And Then There Was Claire - Part One
Funerals ought to have invitations was Garvey's first thought. Embossed ones: Dr. and Mrs. Herman Stoltz request the honor of your presence at the funeral of their daughter, Claire. 1:30 p.m. Steinberg Memorial Chapel, Washington D.C. But instead, of course, there was a phone call -- a calm, pretentious phone call from Buddy, that old son of a bitch, all Hello, how are you? How's Cleveland working out for you? Are Midwestern chicks really that ugly, and do you fuck them anyway? And oh, by the way, Claire's dead. Yeah, Primatene Mist, same as killed that model. You know. Some congenital heart defect thing reacted weirdly to the inhaler. Boom, her ticker just stopped. They found her on the floor of her apartment, that one on the Circle. Life is short and all that. Listen, the funeral's the day after tomorrow, if you want to come.
No, he probably didn't want to come, but he scribbled down the address anyway, on the company non-sticky notepad by the phone. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT THAT I'M WRITING IT DOWN ON A SMALL PIECE OF FLY-AWAY PAPER read the top; the bottom contained a childish illustration of a Post-it with wings. Claire Stoltz. Jews bury their dead so fast you didn't have time to decide whether or not you wanted to take the plane to D.C., see those people, get back into that scene.
He looked around his office, somewhat stunned. His desk was neat, with just enough studied clutter to look as though he frequently used it, which was an exaggeration. His name was painted on the glass door, like the set of a 1970s TV detective show. Andrew Garvey Masterson -- his full name, not Garvey, what he'd been called since the first day of first grade, when, with parents present, blue-haired Mrs. Griffin said there were three Andrews in the class, and who would like to be called by a nickname? Garvey's mother raised her hand and spoke up for her son, deciding he should be called by her maiden name, condemning him to years of ridicule as Gravy Garvey, or, worse, Groovy Garvey. Until that radio personality Garvey Wanna came along, galvanizing suburban Chicago and catapulting Garvey into coolness, a throne he still occupied today -- blond hair, toned body, gift of the gab.
So Claire was dead. He could hear the whirring machines below, the presses stamping messages onto cards. RSVP Josh Weinstein Bar Mitzvah; Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth R. Churchman request the honor of your presence at the wedding of their daughter Julie to Connor McGuell; and the birthday cards, condolence cards, thank you cards that were the backbone of their operation. Presses printing what should have been a news bulletin: Claire is dead.
A phone call -- that's how things happened now. Now he would start dreading phone calls the way his parents did. Now his heart would start beating harder every time the phone rang. Garvey picked up the pen and traced Claire's name on the paper so that it was in boldface. What font would that be? Garvey probably should have known, but he left the day-to-day business, the actual printing, to his cousin, concerned himself with making sure everyone reported to whom they should, and that everyone knew his/her job. Not so different from the government job he'd held in D.C. -- a lot of futile paper-pushing, a lot of lunches; vapid, encouraging words, posturing, and perky ass-kissing. When he'd arrived in wide-eyed innocence in Washington, he'd asked the secretary what exactly his boss did for a living. "He delegates," she answered, her eyes remaining on the computer screen where she was transcribing dictation. "He's excellent at it."
And now Garvey was in Cleveland and had a dead ex-lover. She's the first one, he thought; the first of us to die. The first of my lovers I'll outlive. How dramatic. He'd imagined a time when firsts would be less frequent, even non-existent -- a time after the first apartment, the first investment portfolio, the first wedding, the first custom suit -- but they continued, and would, he now knew, until his death; his first (and only) death. Aside from the usual car accidents and suicides of distant acquaintances, he'd been left relatively untouched by death: his Uncle Nick from cancer, a grandfather who'd kicked the bucket, but one he barely knew who left the entire family business to cousin Tate.
And then, back then, there was Claire. There was D.C. And now there simply wasn't anymore, not Claire. D.C. was still there, of course, but so distant as to be non-existent. Do places exist if you're not there? And was it that strange, really, that Claire no longer existed when she hadn't anyway, not really, for two years? Not since he'd left that fictional place called D.C. for Cleveland, another planet?
He should go and say good-bye to Claire, good-bye to D.C. He buzzed Laurie, who buzzed him back. It gave him great satisfaction to have a secretary of his own at age thirty-two, to buzz her and give her instructions like book a flight to D.C. tomorrow, and she'd comply and wonder why. Why D.C.? Why suddenly now? And he owed her no explanation.
Garvey could see through the glass walls overlooking the factory floor that Tate was not in his office. He was down there with the masses, so to speak, fiddling with something while the maintenance guys stood watching. Tate was wearing another loud, passé sport coat, no tie, and Doc Martens. Garvey banged, but there was no way Tate could hear him with the racket on the floor, and Garvey straightened his tie in the weak reflection in the glass before heading down the large metal stairs to the factory floor.
"Tate," he screamed. The din was deafening. "Tate." He tapped his cousin on the shoulder. Tate turned around suddenly, hands cocked in a karate pose.
"Hai-YAH!" he said, giving Garvey a fake chop.
"Tate, listen, I'm going to D.C. for a couple of days, OK?"
"You're going to the sea?" This was one of Tate's stupid games, pretending to mishear because of the noise. He turned his head, leaning his ear toward Garvey, and smiled goofily.
"No, D.C. Washington."
"Watch the sun, great."
"No, it's my old . . . girlfriend, Claire." Garvey tried to infuse his words with solemnity. He found no humor in Tate's juvenile stand-up routine, but at least Tate was consistent in his sophomoric responses. He respected Tate's stability, his predictability. He knew there would never be a moment of self-doubt in Tate's life, no crying into his beer, no might-have-beens.
And he didn't fail Garvey now: "What about her?"
"She's dead."
Tate nodded. He paused. The hair he combed over his bald spot toward the front of his forehead fell a little. He pushed it back absently. "Sure am sorry. Hey listen, the cylinder's broken again."
"Bummer," Garvey said, delegating. "I'll be back Friday."
"No rush, partner. I'll hold down the fort." Tate turned back to the press.
Garvey bought a paper and draped it over his knees as the plane took off for Dulles. Claire Stoltz. He could summon her face only vaguely now, the eyes a little too close together, the small button nose. Her memory provoked only that terrible feeling of loss from two years ago when he stepped onto the plane for Cleveland and she waved good-bye to him from the gate, her right hand in her pocket fingering, he knew, one of those cigarillos she liked to smoke, waiting for the plane to take off so she could step out of the airport into the unclean capital air and light it up. Little Claire, waving fervently, guilelessly, and that heavy nauseous feeling that he never took for grief or emotion but rather dismissed as indigestion, or nervousness. They'd eaten ribs at one of those places on the way to the airport where they tie plastic bibs around your neck. Amicably, they'd eaten three whole slabs, tearing into the flesh (Claire, too, stuffing the food into God-knows-where on her five-foot frame), messy with the grease and sauce, eyes stinging from the spicy barbecue and laughing so loud that other tables turned to stare. They forked cole slaw at each other, retreated into the plastic bib armor, and stuffed whole unbuttered rolls in their mouths, wiped their faces with the backs of their hands, washed it all down with large Cokes, refilled. He asked for the check and paid it with the newly acquired company credit card.
Amazingly, when the bibs came off and their faces were wiped clean with warm lemon-scented towels, they looked presentable. A sidelong glance at his watch told Garvey they were late, and they took off in her unreliable Cabriolet which for once (miraculously, fatedly) started right up.
Now, on the plane from Cleveland, the stewardess came by and asked Garvey what he wanted to drink.
"Gin and tonic -- no, just tonic," he said, remembering the hour.
("How can you drink tonic, plain like that?" Claire had asked. "It's like that stuff they put on sore muscles, what--Ben Gay. It smells like a boxing locker room."
"You, Queen-of-Logic-and-Cigars, asking me how I can stand a smell?"
"They're cigarillos, thank you very much," she said and sparked one up right there in his Dupont Circle apartment. The cockroaches never returned.)
He sipped the tonic slowly, not sure what he was supposed to be feeling. Cleveland was good for that, for numbness: its industrial skyline, its small pond status. He was named most eligible bachelor by Cleveland Weekend magazine the month after he moved there. "Andrew Garvey Masterson, bachelor, hails most recently from our nation's capital, where he held a job in the high reaches of government. A Georgetown University graduate, 'Groovy Garvey' as his friends call him is also an avid mountain climber who enjoys cinema and Asian cuisine. Garvey will use his business savvy as Vice President of Cleveland's own Masterson Stationery, founded by his grandfather, the late Nathan Masterson. Welcome to Cleveland, Garvey!"
Welcome to Cleveland indeed. Low rents, decent sports bars, lonely women -- it was as though Cleveland stretched out the red carpet for him. If he wasn't happy he was, well, comfortable, which was the word his father always used to describe his living. Comfortable living: central heating, dry cleaning delivery, premium movie channels. Comfortable, but not permanent, not forever. The future was, of course, unknowable, but it was never supposed to include Claire Stoltz. Now it couldn't include Claire Stoltz.
