Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  When I did, he handed me a letter. “Read it.”

  It was from Aaron, his son, now forty-six years old. They hadn’t seen each other for twenty years. He wrote he had heard about Bernie’s illness, that he was sorry and hoped he improved. He wanted his father to know that after many years of drug addiction, five years ago he had at last found help and kicked the habit. He had a job he enjoyed, was living in Iowa with a woman he loved and got to spend summers with his teenage son, Isaac, from a previous marriage. He didn’t want anything from Bernie, although he would like to come see him, but he hoped Bernie would pay for Isaac’s college education, since he was a bright boy and deserved a future. Aaron doubted that his salary as a teaching assistant would be enough or was likely to change. “I’m not an ambitious man,” he added. He was being frank, he wrote, because he knew Bernie didn’t like people asking him for money and he thought if he were indirect that would only make the request more irritating. He wasn’t asking anything for himself. He was sorry that he had been such a disappointment, that although he felt he had reasons for the hard times he’d gone through, he understood he was responsible for his estrangement from Bernie, his divorce, and his limited career prospects. Nevertheless, he didn’t think it was fair for his son to be punished for his own fuck-ups. Believe it or not, the letter ended, “I love you.”

  I read the letter twice. I wasn’t happy about it. I felt Aaron was unnecessarily guilty and brusque and pathetic. His current life wasn’t that limited. He enjoyed teaching, was writing short stories, and had had three published. He loved his second wife very much. She was pregnant, a fact he omitted. And I felt he should have bragged more about Isaac, a delightful, intelligent young man. Bernie would have been proud, if the presentation had been more realistic, less manipulative, less ashamed. Obviously, I had been in touch with Aaron for many years, although Bernie didn’t know. That had been Aaron’s wish and I kept the secret. Secrets follow me everywhere, I thought. “Did you know about this?” Uncle asked.

  “The letter? No.”

  “How about Aaron?”

  “Yes.”

  Bernie took the letter. He shook his head at me, smiling wanly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was none of your business.”

  Bernie grunted, amused. He put the letter on the pile of documents. “You helped him, right? That’s how he got treatment.”

  “I gave him a phone number. That’s all. He did it, Uncle. Don’t turn it into that.”

  “So you want me to do what he asks?”

  “Isaac’s a bright boy. He should be able to go to college and not have to worry about tuition and living expenses and so on.”

  “What’s he want to be? Aaron doesn’t say.”

  “Musician. Plays the trumpet. Wants to go to Oberlin. He has a lot of talent.”

  “Another artist.” Bernie gingerly lifted his glass of water to his lips and sipped. He smacked them afterwards, just a little, yet there was something infantile about it. “What a creative family I have. I’m so lucky.”

  “You are lucky.”

  “Oh? I spent my whole life, every fucking minute, doing things for my family. They’re ungrateful and they’re a mess. Can you explain that to me?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I bet you can. I bet you can explain so my hair would stand on end.”

  “You’re angry at me?”

  “You should have told me. Not telling me means you think I’m a child. Or a bully. Is Aaron my fault? Was that my fault, his blowing his mind on drugs, was that my fault?”

  “I’m a head shrinker, Uncle. Not a rabbi. I’m not an expert in blame.”

  “A lot you know. Rabbis are experts at fund-raising. No.” Uncle pushed Aaron’s letter away. It fell off the pile on its end, like a car that had been pushed off a cliff. “Nobody’s to blame for anything,” he said bitterly.

  “Why are you angry at me, Uncle?”

  “You should be my doctor,” he said casually. He looked at Manhattan. The sun was going down, casting a slanting light on the glass towers of Midtown. “I told you I wanted you to cure cancer.” He smiled slyly. “I knew this day would come.”

  “I’m …” I was about to say, I’m sorry, but that was foolish and untrue. I had what many might feel is a harsh point of view toward this situation. Uncle was over eighty years old. The belief that facing death in old age should be to struggle wildly is too immature and unrealistic for me to accept. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” is a failure to understand nature. Bernie was used to controlling events, but that had also done great harm to his relationships. I had hoped he would face his end with more grace. That was childish of me, as well. But, for better or worse, he had become my father and I wished he would set a better example for me. The last gift a parent can give is the lesson of how to die.

  Bernie waited for me to elaborate. When I kept silent, he continued, “You didn’t say on the phone what you think of this treatment.”

  “Treatment?”

  “Yes, treatment. What is it, if it isn’t a treatment?”

  “There are other options. Options that would be less painful, less—”

  “But I’d die. No question, they tell me.”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m going to die anyway, that’s what you think.”

  “You’re forty years older than the other test cases. The only reason they approved you for this is because of your money.”

  “You think you’re telling me something I don’t know?”

  “You might live for up to a year, relatively comfortably, with normal treatment.”

  “Relatively comfortably,” he repeated and shook his head.

  “There would be time to see Aaron, to meet your grandson, to say your goodbyes to everyone who’s important to you.”

  “The people who are important to me are here.”

  “But no one says goodbye, right? That would be unsupportive.”

  Bernie smiled at me. He slapped my knee. “Only you. You’re the only one who has the balls to tell me I can’t make it.”

  “Maybe you can make it. But maybe it isn’t worth it.”

  “To live another five, ten years?” He stared at me. I nodded. “That isn’t worth it?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Maybe not.”

  “You’re crazy.’

  “You don’t know what crazy is, Uncle,” I said.

  We both laughed. Uncle took another sip of water. When he replaced the glass, he raised Aaron’s letter from its wrecked position and restored it to the top of the pile. “Is this grandson of mine, this paragon Isaac, is he white?”

  I was surprised. I thought for a moment. “You’ve checked up on him.”

  “That black wife of his—”

  “Ex-wife.”

  Uncle waved his hand. “She the one who got him on drugs?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. She’s the one who kicked him out. Made him face the addiction.”

  “Bernie Rabinowitz’s one real grandson has rhythm,” he said in a mocking tone; but it sounded hollow. His daughter, Helen, had never been able to conceive. Her two children were adopted.

  “Look at your nephew,” I said, pointing to me. “The Rabinowitzes are a regular United Nations.”

  Bernie smacked his lips. “I’m dry all the time. Get me some water, please. There’s fancy water in that refrigerator.”

  The refrigerator was only one of a number of conveniences added to the room. Besides the table covered with papers, there was a stereo system, a Xerox machine, tape recorders for dictation and a huge device that I didn’t know was a first-generation fax.

  Pat looked in while I brought him a glass of Evian. “Helen and the kids are here.”

  “And the genius?”

  “Helen said Jerry’s still at the office. He’ll be here soon.”

  “We’ll be a little longer,” Bernie said imperiously, his usual tone with Pat.

  She rolled her eyes, but disappeared compliantl
y.

  “She’s the only one who takes and doesn’t whine.”

  “How about me?”

  “You criticize. That’s worse than whining.”

  “Does Jerry whine?” I asked, referring to Helen’s husband, now the president of Uncle’s company.

  “Jerry loses my money and blames everything and everyone but his stupid management.” This was an old complaint. In the early seventies Uncle had retired from the day-to-day management of his company, turning it over to his son-in-law. To Bernie’s amazement, Jerry sold off Home World, the discount electronics and appliance chain Bernie had bought and expanded in the sixties. With profits from the sale, Jerry invested heavily in Manhattan real estate. Not the low- to middle-income housing that had made Bernie rich in the forties and fifties, but elaborate office buildings and luxury apartment complexes. At first, Wall Street loved his maneuvers. In 1972, various improprieties came to light—four city inspectors eventually went to jail—and then the 1973 recession hit New York hard. By 74, the value of Uncle’s company’s stock dropped from twenty-three dollars a share to seventy-five cents, demolishing Bernie’s and Jerry’s paper worth from six hundred million dollars to less than thirty million. Uncle came out of retirement. In a series of dazzling moves, he rescued the situation. He called on his old friends, made sweetheart deals with banks, billed and cooed with the state and city government, and managed not only to keep Jerry out of prison, but out of the papers too. By 1980 Bernie had restored the stock to ten dollars a share. In an act of generosity and loyalty—it seemed to me—Bernie stepped aside for Jerry again. This second succession was going better. By 1988, the stock was up to twenty-five and Bernie had returned to the Forbes list of the one hundred richest Americans.

  “I thought Jerry is doing great now,” I said.

  “Ronald Reagan did great,” Bernie said. “Jerry went along for the ride.” Bernie took another long drink of water. I was reminded of my mother; he didn’t see the world very differently from her. He believed, as did she, that social tides bear individuals at their whim, that often successful businessmen are driftwood who imagine they are Olympic swimmers. Indeed, Bernie’s edge had been the clear vision of his brand of Marxism: he didn’t try to make waves, he rode them. As if he were thinking along those lines, he wiped his lips and said, “It’s time to get out of real estate, especially in New York,” he said. “He thinks Bush will keep things good. They’re so greedy,” Bernie said. “It isn’t hard to make money. Buy low and sell high, that’s what’s hard. But these geniuses think the good times go on forever. I keep telling him, it’s supply and demand. We’ve built and built and built. Prices have to come down. The Japs want our real estate, he says, that proves things are going up.” Bernie grunted. “I’m supposed to take that seriously? I know this city.” Bernie nodded at his view of Manhattan, certainly commanding and panoramic. His buildings were reduced in size, toys for the gigantic hands of his wealth and power. “Nobody makes things anymore. Maybe they will again, after the disaster, maybe …” He grunted. “It’s gone. My father’s world is gone.”

  “Have you been in the Korean grocery stores?”

  “What?” Bernie looked at me sharply, squinting, as if I had brought him something to examine.

  “They remind me of the old Jewish delis. Whole families work. The children. Everybody. Twenty-fours a day, seven days a week. The kids do their homework between making change.”

  “They’re fools too,” Bernie said. “My father was a good man, but he was a fool.” He laughed suddenly. “Kids do their homework and make change. You approve?”

  “I approve and I don’t.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “They include their children in their work, I like that. Apprenticeship has many benefits. Much less alienating than going to school well into adulthood for what amounts to learning a trade from a stranger. But they have no childhood and that’s too hard. They may grow up to be hardworking, decent and successful, but their hearts will be empty. They’ll never feel joy as adults because they have nothing in the bank to draw on.”

  Bernie stared at me, his head trembling slightly. His eyes were fierce, as challenging as ever. “It’s better they grow up to be drug addicts like the blacks?”

  “No. But there should be some other choice.”

  “Your trouble is, you think people can be happy.”

  “I think they should be given the chance.”

  “Enough. It isn’t that I think you’re wrong.” Bernie glanced at his pile of papers, at Aaron’s letter. “I know you’re wrong,” he said quietly. “Now listen,” he leaned toward me, although he lowered his eyes. “If this goes badly for me, I’ve left enough for you to try to save the world.” His head came up with a broad smile, dentures gleaming. His attitude was a confusing mix of humor and malice. “You want to help this grandson of mine, go ahead. They get nothing from me.”

  “What happens if you live?”

  “Tough.” Bernie took another sip. I said nothing. I didn’t believe him. He put the glass down and said, “Go and get my adoring family.”

  This was goodbye. Too many others had gone without my acknowledgment. I took his trembling hand. He was surprised, but gripped me hard. My thumb brushed across the white knots of hair, the knuckles that had fascinated me so long ago. “I love you, Uncle. You saved my life.”

  Tears welled in his hard eyes. He shook his head as if denying it.

  “No, I’m not pretending there weren’t things you did wrong. And that I did wrong. I don’t mean that. I mean, you did the best you could and it was more than enough. I’m grateful.”

  He covered my thumb with his other hand and squeezed, a tear falling. He shut his eyes, sighed, and said, “I’m proud of you.” We sat there, holding hands, for a while. When he opened them again, his eyes were red. “Are you happy?”

  I nodded. “Sometimes.”

  “Because of your work?”

  I nodded. He sighed again. “You did a good thing with those Grayson kids in Boston. Is that what you’ll do with my money? Help kids?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  Bernie nodded. He let go of my hand, shut his eyes, and put his fingers to them, pressing as if he wanted to push them into his skull. “Okay,” he sighed, straightened, and looked at me. His eyes were clearer, but still sad and guarded. “Okay,” he repeated and added in a doomed voice: “I’m ready to see them.”

  Two days later, he was dead. As I feared, his last forty-eight hours were spent in an agonized delirium. From my internship, I was used to the wreck medicine can make of a human being and, with everyone’s permission, I made sure that once Uncle was too far gone, there were no more resuscitations. By the time they let him go in peace, his heart had been restarted twice. At the finish, the bold thirteen-year-old who once led a band of Jewish kids in triumphant battle against the toughest of the Irish gangs weighed less than eighty pounds. It was an ugly death, unworthy of him.

  I finally reached Toni the day of my uncle’s funeral. She had two free hours a week and would be glad to see Gene. When I called Gene, he greeted my brief explanation of Toni with a doubtful, “Oh.”

  “You sound unhappy.”

  “I don’t mean to be sexist, but …”

  “You’re uncomfortable with a woman therapist?”

  “Well … You know, I’ve been sleeping pretty well since I called you. So maybe … Or is that—like when you’re on your way to the dentist—the tooth stops hurting?”

  “Could be. If you see her and don’t like her, I’ll be happy to get you the name of a male therapist.”

  “Okay,” he said in a forlorn tone that meant it wasn’t okay. I was too tired and sad to explore it further. I had a thought that deserved to be analyzed: this guy is bad luck for me. I was in distress, not only about Uncle’s death and funeral. Ahead of me that day was the uncomfortable prospect of seeing Julie for the first time since her father’s death. She was then unmarried and childless.

 
I didn’t have long to wait. I saw her standing alone outside the temple in Great Neck, on the fringe of the parking lot, smoking a cigarette. Although Julie was, besides being the mother of two, a movie producer living in L.A., she allowed her hair to show gray. She was right to. The streaks of white threading her flowing black hair added to her elegance. She tossed the cigarette down and opened her arms to greet me. From my car as I pulled in, she had looked worried and upset. That surprised me. She never liked Uncle and the incident at Columbia banned him permanently from her heart. I was pleased that, as I walked toward her, her unhappy expression relaxed and she smiled.

  “Oh, Rafe,” she whispered in my ear while we hugged. “Is this what the future has in store for us? These fucking funerals?”

  Embracing her called up sexual memories for me: resting my head on her belly; her behind bucking in my palms as she climaxed; toes stroking my pants under the table at a bizarre Seder at Aunt Sadie’s. I was naughty about this embrace in our mourning clothes. I pressed against her and didn’t let go until she pushed me off with enough emphasis so that her discomfort was clear.

  “You look great,” I said, my husky voice concealing nothing.

  “I do not. I’m an old mother of two.”

  “Don’t fish. You know you look great.”

  She smiled. “Okay. Thanks.” She patted her stomach. “I worked hard, believe me. It’s against the law to have a tummy in L.A.” Without a break, her face crumpled into the worry I had seen from the car. “Mom’s upset. She’s really bad. Worse than even for Daddy.” I nodded. Julie searched her black purse and came out with a cigarette.

  “I thought you gave them up.”

  “Just while pregos. I don’t smoke around the kids or Richard.” That was her husband. “He’d kill me.”

  “You smoke secretly from your husband?”