Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  “I don’t know if it will be that long.” But the way he spoke, with the curious speculation of someone observing his own life, made her think it might be even longer.

  “Come upstairs with me,” she said. “Say goodbye to my housemates. Say goodbye to my dog.”

  Her housemates were gone when they got upstairs, but Kingsley jumped up and licked her brother’s face.

  Arlo didn’t even remove his coat. “Take care of yourself, pup.”

  Those were the last words he said, and they hadn’t even been to her. She stood at the window as he walked down the path, until he was out of sight.

  25

  Sarah got to the admissions office early. Unlike Arlo, she’d made an appointment. Her posture was fine, but it wasn’t getting her across any thresholds.

  The dean was about fifty-five, with a full head of silver hair, and he wore a navy blazer and an open-collared shirt. He’d been a professor once, but academia hadn’t been for him, so he moved into administration.

  “Do you know Arlo Zackheim?” she said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “He’s my half brother.”

  The dean nodded. “I remember him vaguely.”

  She said, “Did my brother talk his way into Reed?”

  “All our students talk their way into Reed. It’s called an interview.”

  “But did he do it differently?” Her gaze alighted on a bookshelf, where an SAT prep book stuck out. Was that the book Arlo had told her about? “Would you be able to tell me my brother’s SAT score?”

  The dean laughed.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “First of all, I don’t remember your brother’s SAT score. Second of all, those scores are confidential.”

  “He told me a strange story,” she said, and she repeated Arlo’s story to the dean.

  “That is a strange story.”

  “So you’re saying it’s not true?”

  “I’m saying this sounds like a family matter.” The dean wrote down the phone number for student counseling and escorted her to the door.

  * * *

  —

  As he left Portland that night, Arlo wondered whether Sarah believed anything about him. Checking out the alma mater? Well, yes, he’d gone to Reed. But the reason he’d come back was to see her again. He couldn’t admit it, so he’d wandered around campus for hours until he found her at the café.

  He had, in fact, done well on the SAT—not as well as he’d claimed, but well enough. That story he’d told about the dean? The truth was, he hadn’t even met him. He was admitted to college the regular way. But this demeaned him, felt like an indignity.

  Did he want to be the next Steve Jobs? Absolutely. But he had no idea why Steve Jobs had dropped out, and he hadn’t been planning to drop out himself.

  He had trouble, though, going to class; he was busy with his programming business. And it was insulting to write papers and study for exams. He got Cs and Ds that first semester. If he’d played the game and gone to class, he could have gotten As. But what if he’d gone to class and hadn’t gotten As? So he cut bait before someone else could cut it for him.

  He was doing well in tech, rising up the ranks at Yahoo, but the reason he was driving through the night was to be back in San Francisco the next morning for his classes at San Francisco State. Though once he got back, he slept through them anyway.

  A year later, he transferred again, this time to UC Berkeley. He hated college, but he needed to graduate in order to go to medical school.

  The problem was, his academic record was spotty. An A in organic chemistry, an A in physics, but Bs, Cs, and Ds in his other classes, a penchant for excellence when he set his mind to things and an almost principled resistance to doing so. His MCATs, like his SATs, were strong. The medical schools didn’t know what to make of him. They turned him down, except for a medical school in Grenada, but all he knew about Grenada was that Reagan had bombed it, and he wasn’t going to medical school there.

  In August, he got off the waitlist at the University of Nevada. He left Yahoo with his stock options. He could live off the money for a while, and if he didn’t like medical school he could ski and prowl the casinos.

  There were only sixty-five students in his medical school class, but a month into the semester he was introduced to a classmate, who said, “You go here?” He had no idea why he’d gone to medical school, or why he’d endured premed. Because of a conversation he’d had years ago with his sister, something she probably couldn’t even recall? Because they’d said they’d be doctors together? In a few years, when Sarah was in med school herself, he would tell himself it was because of him, but he felt as if she were taunting him, reminding him she was the favored child.

  He didn’t even bother to withdraw from school: he simply left. By Thanksgiving, back in San Francisco, he had trouble remembering he’d ever been gone. Yahoo offered to take him back, but he was already working at his start-up.

  26

  The next time Sarah saw Arlo, she had graduated from college and was back in New York, applying to medical school. “Dad’s been given a new rank,” she told him over the phone. “There’s a ceremony for him.”

  “Have the cardinals convened? I always knew Dad would someday be pope.”

  “Not pope,” she said. “University Professor.” It meant you transcended department. In theory, at least, their father could be a dramaturge now. He could teach physics, or Portuguese.

  “So you’re inviting me to the coronation?”

  She was. But when she told Arlo the date, he said he was busy. There would be other elevations, other honors: he would try to come next time.

  But as the cocktail hour started, she saw her brother from across the room. “Mom, Arlo’s here.”

  “Does Dad know?”

  She shook her head. She hadn’t even known herself.

  Her father, sipping a club soda, was conferring with the president and the provost. He looked up and saw Arlo. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, and he walked across the room to his son.

  “Dad.” Arlo had seen his father twice since Iowa, but not in the last couple of years. They hesitated for a moment, then hugged.

  “Son, you’re all grown up.”

  Arlo nodded.

  “Let’s take a walk,” his father said. “They can elevate me in absentia, for all I care.”

  They made their way across College Walk, Arlo’s father still sipping his club soda, Arlo with a cup of red wine. A man stood on the steps, playing the trumpet. A college kid was fiddling around with a golf club, swinging at an imaginary ball.

  Philosophy Hall was dark except for the illumination from the exit sign and from the small lamp on Arlo’s father’s desk. “Have a seat,” he said.

  Arlo spun around on his father’s chair, recalling visits to this office when he was a teenager, seated where he was now.

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have cleaned up.”

  “My start-up’s office is cluttered, too.”

  “It’s the sign of an organized mind.”

  “That’s what I tell myself.”

  Arlo’s father tapped the computer monitor. “They’ve given me one of these machines.”

  “Dad, it’s called a computer.”

  “That I know.”

  “Do you ever use it?”

  “Not when I can avoid it. I still write my lectures by hand, and my secretary types them up for me.”

  “And email?”

  “I use it occasionally. I prefer letters, or the phone. Come,” he said. “Show me what’s inside.” He seemed to think information was inside computers the way milk was inside the fridge. “Tell me about your start-up.”

  “We provide restaurant reservations online. We’ve started in San Francisco, and we’re hoping to expand ar
ound the world.”

  “And before that, you worked at Yahoo?”

  Arlo nodded. “Yahoo you know about.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” his father said unconvincingly.

  “Yahoo’s a search engine,” Arlo said. “Now, take a look at this.” He typed his father’s name into the computer. “Here’s your event tonight. People can know about it anywhere in the world.”

  “Is that how you found out about tonight’s event? From Yahoo?”

  “Sarah told me.” Arlo pressed a few more keys, and an image of himself appeared on the screen, beneath the logo for his start-up. “That’s my company. I’m on Yahoo, therefore I am. What about you?” he said. “What’s new in Shakespeare scholarship?”

  “Not much. There are new trends, of course, but the work I do is all about the old.”

  “Yet you seem to be reaching new heights.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You always refused to brag.”

  “What’s the point? Honors are nice, but it’s mostly good fortune.”

  “But the work?” Arlo said. “That you love?”

  “I’m committed to it,” his father said. “Love—that’s for family. It’s for Pru and Sarah, and for you.”

  Arlo looked away. This wasn’t what he had come for. Though what he had come for he didn’t know.

  “Look,” his father said, “I know I was difficult.”

  “I was too. The thing is, you were a teenager yourself once. You probably rebelled, too.”

  “I did.”

  “You were arrested.”

  His father looked startled. “Who told you?”

  “Stanley.”

  “When?”

  “That day in New Jersey. He said you broke into someone’s house and wrote graffiti.”

  His father nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t see the point.”

  “You always hid things from me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You didn’t tell Pru I existed. You didn’t let her know you had a son.”

  His father was quiet.

  “Were you embarrassed by me?”

  “Never.” It was Linda he’d been embarrassed by. He’d wanted to split custody.

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “She wouldn’t agree.”

  Then the phone rang and it was Pru, saying the guests were waiting. He had to come back to deliver his speech.

  They returned to the celebration, where, for a few minutes, Arlo stood in back. Then he did what he’d done at seventeen. He left without saying goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  He spent the night at a hotel, and the next morning he took the subway downtown and loitered outside a club. It was daytime and the club was desolate, like a church after the parishioners had streamed out. Many of his old hangouts were gone now; it was hard to do business in the city.

  He walked down Essex Street, and he didn’t realize where he was going until he stepped inside. The Schoenfeld Rehabilitation Center. He had come to see Enid.

  The metal detector, the divesting of wallet and keys: security was as strict as it had been last time; it was as if he were at a border crossing. There was still the same book, the same onion-skin paper, grimy and tea-stained, with the guests’ names printed on it. “I’ve come to see Enid Robin.”

  “Are you an authorized guest?”

  “I am.”

  The man flipped through the book. “Her only authorized guest is Spence Robin.”

  “That’s me.” But Arlo didn’t have ID, not with his father’s name on it.

  He returned a couple of hours later. Eleven years had passed, but he still knew how to make a fake ID. The security guard pressed a nametag to his chest, like someone pinning a corsage.

  Enid was brought out. She had no idea who he was. Why should she have? The last time he’d been here, she’d had no idea either. She was wearing a floral-print dress, which inflated like a parachute in the breeze. She touched her hair.

  “I’m Darlene,” the attendant said. She looked at his father’s name printed across Arlo’s chest.

  Then the music came on—the same music as last time, Arlo thought, as if the show had been on replay. The lemonade followed, as if it, too, had been kept on reserve. Again Enid asked if she could have lemonade, and again she was told sugar wasn’t good for her. Sugar wasn’t good for anyone; Arlo himself avoided it. Still, he believed life was made up of little privileges, and if he were ever told he couldn’t have lemonade, he would have to kill himself. “Enid, will you sing for me?”

  Enid started to sing—a Yiddish song, a plangent song—and Arlo, his eyes closed, hummed along with her. He thought he was going to cry. “Can I use the bathroom?” he asked the attendant. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  But he didn’t come back. He still had his father’s nametag on, and when he finished in the bathroom he went down to the lobby and stepped out onto the street.

  * * *

  —

  Back uptown, he entered his father’s building. “I’m Arlo Zackheim,” he told the doorman. “Spence Robin’s son.”

  “Professor Robin’s at work.”

  “That’s all right.” All these years later, he’d kept his key.

  There was still a no-shoes policy, still the shoe cubby like a bulwark in the hall. He removed his shoes and walked through the apartment in just his socks, careful not to disturb anything.

  His old bedroom, at long last, had been switched back to his father’s study, the bed replaced by a couch. He lay down on it and closed his eyes. He fell asleep for several minutes.

  In the hallway, the charcoal map of Florence still hung on the wall. Above him, the smoke alarm blinked. The Käthe Kollwitz print hung in the living room. A couple of chairs had been reupholstered, but everything else remained the same. He sat down at the grand piano and struck a few keys, then played a song of his own devising.

  He found the TV in the linen closet. It was removed only for special occasions; the rest of the year it was hidden away. His father’s plaques and awards were on a ledge, next to the fitted sheets and pillowcases.

  On the shelf in the living room stood his father’s books. Beyond Verona: Shakespeare’s Politics and Poetics. When the Elizabethans Ruled. Humoral Musings: The Complexion of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. How New Is the New Historicism? Kicking and Screaming: Essays in Renaissance Culture. Who Really Wrote Shakespeare? When There’s a Will, There’s a Way: Performance and Costume on the Elizabethan Stage. He flipped through the pages, then put the books back on the shelf.

  He took an apple from the fridge and ate it down to the core and tossed it in the garbage. He took another apple and ate it too. He wandered through the apartment for the last time. He put his shoes back on and closed the door behind him.

  Down the stairs he went, past the Putneys and the Fitzgeralds, the Lathams and the Schwartzes and the Abner-Goldsteins, the doorman in the lobby ushering him out. He thought of school days when he was a teenager, looking up from across the street to see his father at the window, waving to him.

  In another few years, his father would be sick. Even before Sarah called him with the news, he’d suspected something. That night in New York, sitting in his father’s office while the celebrants waited for them to return, he thought the disease might be taking hold. It wasn’t confusion, exactly, just a kind of reckoning, as if his father were ordering his affairs. And a softness in his father he couldn’t recall. Was it possible the disease had made his father gentler?

  Part VI

  27

  “I want to introduce you to my oldest friend,” Camille said.

  “I thought I was your oldest friend,” Pru said.

  “You’re my closest friend. Walter’s my
oldest friend.” Back in high school, Camille had been friends with Walter’s younger brother, so she became friends with Walter, too. They’d been out of touch for years, but she ran into him last week on the subway.

  “Is he a caregiver?” Pru said, because Camille had been saying Pru should befriend other caregivers. She’d even suggested Pru take a caregiving class.

  “Kind of.”

  “He’s kind of a caregiver?”

  “Just get together with him and you’ll see.”

  * * *

  —

  They’d agreed to meet at a burger joint, but Pru was twenty minutes late. She found Walter at a table, waiting for her. “I’m sorry,” she said. She started to say something about subway delays, but Walter stopped her. He understood: when he was told he had something in common with someone, he ran the other way, too.

  His complexion was so fair Pru could see the capillaries running beneath his skin. His beard cast his face in shadows. His eyes were pale green, set precariously between mourning and mirth, and he had a mass of dark hair he kept patting down as if to prevent it from ascending skyward. He was handsome, she thought, carelessly so, as if the very notion hadn’t occurred to him.

  He ordered them each a cheeseburger and fries. “Camille tells me your husband has Alzheimer’s.”

  Pru nodded.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “And you’re taking care of someone, too?”

  “It’s complicated,” Walter said. He’d met his wife when they were seventeen, though they’d waited until they finished college to get married. “Columbia,” he said, thrusting his thumb in the direction of campus.

  “My husband taught at Columbia,” Pru said, then wondered why she’d said that.

  “My wife put me through graduate school,” Walter said, “and then, after twenty-five years of marriage, she up and left me. All those clichés about not seeing it coming? Well, in my case, they were true.” A french fry was pinned to Walter’s fork; for a moment he just held it there. “My wife fell in love with someone else, but a few years later she got Parkinson’s. Then her husband left her.”