The Death Committee
Noah Gordon
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 075150792X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
on the sixth floor to say goodbye to. They drove to the place in Cambridge and Susan Haskell helped Gaby to pack her things while he emptied two bookcases into cardboard cartons. Susan was very upset but she treated Adam with icy care. “The plastic bucket is mine,” Gaby said guiltily. “I bought a bunch of supplies and things but I forgot to get a bucket. Is it all right if I take it?” “Of course. Take whatever you paid for, silly.” “We’ll have lunch in a couple of days,” Gaby said. “I’ll
shoulders. In a little while he could feel her shaking under his arm much the same way as the landlady had shaken but was unable to tell whether in sorrow or mirth. “What’s the matter?” he asked gently. “I’m so tired. And I keep thinking ‘So this is what it’s like to be a fallen woman.’” He laughed with her, although it hurt in a number of places. A small cold foot found its way into his instep. Upstairs the woman—he wondered, drunk or demented?—wailed no more. Occasionally a car went by
over and his father slept again. For a while he simply sat looking at the figure in the bed, an old man who had roared for a violin and a used prayerbook. Eventually he noticed that his father’s hands had not been properly cleaned. Grease or something similar had become engrained long ago and the admitting team had not attempted to remove it. He helped himself to a bowl of warm water and Phisohex and gauze, letting the hands soak one at a time and washing them gently until they were clean. As
she said. He didn’t know whether she meant her son or the girl. “Then you would sign the permission slip?” “He’s been torn up enough. But if it will save some other mother’s child . . .” “We hope that it will,” Adam said. The permission secured, he thanked her and fled. “Our Lord gave up his entire body for you and for me,” he heard the priest say as he walked away. “For Paul, too, for that matter.” “I never said I was Mary, Father,” the woman said. Depressed, he felt it would help his
always possible.” The fog was breaking. Shining through it he became conscious of an enormous sun-reflector, more ocean than he had ever looked at. The beach was broad, white, marked only by jetsam and driftwood on the upper reaches and on the lower strands shining and hard and pounded so smooth by the breakers that it glittered in the sun. “I wanted you to see it,” she said. “I used to sit here and tell myself that if you piled all the ugly hurts down there they would be washed out with the