Frozen in Time

by Joseph Epstein

  “Did Charlie want to marry the girl?”

  “He didn’t say. Truth is, he doesn’t seem much shaken up.”

  Paul asked no more questions. Eugene said no more about it. And Charlie came back to Arnheim & Sons as if he had been away on an extended vacation. The brothers tried to give Charlie more responsibility and that meant he spent more time with his uncle than his father. His talent was more akin to Paul’s than Eugene’s; he was good working with customers, but impatient with details. Paul decided to send him on the road, in the hope of opening up accounts on the West Coast. He had some success, too. His father and uncle began to feel that Arnheim & Sons might be safe for another generation. Who knew, when Charlie had children, maybe beyond that.

  Then, eight months or so after Charlie’s return, on a Friday afternoon just before closing, Eugene telephoned Paul, who was out calling on customers, on his cell phone to suggest that they meet for a drink at the Standard Club in an hour. Paul was anxious; was something up with his brother’s health?

  “I’ve got some news,” Eugene told his brother.

  “Bad?” Paul asked.

  “Elena Olchek is leaving,” Eugene said. Paul was flooded with relief for a moment, and then became worried. Elena had been with Arnheim & Sons for twenty-five years crafting lenses for people with difficult vision problems, a job that would be hard to find someone else to fill—and one so specialized that it would not be so easy for her to find work elsewhere.

  “Elena sick?”

  “More complicated than that,” Eugene said.

  “What’s the problem? We pay her well. You’ve always treated her with great regard. She asked us to hire her daughter, we hired her daughter. What’s her name?”

  “That’s the complication,” said Eugene. “Charlie. Charlie knocked up the daughter.”

  “Her name is Marlus, right?” was all Paul could think to say.

  “Some of this is ancient history,” Eugene said. “I first heard about it three months ago. No way Charlie was going to marry the girl. Nor was Marlus about to have an abortion. Serious Catholics, the Olcheks.”

  “It is Marlus,” Paul said, because he had nothing else to say.

  “We lucked out, I suppose,” Eugene said. “The girl had a miscarriage yesterday. But Elena wants nothing further to do with the Arnheim family. I offered her $25,000 to help with expenses before Marlus lost the child, and that was apparently a big mistake.”

  This could have been the moment to hash out the problem Charlie had caused, to talk about Charlie problems in general, but Paul loved his brother too much to say anything that might cause a rift between them, and so they spent the rest of their time discussing how to replace Elena Olchek.

  Paul never brought up Marlus with Charlie. He continued to bring him along in the business. He even turned over a few smaller accounts to him, giving him sole responsibility for managing them. And this Charlie seemed to do well enough, until one Monday morning, opening his mail, Paul discovered that a small firm in the Southwestern suburbs called What Do Eye Care, a company now handled by Charlie, had cancelled all further business with Arnheim & Sons. The letter gave no reason.

  Alma, the secretary he and Eugene shared, told Paul that Charlie had taken a long weekend to go skiing in Vail. Paul decided to call Jim Williams, the head of What Do Eye Care—he was the firm’s founder and Paul had opened the account himself sixteen years ago, so he learned from his files.

  “He called me an anti-Semite,” Williams said.

  “What?”

  “Your nephew took me to a good lunch,” Williams said. “We had agreeable chit-chat, some of it about business, some about sports. Then before dessert and coffee arrived, he went off to the washroom, and when he returned he seemed suddenly changed.”

  “How changed?” Paul asked.

  “I’m not sure, but he seemed different. Next thing I know, out of the blue, he says it.”

  “I’m so sorry, but can I ask if there’s anything you can think you might have said that could have created the impression?”

  Williams was silent. “My wife is Jewish,” he said finally. “My kids are being brought up as Jews.”

  Paul apologized for his nephew’s behavior and asked if it were possible to win his business back. Williams said he had already gone over to a competitor.

  When Charlie returned from Vail, Paul called him into his office, showed him Jim Williams’s letter.

  “Charlie,” Paul said, “Williams says you called him an anti-Semite.”

  “I did?” Charlie answered, genuinely surprised. “He said that?”

  “Not something I would make up, kid,” Paul said.

  “Is it too late to apologize? I’ll call him. There’s some goddamn misunderstanding here. Why would I do that?”

  “Don’t know,” Paul said, “especially when his wife is Jewish. Anyhow he’s taken his business elsewhere.”

  After this awkward exchange, Paul began to think his nephew was on drugs. He decided not to say anything about it to Eugene. When he and Eugene talked about What Do Eye Care having left Arnheim & Sons, Paul lied; Jim Williams had had a counter-offer from another optical firm so low that he couldn’t refuse it, Paul told him.

  Another six months or so went by. Then Sylvia Kleiderman, the bookkeeper who had originally been hired by his father, brought Paul three requests for expense reimbursements Charlie had put in for trips to the Northwest, presumably to scare up new business, but for which he claimed to have no receipts, the airline having lost the suitcase in which he had kept them. The expenses came to $7,386.

  Charlie had never been told to scout up business in the Northwest. He was, Paul surmised, trying to cheat his own family business. He had been given a decent salary, and anything expensive that he might have wanted—a new car, a down payment on an apartment—Paul was fairly certain Eugene would have helped him acquire. The reason for his stealing seemed obvious.

  That evening Paul stayed late, and after everyone was gone for the day, he went into Charlie’s small office. In the left-hand lowest drawer of Charlie’s desk, he found the only book in his office, a copy of a school text on macroeconomics. Paul opened it, and found it had a hollowed-out center that contained a razor blade and two plastic straws, each cut in half, and three small plastic packets of white powder.

  “Sylvia tells me that you put in receipts for trips I have no knowledge you ever took,” Paul said to Charlie the next day after going into his nephew’s office and closing the door.

  “Oh,” Charlie answered, very coolly, Paul thought. “I was in northern California and figured I would check out possibilities in Portland and Seattle. I thought it worth a look-see.”

  “Was it?” Paul asked.

  “I think it was,” Charlie answered. “There’s a firm in Tacoma, name of Corrigan and Wieboldt, that’s supplying most of the optical firms in both cities. And my sense, from talking to retailers, is that we can beat them, both price-wise and on delivery time.”

  “Really?” said Paul. “Sounds interesting. You should write up a report on that.”

  “I had planned to,” said Charlie. “I’ll get to it straightaway.”

  Paul felt a passing wave of admiration for his nephew’s gall. He also felt a stab of pity for the kid, lashed to a drug problem that had locked him into stealing and lying.

  “Charlie,” Paul asked, “are you in any kind of trouble? Do you have any problems that maybe I can help you with?”

  “What kind of trouble would I be in?” he answered. “No, I’m good. Really. I’m cool.”

  Paul had no idea how to bring up the book in Charlie’s desk to Eugene. Yet he knew they couldn’t let Charlie continue working for Arnheim & Sons, at least not in his present condition. If they did, they could only expect the firm to lose more customers and Charlie to do more stealing.

  Paul waited more than a week b
efore bringing up the subject with his brother. He arranged for a table in the far corner of the dining room at Lake Shore, their country club, which was mostly empty at 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon. He had arrived ten or so minutes early to collect himself, to go over what he intended to say.

  Eugene entered in chino pants, a blue button-down collar shirt, and a maroon cashmere sweater. He retained the confident walk of the successful boy athlete. Even though they were not identical, Paul always studied his brother’s face for signs of aging, assuming that his own growing older was proceeding at roughly the same pace. Eight or nine years earlier, Paul had seen on television a 1940s movie called The Corsican Brothers in which Douglas Fairbanks Jr. played both parts of Siamese twins separated at birth, each of whom directly felt the pain undergone by the other. If one brother was flogged in the provinces, the other felt the lashes in Paris; if one brother was wounded in a duel in Paris, the other felt the stab in his flesh in the provinces. The movie, as they say, spoke to Paul. He sometimes thought that he felt more deeply about Eugene than he did about his own wife and daughters.

  “How goes it?” Paul asked, when his brother sat down at his table.

  “All calm on the western front,” Eugene said. “About the eastern front, I’m afraid to look.” Of the two brothers, Eugene was the habitual worrier, with Paul assigned the role of optimist. Eugene was financially frugal, Paul looser, more the sport, with money. He sometimes thought that, taken together, he and Eugene comprised one complete, and rather superior, human being.

  They began by talking about family matters: Paul’s young grandchildren, Eugene’s plan to spend a few weeks on a golf holiday in Arizona with Susan, the prospect of their going in together on a condominium in Sarasota, which they had talked about in a vague way for some while now. After they had ordered coffee, Paul felt he couldn’t hold back any longer.

  “Gene,” he said, “it’s Charlie.”

  “What about Charlie?” Eugene asked.

  “We have a serious problem with Charlie. He’s on drugs. I’m sorry. Cocaine. I’m so sorry.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was suspicious, and I didn’t tell you. He blew off our client in Oak Lawn, What Do Eye Care, by telling him off. He recently put in fake expense claims for more than seven grand. Going back a bit, there was the defection to Argentina, the incident with Elena Olchek’s daughter. It doesn’t add up to a happy result.”

  “How do you jump from that . . .”

  “Because the other night, after Charlie had left for the day, I went into his office and found the stuff in a book in his office.”

  “You went through my son’s things in his office?” Eugene said. “Jesus, Paul, even I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I felt it was necessary, Genie, or believe me I wouldn’t have.”

  Eugene shook his head. “You should have come to me before rifling through my kid’s things. What you did is out of bounds.”

  “I didn’t rifle anything. I opened a few drawers. I found a book. The main point’s Charlie’s in trouble, and so are we.”

  “You should have come to me first,” Eugene said again.

  “I apologize if I’ve done anything wrong,” Paul said. “But what are we going to do? Charlie is a danger to himself and to the firm.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Eugene said. “I’ll find out what’s going on. You leave it to me from here on out.” He called for the check, and they sat in awkward silence. After Eugene signed for the check, they rose and left the dining room. Eugene said nothing as he got into his Lexus. Paul watched him pull away as his own Porsche was brought around.

  Monday morning, in their office, Eugene got up to close the door and returned to his chair behind the partners desk. “I talked to Charlie,” Eugene said, “and he denies the drug thing absolutely.”

  “You didn’t tell him I found evidence in his desk?”

  “Of course not,” Eugene said. “What I said was that you thought his behavior suggested he might have a drug problem.”

  “And he replied?”

  “‘Uncle Paul is full of shit.’ His words. When I asked him why he thought you would tell me this, he said that he thought you might be envious of him.”

  “Envious of what?”

  “Of his success with customers. Some of them, he claims, feel you’re getting older and now you’ve made your pile you’re losing interest in them. That’s what they’ve told him.”

  Paul was astonished. He waited a moment to reply, “You can’t really believe that crap, Gene.”

  “He’s my son,” Eugene said.

  “I know,” Paul said.

  “Did you actually see the drugs in his desk? Are you 100 percent certain it was cocaine?”

  “I didn’t kitchen test it. I didn’t taste it, I didn’t blow it up my nose, but I saw it. It was there in small clear plastic packets. In a hollowed-out book. Why would I make any of this up? I want my nephew to succeed. I want Arnheim & Sons to go on and on and on.”

  “You’re asking me to believe my boy is a liar, a drug addict, and a thief. That’s a lot to ask, Paul.”

  “It’s the drugs making him steal and lie. You have to help him. We have to help him. The kid’s in trouble.”

  “He tells me there’s no problem. He says the problem’s you.”

  “You believe him. You believe him over me?”

  “This is a terrible subject,” Eugene said. “We better get off it.”

  “No, we better stay on it,” Paul said, and suddenly he was yelling. “It’s everything to the future of this business.”

  “You’re out of control,” Eugene said. “Maybe you’re the one on drugs.”

  And then Paul found himself on his feet, and, with no intention of doing so, he slapped his brother. It was an inept, even a slightly effeminate slap; and as soon as it was loose more than anything in the world he wanted it back. He grazed his brother’s cheek with a ragged nail. A thin trickle of blood appeared high on Eugene’s cheekbone. Eugene got to his feet, his fists clenched. Paul stood there. He imagined them tumbling across the partners desk, papers and arms flying, and it seemed ludicrous, melodramatic, comic even.

  Instead Eugene, with a terrifying calm, said, “Leave.”

  Only when he was behind the wheel of his car did Paul notice that his hands were shaking.

  Eugene, usually in the office by 8:30, failed to come in the following day. At 9:30, he called from home.

  “Paul,” he said.

  Before he could say another word, Paul said, “I apologize. I was way out of line. I handled everything all wrong. Please forgive me. Please, Genie.”

  “I’m out of here,” Eugene said. “It’s over. I can’t work with you. Not after last Friday.”

  “One argument, Genie, our only argument.”

  “It was on the worst possible subject,” Eugene said, “the very worst. I’ve nothing more to say.” And he hung up.

  Paul received a call an hour later from Lou Freifeld, the firm’s attorney since their father’s time, to say that Eugene wanted Paul to buy him out and that Freifeld would negotiate on Eugene’s behalf. The terms were reached in a day; documents were Fedexed back and forth; the sale was completed in a week.

  The Arnheim twins never spoke again.

  Paul tried to run the firm alone, but after three years found himself exhausted and, his physician found, during his most recent yearly physical, he had incipient ulcers. One man alone could not run Arnheim & Sons. Paul arranged to sell the company to a large firm in Atlanta called Omni Optical. As part of the sale, Paul agreed to stay on for a year. And so Arnheim & Sons died in its ninety-seventh year. When he departed the premises, Paul took with him only the paintings of Spinoza and his father Chaim. He left the partners desk behind.

  Eugene retired to Sarasota soon after the split. Later, Paul and Marilyn settled in Palm Sprin
gs, where, almost daily, he thought about picking up the phone and calling his brother. Once, a few years after their breakup, he did call and, to his relief, got his brother’s voice mail: “Gene,” he said, “it’s Paul. Call me when you get a chance: 760-492-3884.” Eugene never did.

  Charlie left Arnheim & Sons with his father, of course. Two years later, he tearfully confessed to his parents that he did in fact have a cocaine problem and needed help. Eugene thought of calling Paul and telling him he was right, but decided it was too late for that. What was done was done. At considerable expense, he sent Charlie to Hazelden. There, alongside rock musicians, movie starlets, and wealthy young hedge-fund operators and their wives, he conquered his addiction. Not long after he got out of Hazelden, with his father’s financial help, Charlie enrolled at John Kent Law School, attending classes at night.

  Charles W. Arnheim is today one of Chicago’s most successful personal-injury lawyers.

  Oh, Billy, Where Are You?

  When I told my mother I was getting married, she replied: “So, Louis, darling boy, you waited until forty-eight to marry a woman your own age who can’t give you any children and who has already failed three times at marriage? And this is my son who’s supposed to be so intelligent?” Common sense, not tact, has always been what my mother has prided herself upon.

  “Please don’t make a judgment until you meet Lynne,” I said. “She’s an extraordinary woman, you’ll see. Besides, be fair, one of her husbands died of a stroke.”

  “Let’s hope she didn’t give it to him,” my mother said. “I don’t care what you say, three husbands means something’s wrong. Three previous husbands speaks to a serious flaw.”

  The fact was, I considered myself lucky that Lynne Ross had agreed to marry me. She is a great beauty, dresses with unfailing style, and brought no children for me to have to help raise. A dermatologist with a successful private practice on Michigan Avenue and on the staff at Northwestern Medical Center, she was, by my or anyone else’s reckoning, a good catch, a better one than most people would say I was for her. A professional matchmaker might have said I was going up-market, Lynne headed down.