What follows is unsure, from the shock, a reasoned excuse, the mourning, another — as scattered as shards of the gallon’s vessel shattered with the fullness of morning’s milky light that was God and still is, God Who is the vessel, too, though He be plastic and unshatterable, as He is everything and is full of everything, even Himself; glosses scribbled across history’s whitest holiday tablecloth, handwritten writ to be read aloud upon Mondays and Thursdays that are the Law’s second and fifth days of the week, to be debated offhand on the days between that will become as will they all the perpetual Sabbath, in arguments, also, at the table of Paradise, over a brunch of the crow that will be savored as sweet upon the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection of tongues. One source holds thusly. Other sources withhold. This is what’s known. Upon that Shabbos morning, early, Wanda upstairs and so absenting herself from the Underground’s emergency meeting goes, instead, to the kitchen to telephone every number of every person ever represented in what Hanna once called her Other Bible, which is to say her addressbook, overstuffed more than even the most obliging of vessels — delimited but dangerously, contained with clips, and with rubberbands wristed; at hand, the receiver, the phone’s mouthing ear.
It’s an emergency, Saturday desecrated only with the greatest respect. Book on the counter, it counters, how to begin. An immense tome, a testament to the availability of everyone that she, Hanna, had ever met, near met, was who knows how related to, sketchily, pencil under pen revising the margin, Hanna could’ve explained, during her relatively short span of whatever this was: marriage, daughters, son and then, death. Preparations. A volume painstakingly annotated, amended, addended, updated every lie of insomnia, every sit of amenorrhea, revised every turn atop the mattress from one side to the other with the both of them pregnant, with flux of residence, marriage/separation/divorce information (including info for the lawyers of each party, that of the lawyers of the lawyers, too, psychologists PhD, the shrinks of the shrinks, all their mothers and rabbis and yadda), work and offspring notations, appended with birthday, anniversarial, and other dates important to remember if impossible to and so the scrawl here, frenzied scratches made with the weak hand, maniacal blots and crossings, fades, it’s not the pen that remembers, it’s the ink, which is without form but voids, then goes as dry as a mouth open for sleep with her just scratching at the paper as if a knife into stone, looseleafed tablet inscribed with a wound; xreferenced and by memo reminded, additionally notated with every possible system, and any possible means, of getting in touch without truly touching, which is noted impure, many of them decades obsolete, many years. Too intensely large for any of the drawers of the unit countered by the frontdoor, it’s kept if unlocked in a safe, fireproofed, in the closet by that door and obscured by coats for the season, winter or summer depending.
Wanda’s managed to heft the mass atop the formica, to unbound it then open its pages to drift to the floor, which is wet from her rushing, above, Underground — where they’ve been plotting for hours before invisible dawn — filthy from ash and the butts of her cigarettes she now smokes inside with no one to ask her please don’t. Intending to ransack the A’s, to begin with the Adamses, whom Israel’d met at the Bar, at a function of the Inns of Court maybe, or, Hanna would’ve known: there’s probably an indicative abbreviation addressing that quandary herein — and then to work on south through the J’s and K’s to the Z’s, down at the end of the alphabet, where it’s warmer and the sun always shines, phoning everyone that strikes her as halfway Unaffiliated, and so none of those bergs and blatts, these steins or zweigs disconnected, out of service when, finally about to lift the receiver, manicured in the red of distress poised for the dial, the touching of tones, a low thrum zeroes through, a call incoming, and she who wouldn’t even begin to screen picks up, to answer it at pitch.
Hello, you have reached zee Izraelienz!
Alive whoever you are, call me back, will you? I hear the dead get good rates on longdistance.
Wanda dials the number as it appears on the screen for ID, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s PopPop, estranged father of Israel, resident of a world that came into being when God said Miami, it was.
Unlike his wife, who died years ago of some strain of neglect, he’s Affiliated, firstborn and so, a survivor.
Hello, you have reached, she says again when he says, About time!
No call for such snarl, she’s just exorcising instructions — Wanda with the cord coiled around her arm, a snake’s helix hissing its orders from beyond the grave that is silence.
