The Dead Celebrities Club

by Susan Swan

  The voices of the Pauls appear to be coming from the second floor, where the inn has set up a private tea room. He stops on the landing to listen. From above his head comes the clink of cutlery against china plates and the sound of people yelling at one another. It isn’t like the Pauls to shout. Dale Paul’s ex-wife, Esther, is slurring her words, and Tim hears a pleading tone in Meredith’s voice. Then a young man cries: Someone wrote fraudster spawn on the wall by my bed.

  It’s Davie, Dale Paul’s son.

  Hey, that’s what they’re calling me now. Fraudster spawn! Thanks a bunch, Dad! And they kicked me out of my dorm.

  Fraudster spawn is a horrible thing to call you, Meredith replies. But your roommates can’t kick you out of Harvard.

  The hall monitor said they could ask for a new roommate, Davie replies. No one wants me in the other dorms. Whatever. I’m not going back next semester.

  Don’t you dare do something self-destructive again, his mother shrieks.

  You mean like kill myself?

  There is a shocked silence, and then Davie says, Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I — I’m okay now. I’ve got it together.

  A housekeeper is coming up the stairs, so Tim chooses that awk-ward moment to appear. They stare up at him in surprise: Esther, matronly in a baggy pantsuit, and Davie, red-faced and insolent, next to Meredith, who looks alarmed and unhappy. Dale Paul’s mother is snoring in a wheelchair. Aside from her stiff 1960s bouffant, Googie Paul is unrecognizable.

  Hello, Tim hears his voice boom. Am I interrupting something?

  16

  Dale Paul

  ARNIE AND HIS father have shown up. Somehow, they have got around the red tape forbidding me to have visitors, possibly because Arnie is an Iraq veteran. It is cold and rainy, so I find the sorry-looking pair standing in the visitors’ lounge instead of waiting for me in the fenced-off compound by the lake where visits take place in good weather. Arnie’s father is paralyzed from the waist down after a malfunction sent his aircraft spiralling to the ground near a Viet Cong village. As if paralysis isn’t bad enough, Arnie’s father has suffered damage to his vocal cords. Arnie, meanwhile, fractured his pelvic girdle when his parachute didn’t open in a reconnaissance flight over Baghdad.

  When I come through the door, he turns his face toward me in his hopeful way and I know he is looking for a reassuring gesture, not to mention a promise that I will recoup his lost funds. Unfortunately, I’m obliged to put my old associations behind me. How can someone like Arnie help me now? Yet a display of grace is required: a reminder that Pater has brought me up to walk with kings and keep the common touch.

  Arnie’s father doesn’t smile, although his eyes flicker with an unfathomable emotion when he sees me.

  Arnie, Josh, how good to see you both! I exclaim, struggling to be heard above the screams of the tatty-looking children and their frustrated mothers. The visitors’ lounge is a vast, airless space that resembles my Anglican Sunday school. The Dead House, I used to call it.

  Arnie shakes my hand. The spring has gone out of his step, no question. He has lost a great deal of weight, and a safety pin holds together the frame of his spectacles. He must have gone to some trouble to find a pair of dilapidated glasses so I would feel sorry for him. And, of course, I do, although the last thing I want to discuss are the losses in Arnie’s portfolio.

  We have something to ask you, Arnie says.

  Ask away, good sir.

  We’re sleeping in Pop’s car. And we want to know … Arnie smiles anxiously. If you can help us?

  As far as I know, Arnie’s father has been living safely and well in a small apartment the Veterans Affairs people found for him; the va pays half his rent while Arnie covers the remaining amount. Why they expect a donation from a man in my circumstances beggars belief.

  How I wish I could. But you can see the situation I’ve found myself in. To make my point, I gesture at the visitors’ lounge, the perfect synecdoche for my dilemma, and Arnie’s eyes follow the movements of my hand with what appears to be desperation.

  I know you have money hidden away, Arnie retorts. Esther told me you did.

  And you believed her? Arnie, those funds went to my court costs. Hand on heart, if I had the funds I would give you some.

  Arnie’s father says something in his strange, whispery voice, and Arnie bends down to listen. When he straightens up again, Arnie is scowling. Pop doesn’t believe you. He won’t forgive you, either.

  Forgive me for what? It’s me who should forgive you for talking to a New York Times reporter.

  For a moment, Arnie looks nonplussed. I was only telling the truth, he splutters. He draws himself up to his full height, which isn’t very high. Jesus said I am the way. I am the life and the truth you have been looking for.

  What version is that? I know the King James: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

  So you know it, Arnie says. You know it already.

  Of course I know it, you fool. I wasn’t bored stupid at Sunday school for nothing.

  Well, why don’t you practise it? Arnie’s round, bug eyes, ordinarily so lustrous and bright, turn dark.

  You should know better than this! You’re a Jew, Arnie, and Jews don’t do religious conversions. It’s not their style. Look — I did nothing wrong, and the sooner you understand that, the better you will feel.

  Arnie’s face clouds over, and it strikes me that he doesn’t have long to live. He’s never been very healthy, and he smokes a pack or two a day. Once, when life was good and he used to come to me for investment advice, we both smoked Silk Cuts. Then, when life was good no longer, I stopped, but Arnie refuses to quit. The nicotine stains on his fingers give him away. Funny, how cigarettes mark you. How they mark your skin and wrinkle it up. Webs of fine lines have spread across Arnie’s cheeks and forehead. His skin isn’t getting enough oxygen, clearly. Those damn cigarettes.

  You’ve got to stop smoking, Arnie. It’s not good for you.

  Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself, Dale Paul?

  How are my old friends Ted and Sofia? Are they well?

  Ted has cancer of the esophagus, Arnie replies. Maybe you forgot.

  I shake my head disbelievingly. Ted with the big C? Perish the thought.

  Sofia said she told you about it.

  Arnie, this is all very dreary and sad. I think you and your father had better leave. I motion to Martino, who has been watching us with his sleepy eyes. Not all prison visits go well. Nobody knows that better than him.

  After the two men leave, I stand at the window and watch my old pal push his father’s wheelchair down the pathway to the parking lot. Arnie walks with a slight roll, like a sailor. Is it my imagination or does his limp seem more pronounced? Cradling his father in his arms, Arnie sets him down gently in the front seat of a broken-down car. With a start, I realize it is the junk heap I saw in the Times photograph. Then, to my surprise, Arnie turns and shakes his fist at the prison. I assume he is staging a performance for my benefit, although it’s hard to see in the rain.

  17

  ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER letter. This time from my cousin Meredith:

  May 31, 2012

  Dear Dale Paul:

  I’m back home on Long Island and I wanted you to know that Tim walked in on a family argument. On our last day at the inn, Esther and Davie surprised us with a visit. Esther was ranting drunkenly about Davie, who has been spending his days online. Apparently, he searches the Internet to see if his name is linked to yours. If he finds the two of you mentioned together, he asks for his name to be removed from the website.

  When I pressed Davie about going back to school, he said he wished he were dead. Esther and I rushed to his side. (We were thinking about the night he tried to kill himself. Remember?) Thank heaven Googie was snoring away by then. The
last thing we needed was her chatter about sundials that record only happy hours.

  By the way, your mother has been difficult since you have been in jail — she refuses to let me put on fresh Depends and swears like a trooper when the sticky tabs of the diaper pull at her skin. She also refuses to use her wheelchair, staggering around our suite at the inn gripping the handles of her walker as if it were a wild horse in need of taming.

  She seems to be in constant pain, although the doctors can’t find anything wrong. I don’t really blame her for being cross. If only she wouldn’t spend money on things without telling us. The other day a man on the phone talked her into buying a new dishwasher.

  Well, enough said. I don’t mean to add to your problems. (Okay, let’s be honest. Maybe I do.) In fact, I am hoping Essex will be a good place for you to reflect on what you’ve done. I know your lot isn’t easy, but you are a well-educated person with more resources than the other men. So please try to put your time to good use. I can see the look on your face when you read this, but if you can’t do it for me, do it for Davie.

  Love,

  Meredith

  18

  I HAVE HEARD all this palaver before from Meredith, her do-gooder hope that prison life will have a salutary effect on yours truly. She should know better than to waste her breath.

  I have a great deal of sympathy, however, for what she is going through with Mother. One afternoon when nobody else was around, I was obliged to look after my parent. As I peeled off her soggy diaper (the ghastly action Meredith mentioned in her letter), a shower of urine wet the back of my hand. Googie pretended not to notice, and I averted my eyes while she lowered herself with steely determination onto the toilet seat. There was a faraway tinkle of water and then she hoisted herself up again using the rubber wall handle. She chastised me angrily as I slid the slacks up her legs and cinched her belt, complaining all the while that I didn’t handle her as gently as Meredith.

  I am well aware of the difficulties with Mother, just as I can imagine Tim’s shock at seeing Esther in one of her inebriated states.

  Point being, my ex-wife can’t pull herself together; she lives in a saltbox on the main street of Port Washington; its rooms are over-stuffed with the crude pine furniture from Quebec that was sold in Toronto antique shops during the sixties: a beaten-up refectory table and crude rolltop desk with matching captain’s chairs. The noise of the traffic outside interferes with social conversations, and it’s hard enough to make out what Esther is telling you if she’s got into the California wine she likes so much.

  Late one night, not long after our divorce, she phoned in a drunken state. I had no idea what she was going on about. Then I understood. Davie had tried to kill himself. Meredith and I rushed over and found my boy lying very still on the bathroom floor. I smelled a coppery odour and saw his bloody wrists. There was more blood on the bathroom mat.

  The ambulance arrived just as I was helping Davie to his feet. Luckily, the cuts weren’t serious. Hesitation wounds, the medico called them. Practice runs for the real thing.

  The unhappy incident turned out to be a one-off.

  19

  MY LATEST PHONE message from Nugent says he is back in his dreary midtown lodgings. For years I have tried to help him with his unfortunate personal taste, but he doesn’t want my advice. Most people don’t. In fact, it is extraordinary how satisfied with themselves most people are. What can you do? My old friend has always wanted to be poor.

  After my mentoring job is done, I amble over to the ungainly stucco building that was once a residence for Olympics personnel. The prison’s computer studio is on the first floor, a capacious lacuna with old-fashioned picture windows that open onto the stand of white pine. I settle myself behind the screen of a newish Dell OptiPlex 760 and start typing. I hope Nugent will find what I have to say helpful.

  June 24, 2012

  Dear Nugent:

  I realize you’re starting work on my memoir and that’s as it should be. Please note that we prisoners aren’t allowed visits or phone calls for the first four weeks. Not until we adjust to our new circumstances. You will need to wait for the warden to approve my visitors’ list.

  As you might imagine, it was an ominous occasion when I became prisoner number 199421-321. Meredith and Caroline drove me to my new home, and we exclaimed over the derelict buildings in this part of the world. The region’s economy is solely dependent on the Essex Federal Correctional Institute. It is located in the national park of the Adirondacks, and the rolling hills and mountains along with the region’s small, serene lakes remind me of my grandfather’s farm in the Laurentians. The prison staff talks about the weather in the same anxious, hopeful tones as Quebeckers.

  And the high, rocky ground is unsuitable for farming. Both areas perch on a cratonic eruption of igneous and metamorphic rock that happened about one billion years ago. The rocks that form the Adirondack dome were created within the past five million years — a relatively recent phenomenon as far as geological time goes.

  You’ll be glad to know I’ve made friends with my bunkmates. The name of the black scofflaw is Bailey. (I trust you know the meaning of the word scofflaw, Nugent. It’s a Prohibition term for someone who drinks illegal hooch.)

  My other roommate is Derek Williams, whose facial tattoos evoke a Maori warrior. If one man can say this of another, Derek is strikingly handsome and very popular here. Apparently, some of the gangsters even go to his early morning yoga classes.

  Yesterday, I rescued him from our caseworker, a repulsive cipher who smacks his big wet lips when he dislikes what you say. At the therapy session, Giles taunted Derek about selling drugs at his girlfriend’s yoga retreat. Derek explained that he had to save the day because Citigroup was foreclosing on the retreat’s mortgage.

  Giles immediately accused Derek of “stinkin’ thinkin’.” Tell us about the three Cs, Giles said. Conditions, cognitions, and choices …

  Well, let me see, mate. We needed money … I guess that’s the condition …

  Giles, the grotesque blovian, smiled and nodded.

  Then I … I made a bad choice and started selling drugs again. That’s cognition, right, mate?

  What do you know? A light is dawning. Giles smirked.

  You have no right to mock Derek, I cried. You’re a poltroon without an iota of life wisdom.

  What did you just say? Giles asked.

  I said you are a sadistic blusterer and a popinjay!

  The man was so discombobulated he cancelled the workshop. Later, Derek told me he was grateful.

  I have decided not to go to another session. Bailey refuses to go too. His hobby is collecting photographs of child stars like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. Do you remember Dana Plato? She starred with Gary Coleman in Diff’rent Strokes and she suicided on a drug overdose while Gary, her pint-sized co-star, died of a brain hemorrhage at forty-two. It seems most child stars don’t last long. When the guard isn’t looking, Bailey tapes up their photos on our dorm wall.

  To pass the time, I tell Bailey amusing tales about the celebrities I used to know. For example, Pater and I met Princess Diana when we attended a wedding of one of the minor royals. We were stand-ing with a guard in ceremonial attire when Diana came out of the washroom and told the guard she had dropped her tiara down the toilet bowl. She wanted his sword to fish it out. The guard lent her his implement, and a few moments later Diana reappeared carrying the still-dripping tiara.

  Bailey, the idiot, wanted to know what it was dripping with. I wrote up the story of Diana’s tiara and Derek emailed it to a friend who sent it on to a website about celebrities’ embarrassing moments. It was published under the headline: “PRINCESS DI VISITS THE LOO.”

  As you can see, I do what I can to encourage my bunkmates. There is something to be said for even the most unpleasant circumstances.

  Yours,

  Dale Paul

/>   20

  OUTSIDE, SEARCHLIGHTS SWEEP the funereal gloom of the yard, but under the led panels in the Rec Centre, all is cozy and bright. My bunkmates and I are playing cards, and I try not to stare at their ghostly white faces as I deal our hands. It is late June, and they have sprinkled their skin with baby powder to combat the humidity. It’s an incongruous sight! Yet they are serious poker buffs, and they’ve come up with an amusing penalty: whoever loses must drink sixteen ounces of water, a punishing forfeit for older men with a leaky bladder. Luckily, tonight, my fine bunkmates are experiencing a losing streak.

  While we attend our cards, Earl appears on the overhead television screen, his odd face with his heavy-lidded eyes radiating authority. At boarding school, Earl would slather on Clearasil to disguise the condition of his leathery skin. His nickname used to be Lizard Man, although he hadn’t yet developed the display structures that are part of a male like him.

  The scofflaws don’t seem to notice anything unnatural about the way he moves his head from side to side, although it always surprises me how often people fail to see the obvious. Possibly, you need to know about his rare condition in order to spot it.

  My old friend is getting a reputation for being outspoken on issues like immigration. Only a few days before, a graffiti artist painted an unpleasant verse at the base of the Statue of Liberty: Flush your tired, your poor, your huddled masses down the sewers and send the losers back to the shit holes they come from. Earl was quoted in the media as saying the verse should stay up. He said washing it off would suggest Americans couldn’t take a joke.