Richard Zabel

Richard Zabel

A Kaddish for Caspar Glass

 

Caspar Glass, trusts and estates, worked alone in his corner office, high above the darkening city. His last client of the day, Harry Oxman, 76, the seventh generation of Oxman in the United States, left after directing that Glass rewrite Oxman’s will to bequeath a $5 million lump sum payment to his current paramour upon his death, provided she remained his paramour at the time of his passing. Glass asked Oxman, his client of thirty years, “And how, Harry, shall we establish that she remained your paramour up until your death? Will you be providing regular updates?” Oxman appeared to consider it and then rasped, “Caspar, just make it happen like you always do,” laboring out of the chair while waving off Glass’s help; which Glass had not offered. Oxman shuffled toward the closed door of Glass’ office. Without turning around, he growled into his shoulder, “Need I say this must be secret Caspar? The rest of the family, especially Emily, can’t know.” No, you needn’t, Glass thought.

Oxman opened the office door, and Glass saw his paramour, Brie, a young woman of 26, knees together bent like a skier, practically vibrating with anticipation. She pecked Oxman on the cheek and wrapped him with a lithe arm, steadying him for the walk to the elevator. Glass consoled himself tartly that the proof that she remained Oxman’s paramour at his death would be manifest as Oxman seemed a sure bet to die with Brie in flagrante delicto (likely Harry’s heart failing), res ipsa loquitur (Brie birthday-suited on scene calling Glass from bedside for help and as proof), requiescat in pace (Harry in the ground and Brie in the money). And then, as the children’s rhyme goes, the cheese would stand alone.

Later, Oxman’s family would ask Glass about Harry’s deception, his faithlessness, and what other Harry Oxman secrets Glass knew, and why oh why would Harry do it. This would all lead to the question of whether Brie could be cut out of the will. This was how it often went.

For decades, Glass had created secret trusts, rewritten wills, and drafted codicils deciding the fates and fortunes, and even emotional well-being, of his clients’ family members, the unwitting characters in each client’s drama. Of course, he tried to counsel his clients not to indulge their baser feelings and make a spouse feel diminished, or a child rejected, or more positively to honor the emotional attachments of family members, if not for them then – and here he played on a client’s vanity – so that the client would be viewed as a great patriarch or matriarch and regarded well privately and publicly. He had always executed his client’s testamentary directions with discretion and perfect equanimity, no matter how injurious to the family Glass knew they would be. Like any good trusts and estates lawyer he could keep secrets.

But over the last year, Glass had begun to lose his calm and become — unprofessionally in his view — disturbed by his connection to the pain his clients often sprung on their families. What made Glass anxious was the knowledge that many of his clients had enmeshed their families in the client’s lies only for the family to discover the falsity of their lives after the client’s death — too late to do anything about it.

Not just Oxman. In nearly every family he dealt with, the secrets lay buried like unexploded mines. Glass knew these minefields inside out. Clients retained him to map them, re-map them, and then clean up after the explosion. What gnawed at him was why, after all he had been through and after all these years, other people’s secrets should cause him anxiety, or some other vague diagnosis of nervous disorder, as Lansman had suggested. It was when he started to feel on the verge of unraveling, although it was invisible to others, that he went to see Lansman, a client who was a shrink. Lansman, with pink skin hung like bunting below his watery eyes as if every patient weighed on him, suggested they meet for sessions to get to the bottom of why Glass “could no longer compartmentalize his work.” This was how Glass had put it, and Lansman quoted it back. “Caspar these symptoms are more than that and mainly come from trauma.” Glass said, “mainly” he just wanted a valium prescription. Lansman gave him the prescription, on the promise that Glass would see him soon. Glass didn’t. Even when the symptoms grew more difficult to control, he felt he could manage them without discussing his past with Lansman, or any doctor.

So once again, alone in his office, feeling the unraveling coming on, Glass reviewed his own case. He thought back forty years to a frozen forest in Europe. He and others waited in silence, half-buried in the ground under pine spires clotted with snow. Nothing moved except plumes of breath. The cold, a blade on your skin. Then the whistles and screams of bombs and everything blasted open in fiery chaos with shock waves that knocked him flat whipping him with sheets of dirt and snow. Trees splintered open, black charred craters burst like abscesses in the snow, and limbs flung themselves from bodies. In between explosions, the agonized calls of soldiers came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Men died alone, eventually frozen stiff. But he survived.

He survived, too, snipers and close combat in burned-out cities. Cities where civilization proved to be a pretty façade of cathedrals and cafés. Until the façade was tested by a few madmen and collapsed. Speeches, parades, bonfires, broken glass, and eventually so many ready to play along. ‘Civilization’ that with the slightest push — the slightest excuse really — ­­could incinerate and bury itself in bodies and rubble. The white baby shoe that stood upright on a cobble-stoned street in front of a door with nothing but rubble behind it. They tore off the mask of decency and then, defeated, some ashamed, some just exhausted, put it back on again until the next time.

In 1945 he came home, stunned and alone. With no idea what to do, he became a lawyer because law felt like a distracting puzzle. He kept unwanted memories tamped down. He learned to shut them off from causing any feeling at all. That experience now belonged to someone else. What a relief, but what an absurdity it was too, to have a job or a profession after you have been among men killing, dying and screaming for the medic or their mother. And what a sad joke on him, after the horrors he saw decades ago, that in New York in 1983 the secrets and lies of his clients should make him anxious, or even affect his mind one whit. He kneaded a cramp in his chest. Something from lunch didn’t agree with him.

Miriam wasn’t at her desk.  She hadn’t said goodbye, so Glass assumed she was filing or in the bathroom. Through the bank of windows he saw the river. The October sky lowered an ashen light. In other buildings, office lights flicked off as people left for the night. He thought he should go home. He turned on his desk lamp and made brief notes in Oxman’s file.

He sat back in his chair. His office, lustrous with wood and leather, was dead quiet. Old prints of sailing ships and a map of New York harbor and lower Manhattan, as it was in the 18^th century, lined the far wall. The door to his burled barrister’s armoire, a gift from British lawyers for whom he had lectured on U.S. intestacy law, was open. His hat sat on the top shelf. His spare suit hung with his spare shoes directly below, like an invisible man. He could see himself in the mirror on the inside of the door, underlit by the green desk light. He looked indistinct. He couldn’t understand why the door to the armoire was open, but instead of getting up to close it, he sat in silence.

It had been a long time since he last looked at it. He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and took out the small box. He lifted the leather cuff of the desk blotter and felt with one finger for the key, which he kept taped down between the leather and the blotting paper. He unlocked the box. The worn metal dog tag had no chain anymore. He ran his finger over his name debossed in black letters in the metal: CHARLES F. GREEN; his serial number; T43 for his tetanus shot in 1943; and O, his blood type. The bottom right corner of the tag was cut and sharp, and still showed where it was burned.

It was at night near the Belgian-German border, sitting with Strauss, Stone, and Rosenthal, that he cut the H from his tag. After that, he held his Zippo under the cut edge, and the flame wrapped like a blue tongue around the metal until it turned black. He burned it to make it look like it happened in battle. He threw his other tag into the woods because two of them mutilated in the same place would never be believed. But he couldn’t bring himself to throw both tags away and have no identity if he were killed. Forty years and he could still hear the snap of the metal being cut and then the smell of it burning. Renunciation. Disguise. Fear. Because word had gone around that if you were captured with an “H” on your tag there was no chance you would live.

Rosenthal, pale as chalk and skinny with a jutting Adam’s apple, said it wasn’t right, it wasn’t permitted under Jewish law.

‘Put a lid on it Rebbe,’ said Strauss. A week earlier, Strauss found a kid who used to engrave at a jeweler’s on Canal Street. Strauss gave him a tube of M&Ms in exchange for him changing Strauss’ “H” to a “P”. ‘Rosy, you don’t get to make a ruling cause with your name, the “H” is super-, super- . . . goddamnit . . . Greenie at least has a fighting chance to pass.’

Stone, who the day before had put his tag on a tree stump and used his Colt to shoot out the “H” and about a third of the tag, was cleaning his gun. He didn’t look up or stop when he said ‘for the Protestants it’s a “P” and the Catholics a “C”, but for Jews it’s not “J”, it’s “H” for Hebrew, like we’re foreigners, like a different race.’

Strauss said, ‘Who does that remind you of? Why not just say on the tag “hey Kraut, if captured, you’ll definitely want to kill this guy.”’

Rosenthal shrugged, ‘It’s not allowed to deny you’re a Jew.’

Stone closed one eye to look in the chamber of his pistol, ‘Who’s denying? He’s just not admitting.’

Strauss barked ‘yeah, Green looks like some Ivy league tennis player but Rosy, you practically scream Jew. Anyway tzaddik, where is it written you can’t do it?’

Stone said, ‘It’s definitely not one of the Ten Commandments. That’s as far as I can go. Rosy, ya gotta cite a law or something.’

It ended there with Rosenthal shaking his head and walking away into the dark, his last words, ‘It’s wrong. And Strauss, the word is superfluous . . . moron.’ He left everyone laughing, calling for him to come back.

Glass squeezed the cramp in his chest, and it felt better for a moment. He thought he heard noise in the hall but still didn’t see Miriam at her desk.

 

 * * * *

 

Without a knock or a word, in strode Fenster: portly but cat-footed, a beard like smoke, black suit, white rumpled button-down bloused at the belt-line, black dented Homburg.  He sat himself down facing Glass like he owned the place. Glass, surprised, but wanting to exude calm, leaned back in his chair and looked him over.

“You are?”

“Solomon Fenster.” The man’s voice was gravel.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Oh, ho, the pleasure? Let’s wait and see.”

“I’m sorry – did you make an appointment with my secretary because I don’t think you’re scheduled.”

“I don’t know from your schedule but I have an appointment. I’m here for our talk. For counsel. You don’t recognize me?” Fenster tipped up the front brim of his hat, widened his eyes and craned forward for Glass to inspect his face.

Glass studied him. He seemed familiar somehow, but Glass was in no mood. “No.”

“You know me. Stanton Street?”

Glass felt the threat in Fenster like some buried evidence about to yield itself up from the ground. “No, you’re mistaken.”

“Yes, yes, think.”

“You should leave Mr. Fenster, it’s late. Make an appointment.”

“I have an appointment. And it’s for now.”

Glass looked, but Miriam was still not at her desk.

“Listen Glass, or should I call you Green? Makes no difference to me what you call yourself and what you pretend to be.” Fenster swiveled his head to scan the walls. “You’ve done well for yourself these years. Tell me, Glass, what fine things you see from your chair? Or what magnificent view out the window? Because I don’t see it.”

Glass stared straight at Fenster. “What do you want?”

“I need help. I’ve done well too, Glass. I’m a doctor with assets here and there. But my oldest daughter has strayed. She’s a smart and beautiful girl, but she’s headstrong. Anyway the story of her life you don’t need to know except this. She’s with a Gentile, against my wishes, and I think she’ll marry him if he asks. This cannot be allowed to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? It’s completely out of the question. He wants her to convert.”

Glass didn’t respond. Fenster seemed completely unbothered by the silence, drumming his pen on a small notebook, giving Glass and his desk the once-over. Where in God’s name was Miriam?

Finally, Glass spoke. “What’s this have to do with me anyway, Mr. uh –?”

“Fenster. You don’t listen so great for a lawyer.” He went to close the office door and returned to the chair. “This is private stuff. It’s got everything to do with you. I want her cut off from any of my assets if she marries out of the faith. I want that in my will. I want you to do that. The law permits that, right Glass?”

Glass nodded. “The law permits it.”

“And I want some sort of whattayacallit agreement before she marries him that says he doesn’t get any of her money, my money, if she turns her back.”

“A pre-nuptial agreement.”

“Right – one of those.”

“You should talk with your daughter. She’ll end up hating you. Talk with your rabbi. This is not the shtetl after all. This is 1983.”

“Not the shtetl! 1983! Listen to you Glass. Anyway, you don’t think I’ve tried talking to my daughter?”

“But why come to me? You could get this done somewhere else. I’m not the lawyer for you.”

“Wrong. This is sensitive. I don’t want anyone with connections to the community involved. I want it quiet. You do some legal thing that stops this, or tell me why I shouldn’t.” Fenster’s tone changed suddenly almost pleading to Glass, “Green, Glass, I don’t care. I’ll keep your secret. But I came to you because you know what it means to cut yourself off, to leave your family and your history. I need someone to tell me why, why would she do that? I want to stop her but maybe I shouldn’t. What will happen to her if she cuts herself off from her family and her history?”

“How would I know? She’s your daughter. Maybe she’s in love. Maybe she just wants distance. Frankly, Fenster, you don’t seem like a day at the beach as a father.”

“You do know because you did the same.”

Glass, against his instincts, answered. “Mine wasn’t at all the same. Yes, for sure love, but circumstances were different.”

“Ah, circumstances, you lawyers and your circumstances, but at least we are back on track Glass even if you claim we haven’t spoken before. Please continue.” Fenster moved forward in the chair and began leafing through his notebook. Strangely, Glass began to feel drawn to Fenster, not that he liked this man, but that he had the urge to talk to him as if they had unfinished business.

“Okay, I’ll play along. I’ll start with the war, just facts and history. I’m not interested in spiritual counseling. Draw your own conclusions.” Fenster came to a blank page and looked at Glass with his pen poised.

“The soldiers were mostly good men, and mostly the same. Same uniforms, same haircuts, same enemy, same fear. There were Jews. We’d find each other. Sometimes it was made clear to us we weren’t welcome, but for the most part we were accepted because, after all, we could save a fellow soldier’s life or die as well as the next man.

“Stone, Strauss and I all made it out of the war alive. Rosenthal disappeared after the Hürtgen Forest. Like in a fairy tale, he just vanished in dark German woods. If he had been dead, it would have been better. But no, later we learned German wolves had gotten him, truly wolves, with blood all over their snouts, and their faces twisted with rabid fury, always hunting and killing. We thought Rosenthal was dead, but he was alive and we didn’t know. He had the bad luck to be taken prisoner. They tortured them, worked them to the bone, and starved them, and then, later, when the Russians and the Americans were closing in, the wolves, insane until the end, forced the prisoners out on a death march. Men weighing under 100 pounds, sick and delirious, collapsed along the road and died. They made the surviving prisoners bury the bodies along the way to hide the evidence. Roosevelt was already dead. Hitler in days would be dead in his bunker, and the Germans would surrender. But Rosy, it turns out, was still alive, marching.”

Glass stopped, choking on his thoughts, now regretting going through this again.

Fenster said flatly. “Go on, Glass.  This is not the end.”

“But this has nothing to do with your matter.”

“Go on.”

“They wouldn’t stop. It was April 1945. They marched these wasted men south on a road along a black river, swollen with snow-melt, past picturesque towns and gingerbread houses. The people gawked at the walking skeletons. Some were moved to offer food, some just spat at the sight of them and cursed them. The prisoners died everyday along the road. We learned Rosenthal tried to escape into the forest only to be caught and beaten. Why? What did it matter? Everyone knew the war was over. If they had just let him go, he likely would have died in the forest peacefully like a leaf that just finally lets go from a tree.”

Fenster frowned at this and seemed to cross something out. He propped his elbow on the arm of the chair and rested his cheek on the palm of his fleshy hand. He exhaled wearily.

“I am boring you perhaps?” Glass asked with annoyance.

“Facts and history Glass. You said it. I prefer less falling leaves and speculation and more getting on with it. You know this.”

“There’s not much more. Rosenthal couldn’t walk after the beating he took. They put him in the cart being pushed by prisoners who still had the strength. Other men fell, and if they weren’t dead they put them in the cart, one on top of the other, at all angles, like a pile of sticks. They were all near death, with Rosenthal at the bottom. He just suffocated under the weight of other prisoners. Even though he was on his stomach his head was twisted up against the side of the cart facing the sky trying to get air.  It was no use with all the weight on his body. The agony in his face showed he was alive.”

“This you saw?”

“No, I was told by those who were there. Some was in the testimony taken later by the army investigators.

“The burial also an atrocity. Rosenthal died, and so did two others along the way.  One a Catholic, the other a Protestant. When they reached a town to stop for the night, the Germans ordered the prisoners to bury the dead. The few prisoners who could, carried the bodies to a church graveyard. The sexton — who knew the war was ending and the Americans might soon be in charge — tried to create a good record for himself. He said we are decent people—no, the testimony was ‘God-fearing people,’ and we will give these men their rites. He asked one of the gravedigger prisoners the religions of the dead men. The prisoner said these two are Christians, that one a Jew. The sexton said no, no, no, this can’t be permitted. The Christians can be buried here, but the Jew can’t be interred in consecrated ground. The wolves barked ‘Raus! Raus!’ So the prisoners, almost dead themselves, carried Rosenthal outside the walls of the graveyard and buried him next to the road, in a rut of dirt and mud. Later, the investigators took photos of Rosenthal’s body when they dug him out. He was on his side curled up, with his vertebrae and ribs protruding, cradled and white in the earth, like a grub or maggot, something less than human. So you see they succeeded.”

Fenster did not look up.  Again, he crossed something out and sighed. He continued writing, casually, like he was making a grocery list or doodling. He stopped his pen on the page and looked at Glass. “When they dug him up, was he wearing his dog tag?”

“I think this is enough for today.”

“Glass.”

“You know! You know! you know he wasn’t. What does that matter?”

“Calm yourself Glass. This is good. This is progress. For whatever reason, he wasn’t. So fine. He can’t be blamed. This is enough of Rosenthal. Rosenthal is dead. You are not. We draw a line under Rosenthal. What happened next?” Fenster drew a line across the page and turned it over.

“What’s the point? This is old ground.” The pain in Glass’s chest returned, and he massaged it.

“Have some water.” Fenster stood up to pour water from the carafe at the corner of Glass’ desk. A rucked, white wing of shirttail hung over his beltline. Close up, Fenster loomed like he had doubled in size since he came into the room. He poured some water and set it on the blotter. He had pink, glabrous hands like a baby. Glass heard Fenster’s heavy breathing and saw below his hat where sweat beaded his forehead and pasted damp curls of hair to his temples. Fenster sat back down.

“You still haven’t answered my question of what happened to you?”

“Nothing happened to me Fenster, that’s the point.”

Fenster, the notebook balanced on his lap with the pen lodged in the spiraled metal, arched back in the chair, clasped his hands behind his neck, and tipped his face toward the ceiling, so that all Glass saw was the bottom of his beard and the brim of his hat. Glass knew he was waiting him out.

“Okay. I came back from the war to New York. I had no family but my uncle who I had been sent to live with years earlier on Stanton Street. The letters from my parents stopped and they were never heard from again.” Fenster straightened and took up the pen.

“My uncle was a furrier. He was dying by the time I returned. Years of mercury nitrate they used to treat the furs poisoned him. Before I left for the war he shook with tremors from it. When I got back he had lost most of his teeth, and his gums were blue. For days, we sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and smoking. I held his glass and lit his cigarettes because his hands shook so much. I think he hung on just to see me if I made it back. He asked me all about the war and named the places we had family: Minsk, Lodz, Lviv, Bucharest, Budapest. . .  .  He thought I had gone to each place to check. I told him everything I’d seen, except about the dog tag and Rosenthal. He covered his face with his discolored, flaking hands and wept when he realized everyone but us was gone. He had taken care of me best he could and treated me like his own son, but I felt only enough to be kind to him in his last days, and nothing more. He gripped my arm and said ‘you are a hero and will carry on for all of us.’

“When he died, the union newspaper, the Fur Worker, said he had no known survivors. He left me everything except $100 which he willed to the union ‘for the Socialist cause and my worker brothers –THIS WORLD IS A SWINDLE!’ At the kitchen table, he dictated this to me and asked that I make sure the Fur Worker used those exact words and that they print the last part in ‘big letters like I am shouting it.’ These were his last words to the world.

“I had what he left me, and my military benefits. I took a job as a stenographer by day and went to law school at night.”

Fenster, who was writing again, asked, “What kind of service?”

“What?”

“For your uncle. What kind of service?”

“Graveside and lightly attended, Fenster. In Queens on a dreary day. He’s buried shallow and crowded among the plots of other Jews, in the corner of a cemetery near where the LIE and 54^th Avenue intersect. Go take a rock and put it down for the furrier.”

Glass paused to look at Fenster who clucked and shook his head at this remark.

“Fenster, you know what? I would’ve cremated him just to avoid the burial, but cremation right after the war — a bit too on the nose wouldn’t you say?” Glass snapped with a manic laugh.

“Really Glass, we’ve been through this. Morbid jokes will not improve the situation. Let’s make use of the little time we have.”

Unable to get a rise out of Fenster, Glass continued. “I did well in law school, Fenster, toward the top of the class. As stupid and pointless as it all seemed at first, the law steadied me. And because it distracted me and gave me problems to solve, it was also a comfort. I felt the darkness from Europe lifting. During law school, I was hired quickly as an intern at a white-shoe firm. You know white-shoes Fenster? You don’t seem the type.”

Fenster rolled his index finger in the air to signal go on, and without looking up said, “The drift I get.”

“They gave me the job and put me in a nice office with a hale young fellow from Yale. The next day, the hiring partner comes to me and says ‘Come with me Green.’ He walks me down to the end of a long, carpeted hall. The secretaries, without raising their heads, follow me with their eyes. He takes me into a windowless office with a chair and a desk and says, ‘There was a mistake. This will be your office, Green. Had you told me your background we could have avoided this awkward mix-up, but I never thought to ask.’ I remember he looked me over and laughed like it was a joke we both could enjoy. ‘You had me fooled.  I don’t think at this stage it would be right to send you off. I’m sure you’ll do very clever work. Please keep the door closed as it’s unsightly for the clients to see an open office at the end of the hall.’

“And what did I do, Fenster? How about an answer from you just to change the pace?”

Fenster smiled at Glass, his hands steepled over his notebook.

“Nothing? Psh!” He waved off Fenster with contempt, knocking over the water glass. The water pooled around an easel-backed photograph angled at the corner of the desk. It showed a blonde woman and two tow-headed boys at the beach.

Fenster stood and pulled a balled-up handkerchief from his pocket. He picked up the photo and wiped it off. He blotted the water on the desk and handed the dried photo to Glass, who snatched it violently from his hand. Fenster wiped his face and sat back down. He gestured to Glass to continue, but Glass just stared at the photo.

“It was that September that I met Elizabeth. Elizabeth Constance Bower, from Connecticut. I was sitting on a stone bench at Columbia, the sun so bright it bleached the stone nearly white. I was poring through Scott on Trusts. She just appeared standing over me. I only knew she was there because suddenly there was shade. I know, I know, Fenster, and Glass mimicked Fenster’s graveled voice, ‘stick to the essential facts Glass, not stone, sun and shade.’ She said ‘that’s a serious book.’

“I looked up at her shading my eyes with my hand, ‘trusts? literally life and death.’

“From there on, we were always together. She was studying art and design. It was unreal, something that had to be a trick, because it was all so easy and perfect. By winter, we were waking up in my apartment at 108^th Street. She sipped coffee in both hands, like it was precious, sitting with her knees pulled up on a little bay window seat overlooking the Hudson. From the bed, against the gray light, when she stood in her nightgown I could see the silhouette of her body, her breasts, her hips, her thighs, like a lovely x-ray; and then, through the window behind her, colorless sky and bare winter branches.

“One morning she saw my watch on the night table. A gift from my uncle and aunt, it was inscribed on the back, ‘To Charles, From Avram and Esther with love.’

“She said, ‘You’re Jewish? I had no idea.’”

Fenster stopped writing. Glass felt the same sharp pain in his chest and now in his side, and he closed his eyes for a moment to let it pass.

“Why aren’t you writing Fenster? Shall we cut through it then? Yes, I explained to her, a Jew, from a long line of them, but you are looking at the end of the line. And just as well because it doesn’t mean much of anything to me anymore.”

“‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked putting down the watch.

“I remember that question and thinking about how to answer. I thought to say you didn’t tell me your religion either and would you expect me to ask? Her question of course insinuated that I was hiding that I was a Jew, and in truth there wasn’t a minute until then where I thought she knew, so I really was hiding in a way. So how did I answer? As honestly as I could, so she would understand, because I loved her Fenster and losing her would’ve broken me. I told her about the war, and Rosenthal, and she’s the only person I ever showed this to.” Glass showed Fenster the dog tag, holding it up for him to see.

“Ha, it’s funny — now Elizabeth Constance Bower and Solomon, uh, you have a middle name, Fenster, you know for symmetry?”

“Emmet.”

“Elizabeth Constance Bower and Solomon – excuse me — Doctor Solomon Emmet Fenster are the sole secret-bearers of my life. I told her about the windowless office at the end of the hall. She stood in front of the bay window with her back to me, ethereal in the winter light, and I waited for her to speak. She said again, ‘I had no idea,’ as if she were playing a reel of us together in her mind to see where she had missed the clues. I waited for her to say it didn’t matter to her or to walk out, ready for either. But it’s never that easy, is it Fenster? No, she suggested a third option, that was as sweet and tender in intent as it was corrosive in effect. She sat next to me on the bed and said she wanted to stay with me, but look at all the pain that something that did not mean much to me, that was not even really me, had caused, and so why not leave it behind? Why not just let it go? ‘Cast it off’ she said. It would be so much easier for her family to accept and for the children we would someday have to not have this unnecessary burden. And she said, without irony or cruelty Fenster, I assure you, that there was none of my family left to offend. Why go through the pain, she said? She held my face in her soft hands, beautiful, looking like an angel, a guardian angel trying to save me. Offering me a warm bath to sink into and rest.

“And so I cast myself off. Charles Green was gone and Caspar Glass was born. Without a blip in the world. All that remained, were my same initials, as a keepsake to myself. It was surprising how easy it was to change my name and really my whole identity. Elizabeth and I were married in Connecticut, in a beautiful stone church by a stream, where generations of her family had been married and laid to rest.

“My law career succeeded. We had the two boys you see there in the photo. They are now men in middle age, though I have not seen them for years. Everything was perfect like this photo, Fenster, a beautiful wife and two beautiful boys, do you see it?”

Fenster smoothed his beard. “You aren’t in it.”

“Let me finish. After years, the lie didn’t sit well with me. To the world there was Caspar Glass, a successful lawyer, with a beautiful, intelligent and accomplished wife, handsome achieving sons, and a large circle of friends and colleagues. But in fact, Fenster, I was a cipher, and it was all fake. There was no real connection with anyone, and I even started to feel walled off from Elizabeth. The longer the lie went on the more buried by it I felt. Every time I heard, spoke or saw my fictional name I seethed. There were slights and comments that went unchallenged by me for fear of giving something away. Even in my family. One night at the dinner table my older son, 17 at the time, boasted that he held firm selling his baseball glove for $20 to a younger student who tried ‘to Jew him down to $15.’ His brother snickered, and I looked at Elizabeth whose head was down moving her fork on her plate. I exploded telling him he should know better than to say something like that, and how had I raised such an ignorant, narrow-minded fool. I stormed away from the dining table. Shocked by my anger, both boys later came to me to apologize. But I knew I was growing more and more estranged. That night, Elizabeth said they were wrong, but that my reaction was ‘over the top,’ and that the way I was behaving with family and friends was going to raise questions. From then on, I lived with an invisible enclosure around me, like I was an exhibit in a museum, but the world for me existed inside the enclosure. I could see them and hear them through a partition, distant and muffled, but I was suffocating in my shrunken space.

“Over time, I begged Elizabeth that we reveal the truth to everybody. I argued it was the only way to save myself and us. The marriage and our family were failing because I couldn’t go on with the lie. It was the worst weakness — to be able to tell the lie and then not see it through. But Elizabeth begged me not to. She said imagine what it would mean to everyone that we deceived them. I withdrew more and more. In every comment and slight I would hear or read, I thought if I don’t challenge it then don’t I condone it? Are the comments just the minor prejudice anyone might have from ignorance, to be corrected over time, or are these the little slips of the mask of civilization that happen before it’s torn off completely?

“And then Elizabeth became ill. Cancer. The doctor pointed to shadows on her x-rays. Soon she had terrible, cruel pain. From her bed she touched my face with a trembling hand and we both talked about years ago on Riverside Drive, and she seemed like an angel again, ravaged and older, now in a hospital gown, but she was beautiful like before. She pleaded with me not to reveal our lie, even when she was gone. She didn’t want to be known as a liar to her sons, to her family. She said ‘we had a good life together, Caspar, and I’m sorry if you feel we built it on a lie, but I loved you and love you still, and I know you love me. Please don’t erase my life at the end. For me, please.’

“Of course, I couldn’t. And without her agreeing, what would be the point? She died, and the boys moved away. I’m sure I was the distant angry father who was cold to their mother in their eyes, even at the end. The terrible truth, and I’m ashamed of it, is I had little to do with them after Elizabeth died. I’d lost myself.”

At this point, Glass bolted up from his chair.  He raised up the photo in one hand and in the other the dog tag, which caught his shirt and ripped it. With both arms raised he shouted, “Have you gotten what you need Dr. Fenster! Is it explained now what happened to me! That nothing happened to me! Am I retained?” He dropped back in his chair collapsing his head on his folded arms, either laughing or crying manically.

Fenster stood, slid his notebook into his pocket and straightened his hat.

“We’ll speak again Glass. This is progress.”

Glass heard Fenster close the door to the barrister’s armoire. He didn’t hear anything more. The pain in his chest had receded but he felt a tightness in his neck and jaw. Slumped on his desk, he turned his head toward the window. Reflected in the black glass he saw the door to his office, now open, and the faces of Miriam and others living and dead massing at the door to come and redeem him.

 

 

 

Richard Zabel’s short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, among other literary journals. His work has been included in The Best American Short Stories collection, in the “100 Other Distinguished Stories” section. He is a lawyer living in Brooklyn, New York, who also teaches law and has written extensively on legal subjects, such as the U.S. terrorism law.