“I’m probably gonna call you tomorrow,” Gene said. “I’m probably gonna be back here in a week.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“But just in case I pull this off, I want to thank you for—” he interrupted himself to say, “You know I spoke to Dad the other day.”
“How is he?”
“Complaining, as always. His career’s not going well. But, anyway, he asked me how I was doing and I told him, I really told him. Everything. You know.”
“Halley also?”
“Yep. And he actually lectured me about how important it was to try to keep my family together. Can you believe it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I remember how long he tried to.”
“I guess that’s right. Anyway, he said, even though he had a hard time living with Mom, that the years we were together, you know, when I was a kid, that, in the end, it was the happiest time of his life.” Gene swallowed, moved. When he could speak easily, he added, “He told me when he has another show, he’s going to put a picture of me and Mom in it, a picture he took when I was a child.” Tears appeared in Gene’s solemn eyes, the same worried and yet trusting eyes that had looked at me furtively thirteen years before, pleading for rescue. “He said I was a good son and that he was proud of me. He said he knew I would do the right thing.”
“I agree with him,” I said.
Gene sighed. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to say that to compliment myself.”
“You’re sure about that?” I asked with a smile.
“Really,” he smiled back. “I meant to say that I would never been able to talk to him about all this if it weren’t for you. I would never have been able to get through Black Dragon, or have had the nerve to come on to Halley. Even if that was wrong, it made me happy. It’s thanks to you.”
“Well, you’re welcome. But you—”
He interrupted. “I know. I did it. Still. Thanks.”
He stood up, dressed that day in fashionable black shoes, faded blue-jeans, a black polo shirt, and a light gray sport jacket, his hair slicked back, his eyes, at our parting, at last direct and unafraid. He put out his hand and said, “I hope this is goodbye, Dr. Neruda.”
As I shook it, I have to admit a surge of vanity: I was proud of what I had wrought.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Closure
JOSEPH STEIN DIED A YEAR AFTER MY LAST SESSION WITH GENE. HE survived less than two years since testing positive, a mere fourteen months following the first symptoms of full-blown AIDS. To the horror of his colleagues and friends, he made no attempt to stave off the disease, refusing not only standard therapies but those in the experimental stage that, in his privileged position, he could have had access to. He dropped out of sight after the onset, severing contact with everyone, including his lover, Harlan. No one knew that he took a long tour of Asia and Europe. Later we found out that during his travels he twice fell ill with pneumonia and tried to avoid hospitalization. The second time, the delay in getting treatment killed him: the infection was too far gone and complications led to heart failure. He died, of all places, in Poland. His behavior was pointed, clearly suicidal. He knew better than anyone that with proper preventative care he might have lived for many years. I learned of his death from his mother. She nursed him for the final three days of his life. At last her nightmare came true: she returned to the scene of the Holocaust, to the sick bed of a son who was vulnerable to every germ.
Surely Joseph meant something by these actions. Whether they were a rebuke or a homage to his parents, I don’t know. Whether his purposeful trip to Poland while dying—he collapsed at the Warsaw airport—was part of a delusion or merely curiosity about the scene of his parents’ drama, again I don’t know. Mrs. Stein didn’t volunteer if she knew and I felt asking whether he explained himself to her was inappropriate. Besides, she might be ignorant of his reasons. Until he called to say he was dying in a hospital in Warsaw, she hadn’t heard from him in a year. She told me when she arrived the next day at his bedside, he was incoherent most of the time. She reported that in one of his lucid moments he said there was something in his will for me, and I had better do what he asked or he would never let me win at chess. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“He always beat meHe always beat me,” I said. “He was always smarter than me and he liked to remind me of it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her calmness, now widowed and without her child, intimidated me. She was tiny. Her pale skin hardly obscured the veins and bones of her hands. Her chin quivered all the time and her eyes were as lifeless as a doll’s. Yet speaking of her son, her voice was strong, apparently untroubled. “He was crazy. Didn’t know what he was saying. He was very fond of you. He probably thought it was a funny joke. He liked making people laugh,” she said, a quality of Joseph’s that I must have missed.
I understood when the will was read. Other than a trust fund for Mrs. Stein, he left his money to Harlan. Joseph’s cold behavior to his lover, breaking off their relationship and making contact impossible, only intensified Harlan’s grief. He said, “Fuck you,” when we heard the clause leaving the money to him, but he broke down on his way out, sagging into the arms of a mutual friend to sob. Mrs. Stein watched them comfort each other impassively. She seemed all the more isolated because she hadn’t met most of Joseph’s intimates until his memorial service. I felt useless to her and angry at Joseph. I was angry at him for many things, in particular his legacy to me. His message referred to the fact that he left me his papers, all his research on the brain, in the hope, he wrote, that I would use my skill to explain his theories to the general public. Was that nastiness? Egomania?
To my surprise, Diane took his side. “I think you’re wrong,” she said to my speculation. We were walking home from the lawyer’s office in Midtown to our apartment on the West Side. It was an early spring day. Although cool, the sun was out. Central Park was crowded with people wearing as few clothes as they could bear. “He left things to only three people—his mother, Harlan and you. The three people he loved most.”
“Or resented the most.”
“Come on, Rafe. And he left you his work, the thing he valued most. He’s trusted you with it, even though he knows you don’t agree with him. That’s quite a compliment.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it just amuses him to think of me saddled with the job of disseminating ideas I don’t agree with.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that highly of Joseph. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he was too much of an egomaniac to risk throwing away his life’s work just to tease you. He trusted you. He knew you’ll do him justice.”
“Fuck you, Joseph,” I said. But I began reading and making notes on his papers the following weekend.
Two weeks later I took on a collaborator for the job, Amy Glickstein, a brilliant young neurobiologist who shares Joseph’s faith in biochemical determinism. I asked for her help after an incident of great significance in my personal life that changed my attitude as to whether I was fit for the job of exclusively representing a point of view other than my own. My father returned to the United States. I learned this in a straightforward way, but it was still a shock. On a Thursday afternoon, I picked up the phone at the clinic and a reedy male voice asked in Spanish if I was Rafael Neruda. When I said yes, the caller continued in rapid Spanish that I couldn’t follow. I interrupted, asking if he could speak English.
“Not good English. I am Francisco Neruda,” he announced.
I stared into space for what felt like a long time, but was probably only a moment. I said without thinking, “No, you’re not.”
“Yes. That’s my name. But they call me Cuco. I am your half-brother?”
Then I understood. Embarrassed, I said, “Of course, of course.” And I added, foolishly, “Nice to meet you.” I continued to fumble. “I mean, talk to you. We never met, so …” At last, I stopped the silliness. “Perdóname. I didn’t know your name. In fact, I don’t really know anything abou
t you. I’m sorry, but no one told me. Are you Carmelita’s son? Born in, let’s see—?”
He interrupted. “That is correct. I’m twenty-eight years. No one informed you of anything?”
“Informed me about you?”
“No. Excuse me. I’m not clear. My father—excuse me—our father, he thought … He asked me to call.”
“Is he here? Are you here? Are you calling from the States?”
He told me they were in Tampa. Grandpa Pepín was having trouble with his mind, he said, and they had come to take care of him. I spoke to Pepín every other month and he seemed to be in excellent physical health, except for arthritis in his knees that especially annoyed him because he could no longer garden. He was ninety-two years old, living alone in the same house whose porch and lawn were the scene of my World Series injury. He didn’t like to travel and, for reasons the reader well understands, I didn’t care to visit Tampa. I hadn’t seen him in six years. Listening to my half-brother’s brief explanation, I felt so many different pangs of guilt that I almost laughed. No matter how many psychological textbooks I might consult, here was one situation where I was the bad guy, pure and simple. Three male relatives were down there whom I had neglected or betrayed or pretended didn’t exist. Once I accepted the fact that I was hopelessly and forever in the wrong, I relaxed. Selfjustification may do wonders for the ego, but it’s exhausting and probably bad for the hairline as well. “How can I help?” I asked. “Do you need the names of doctors?”
“No, thank you. Abuelo has a doctor. Dr. Garcia.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, a little peeved. After all, when Pepín outlived two generations’ worth of Latin doctors, I had helped find younger men such as Garcia, each time warning the new doctor to conceal the fact that his parents were anti-Castro refugees from Cuba. Grandpa didn’t trust non-Hispanics or anti-Communists to treat him—the truth is, he wasn’t that happy about putting his health in the care of people a third his age no matter what their ethnicity or politics. Although I had seen Pepín only five times since I was a child, I liked to think I had done my best to stay in touch and help. But who was I kidding? I wasn’t close to him. Pepín had never told me about my half-brother or my father’s whereabouts, claiming he didn’t know, when obviously he did. “Tell me, what’s wrong exactly? You said he’s having trouble with his mind?”
“He can’t help himself. He needs someone to cook and clean.”
“But there’s a woman who comes,” I began, again referring to something I had arranged. There was no shaking off my guilty desire to prove I had made some attempt to be good. I was ashamed that Grandpa Pepín had lapsed into senility and I hadn’t noticed from our phone conversations.
“Yes? A woman comes?” My brother seemed surprised.
I heard someone in the background call out, “Cuco?”
“A moment, please,” he said. He talked to the voice in Spanish.
I held my breath. I became conscious of my heart beating. I swallowed the welling in my throat. I was sure the voice I heard answer faintly was my father’s.
My brother resumed speaking to me. “Understand,” he said, meaning, I think, not that I should understand, but that he understood. “Abuelo needs help twenty-four hours. He’s,” he lowered his voice as if trying not to be overhead, “forgetting. He doesn’t always know you. Excuse me. I don’t mean you. I mean any person.”
“I understand. Are you looking for a full-time nurse or a home? What kind of care are you—”
“Excuse me,” Cuco interrupted. He spoke to the voice in the background. Again, I remained still, straining to hear. There was a distant groan of irritation. Cuco said, “Wait.”
Immediately, a deep resonant voice took over the line. A voice I had known all my life.
“Rafe, it’s me.” The strength and self-assurance was unmistakable, and also unchanged, as though not a day had passed. “Your grandfather insisted I inform you. We have to find him a nursing home. Goddammit,” he mumbled, not to me, presumably about the situation. “He wants you here,” he resumed in a commanding voice. “Come or not as you like. I don’t give a fuck,” he added casually, without the malice his curse implied. “I promised him I would call. I’ve kept my promise.” I heard the hollow noise of the receiver clatter home to its cradle and the connection died.
I felt for a while that I, not Ma Bell, had been silenced. Mine did last longer. The phone rang—actually it doesn’t ring, it coos like an electronic bird. I answered mechanically and made up some excuse, saying I had to call back, instead of finding out what was wanted. I recovered from the shock by thinking about how to go. Straight to the airport? Not bother to pack, just get on the first plane? Should I tell Diane and let her come along? Would she insist? Should I go at all? I have to admit I was tempted to ignore them. If I pretended they were phantoms perhaps I would be guilty of nothing. I knew myself too well to do that; this was one of the times in my life when I wished I had never read a psychology book.
And yet I did behave as if I had never been analyzed or was capable of self-analysis. I called Julie. I had to look up her office number and it turned out to be wrong anyway. The person who answered told me her new one. I got through the area code and the exchange before stopping. What in God’s name could Julie say that would help?
At least I had come out of my paralysis. I phoned several airlines and booked two tickets on a flight in four hours. That should be enough time to go home, pack, and get to the airport. I went down the hall to catch Diane as one of her sessions ended. First, I told her I had to find a nursing home for Grandpa. She asked how long I thought I would be gone. Then I said that my father was down there. She walked to the receptionist and asked her to cancel our appointments for Friday. I guess I was testing her. She passed.
On the flight I told her stories of Tampa. What she knew of my childhood was really the big picture, the lurid highlights, but it wasn’t those things that lived in my head. I ended up talking mostly about Grandmother Jacinta’s indulgences of me: making grilled cheese sandwiches at ten o’clock at night, storing up natillas in the refrigerator, watching me through the screen door while I played on the street, calling out that I should come in for lemonade. I could feel the cool hand of her palm on my forehead as I sat at her yellow Formica table and gulped the drink. I was moved by the memories. Diane held my hand. I stayed quiet after that, surprised by the spreading lights of Tampa at night. I didn’t remember the city being so big. I mentioned that to Diane. She surprised me by saying that she’d read in the Times it was one of the fastest growing cities in America. The airport was certainly large, as if they expected millions to arrive. In fact it was eerily deserted.
When I gave the address to the cab driver, he picked up a book of city street maps, looked in an index, then flipped to a brightly colored page. He said, “What was that address?”
I told him again. “Sixteen fifty-three St. Claire Street.”
“You sure you got the right address?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s not a hotel. There are no hotels there.”
“No. We’re staying in a house.”
He looked in the rearview mirror at me. “You been there before?”
“What’s the problem?” Diane asked me.
“It’s the right address,” I said to him and continued to Diane in a normal tone, so the driver could hear, “Since the area is mostly black he’s assuming I’ve got the wrong address. It used to be a very poor, but respectable Latin working-class neighborhood. Now it’s crack heaven. And worse,” I added, “the spies have moved out and the niggers have moved in.”
The driver pulled away from the curb, but he glanced at me in the mirror, checking whether I was being sarcastic. I showed nothing. “Is it safe for your grandfather to live there?” Diane asked.
“He’s lived there for seventy years. I couldn’t get him to move.”
“That’s a shame,” the driver said. “So Grandpa’s stuck with the house. Probably can’t sell it.�
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“Probably not,” I agreed.
“You never said anything about that,” Diane commented. It sounded like a complaint to me. “Weren’t you worried about an old man living in a neighborhood like that?”
“Who me? You know I never worry about anything.” She didn’t laugh. “He told me once he would rather be dead than move. I thought that closed the subject.”
She peered at me, squinting at the flashing lights of passing cars, saying nothing, waiting as if my answer wasn’t satisfactory.
“His politics,” I said softly. “Remember their politics? ‘Rise with your class,’” I quoted, “‘not out of it.’ He would never move.”
She looked away, at the window on her side. “I guess it’s hard to leave a place you’ve lived in your whole life,” she commented. I was annoyed. That was a shrink talking: arguing with my understanding of my world.
“His closest friend left about twenty-five years ago,” I said, “when the first blacks moved to St. Claire Street. So did all the cousins of my generation. They moved to nice middle-class neighborhoods. If he’d gone with them he’d have familiar people and things around him. It’s not so clear that staying was timidity on his part. When his block was integrated, the black families who moved in were respectable working-class people. Grandpa was the first Latin to knock on their doors and invite them over. He’s still good friends with the family next door. In fact, they keep an eye on him. They’re not any happier than he is about what crack has done to the neighborhood. I know it’s hard for those of us who live in New York to remember, Diane, but there are people who act out of principle, rather than neurosis.”
Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil Page 52