I reminded myself what the doctor had told me; I tried to accept that this nothing, this shackled passivity, was as much as I could do. A bitter pill, for it was at that very moment, when she was too weak to talk, that I began to appreciate the depth of my debt to Alma. Whatever comfort I afforded her, she had already advanced me tenfold. For that I will forever be grateful, looking back on those early days as the happiest of my life, all the more so for how fleetingly they passed.
10
What it sounds like,” Drew said, “is Harold and Maude.”
It was late March. I’d ventured out of the house in a feeble attempt to maintain the fiction that I still had a social life. To thank him for repeatedly putting me up, I bought us lunch at Darwin’s: deli sandwiches and macaroons the size of trumpet mutes. We took our food to Harvard Yard, where we sat on the steps of University Hall and watched Japanese tourists snap photos of frazzled undergraduates.
Drew’s real name was Zhongxue. A computer scientist by training, he came from Shanghai by way of Milwaukee. We’d met in the artificial-intelligence seminar and become fast friends. Like me, he was All but Dissertation; unlike me, he had stopped of his own volition, dropping out to play poker full-time. He now made his living shaking down bachelor parties at Foxwoods. His parents wept whenever he called.
“Please,” I said.
“All I’m saying, it’s a strange way to talk about a lady old enough to be your grandmother.”
I said nothing. I couldn’t think of how to describe my feelings for Alma. One deeply uncomfortable dream aside, I didn’t find her attractive, not per se. Obviously not. If we’d met fifty years ago... But this was now, and given the circumstances, I could not reasonably look on her as an erotic subject.
But it wasn’t quite friendship, either. These days, friendship is cheap and fungible; go on the Internet and you can collect two thousand “friends.” That kind of friendship is meaningless, and I considered it blasphemous to apply the term to Alma.
The closest fit I could come up with was Platonic love, not in the colloquial sense but according to its original definition: a spiritual love, one that transcends physicality, that goes beyond sex, beyond death. True Platonic love is the fusion of two minds.
“She’s the most interesting person I know,” I said.
“I’ll bet.” He growled, clawed the air.
“Idiot.”
“Seriously, I’m happy for you. I don’t understand you, but I’m happy for you.”
“Stop it.”
“What.”
“Stop saying you’re happy for me.”
“But I am.”
“I’m not dating her.”
“Uh-huh. Your old roommates sounded more my style. Introduce me?”
“You’re about a hundred pounds underweight.”
“On it,” he said and stuffed half a macaroon in his mouth.
A tourist ran up to us and began photographing him.
“He thinks we’re students,” I said.
Drew nodded, his mouth full of coconut.
“Just so you know, we’re not students,” I said. “I’ve been expelled, and he’s a professional gambler.”
“Havad!” yelled the tourist.
“Okay,” Drew said, coughing out crumbs. “Show’s over.” He shooed the tourist away. Undeterred, the man positioned himself behind a tree, fitting on a zoom lens.
“These people,” said Drew. “What’s so appealing about pictures of complete strangers. Who cares?”
“Evidently, they do.”
“I should tell him to shoot my left side. That’s the photogenic one. Hey, happy almost birthday.”
One of Drew’s talents is a remarkable memory for dates and numbers. It’s especially peculiar because he has a terrible time remembering anything else: to flush the toilet, for example.
“Thanks.”
“Are we going to party?”
“We?”
“I forgot,” he said. “You don’t like parties.”
“I don’t mind parties, but I don’t see why one’s called for here.”
“Uh, because it’s fun.”
“It’s not a milestone.”
“It’s your birthday. Think about it, at least.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Say the word. Crap, I almost forgot. Your mom called for you a few days ago.”
I was perplexed. “How’d she get your number?”
“I guess she called Yasmina first. Anyway, call her back.”
“Did she say what it was she wanted?”
Drew shrugged. “Probably calling to wish you a happy birthday.”
These days I heard from my parents only when they had bad news: the divorce of a cousin, the death of our family dog. If my mother had gone to the trouble of calling both Yasmina and Drew, then the news in question had to be of a far greater magnitude. I thought of my father. He wasn’t yet sixty, but he had overworked his machinery, and his own father had died of a heart attack. Suddenly I had a vision of him, crouched beneath someone’s kitchen sink, straining to loosen a U-bend—then an angry grunt, a mighty crash, a spilled can of Comet.
I stood, balling wax paper between my palms. “I think I’m going to go.”
“Whoopsy. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“It’s all right.” I handed him the rest of my macaroon, wished him good luck at the tables, and walked to the Science Center to make a collect call.
“JOEY,” SAID MY MOTHER. “I’ve been trying you forever.”
I winced at the old nickname. “Here I am.”
“Your girlfriend said you moved out.”
“I did.”
“What happened?”
“I moved out. That’s all.” Having inferred from her tone that my father was still alive, I was ready to end the conversation. “What’s up.”
“Well, honey, I know you’re busy out there, but I want you to think about coming home for a visit.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t know, Mom.”
“You didn’t hear me out yet. It’s important.”
I waited. “Yes?”
“Well, it’s been twenty years.”
Twenty years, but never very far away, and with that mild invocation the memories poured over me with the force of an avalanche. I remembered an April snowstorm. I remembered the gagging sound of a truck starting in the cold, and a state trooper in our kitchen, and three cups of coffee left out on the counter overnight. I remembered all this and more as my mother began to ramble.
“We thought maybe we could have a little memorial service round bout Chrissy’s birthday. Nothin fancy but Grandma’s getting on and who knows. No time like the present. We could invite some of his old pals, you know Tommy Snell still lives in town, and so do a lot of the kids we used to have around. Course Tommy’s all grown up, he has the shoe business like his dad, and wouldn’t you know it but he’s stone bald like him, too. Everybody’s changed so much, Joey. You’d get a real kick, seen’m all. They weren’t your own personal friends, I guess, but still and all.... Anyhow, Rita said she’d ask Father Fred to say something, he’s always so good with things like that. Not that I’d ever ask, but if people want to help, it’s rude to turn’m down. But I wouldn’t want to do it less you came. That wouldn’t look right. I’d like to, though, and you know what, I think Dad would too if he came right out and said so. But he’s not going to agree either, less you come. I know he won’t. So it’s up to you. You know we never put pressure on you to do one thing or the other, but I think it’s the right thing to do.” A pause. “Joey?”
“I’m here.”
“You hear me?”
“I heard you.”
The day of the funeral was my first and last time in a limousine, and I remember staring through the darkened glass as we pulled up to the graveside, feeling awed by the immensity of the crowd. Next morning’s paper would call it the biggest turnout since the town fire chief, who keeled over at a block party from an aortic ane
urysm. Among the mourners I spotted Chris’s soccer coach, a legendarily stony man, his face beet-red and wet. The limo idled and the door opened magically, like we had a ghost butler. Was this what fame felt like? My mother climbing out, hoisting herself up awkwardly on a pair of proffered arms. Next the swell of my father’s behind, out of place in anything other than coveralls. And then me, in one of Chris’s old flannel suits. It itched and the pants were too tight, and as I got out of the limo, I tripped. People lunged forward, grabbed me; someone called my father and he came back to take possession of me. With the coach flanking my other side, I felt like a prisoner being escorted to the gallows—a flight risk. In a sense, I was. It took me a few years to get my bearings, but as soon as I did, I ran.
On the phone, I heard my mother talking about plane tickets.
“Hang on,” I said. “I haven’t said I would come.”
In the ensuing silence I sensed her gearing up for one of her meltdowns. I said, to head her off, “I’ll do my best, but no promises. I can’t leave whenever I want. When are we talking about?”
She made a small, resentful noise. “You forgot his birthday.”
“I didn’t forget. It’s October tenth. That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking how long you expect me to come for.”
“You’ll have to spend the night, the last flight out’s at five. I need to know, Joey. Rita said she’d get a big photo of Chrissy for people to sign. These things take time.”
“It doesn’t take six months to have a photo blown up.”
“I don’t want her to feel rushed.”
This was exactly the kind of irrational stuff that drove me nuts. The fact that she had already waited this long—twenty years, rather than five or ten—vitiated such stubborn urgency. Why now? It seemed so arbitrary. And yet it would be typical of my mother to stifle her needs until they could no longer be contained and frothed over in histrionics.
“Is something going on?”
“What do you mean. Nothing’s going on.”
“Something must have happened to inspire this.”
“It’s the anniversary.”
“So?”
“So, anniversaries are important.” And then: “Father Fred’s leaving.”
Whatever I expected her to say, it wasn’t that. I considered Father Fred a lodestar, the single living fixture of my past by which to extrapolate my present position. Leaving? For what possible purpose? What about the whole speech on how God had brought him back home, and life moving in a circle, and so forth? All a bunch of empty moralizing, aimed at placating a restless teenager? It troubled me to think of him as that superficial, and I felt a throb of anxiety, followed by anger.
She said, “Before he goes—”
“Wait a second. Where’s he going?”
“He’s moving to California.”
“When? Why?”
“You call him and ask him that. Meantime I want to make sure he’s around, cause he was so important in Chrissy’s life. Yours, too.”
I said nothing.
“So I need to know if you can come.”
“I don’t know.”
“When’ll you know.”
“I have to clear it with my employer.”
“When can you do that?”
“When I can. All right? For crissake, leave it al—”
“Don’t get snotty with me,” she said. “After everything I don’t deser—”
Rather than yell, I hung up.
“SORRY I’M LATE,” I called. “I lost track of time.”
Opening the library door, I stopped short on the threshold. Across from Alma, in my usual chair, sat a wiry man with the wispiest beard imaginable. His shirt looked five sizes too big, his shoes even shoddier than mine, their laces undone and their tongues coughed out, like they were vomiting up his ankles. Even with the strung-out aesthetic, he was undeniably handsome, quite the young buck, with a penetrating stare and Alma’s heart-shaped face, which on him looked boyish, almost Grecian. They both wore the same conspiratorial half-smile, as though they’d been caught in flagrante. Queerly, this caused me to feel ashamed.
“Mr. Geist, allow me to introduce my nephew. Eric, this is Mr. Geist, my tenant and interlocutor.”
Eric tilted his chin back. “Hey.”
I nodded hello.
“We were just discussing you,” said Alma. “Is it three o’clock already?”
“Ten after,” I said.
“Goodness, so it is.... I hope you don’t mind if we table the debate for today. My nephew has been away and I have not seen him in too long.”
“... if that’s what you want.”
“Yes, please.”
I wanted to snap my fingers at Eric, who was picking at a scab. “. . . all right.”
“We shall resume tomorrow, then? Very well.”
Thus dismissed, I crept away to my room, where I lay on the bed, reeling. She had never mentioned a nephew before. Here I’d thought we were growing close. We were growing close. How, then, to explain this? Had she known he was coming and kept it from me? Or had he shown up without warning, and had she accepted him without hesitation? The latter seemed to teach a crueler lesson: he needed to do nothing, prove nothing, to obtain her affection. By dint of birth, this person—and what kind of a lame name was that, Eric—had a bond with her that I never would, whether I’d lived with her for three months or thirty years. I thought of her face when I’d walked in on them, a private face, an outward expression of inner pleasure. It was not a face she’d ever shown me, and I resented her for it. Rationally, I understood how silly I was being. I had no right to jealousy. But the conversation with my mother had left me on edge, and the sudden appearance of a stranger who was not in fact a stranger but a threat (perceived or real, it didn’t matter, it’s all one to a mind ill at ease) brought panic. She was punishing me. For what? What had I done? Had I injured her pride by showing concern for her health? Is that what was going on here? They had been discussing me. Why? What was there to discuss? I had a right to know the context, didn’t I? To my eye it hadn’t looked like a discussion. It looked like mockery, and the message was clear enough: he had come to replace me. It was over. I would be out on the street. The beautiful dream, smashed. I gripped my sheets, clenched my jaw, wondered how long I had left before she ordered me to vacate. I should start packing now, leave quietly, spare everyone the indignity of a scene....
Standing in the hall, eavesdropping, I couldn’t make out words, but I did hear laughter, and lots of it, and I burned. What in the world could someone like him possibly say to amuse someone like her, save something so unbearably asinine that she could not help but laugh at him? But no. She was laughing again, not at him but with him. He was laughing, too: easy, confident, triumphant. This had to be a punishment. I went back to my room to wait them out.
The clock ticked four, five, six.
At six-thirty I knocked on the library door and announced that I was stepping out.
“Pity,” said Alma. “I had hoped we would all dine together.”
“I’m meeting someone. Sorry.”
“You didn’t say so earlier.”
“It slipped my mind.”
She stared at me. I think she knew I was lying. “Very well. Before you go ...” She reached into her sweater pocket and took out her little blue pleather checkbook. Normally she kept it upstairs, in her room—never on her. What was going on? Had he asked her for money? I tried to glare at him, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me.
“Mr. Geist.” She waved the check at me, and of an instant I grasped the purpose of calling each other Mr. and Ms. It wasn’t affectionate, or a sly joke. She meant to establish a boundary. If I’d missed that, it was nobody’s fault but mine.
I mumbled thanks and took my allowance.
“You are quite welcome,” said Alma. “Enjoy your dinner.”
THE EVENING WAS MILD, and I stalked the brick canyons around Harvard Square, hoping that its crowds would work like white noise,
drowning out the resentment that I felt guilt over feeling. A group of teenagers had gathered in front of the entrance to the T: the Pit Kids, suburban goth-punks with safety pins in their ears, their ragged outfits belied by years of expensive orthodonture. Inexplicably they reminded me of Eric—I think it was the bony elbows and the get-bent sneers—and I turned and made my way to the Common, where I slumped listlessly on a bench to watch a coed softball game. By then I felt more pathetic than angry. Really, I thought, grow up. The woman was almost eighty years old. She had earned the right to entertain whomever she chose, certainly a relative. Judging by the shape of his face, a blood relative. Alma’s sister was older than her, making it hard to believe that he was actually her nephew. Great-nephew, more likely, which meant that in calling him “nephew” she meant to express intimacy. Hadn’t she that right? It wasn’t up to me to decide on whom she chose to bestow affection. She could talk to him all day long if she wanted. It was none of my business. More to the point, nobody had said anything about kicking me out. My reaction reflected my own insecurities, nothing more.
That didn’t excuse him, of course. Probably he had a drug problem. Who else dressed that way? I was no fashion plate, but at least I combed my hair. No, my dishevelment was artful; his the product of indifference. I kept thinking of the smug ease with which he occupied my chair—and wasn’t that my right, after all this time, so many hours spent in it, to think of it as mine?—not to mention the way he’d eyed my check, the air of entitlement he carried....
Unable to face going home, I walked to the Science Center and stood at a computer kiosk. I hadn’t checked my e-mail in two weeks, and now I faced heaps of spam. Coming here had been a bad idea: I felt lonelier than ever.
Against my better judgment, I clicked COMPOSE and entered Yasmina’s address. Then I erased it. Then I typed it again. I repeated this process several times before moving the cursor to the body field.
Hi there. It’s me. (Obviously.) Sorry to drop in unannounced (so to speak), but I was thinking of you and wanted to let you know.
Don’t worry. It’s nothing malicious. I’m doing well. I have a new job and a terrific roommate. Your
The Executor Page 9