by Neil Gordon
But I am no fool. I am no fucking idiot. It is for only a moment I lie there, watching the shadows of the branches sway; a moment that I lie there watching shadows on the ceiling of a room in the house in which my father grew up, even if that moment seems to last forever. For only a moment I lie there and feel the blank blood in my veins, empty of alcohol, free of THC, and think of the million mistakes of which my life is constituted, all culminating in the huge, overwhelming mistake of my presence here, in this room, now, tonight.
But, see, I am no fool, so I only do this for a moment. In just a moment I will get up, and out of bed, and away from all this.
But first, just for a little second, I will lie on the surface of this depthless bed, in this tall house, watch these shadows of the chestnut in a gusty March wind outside, and, just for a moment, feel the black distances of water below me, hundreds of feet, swimming with fear.
And then I am standing, then padding my way down the stairs: third floor, second floor, straight to the liquor cabinet, and genuflecting, naked, in front of its open door as I arch my back and pour a long shot of warm vodka down my throat.
I gag, and I swallow.
Then I carry the bottle down to the kitchen and put it in the freezer to cool.
So this Uncle Joe is some sort of a saint. In the kitchen there is coffee, milk, sugar. I make coffee in a little espresso pot, then I drink it. I make another pot, and drink it, then another, hitting the vodka once or twice in between. The last coffee, I carry through the kitchen and into the dining room, and through the dining room into a little book-lined library.
You can see, here, the trunk of the chestnut through a huge window, its branches outlined in front of the lighted clouds from what, I can now see as I come right up to the window and crane my neck, is a three-quarter moon, amazingly bright. That makes sense: it had been barely gibbous when I left Saudi. The light switch is right next to me and, when I throw it, the moon disappears and in its place, in the window, is, suddenly, my face.
But why would I look at my face? Why would I look at the face that takes all the delicacy of Julia Montgomery’s, its high cheeks, its depthless green eyes, its full mouth—remember, Momma, before she decided to start shooting cocaine, had acted for Martin Scorsese and posed for Avedon—and dumps the Sinai nose in its middle? True, this professor once said to me, in college, that that nose, it was the difference for me between pretty and beautiful, and she was, herself, a very, very beautiful woman. Then she put her tongue down my throat. But that was then, and this is now, and now is four in the morning in New York City, where I have been brought by an amazing series of accidents; now I am before a mirror, not a lover, and all I need to do, all I need to do, is turn away. Anyway, my blood is filled with only some of those things I like to stock it up with—nicotine is still missing. I close the blind on the big study window. Then, naked, I pad back upstairs to my room to get my smokes.
3.
Rebeccah Schulberg—my half-sister Beck, born to my father and Mimi Lurie when they were underground and, in a move that would turn out not to be an aberration in their interesting little lives, but something of a habit, abandoned so that they could pursue their little careers as radical criminals—was in fact more or less my size, though with bigger boobs, judging by the bras in the little wardrobe. Of course, she had bred—or so I’d picked up somewhere—so her tits would be bigger. In any case, I don’t wear bras. I find a not bad little T-shirt by Karan which, if I rolled up the shoulders, is wearable, and a pair of chinos which, after I meticulously take in the hips with safety pins, fits pretty good. It’s only now, for some reason, that I notice how cold I am—the little silver radiator under the window is only warm, not hot, and it is early March—so I add on a cardigan and a pair of socks, which gives me a college girl dyke look which in turn makes me feel a little sexy. Anyway, fuck it: no one’s going to see me now, and I’m in New York and sooner or later I’ll get to my luggage and/or credit cards and in either case go spend some money on clothes over in the Meat Market where the shops, I am reliably informed by years of reading Momma’s Vogue, are now to be found.
This time I explore the house a little more carefully as I descend. This top floor has four rooms, all bedrooms, all impeccably made, with floors in wide plank pine liberally covered with kelims, of which none are new. One of these rooms, I suppose, was Sinai’s, one was Uncle Danny’s, and one would have belonged, after she came here from Israel, to my “aunt” Klara, adopted by my grandparents at eleven, who now never talks to her siblings, for reasons I’ve never understood. Or, for that matter, given a fuck about. If, though, you’re expecting that Sinai’s room was filled with Filmore East posters and anti-war memorabilia, no way: any trace of the childhood inhabitation of these rooms had long been removed: they are tidy, pretty, and empty of personality, which is a disappointment, because had they been the childhood rooms of my dad or uncle, I’d likely be able to find some way to get high. There are, however, quite a few framed photographs: Sinai, with long bangs over one eye, sitting on a stoop in a denim shirt, squinting into the camera; Danny and Klara on the beach at what must be the Martha’s Vineyard house, a black dog with a white nose, standing straight and staring at the camera, his tongue hanging out one side of his mouth.
The third floor has the master bedroom, and while it, too, has been denuded of personal effects, I remember that this was Granny’s room, and this the bedspread, and these the paintings on the wall, of which two are large abstracts of a style I believe to be called Abstract Expressionism and one is a large, naturalistic vision of an overgrown garden gate, likely by my grandmother. Also on this floor is an artist’s studio, smelling very faintly of oil paints, which is evidently built over an extension because it has lead-glass windows and skylights through which, had the lights been off, I would have had a splendid view up into the chestnut. Then there is a small library with a couch that, I can see, doubles as a guest bed. The books on the shelves are jacketed and, I have no doubt, firsts. I look only briefly at the shelves and catch these names: Fuchs, Dahlberg, Sanford, Farrell, Greenberg. Clement, I mean.
Down one more flight, the living room, as I say, occupies the whole parlor floor, and now that I understand the extension at the rear of the house that allows the studio to exist, I understand why it is so big, perhaps fifty or sixty feet deep by twenty-five wide, an immense piece of New York real estate, immense enough to have two staircases descending to the garden floor: one, a more modest continuation of the grand staircase I had just come down; another a small spiral descent, no doubt directly into the kitchen for the servants. Likely, I thought, the room had once been divided, with huge pocket doors in its center kept closed to define a dining room on the street side. Visitors would have been meant to come up the stoop and enter a corridor that ran next to a huge formal dining room, leaving their coats with a maid. Now, however, the corridor had been taken down to open the space entirely, the doors were wide open, and the only divisions in the room were made by the groupings of furniture and rugs. Why this was so, I understood when I went down, this time, not the servants’ stairs but the main stairs, which came out, on the garden floor, to the right of the kitchen into a dining room of which I find I have no memory whatsoever. It’s huge: could easily seat twenty-five, set right back against picture windows out to the garden in which grew the massive chestnut. I pause for a moment here, shocked by the sudden stillness of the room, a stillness as if made more impressive in implicit comparison to the noise that must so often have filled this room over numerous dinner parties.
There is also an entrance to this room by a set of swing doors to the kitchen, which I do not remember seeing earlier, from the other side, while making my coffee. I go through to the kitchen, pause to hit the vodka, which is slightly more potable now, from the freezer. Then, on reflection I backtrack up the guest stairs and come back down the servants’ set to the kitchen. Now I can see how I missed the swing doors, which are removed from the main work space. The only explanation is tha
t I wasn’t allowed to use the big stairs when I was a child, or that I didn’t want to. In any case, I have no recollection whatsoever of their existence. Further, another door altogether, from this vantage, is more immediately prominent: a small one that leads into a book-lined lounge with a television.
This feels more familiar. The television is a Zenith and perhaps forty years old. There is a large abstract painting on the wall signed “Carton,” another signed “Golub,” and a charcoal nude signed “Soyer.” There is a framed Hebrew document, ornately inked and dated 1948 which, from somewhere unknown in my memory, I suspect to be a marriage contract, and then verify, because Hebrew is one of my languages. I stand for a moment, breathing in the musty smell of the room. Then a memory strikes and I turn. Behind me, yet another door leads off, and when I put my hand on the knob a vivid picture strikes me of lying on a bed next to a window, staring up at leaves. I open it. I find myself in a small study lined with legal texts. A large window gives out onto the garden. The lights turn on with a toggle switch. The room is carpeted in yet more splendid Turkish rugs. A couch—bed, really—sits under the window, but the window is still too dark to see outside. A huge oak desk holds a lamp, a dial telephone, and a squat, nearly round plastic television which, in due course, I realize is an antediluvian Macintosh. This, I look at for a while, feeling something which, in turn, I come to understand as a deliquescence. I feel slightly ill; and I feel so because somewhere in my stomach I understand that I am in a room belonging to my dead grandfather which has been left empty and intact for a long time. I squat, then, and look under the bed; then I check the surfaces of the desk and bookshelf. Everything is spotless: this is a room that is maintained impeccably, no doubt by Uncle Joe.
Feeling better, now, I find a power button on the Mac and it actually whirrs into life and begins to boot. While it does I examine the ports and find there is a USB. This is good in so many ways, I hardly know where to start. For one thing, I can charge my iPhone. I run up the stairs, literally, and down, like a kid at Christmas, and hook my iPhone into it. It leaps into life, and as it begins to charge, I click through the antique desktop icons. Now I can see that this was not my grandfather’s Mac but Uncle Danny’s, no doubt from when he stayed here during my grandfather’s death. Or mostly, anyway. It was also my father’s, or sort of: an ancient version of iTunes launches itself in response to my iPhone being plugged in, and a dialogue box asks me if I want to sync with “Sinai’s Music.” I click through a bit—Band, Bowie, Dylan, Fitzgerald, Mitchell, Sinatra, U2—got most of it from Sinai already—and launch a track from Ziggy Stardust. Then I click yes on the sync request, and consider the ensuing dialogue: “Are you sure you want to replace ‘Izzy’s Music’? This action cannot be undone.” I think for a second, then click yes: my music’s all backed up on iData anyway, I can merge again later. While the music loads, I get even more ambitious, and find my way into the system settings. It appears that even those days they understood the concept of display mirroring, so I set my iPhone up as an external boot device, and tether the internet through the cell connection. Then, when the music import is done, I reboot and, to my immense satisfaction, the Chrissie Hynde wallpaper from my iPhone comes up on the ancient glass screen. Now I got me a computah. And I am just getting on the web when an explosion shatters the silence and I jump clear out of the chair.
It is an incredibly loud noise and it goes on, and on, and on. Then, as abruptly as it started, it stops. Then it starts again. Heart bursting, I finally understand it to be coming from the dial telephone which, later when I turn it upside down, turns out to have an actual bell in it with a mechanical ringer. And in order simply to stop the noise, I pick up the receiver.
You’ll say this is not a smart move, and you’ll be right. It’s a rare mistake for me, but see, the noise was so fucking loud. Anyway, I am lucky: it is Aunt Maggie on the line, and as if knowing how much I am already blaming myself for answering, she begins to talk right away.
“Izzy? Maggie. I’ve been trying your cell, can’t get an answer. Where are you?”
“Sorry.” I am finding my voice. “Sorry, my cell was out of juice. I’m just charging now. Ummm . . . I’m on the ground floor in a little study.”
“You’re in Jack’s study?” My aunt is laughing her surprisingly deep laugh. “That telephone must have scared you out of your skin.”
Now I smile, a little. “Minor heart attack. I’m young and strong.”
“I bet you are. Can’t wait to see you. It’s been what? Six months since we were in Rome?”
“God. Something like.”
“What is it with you? Leave some stuff for someone else to write.”
“I’ll think about that.”
“Now listen. The news is good and bad. The bad part is that you have in fact been subpoenaed. It’s the internal specs of the PVI array—specifically, you published that they’re hooked into the Pentagon satellite system, which would violate Separation of Powers, if true, and make someone in the West Wing prosecutable. Did you know what you were saying, doll?”
Doll. That’s Sinai speaking. I wonder, suddenly, if it came from Jack. I pause, then speak carefully. “I knew I was reporting that they’d violated Separation of Powers, yes. My source is good.”
“Can you name him?”
That gives me pause. “Who?”
“Your source, doll.”
“Oh. Her. It’s a her. No, I’m not naming her.”
“Well, they say she must be from the Pentagon, and that means she’s treasonous. They’d have to, wouldn’t they? Now they want her. You’re subpoenaed, you have to show in court, and if you refuse to give the source you will be jailed. I’m representing, the Times is co-counsel. You’re super-duper covered.”
Super-duper. I note that. And I note this, too: you’d have expected me to be pretty uptight at this point, no? Jail, blah blah? Dimly, it occurs to me that I am on the front page of the Times this morning and I haven’t even looked. All I’ve done is explore this strange house I find myself in. Tintin? Not so much. Even now, I find my eye straying down the bookshelves in front of me, which I now see contain things other than legal texts. There is a large number of leather bound portfolios filling one long shelf, one of which, as Maggie talks, I open. “What’s the good news? That I’ll be in a woman’s jail?”
“That I’ll get you out in a couple-three days. This won’t stand up, not even in a New York state court. But it will take a few days. So for now, I recommend you stay put while I negotiate a surrender.”
“That’s wonderful. People actually pay you for this?” A couple-three. I know that one. Sinai said it, and I knew it to come from my grandfather, ’cause when he was interviewed for a movie called The Good Fight, he said, at one point, that he had taken a couple-three bullets at Cape Tortuga. The portfolio is surprisingly heavy, and I have to stand to get it. But I find that you can cradle this receiver between your ear and shoulder, and thus use both hands.
“Very funny. For the moment, they have no idea where you are. Stay put. Let me get your stuff from your hotel meanwhile.”
So I am stuck in this mausoleum for a few days. With a full liquor cabinet. Suddenly, in a flash, I remember that I had once dBased a marijuana delivery number in New York. The portfolio is tied with a thick ribbon, in a bow. I leave that for a moment, launch my address book and search “delivery.”
“Please do, will you? Soho Grand. Be careful—there’s some dope in a pack of cigarettes.” Delivery doesn’t hit, so I try service.
“Dope? Boy, like father like daughter, hey? Okay, doll. Uncle Joe was meant to buy groceries, did he?”
I answer in a raspy voice. “Yes. He keeps up the house.” Nothing for service. I try pot.
She laughs. “He’s an angel from heaven, that man. You okay? You going to be lonely?”
Bingo. AAA Pot, an 800 number. And aren’t you just the little undercover operative? Christ sake, listing my dope dealer under pot. Talk about the purloined letter. I can just imagi
ne the intake cops at whatever prison they sentence me to scratching their heads over that. Heads? Underarms, and hooting, because unless they’re fucking apes, they are going to be tracing that number in seconds flat and adding drugs to their little shopping list of Izzy Montgomery’s prosecutable crimes. I cover the mouthpiece of the phone to laugh a little. That done, I go back to worrying the knot on the portfolio, which gives suddenly and completely. “Lonely? Did the Times say they’re honoring my contract?”
“Yes, of course. Oh—I spoke to your editor. He said to give him three thousand words background on PVI by closing tonight.”
“Well then. Who has time to be lonely?”
“Okay, my lovely, you keep busy, and I’ll keep in touch.”
By now, the portfolio cover is open, showing a number of photographs, which I spill out onto the desk. Childhood pictures mostly of people I don’t recognize. Then I hit one of Sinai, at maybe sixteen, his long red hair combed down over one eye. Then one with Danny, looking up at his big brother with shining eyes. I put these two out on the desk, and go on looking: my grandmother, in a painting frock, and one of my grandfather, walking next to a river, perhaps the Hudson, on a brightly lit day, looking up in surprise.
The people who made me who I am. I watch these for a while, smoking a cigarette. Then I turn back to the portfolio and sort through the rest of the pictures.
Only, it’s not only pictures. Below them, I find a set of light blue airmail envelopes, a type of paper called “supercalendared,” very brittle at the edges now, with age, and typed on a manual typewriter. The first is postmarked in 1956 in Mexico, and addressed to Jack Sinai, Esq. I open it, gingerly: I dealt with paper before when I did a New Republic piece in the British Library, the one where I found the copy of IF Stone’s Weekly. In the envelope is a folded letter signed in hand by “Dalton,” addressed to Jack, and directing him to go ahead and take the “1,200 weekly for The Brave One.” All of the envelopes are the same. But now, my ear suddenly is filled with a horrible, deeply offensive beeping, and I realized that the telephone receiver is still under my ear. I hang it up, close the portfolio, and pick up my iPhone.