. I barely know her. She is not important as an individual. She is a Symbol.

Oh, that's fine. A Symbol of what?

How should I know? As Symbols go, though, she's very nice.

Mrs. Klapper shifted impatiently beside him. "Rebeck, pardon an old woman, but are you laying an egg?"

Whenever Mr. Rebeck thought about it later on, he was always sure that the scales were kicked over when she called him by his name. She never had before. Laura always called him Mr. Rebeck.

He got up and stretched, thumping his chest as if he were taking a shower. Then he looked down at Mrs. Klapper.

"Come on," he said. "Let's walk."