The ringing of Tay’s cell phone pulled him from a deep and dreamless sleep. It was very dark and he couldn’t remember where he was. He sat up and fumbled around until he found the switch for the bedside lamp. When the lamp came on, he blinked and then for a few moments stared in total amazement at the strange room in which he was sleeping.
Then everything about where he was and what he was doing there came back to him in a rush and he picked up his telephone.
“Hello.”
“Is this Samuel Tay?”
It was a man’s voice, someone with an American accent.
“Yes,” Tay said. “And by the way, it’s the middle of the goddamned night.”
He looked around for his wristwatch wondering if it really was the middle of the goddamned night. He couldn’t find the watch, but it felt like the middle of the goddamned night so he thought hewas more than justified in making the claim anyway.
“I’m terribly sorry,” the man said with a note in his voice that sounded like genuine contrition. “I must have miscalculated the time change.”
“Look, who-”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Tay. I really am handling this badly. This is Arthur Rosenthal.”
The name sounded familiar, but Tay couldn’t immediately place it so he said nothing.
“I’m a lawyer,” the man added helpfully. “In New York.”
And then Tay realized who it was.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Mr. Tay,” Rosenthal went on, “but I thought-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tay interrupted. “I’m glad you called. How is my mother?”
The man didn’t respond right away, and all at once, just like that, Tay knew.
“I’m sorry,” Rosenthal said.
He said something else after that, too, but Tay didn’t register what it was. It didn’t matter anyway. Rosenthal had delivered his message and that, more or less, was that.
Tay’s mother was dead.
That was very much that.
She had died in her sleep, peacefully, the previous night. At least that was what the lawyer named Rosenthal said. He also said that her husband was making the funeral arrangements.
“Why would he do that?” Tay asked.
“I don’t quite understand what you-”
“I’m her son. I can make the funeral arrangements.”
“We just thought that…well, you’re a long way away, and naturally we assumed…”
Rosenthal trailed off into silence, apparently not certain what to say next. Tay could understand that. He didn’t know what to say next either.
Why in God’s name was he starting an argument over who would make his mother’s funeral arrangements? He didn’t have the first idea how to make funeral arrangements in New York, and even if he had he was halfway around the world, it was the middle of the night, and he was over his head in an investigation of the most brutal murder he had ever seen.
“Never mind,” Tay murmured. “Forget it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, never mind. Her husband can make the funeral arrangements. That’s fine with me.”
Could they assume then that Tay would be coming to New York for the funeral, the lawyer named Rosenthal asked?
Of course they could assume he would be coming to New York for the funeral. It was his mother, for Christ’s sake. Or maybe he wouldn’t be. Later he couldn’t remember how he had answered Rosenthal’s question. After that there were some other words, too, but later Tay couldn’t remember what they were either. As soon as he could he thanked the lawyer for calling and hung up.
Tay shut off the light, pulled the sheet around his neck, and rolled over with his face to the wall.
Feelings came and went, flickering in and out of his mind like an unreliable signal on a faulty television set. Sadness, abandonment, the loneliness of the forsaken child, regret for time gone by, for things undone and unsaid — and most of all, sorrow for his inability to share or even acknowledge in any real way the pain, perhaps even the humiliation of the way his mother’s life had ended.
Every thought dislodged feelings deep within Tay and they rained down around him like bombs, setting off little explosions of recognition, remembrance, and regret. When he could take it all no longer, he got up to have a cigarette, but then he remembered he didn’t have any. That left him nothing to do but go back to bed where he laid absolutely still, breathing in and out, counting every breath. It took him quite a while to get back to sleep, but eventually, somehow, he did.
Once during what remained of the night he thought he felt himself crying softly, but that had probably just been a dream.