Who, Me?

by Who, Me- A Memoir (retail) (epub)

  The furniture....I was tempted to rent a truck and take the whole kit and kaboodle back to Michigan with me, but my Survival Voices inside me said, “It’s too far, too many days, and besides, you don’t really want that stuff anyhow, it’ll just be a constant reminder of how fucked over you were all your life . . .”

  OK.

  The jewelry and other carryables, though, I could give to my daughter, Alexandra, my sons Hugh and Chris.

  And I’d have to get out before Judy came. I didn’t want to deal with her, did I? And didn’t want to go to the funeral. Funerals are homage, aren’t they? And was I going to do homage to my monster mother who had done all she could to punish and hurt me?

  Not likely.

  But . . .

  I went over to the hospital building where they put all the patients who were in their final stage, just on the brink of death, talked to the fat blonde receptionist with her hair all in cutesy-pooh little curls.

  “I’m Hugh Fox. My mother, Helen Fox, just died, and I’d like to talk to the nurse who was with her when she died. If it’s possible.”

  “Here, everything is possible. Especially with computers.”

  She pushed a few buttons, looked up a few records, made a phone call.

  ` “She’ll be here in a moment. Nurse Gomez. Why don’t you just . . .”

  Pointing to a waiting area. Nice plush chairs, a big palm tree, a little table with magazines on it.

  Mount San Antonio Gardens was a fancy place all the way around. Kind of sprawled out, not many stairs to climb, one building with a nice central dining room where they served breakfast and lunch, then outlying buildings with lots of walkways between them, a big variety of housing, from a simple room to a house all to yourself, three different infirmaries, 1). Minor problems, 2). More serious problems, 3). Close to the End.

  But you never felt Death around here; everything nicely tropical, palms and palmettos, eucalyptus, every imaginable flower, like one vast garden.

  It was a good place to end up as you slowly slid into Death.

  Ah, here comes Nurse Gomez. Very Chicano-looking. So I kind of automatically slipped into Spanish.

  “Que tal?” (How are you?)

  “El hijo de la Señora Fox?” (The son of Mrs. Fox?)

  “Si.” (Yes.)

  “Pero hables el español como un nativo.” “(But you speak Spanish like a native.)

  “Me casé con una Peruana, profesora de Español.” (I married a Peruvian, a Spanish professor.)

  “Entonces . . .:” (So . . .)

  “Queria preguntar una cosa solamente. Cuando mi madre estaba muriendo, ella dijo algo sobre los judíos . . . qualquier cosa?” (I only wanted to ask one thing. When my mother was dying, did she say anything about Jews . . . anything at all?)

  Nurse Gomez suddenly sat down next to me, agitated, slipping into English.

  “It’s funny you should ask that. As a matter of fact she did . . . she said the strangest thing I ever heard in my life. Let me see if I can get it one hundred percent straight: ‘My mother was Jewish, but I am one hundred percent Roman Catholic.’ Yeah, that was it: ‘one hundred percent Roman Catholic.’ I’ve been with lots of dying people, that’s kind of my job around here, accompanying the dying into death, but ‘one hundred percent Roman Catholic,’ that’s a first for me.”

  “My grandmother’s Jewishness was always hidden from me,” I explained, “I was raised as a super-strict Catholic, then became an agnostic, spent decades as an agnostic, then a few years ago I became Jewish myself. I’m still kind of agnosticish, but I like to go to Temple and get the vision of God out there bringing on the dark and bringing on the light; God out there, God inside me, God, God, God. Then there’s always a little oneg (party) after every service, you sit around and have coffee and cookies, meet all your friends.”

  “I don’t believe in anything myself,” said Nurse Gomez, getting up, getting ‘‘professional’’ again; warm but professional. I was just a client, not an old friend, she didn’t want me to forget that, “Of course I did when I was younger, but—and I don’t want to sound cynical, but—then I grew up . . .”

  Shaking my hand, muy amable (very amiable), but the distance was there.

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. You too.”

  I walked back to my mother’s room, thinking, thinking, thinking: so it was all a lie, the whole time I was growing up, one big lie, hide this, hide that, never just let me in on the facts. And what would have been wrong to let me in on the facts, to have simply said “Your grandmother was Jewish, when her mother was killed/died her father married the mother’s sister but she didn’t get along with her so she left home and started cleaning houses for a living, was taken in by a Mrs. Seidel, who owned a bar, and she started working in the bar, someone tried to rape her one night when she was on a date, she ran away and got on this streetcar that was passing by and eventually married the streetcar conductor, James Patrick Mangan. She converted to Catholicism when they got married.”

  Period.

  She could have maintained contact with her father, unless he had cut off from her.

  Or how about her saying “When I left home my father got furious and told me he never wanted to see me again, but maybe you can see him . . .”

  That old man in the toy store, remember?

  How about him telling me, “I’m your great-grandfather. Your grandmother and I don’t get along, but that’s no reason why you and I can’t get along.”

  Or had Jake taken me down to see him on the sly; more tricky stuff?

  I’ll never know.

  There was undoubtedly a whole world out there that I never knew, was allowed to become part of.

  I went back to my mother’s room, called the airline and got what they called a red-eye flight back to Michigan, leaving at midnight, then got a cab and went to downtown Pomona, bought a couple of the biggest suitcases I could find, went back to my mother’s room again and packed all the silver in the suitcases, went into the closets and put a mink stole in between the huge coffee urn and creamer, wrapped everything in clothes so that nothing would get dented, bring down the value, went to the main desk and found out where my mother’s funeral home was, the people who were going to bury her, out in Hemet, where my father was buried, back to the room again, called up, “Listen, I’m Mrs. Helen Fox’s son, I can’t stay for the funeral, but I’d like to see my mother’s body, one last personal farewell.”

  “It will cost you two hundred dollars if we send a car for you. A taxi isn’t much better.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Hung up.

  Did I want to see her anyhow?

  What was the point?

  All the years of promising me, “When I die you’ll be a wealthy man. That’s what we always wanted for you . . .” Then giving it all to Judy.

  I’d have to get a lawyer, wouldn’t I? Take it to court.

  No, I wouldn’t go see the body. Forget it.

  Put all her jewelry into the old black bag I’d brought with me. Looked at the furniture, all the fake antiquish tables and chairs and lamps, credenzas, the closets full of her silks and satins, hundreds of pairs of ankle-strap shoes, the bathroom piled with makeup and creams, hair-dryers, cuticle scissors, eyebrow pencils, fancy little plastic hats to put on in the shower, hair curlers . . .

  She should have gone into films, been what she really was, an actress; mega-personality, instead of trying to turn a doctor’s wife’s life into the big screen. My father did OK as an M.D., but my mother wanted to be a Vanderbilt, McCormick, Hearst, Rockefeller, which she was never going to be married to my father. So the frustration was built in.

  I still had hours to wait, walked to downtown Pomona, found an Indian restaurant and went in and pigged up on everything I shouldn’t have eaten, everything that was guaranteed to give me diarrhea later on, then came back and called up Bernadete back in East Lansing, gave her the whole story.

  “I’ll get back . . . I’m leaving here at m
idnight, which will be three AM in Michigan . . . I don’t know, don’t worry about it . . . don’t meet me, I’ll just take a taxi home . . . OK, whatever you say.”

  Sat and watched TV, waited, went through all the drawers again, found some pictures of me when I was a kid, an old, old scrapbook where my mother had pasted anything and everything about me when I was growing up, an old program of Mozart’s The Magic Flute where I had appeared as Sarastro, the High Priest, the year my voice had changed from soprano to bass; a program of Mendelssohn’s Elijah with my name in the chorus, a violin recital when I was ten, my name in the Leo High School band folder as bassoon player, a program from my graduation from college, “with honors,” anything and everything like she was my chief fan and I was her hero. That’s what it all said, wasn’t it, “I love, you, I adore you, you are the center of my life.”

  Until the knife went in under my ribs.

  Disinherited.

  I checked everything through to Michigan, just carried the one bag with all the jewelry in it, got a taxi home, totally tired, confused, I didn’t know if it was eight in the morning or eight at night. It was crazier than a flight to Brazil or Lisbon.

  The magnificent coffee urn, creamer, sugar bowl on its huge silver platter all full of fruits and flowers looked great on the table in the dining room of my old Victorian house in the middle of East Lansing.

  Great old house.

  On top of this high hill, the highest point in East Lansing.

  I spread the silverware out on the table next to the coffee urn set.

  “What do you think?”

  “Beautful!” said Bernadete, “uma beleza.”

  Brazilian Portuguese. I tried to speak it, but the minute I opened my mouth in Brazil everyone immediately identified me as an (Spanish-speaking) Argentinian.

  “I want to give the coffee set to Margaret, the silverware to Marcella; I’ll sell the jewelry and give some money to Alexandra, Hughie and Chris, our baby-boy, well, when the time comes . . .”

  Three wives, six children. More about all that later.

  “Whatever you want to do,” she said with just a smidgen of disappointment in her voice. Of course I would have preferred to hang on to everything, too, but there was this other generous impulse inside me that turned me into Father Christmas all year around.

  I called up my lawyer, David Greenberg (it was four thirty in the afternoon I discovered, looking at the fake antique battery-run clock sitting on the credenza in the dining room), “Maybe we can talk tomorrow. My mother just disinherited me because I became Jewish, gave all the money to my cousin Judy in Chicago.”

  “Tomorrow at nine AM, how’s that?”

  “OK.”

  And that was settled. The next morning I was at Greenberg’s office at nine and he drafted up a letter to send to Judy:

  Dear Ms. Wieznewski:

  I have just been informed by my long-time client (and friend), Hugh Fox, that his mother has willed all the money that is rightfully his, to you, in order to punish him for having converted to Judaism, the religion of his maternal grandmother. As you know, Hugh is an only child and rightfully the money should just naturally be his.

  It makes no sense to take this to court and waste all sorts of money on legal fees. I think that if you look into your own heart, you will know what is right, and what you should do. It will be easy enough to have Mrs. Fox declared senile and incompetent to make any meaningful judgments, but why go through all sorts of needless pain and suffering—and expense?

  Sincerely,

  A. Greenberg L.L.D.

  “Very nice. Let’s see what she does.”

  And what she did, within a few days, after she’d gotten back from the funeral, was to write Greenberg and call me: “I never wanted or expected anything from Aunt Helen. Except maybe one of her diamond watches, just as a keepsake. She was always very sweet to me. She was always disappointed in having only one child and a boy at that. She had so much of herself to pass on to a girl. So she passed on a lot of herself to me. And that I can thank her for. Although, I always felt you were being slighted or ‘turned into a girl,’ if I can put it that way. And your having polio when you were a kid didn’t help. It really, how can I put it, ‘thrust’ you into her arms full-time. Besides, Gene is doing great in his plastic wrap business; we don’t really need anything. I mean you’re just a college professor and all—although now with Bernadete in a residency for pathology, once she finishes you ought to do rather well—and don’t tell me you didn’t bring an M.D. back with you from Brazil just by accident. But anyhow, what I’m going to do is send you a check for everything that Aunt Helen gave me. So forget the lawyers, and let’s just be friends. I’ve always felt you were the brother I never had, and I know you always felt I was the sister you never had, so let’s keep it that way, OK?”

  “OK with me, my friend. You know I’ve always cared about you, deeply, I mean . . .”

  And that was it.

  Within a few days I got the check, paid Greenberg, and when Bernadete and I went out to dinner with Cantor (Bruce) Wetzler and Miriam that weekend, over to the Gourmet Village Chinese next to the Michigan State campus, Bruce told me (as he dug into his Vegetarian Special), “So send her a check for ten thousand. It’s only fair. And keep peace in the family.”

  Which I did the next day.

  Another call from Judy. Much shorter this time.

  “Thanks for the ten thousand. And if you find an extra watch . . . and come down and stay with us in Chicago. We bought an extra apartment/loft over on the near South Side, great view of the Sears Tower and all of downtown Chicago. Let’s be pals again. Like when we were kids.”

  OK. So I sent her one of five diamond watches I had taken from my mother’s jewelry box.

  And everything was fine between us. Still is.

  She’s a funny woman.

  Just last year I was down in Chicago with my M.D. wife. A conference at the Drake Hotel; the usual: pathology.

  And one day I dressed up as my alternative self, Connie (more about that later), and my wife and I walked from the Drake all the way to the near South Side. Miles. No one noticed me. As Connie I disappeared in the crowd. Even when I talked.

  Got to Judy’s downtown apartment, rang the bell.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me.”

  The door opened, we went up to the top floor in the elevator, and there she was at the open door.

  She’d never seen me dressed as Connie before, sandals and pantyhose and a flimsy black dress, my bleached hair all over the place, slanted sunglasses that gave me an orientalesque look.

  No reaction. Nothing strange.

  “I’ve got chicken salad for lunch. Put some grapes into the salad, but if you don’t like them, out they come. Rye bread. Beer. A little beer never hurt anyone, especially during a Chicago summer . . .”

  Nice apartment. Stark. Basic.

  But the view out the north windows; I couldn’t believe the majestic sweep of it all, all the new skyscrapers, the lake; magnificent.

  “You don’t notice anything different about me?” I asked.

  “Well, I always knew about your other self and everything. You look fine—normal—more you in fact than in your other disguise.”

  “My other disguise?”

  Which gave me the giggles.

  She came over and gave me a hug. We were kids again. Pretend time. Lunchtime. Be together time. My mother’s tricky shit to turn us into enemies, while at the same time punishing me to death, simply hadn’t worked. Evil hadn’t triumphed!!!

  But my grandmother, my grandmother, my grandmother.

  It’s as if she’s still with me, as if I’d somehow bypassed my mother altogether, and was my grandmother’s son instead of grandson.

  Every Friday night, almost invariably, except like two weeks ago when I had a catheter in my bladder (prostate cancer) and a urine bag strapped to my leg, my wife and I go to the local synagogue.

  Not that I’m a believer, believe
that God ever talked to man.

  What I really believe, deep, deep down, is that we are in a universe that can’t possibly exist. How could the universe have been eternal? Everything has to begin, right? Even an eternal God. How can anything every have always been? Or, on the other hand, how can anything (the universe) ever have begun out of Nothingness. In the beginning was Nothingness, and then Nothingness began to be Somethingness . . .

  And if God was always talking to the ancient Jews, what happened to Him now? Why the end of dialogue . . . especially now when we most need it?

  So deep, deep down inside me I see everything around me as impossible. I can’t be, the stars and space, sun, moon, planets, are impossible.

  But, I go to the synagogue on Friday nights and a whole other worldview emerges. God is out there in the heavens, bringing on the light and bringing on the dark, worrying about us, part of Him inside us, our own little touch of divinity, everything in control, watched over, cared for.

  Which is what I want to believe, keeps me going. Especially now that I’m in the middle of chemotherapy for my prostate cancer.

  Then, after every service, there’s a little party, the oneg, and I’m back in some sort of little village again, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, rural Germany—before or after the Diaspora, it hardly makes a difference.

  Curt Gorwitz, who (as a child) actually survived the German concentration camps.

  “Howya doin’, pal?”

  Always a hug from Curt and his wife, Cathy.

  “Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten” (I don’t know what it means), I say to Curt, and he completes the line in German “dass I so traurig bin” (that I am so sad).

  Michael Rubner, this dean of something-or-other over at Michigan State (I’ve lost track since I retired), sitting a few rows up, turns and smiles, gives a little wave. Originally from Israel, when he gives the blessing of the wine in Hebrew, Baruch (Holy) atta (Art Thou) Adonai (Oh God) Elohainu (God) Melech (King) Haolam (of the universe), it really sounds like real Hebrew, slushy, explosive, emphatic. None of that ironed out, Americanized stuff.