Timeless

by Lucinda Franks

  “You know that retirement is one of life’s biggest causes of stress. Maybe we’re both in shock.”

  But that was not the discussion my husband wanted to have. Instead, he preferred to talk about our heartbeats. He put his finger to his wrist, took his pulse, and then asked me to take it. Afterward, he double-checked it. Finally, trying to go with the flow, I asked him to take my pulse. He did. “Seventy beats per minute,” he said happily, dropping my wrist. “We’re both fine.”

  * * *

  And that’s all there is to say. Does your pulse signify the pulse of the office? Taking the measure of how much you miss it?

  I feel the defined crease of your knuckles, the curve of your thumb, firmly encircling my hand. I keep vigil for definition; I crave it, for it means you are still with me: whole, quirky, mine. You have not begun to slip into that hazy dimension of old age, that flattening out, a free fall into the not here. Counting your heartbeats is a ritual I actually like, feeling the strong throb in your wrist, the cool touch of your hand on my skin.

  * * *

  It was mid-January, and I was taking a brisk walk on the frozen orchard ground: dying grass, dying leaves, dying gray sky; no tractors plowing the soil, no Newtown Pippins or newer innovative varieties being planted. The raw wind was making my cheeks red, not a fresh young blush, but a late splotchy irritation; I used my inhaler to ease the bronchial tubes tightened by the icy air.

  Summer rushes by like a bullet, reminding us of love’s quickness, while winter sticks to us forever: dead, cold, stiff.

  In defiance of an injured knee, I picked up my pace, speed-walked, faster and faster until sweat dripped down my neck. When I walked these paths with Bob, it was exercise for him but not for me.

  This made me all the more eager to reassure him that he might not have as fast a gait or as strong an arm, but he would live for many more years. We had friends who were over a hundred.

  “Sweetheart, age isn’t always chronological,” I had said to him recently. “You are perfect proof of that. One day you feel ninety, and the next you’re fifty. Look at Gram Leavitt. She seemed to be losing touch when she turned seventy-five, and then, when Mom got sick and she was needed, she snapped right back.”

  If my words were a comfort to Bob, they were not to me. They simply disguised my latest bout of fixating on death, and this time I was not only afraid of losing him; I was afraid of losing myself.

  * * *

  From the day we met, we were ageless; we called ourselves twins. We acted as if we had boarded the Trans-Siberian train and it would just keep rolling on and on. We never thought about the last station, but in the haze I see it now. Why can’t I simply be happy about your excellent health? You do strength training, aerobics; you are an active father and husband. But I see the other you: the one who may still surpass me in mind and can no longer keep up with me in body.

  Share your fears, the psychology books say, which neither of us wants to do; it would only make things worse. Though if I understood your dread, I would try to help you. You never complain. When your body refuses to obey you, you bear it stoically. A scary imbalance on the steps, toes and fingers losing their straight fine shapes. When you are stiff, I know it only by your quips: “When are they going to invent WD-40 for the joints!”

  I cannot stop my body from following yours. I have begun walking gingerly over the farm’s stony paths. A doctor told you whatever you do, don’t fall, so your feet barely skim the ground. I find myself mimicking you, and what happens? I trip and fall. Like now. If I hadn’t caught myself when I stumbled on that stone, I would have landed smack on my knees. Once you locked us out of the car, and ever since, like a little old lady, I check and recheck my purse to make sure I’ve got the keys.

  I don’t want to be your twin. Old age is after me, and I’m running for my life. I say to myself what Dylan Thomas said: “Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  Once, I imagined away the fear. But it will never really go. I see the future without you all too well. The echoes of an oboe: your voice. The faint sound of newspapers crackling in your beautiful veiny hands, your wisecracks, your jokes, your exciting ideas. I will eat soup alone at a diner, celebrate Christmas with an empty, treeless apartment, the kids living their lives and I, my own, too numb to lose myself in the little worlds of ice-skaters and choristers. Then, one day, falling sick … suffering … passing through alone.

  Please, God, don’t let him die before me.

  * * *

  When I got back to the farmhouse, he was coming out the door. He ran his hand over my dripping hair. “Oh, you did have a good walk! I hope you were careful with your knee,” he said gently. “I’m proud of you.”

  But his eyes said something different. A wish. An entreaty. He finally passed me by, his back slightly bent, his walking sticks penetrating the earth before him, slowly making his way down the old dusty lane.

  He grew smaller and smaller. Before he disappeared from sight, I willed myself to empty my head of all the phobic garbage that had accumulated there. Instead, I chose to see my husband as bold and gritty and ready for anything. I caught up with him, slipped my hand into his. “Can I walk with you?” I asked.

  30

  On January 19, 2010, looking natty in tweed cap and silk scarf, Bob left the house and, at age ninety, began his second career. I was jubilant. On this day, I vowed to rid myself of the specters of old age and death that had obsessed me for too long. First, I set my bike to high gear and pedaled furiously to the beat of the Pointer Sisters. Then there was the cold shower, scrubbing off dead cells with a concoction of brown sugar in olive oil. Finally, feeling symbolically cleansed, I went to my studio and began a regime of writing fiction, any kind of fiction, for seven hours a day. Shaping imaginary realms was the only way I knew to keep imaginary realms from shaping me.

  As the saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” The retirement that had undone us turned out to be a three-week illusion—an intermezzo before a prestigious New York law firm gave Bob the chance to undergo an explosion of creativity.

  With a sense of dignity and his own office in which to study and think, he gradually opened up the dark hidden places where a new breed of “little guy” suffered unnoticed. He lambasted the U.S. government that he had once pledged to uphold for abusing and deporting the “tired [and the] poor, [the] huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” who were once welcomed to our shores with the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. He blamed the government for providing little help to the heroic young soldiers traumatized by fighting its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He exposed the plight of both immigrants and soldiers with PTSD in Op-Ed columns published in the most distinguished newspapers. His pieces, sometimes coming one after another, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Reuters, the Daily News, turned the thinking of policy makers from New York to Washington upside down.

  If I had tried to mirror Bob as a man who had never lost his potential, Martin Lipton made it a reality. A founder of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and a public leader in his own right, Marty hired Bob as of counsel to advise and do pro bono work for the firm. A professor, author, trustee, and financial wizard, Marty had invented an algorithm called the poison pill that prevented quick hostile takeovers of small companies; it had been called one of the most important corporate innovations ever made. If Bob had altered the criminal justice system, Marty had altered the face of Wall Street.

  In one weekend, Marty Lipton and Herb Wachtell had walls knocked down and a spacious office created for Bob with sleek blond furniture. In days, plaques and pictures of Bob with the nation’s leaders were hung on the wall. A procession of curious young lawyers lined up to meet him, but they had to get by the famous and devoted Ida Van Lindt, who had, upon his orders, come with him from the DA’s Office and was now his de facto vice president. He advised the firm’s young lawyers and provided moral support. He spoke at prestigiou
s think tanks like the Brookings Institution, warning that nuclear materials were being amassed at our back door by Venezuela courtesy of Iran. He continued to exchange secret information with his Israeli contacts. He again publicly criticized Mayor Bloomberg about financial issues and publicly made up with him. It was clear to everyone that being DA was not what had held him up.

  After his many immigration exposés, the newspapers rushed in and began publishing a plethora of stories about the maltreatment of immigrants whom we once welcomed to our shores. His personal outrage was catching, especially by President Obama, who proceeded to issue new reforms. But Bob didn’t let him off the hook. The reforms were deceptive, he wrote, and they were simply not enough.

  One day, we heard about an intolerable injustice, which brought Bob into the crusade against the death penalty once again. A man from Alabama who was convicted of murder in spite of gross negligence by the state had languished on death row for twenty-four years. Bob asked two prominent prosecutors to join him in a friend-of-the-court appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. The brilliant brief that Bob had helped write landed him on the top half of the first page of the Times’s New York section. The panegyric, written by Jim Dwyer, was accompanied by a wonderful color picture of Bob grinning in mid-stride through his office. Quoting Dickens, he crisply told the reporter, “The law is a ass.” Dwyer began the weighty piece on a light note, making the irresistible observation that the heaps of scattered papers on Bob’s desk seemed transported intact from the one he occupied as district attorney. I made fifty copies of the article for friends and family. At ninety, my husband, my hero, the defender of the helpless, was back.

  * * *

  Dear Sweetheart,

  You are the Erasmus of our day. Almost five hundred years ago, this Christian humanist said what you have said in so many ways: “It’s the happiest of men who are willing to be what they are.” People sought Erasmus out for the same reason they seek you out now: because of who you are. They want to be on the side of good; they want to absorb what you have. Being near you enhances their reputations.

  You have always surprised me, just when I thought things were fixed. I have watched you reinvent yourself from a cool prosecutor to a crusading columnist! Lashing against the system’s moral turpitude, as I did one time long ago.

  You are still chairman of the boards of PAL and the museum and, in a tough economy, saved them by raising a record amount of donations.

  Don’t worry about your promise to work only part of the days. It is silly for you to defend yourself by pointing out that you now come home at 6:30 instead of 7:00. Remember that nasty blizzard last winter? You and Marty were two of the only ones who came to the office. You work too hard, and I worry about you. But I have always known who you are. There are some people who work to live and others who live to work.

  Love,

  Your Tartlette

  * * *

  Tartlette,

  Thank you for your nice letter. I’m glad you think I’m more important than I am—if you think that, then I think it too. You are right; I feel the pressure to work, and I know you worry about me. I’m sorry I was so hard to live with after I left office. You make me happy and secure, and I love you with all my heart.

  Tart

  * * *

  Bob had branched out from immigration to other causes. He had written about gun control, corporate transparency, and other issues, but perhaps his most poignant column was about a pitiful victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. Bob had become so in touch with his own postwar shock and how it had altered his personality that he wanted to reach out to help other afflicted veterans. One day he found out from a source about a Vietnam vet, one Peter Wielunski, who had been diagnosed with severe PTSD at a Veterans Administration (VA) hospital in Queens, New York. For one year, Peter kept asking for psychological help but was not given therapy even when he threatened to commit suicide. Finally, he hanged himself in front of the psychology department.

  I felt sick when Bob told me. And then I got angry. No other media knew about the case. He had to get this outrageous story out quick before some VA press agent spun it as a minor incident. I was excited to be part of the process, to bring in my expertise. I coached him on how to persuade the family to talk and how to get the autopsy reports. He even obtained the VA’s one thousand pages of records on Wielunski. The Wall Street Journal jumped at the story and assigned him Op-Ed space. Leading the column with the suicide, he gave harrowing statistics and told how veterans who were not given the chance to talk about their experiences went on to either hole themselves up or become violent, even murderous. His piece was widely applauded and helped him get private hospitals involved in treating these men who had sacrificed so much for their country.

  * * *

  He made frequent appearances, including an interview about his war missions conducted by Tom Brokaw at the New-York Historical Society. To me, the culmination of his work on immigration came in January 2012, two years after the law firm had hired him. We had been in a state of agitated excitement for weeks because a top New York Times reporter, the respected Kirk Semple, would be interviewing him in front of some two hundred people at the distinguished Roosevelt House, now a museum and a forum for the top American policy makers.

  Bob was at heart a modest man who didn’t really believe that he mattered as much as he did. He worked on his words and his graphs for weeks and occasionally wondered whether anybody would even care about them.

  I arrived early and sat in the front row so I could allay his nerves with encouraging smiles. I wanted my husband to shine, to hear people say, “I don’t believe that man’s over ninety!”

  He walked in and sat, waiting for the program to begin. Under the bright lights, his eyes closed and his mouth opened in such a grimace that he might be thought to have seen some repulsive sight invisible to the rest of us. I beamed at him and then closed my mouth tightly, hoping he’d pick up the signal, but he didn’t seem to see me, though I was right in front of him.

  Semple’s first question was easy: “What do you think about immigration reform, Mr. Morgenthau?”

  “I think we have a special responsibility to immigrants because that is what all of us are,” Bob replied. “We are a nation of immigrants who came from all over the world.”

  Bravo, sweetheart! Then a harder question came: What about the argument that immigrants are taking the jobs of the American people? Bob proceeded to give almost word for word the same answer he gave to the first question. Oh, dear. Sweetheart!

  Then Semple praised him for his columns, which he said were being read and taken to heart by the highest echelons of power in Washington. See, sweetheart? I told you!

  Now he let it rip. As he noticed me smiling and nodding, a raft of horror stories poured out of him, leaving the audience aghast. Graphs he had put together were flashed on the screen showing that only two out of twenty thousand immigrants were deemed security risks last year. He said that President Obama, while instituting “reforms,” bragged that this year they had deported more immigrants than ever before; that immigrants were hauled off the street and deported on the spot for something as minor as a traffic ticket; that it wasn’t just the ethnic poor, the Mexicans, South Americans, Asians, but anyone who could be victimized. Even the middle and elite classes. The immigration officials didn’t discriminate.

  Bob recounted how the daughter of the distinguished Greek-born filmmaker Costa-Gavras, who was living in France, was arrested as soon as she landed in New York to attend a major Greek cultural festival at Lincoln Center sponsored by her father. This was because she had overstayed her student visa by weeks the last time she was here. The Greek ambassador, the French ambassador, and other public officials tried in vain to save her from immediate deportation. Bob just happened to be at JFK Airport and heard what was happening. “I proposed,” Bob said in his deep, mesmerizing voice, “that they turn her over to me as a criminal and I would make sure she was on the first plane out after
her father’s conference. Miraculously, that worked.” People chuckled and applauded.

  When the questions began from the audience, Kirk had to repeat them to Bob, who became so relaxed about his deafness that each time Kirk asked him if he had heard an inquiry, he would smile and shake his head. Judging by the absurdity of some of the questions, I figured that my husband was not hearing them on purpose.

  As for me, I had been sweating under my wool blazer, and in spite of the command of my friend Lila to “breathe, Lucinda, breathe,” I had barely done so. Now, mightily relieved, I began breathing long and deeply.

  Afterward, at a private dinner, Bob entertained the table of dignitaries with story after story about his career long after dessert was served. When we got home, he was ready for a nightcap, and I was ready to collapse on the floor. “Bob was amazing. I wonder why I’m so tired,” I asked Lila.

  Now she smiled and said, “Of course you’re exhausted. How can you not be—you were holding him.”

  * * *

  The sun, a lovely July sun, had just set, its colors coming through the wispy clouds—a huge spread of hot pink melting into spirals of lavender covering half the sky. It was July 2012, and we were on the deck overlooking the hills of the Hudson Highlands. “Look!” I exclaimed. Bob was poring over farm planting schedules. “Look, right now! The sunset, it’s turning ash purple, like the lavender we picked in Provence, all the colors are changing. It’s spectacular!”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, head down, lost in his reading.

  He was frustrating me. “Been there, seen that?” I asked edgily.

  “What?” He cocked his good ear toward me.

  “If I think something’s beautiful, it’s guaranteed you won’t even glance at it.”

  “Oh, stop your complaining,” he said, taking up the copy of The New Yorker I had brought outside.

  “Ha, very clever. I’m beginning to realize that’s your way of shutting me up … Hey, you stole my New Yorker!”