Guess Who Died?

"Please don't say it like that, Margot. Just say who died." Sidney was getting angry.

"You won't believe who died, Sidney."

Sidney turned to his son and sent a class-C shrug across the kitchen table to him. A class C involved one shoulder, a slow lowering of the eyelids and a subtle whistling sigh.

"On his way to the airport, yesterday. Bing-bing. In the taxicab. No warning. Perfect health in a taxicab. His heart on the way to Cleveland, Ohio, on business."

On the word "business," she set a plate of whole-wheat toast covered with melted American cheese in front of her son and shook her head at him. "A plane crash I can understand; you who has to fly planes everywhere like a gambler. You can't take a bus, you can't take a train, it must be a plane. The odds are against you, Michael. Look in the papers. This jet, that jet. Crash, crash, crash. That's how people die, that's no surprise, that's asking for it. And still you have to keep flying those planes."

"I don't fly the planes, Ma. The pilots fly the planes. I go as a passenger."

"They always put the passenger list in the paper. After the crash. Last name, comma, first name. When you went to the Virgin Islands, that plane crashed. I read the list in the Post on the front page with my heart in my mouth looking for Needleman."

"The plane crashed over the Grand Canyon four days after I got to the Virgin Islands and it was another airline."

But she had him. He was playing the Airplane Crash game with her again. The game he always swore, among many games, that he would never play with her again. At these moments Michael thought of himself as the losing pitcher who watches the replay on TV that night knowing that he will be taken out in the third inning just as he was that afternoon, but watching anyway, hopelessly. Michael looked at his father. His father wanted to know who had died on the way to the airport in the taxicab, and in a matter of moments he would be playing the Guess Who Died game with her. She is amazing. Soon she will be playing both games at once, and winning both, taking on all comers, moving from one board to the other, checking all the kings, and still preparing and serving a superb breakfast of scrambled eggs and smothered onions, Swiss-cheese omelets, grilled garlic toast and fresh fruit salad under a blanket of shredded coconut.

"OK, Margot; who died?"

"You'll never believe it."

"I'll believe it. Who died?"

"Bing-bing, from out of the blue. His heart."

"Whose heart?"

Now she had his father, too. Sidney sent out a class-A shrug, skipping the B's completely. A class A required no witness, it was done to oneself, both shoulders up to the ears, head back, eyes wide to a vengeful God, a clearly audible "ooooooh" sound that admitted weakness to the enemy, unconditional surrender and the awful wait before the terrible swift sword.

It was the crucial moment in the Guess Who Died game. In Sidney's mind were all his friends and relatives, business associates, contemporaries, in their 60s, and the angel of death hovered now over them all,(continued on page 186)Guess who died?(continued from page 97) drifting over one head and then another, lingering over each for a moment like some awful helicopter. It might land anywhere. Who? Jack Smollen? His cousin Ralph from Virginia? His ex-partner Bernie? Kenny Kirsh? Saul Terpin? Moe Loesser?

"Danny Ackerman," she said.

"Danny Ackerman," he said. "I don't believe it."

"Danny Ackerman," she said, closing the refrigerator door on his life forever and releasing his immortal soul.

"Danny Ackerman. I don't believe it."

"I told you."

"Wow. I don't believe it."

"We just saw him."

"At the beach."

"Swimming."

"Running, jumping, swimming."

"A young man. He couldn't have been more than what?"

"Sixty-four."

"Wow. A young man."

"Sixty-five, tops."

"We just--"

"Saw him. Sure."

Michael knew that the game had ended with the revelation of the name and that now his parents were playing on the same team together against the common challengers: death, time, age, heart specialists, cholesterol, unfinished business and the terrible, terrible mystery of life. A game he had watched them play dozens of times in the last few years at this kitchen table, in which "We just saw him" meant any time in the last five years and "a young man" was any man who had just died. Were they aware, Michael thought, that the techniques that they used against each other were now used together against their mutual foe? She did his A, B, C and D shrugs, he did the whole range of her "tisk-tisks" and head nods, each using freely now all the gestures, habits, noises, phrases particular to each, detested by each, that they had taught to each other.

Michael's mother put his scrambled eggs in front of him. He noted that she had mixed Swiss cheese and onions into his eggs and toasted garlic butter into his English muffins. It was just what he liked and he knew that he was being treated like a guest this morning. He had been away for one day less than two weeks in his own apartment, which was a few miles north of Hong Kong, in a place his mother and father referred to bitterly as "downtown." He was there this morning at the kitchen table for two reasons. It was one year before he would receive his degree in optometry and he had decided four days ago that he hated it. They had chosen optometry for him. It was not his choice at all, he knew very suddenly in the embrace of Nadine Goodhall on his new studio bed with its new metal Harvard frame in his new apartment in the foreign land of downtown. Wow, in just one week away from them, how clear everything got; Nadine's head on his chest, both naked and trusting, both alert and awake with suspicion, pretending to sleep, cramped in the three-quarter bed, Michael and Nadine and their mothers and fathers all grabbing the covers for themselves. Of course they wanted him to be an optometrist. It combined the dignity of a profession with the solid practicality of a store. And they had shoved him into it against his will. Who did they think they were fooling? He would not play this game with them. He did not show up at CCNY the next day, and for three days after that.

"Neither has my period," Nadine said the night before in a small, flat voice.

"What, Nadine?"

"I said, you haven't showed us for school for three days and neither has my period."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I thought I better tell you."

"Don't worry about a thing, baby."

"What does that mean?"

He had no idea what it meant. It wasn't fair; he had just gotten his studio bed and he hated her awful nasal voice and he had received three pieces of mail that morning addressed "Occupant" and he was lonely and frightened by his efficiency kitchen--a two-burner stove on top of half a refrigerator, which mechanical irony kept the refrigerator hot and the stove cold and suddenly he was in the kitchen of his parents' home amidst the overwhelming stove that was never turned off long enough to be cold and the towering refrigerator and the incredible freezer and the miracle and wonder of an infinity of lamb chops.

All right, he told them now silently, I am frightened, but I've got your goddamned number, both of you, I know your game. Forget optometry. The world is new and alive and pregnant, not to mention Nadine Goodhall. I met her north of Hong Kong, where the Catholics live. I've been away for one day less than two weeks and I have adventures to tell you, oh, I could give you news, I could rock this kitchen.

"You'd take an airplane to school in the morning if you could, wouldn't you?" his mother said, sitting between them with her freshly squeezed orange juice, joining them at their table like the owner of a famous restaurant showing affection for special customers. "A Piper Club."

"Piper Cub, Ma."

"Never mind, you'd fly to school. Risk your life every day if you could. Maybe you could arrange for them to shoot you out of a cannon to college every day. Daredevil. Astronaut."

"What happened?" his father said to her. "No previous heart history?"

"Nothing. No warning. Massive coronary."

"Wow, That's how it happens. I tell you, a life is here, a life is over. Poof," his father said.

"Bing-bing," his mother said.

OK, folks, hold onto the table, I am about to bring life even closer to you than Danny Ackerman. Here at this kitchen table where all decisions have been made since the beginning of my life, since the beginning of time, at this kitchen table where the center is, where the food is, where it is not insane to believe that, over a generous helping of ancient pot roast, the Magna Charta was signed. Life is full of possibilities, he was about to tell his innocent parents, things not dreamed of in your philosophy, out there are fallen optometrists, Catholics, Greek restaurants, mystery. Oh, how delicious it is to feel that I can be, am, free of this table, out of this courtroom, out of this jurisdiction, not to be judged before this bench ever again. I will never play these games again. The season is closed on Guess Who Died, on Death by Airplane, on Why Don't You Call Your Sisters, They Love You; today, this morning, now, the Olympiad is ended.

"Pop...Ma...I'll tell you why I came home this morning..."

"To eat," his father said.

In his father's code, "eat" spelled backward was "live." His father owned and operated the Burger Circus restaurant, where occupancy by more than 74 people was dangerous and unlawful and highly unlikely. In some mood of wild abandon 30 years before, his father had hired his artistic cousin Albert to paint a clown over the stove, and this justified the sign over the entrance. The word "Burger" had been dropped by the family in conversation through the years. "Is Pop home yet?" one of his two older sisters would ask. "No, he's at the Circus."

The food was good at the Circus, because Pop knew good food, and of course the food was good at home, and food was the center of the cycle of life for them all. You know what you got at the homes of the married sisters? Good food. In the morning Margot fed Sidney, and for the rest of the day Sidney fed the world. When dining at restaurants other than his own, his father always did his inevitable thing. The waiter would take their order and leave, his father would look around the crowded restaurant, nod once, tap the table twice, pause and say, "Can you imagine. Can you imagine what they must take in here, one night, place like this. They got a good thing here."

Just two months before, his mother had given a huge dinner for his sister Gloria's birthday; the whole family was there, a full battalion of uncles, troops of aunts, squads of grandchildren and sons-in-law, everybody crowded into three tables in the dining room. At one point during dessert (choice of noodle charlotte, Jell-o mold with fresh fruit, cheese schnecken, fresh-baked butter cookies, four kinds of ice cream), he saw his father standing in the living-room entranceway, watching; and for a moment he was certain he saw his father give that unmistakable look. His father stood surveying the crowded dining room, smiling, nodding. "Can you imagine," Michael could almost see his father's lips forming the words, "Can you imagine what they must take in here, one night, a place like this." His father caught Michael's eyes watching his, and Michael, suddenly full of illogical, surprised love, wanted to leap to his feet and shout, "Pop, you got a good thing here."

"Admit it, Mike, you came here this morning because where else can you get eggs the quality your mother makes."

"There's actually something I wanted to discuss with you both, frankly."

A rare and remarkable thing happened: They both gave him their complete attention. He looked at their faces. He was aware, as he had always been, how little he looked like either of them. It was a family joke, this lack of resemblance. "In a basket, on the doorstep, that's how Michael showed up." He loved them, he was sure, but he hoped they would never discover the secret delight he took in looking nothing like either of them; and this particular morning, knowing certainly that their ideas, their ways of living were at last, inevitably, irretrievably different, too.

"First, about school--"

The phone rang. His mother left immediately for the hallway to answer it.

It's Nadine, he thought wildly. Oh, God, they never met her even. She couldn't get me at my place, so she looked up the number here in Brooklyn. She's calling my mother. Oh, God, she will say, "Hello, Mrs. Needleman," then she will sing a chorus of Ireland Must Be Heaven, then she will say your son made me pregnant on his new downtown studio bed and then she will say six Hail Marys. Oh, my God.

"Hello, Gertie."

My Aunt Gertie. I'm saved.

"Gertie; guess who died?"

"Mike, what about school?" his father said.

"Oh, yes. Well, I wanted to tell you both together."

"Tell me. I got to go to the Circus."

"Gertie, you won't believe it. In a taxi on the way to the airport."

"Bing-bing," Michael said softly.

"You need some money?"

"No. No money, Pop."

"His heart, Gertie, on the way to Cleveland, Ohio."

"Well, what is it, Mike?"

"Some things, some things."

"Well, what is it, you got somebody pregnant, you quit school, what?"

"Yes."

"Yes what? What yes?"

"Both."

"Both what?"

"Both of what you just said."

"What did I just say, what?...Oh. Oh, boy. You quit school and somebody's pregnant?"

"Right."

"Oh, boy."

"Well, I--"

"Don't tell your mother. She won't understand."

"So, I--"

"Somebody you want to get married to?"

"Well--"

"You don't. Then don't. I know a doctor. New Jersey. I'll fix it."

"Really?"

"Both waitresses at the Circus. Regular customers. They run a shuttle, practically, to New Jersey. Come to the Circus tonight. After the dinner rush. We'll work it out."

"Thank you."

"You tell your mother, I'll kill you. She won't understand. She lives with her sisters on Mars. Your sister Gloria had an abortion her last year at Hunter College."

"I didn't know that. Gloria?"

"Yup. You tell your mother, I'll kill you."

"Gloria?"

"What about school? You don't want to be an optometrist?"

"I don't know."

"If you don't know, I don't know. What would you like better?"

"I don't know."

"If you don't know, I don't know. We're all having dinner at Gloria's Friday night. You look funny at your sister, I'll kill you."

"I won't."

"Here comes your mother."

"Sidney, Gertrude wants to talk to you."

His father left the kitchen for the phone in the hallway as his mother sat down next to him.

"Michael, while your father's on the phone. I told Gertie to keep him on the phone. You got a girl pregnant, right?"

"Well--"

"A daredevil, an astronaut. Oh, boy."

"I--"

"Well, I know a doctor in New Jersey. Don't worry."

"Really?"

"He was good enough for Gloria. Don't worry."

"Gloria?"

"You tell your father, I'll break your neck. He wouldn't understand. He doesn't know what goes on outside the Circus."

"OK."

"When he leaves for work, we'll talk. Arrangements."

"OK."

"Daredevil. Astronaut. Here he comes. Shush."

"Well, Gertrude was certainly shocked," his father said, sitting down again and lifting his coffee cup. "Danny Ackerman. Who wouldn't be shocked?"

"She just saw him, you know," his mother said, "at that affair at the Center. She was shocked."

"Look, Margot, it was the same with her husband."

"Well, Harry's heart, we all knew. There was a history."

"That's right."

"With Harry, you could guess. There was preparation."

Michael was thinking about Monday, when he would be back at school. Optometry is a good thing, he thought, it combines the dignity of a profession and the solid practicality of a store.

"Harry and Danny, they were both active men," his mother said. "Tennis, golf."

"But with Harry, you could know," his father said. "His coloring told you."

"Who knows anyway?" Michael said. "A thing like that."

"Poof," his father said.

"Michael. Your sister Ruthie. You haven't called her in a month. She loves you."

Michael did a class-C shrug. A class C involves one shoulder, a slow lowering of the eyelids and a subtle, whistling sigh.