by Bruce Bauman
Alchemy offered to buy us a home back east. We chose a two-story 1930s stone house on Cove Road on Shelter Island, a more pristine and isolated midpoint between the two forks at the end of the Sound. With his partners, Alchemy bought a three-story building on West 26th Street and Eleventh Avenue. They converted the basement and two floors into a women’s shelter and made the top floor an apartment for Nathaniel and me. Ruggles grudgingly agreed that I could forgo twenty-four-hour supervision for now. An aide came to check on me three times a week, and she and Nathaniel signed off on me taking my “normal” pills.
While he watched over me, an unforeseen bout of Gravity Disease infected Nathaniel, caused not by politics or my behavior but by the recognition of his dependence upon Alchemy’s generosity. Alchemy placed the deed to the Shelter Island house in Nathaniel’s name, and it highlighted his near pauperism. In thirty years of railing against the rampant selfishness of the wealthy, whenever Nathaniel had extra money he gave it away. He had donated the proceeds from the sale of the family home to a defense fund for death row inmates. Because they supplied a free house and other perks, Magnolia didn’t pay a grand sum, and he left before he could accumulate a pension. The advance he hoped to get for writing his memoir never materialized. He never made a dime when subletting his New York apartment, which we let go. Nathaniel supplemented our “Alchemy income” with adjunct teaching jobs at Stony Brook and Suffolk Community and occasional speaking gigs, but it was his self-esteem that needed supplementing.
He found invigoration in the rumblings of the antiglobalization movement, whose leaders idolized him. He spent weeks working the phones (and learning to use e-mail) preparing for the Seattle ’99 protests, which made him positively cheery.
Murray Gibbon and Marlene Passant opened the Gibbon-Passant gallery not five blocks from the apartment, and I scheduled a show. Inspired by the autumnal colors, I painted a series of Savant Red and Savant Blue abstracts on Plexiglas. I kept the edges sharp in honor of my past, and titled the exhibition The Beauty of My Weapons.
The Insatiables, at the peak of their popularity, were conquering Europe. When a radio station spread the rumor that Alchemy would fly in for the opening, Marlene and I decided to take advantage of my progeny’s fame. Not that there weren’t poseurs and frauds thirty years before, only now it seemed like New York openings were funless and filled with nonstop monkey chatter that gave me a case of external tinnitus. We sent out five thousand invites for the private Friday night opening, announcing a mystery guest. Hundreds arrived to find only blank walls and me, in my disguise as Dr. R. Mutter McGuffin, dean of the Dept. of the Theoretical Arts, behind a desk, selling MFA and BFA diplomas in the Myth of Fine Arts and Bachelor of False Advertising for $9.99. Some people got really upset. Most took it with good humor and enjoyed the free wine and beer. I sold them all. Gibbon snickered, “At least nobody died.”
The “real” opening happened the next Saturday. The show garnered my first review in New York’s self-anointed paper of record. A rave. The beginning of my art world redemption. You disappear for a while, live long enough, have a celebrity son, and a new generation of “critics” replaces the former slanderers. Every painting sold within a week.
Two days after the Bush coup of 2000, Nathaniel and I took the jitney to the city so he could help organize some protests. The country’s passivity enraged him. Mother Jones magazine asked him for a piece. He tried to write from the perspective of an aging Bohemian Scofflaw, in hopes that would spur him to write a follow-up to Tag—and perhaps make some money.
The afternoon he left for the post office to mail the piece, I took the subway to meet a displeased Gibbon and Passant at the Odeon. I’d sold a Savant Red painting for $100 to a broke young couple. In the middle of Gibbon’s tongue-lashing, my cell rang. Nathaniel had collapsed and an ambulance sped him to St. Vincent’s Hospital. I began to get hysterical—Marlene grabbed my arm and led me outside. Gibbon followed. We hopped in a taxi. I explained to Marlene that the ER doctor at St. Vincent’s had scarred my face with his ineptitude and I’d vowed never to set foot there again. This time the ER doctor, Neil Downs, who smelled like hot apple cider, competently assessed the problem, sent him for tests, and called in a neurologist; he’d suffered a stroke.
I sensated this was not Nathaniel’s time to leave me. I called Alchemy in Los Angeles. He was coming immediately. Xtine rushed over and stayed with me until midnight. I crawled into the empty bed in the semiprivate room and slept. After a few hours, the hospital’s spiritual Clorox odor awakened me. My brain feeling swollen, I left for a walk.
Winter, with its low smoky blue-gray clouds, like a silkscreen backlit by the city’s neon gleam, insinuated itself into my body and drew me to the seminary on 21st Street. The gardens were normally open to outsiders for only a few hours in the afternoon, but I’d made friends with the dormitory guards, who let me inside. I watched my breath as I meandered around the courtyard. I closed my eyes. I prayed to the sky for Nathaniel’s recovery. Suddenly, I felt blood dripping from my nose. I sat on a bench, tilted my head back, and patted it with the edges of my scarf. From my breath’s icy-hot vapors appeared an unfamiliar DNA ancestor.
—Shalom, my scion out of time. I am Margarita.
—Why have you never appeared before? Where is my Salome?
—I am Salome’s daughter. She sent me because I have a special message and mission for you.
—Have you come to take Nathaniel?
—No.
—Then why?
—When Salome and our family’s first father lay together, I became the child “untimely ripped” away to save his purity. My mother and I never found each other until it was too late. If she had found me, and he had known of me, he would never have allowed himself to be slain. You must stop it from happening again.
—What do you mean?
—Find your firstborn. Yes, he lives, and do what you must to assure our family’s destiny. Because one must live and one must die. And one has been chosen.
—Why? What? I don’t understand.
—Salome, murders do not happen suddenly. They gestate over years … and then they happen suddenly. You are their mother, you must be the one.
A guard found me on the ground beside the bench. He helped me inside, where I washed my face and warmed up. I caught a taxi back to the hospital. Soon Alchemy arrived, looking haggard, still anticipating I’d crumble or Nathaniel would leave us. My steadiness surprised him.
Dr. Downs explained the MRIs and MRAs indicated that, in all likelihood, Nathaniel would be facing a long recovery. Alchemy took charge, getting Nathaniel a private room and private nurses. After three days, they sent Nathaniel home to 26th Street.
Alchemy stayed in New York to help us out. But he also needed to work. He began producing an album by Cyrus P. Turntable. At home, he and Nathaniel spoke until Nathaniel became too frustrated and tired—the stroke had damaged his speech—about the short- and long-term ramifications of the Bush coup d’état and how this fracture in the democracy would help revolutionize the outdated system.
When the Mother Jones piece came out, Alchemy read it to us aloud.
“ ‘The swell of change, once so tactile, seems unreachable and our dream of a new enlightenment has become an American Inquisition converting the baby bombers and flower babes, war-fragged vets and suburban protest kids, civil disobedients and civil rightists, same-sexers and sexual sublimators into a class of overfed complainers. This is the moment to reconsider the past and remake the future and awake and sing once more!’
“Damn, Nathaniel, I think the coup inspired you to catch Scofflaw’s voice.”
Nathaniel’s eyes veered toward me, and he struggled to say, “Thank your mother. Without her help … she is the artist and chameleon in more ways than one.”
Yes, my son and I are chameleons. My heart hurt for Nathaniel, who could only be himself.
One afternoon while physical and speech therapists worked with Nathaniel, Alchemy took a smoke on the
enclosed terrace, which faced an unused ramp of the old West Side Drive. We meditated on his future and mine. In my body, in my DNA, I sensated that Margarita told the truth and Teumer had not lied.
“So, when you become the Political Savior, are you intending to call yourself Scott?”
“You’ll never forgive me for that, will you?”
“I want to make sure I’m not going to have to forgive you again.”
“I’m forever Alchemy.”
“Do you ever think taking care of me and Nathaniel would be easier if you had a sibling?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“Do you wish your brother had lived?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“So you’d like to have a brother?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Nowhere. Sometimes, because of what happened with him, perhaps I became too protective. Overbearing.”
“Yes. And no. I’m sure some people would be appalled that you encouraged me to have lots of sex. And others would’ve been proud that their kid enlisted in the army.”
“Yes. War good. Sex bad.” On that note, he took my motherly advice and went out for the night to find himself some sex. I sensated he had no idea that his brother still lived.
As the holidays passed uneventfully and the new year began, I duped myself into complacency. I buried thoughts of my undead child, as I had buried him decades before.
Just as I thought we’d begun to recalibrate toward a filial equilibrium with me—who would’ve guessed—as part-time caretaker of Nathaniel, Absurda succumbed to her Gravity Disease. Alchemy went into shock. That night he spent hours on the phone with Mindswallow and Lux, and all these record company PR people and managers. I wanted to scream, “Stop! Mourn. Cry your fucking eyes out!” The vicious ether began to envelop us, and I feared the family disease would strike him. Neither of us slept all night, and in the morning, as he prepared to evade the locusts swarming outside the building to go to Fond du Lac, he promised me, “Mom, I’ll be back right after Absurda’s funeral.”
He didn’t come right back. He sent Falstaffa and Marty to move me and Nathaniel back to Topanga. I didn’t object. I needed to be with my son. I needed to protect him.
We settled into our guest house on the compound, and I found two Teumers in the L.A. phone book, Jane and Moses. No Malcolm. I timed my first reconnaissance trip for the day before the Insatiables played their Absurda tribute show. Alchemy would be too preoccupied to track my whereabouts.
My nurse drove me by Lily Fairmont’s gallery to check on some possible sales and then to this Moses’s home in Venice. We parked two doors down from the small house. I told the nurse it was the home of an old boyfriend and I wanted to spy on him. She didn’t think that odd at all. I walked around the front and inhaled the soulsmell of morbidly bland steamed white rice.
The morning after the Troubadour tribute show, I stopped Falstaffa as she was bringing some beers and breakfast to the recording studio. Alchemy’d been in there alone all night. I brought in the tray. Alchemy lay on the floor, pillow under his head, staring up at the skylight. Surrounded by the weapons of musical destruction on one side and the Beretta he kept in the studio on the other. I placed the tray on the floor, picked up the gun, walked up the three steps to the console board, and returned it to its usual spot. I walked back and lay down beside him. I stared up, squinting at the morning brightness. For many minutes neither of us spoke.
“Mom, I fucked up bad. I didn’t save Absurda. I’ve pissed off Ambitious. Lux seems fed up. I don’t care if I never write another song.”
Gravity Disease, I understood. Suicide from self-pity, I couldn’t abide. “Do you feel sorry for yourself or for Absurda?”
“Both.”
“Mindswallow and Lux can take care of themselves. The world can survive without another of your songs. I can’t survive without you. Take some time. You need to protect yourself.”
He soon sought sanctuary in the monastery, which offered me the opportunity to pursue my mission without any interference. My course of action not quite set, I called for a taxi. My nurse intervened. Alchemy had left instructions not to allow me to go anywhere alone. I sent the taxi away. Two nights later, while everyone slept, I slipped out and down the path that led to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. I wanted a ride to Venice Boulevard. From there, I’d make my way to his house. I never even made it to PCH. Yes, I’d taken a bottle of Haldol and borrowed the Beretta from the studio—only as precautions. Misinterpretation of my intent landed me back here.
And then, in what was surely no coincidence, a week or so before I was finally allowed to leave Collier Layne and rejoin Nathaniel, I found a copy of People on a table in the lobby, with the sidebar headline “The Sexy Savior.” My insides shredding as every new word pierced and twisted itself into my body, I wondered if, as Margarita warned, my moment to save Alchemy had passed. I resigned myself to a life bracketed by the death, pretend or not, of my two children. For I lived Moses’s death for decades before his resurrection, and I lived Alchemy’s murder long before it occurred.
54
THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2008–2009)
Smile, You’re on Candide’s Camera
Moses surveyed his room, the few items left to be packed. The house would go up for sale next week, and he was moving to a one-bedroom apartment in Marina del Rey. They’d split the house money and their savings. Jay asked for nothing else.
His mother’s menorah rested on the almost empty shelf next to the plain white envelope where he kept his father’s medal. A large plastic bag filled with rubbish and a half-filled box with mementos sat on the floor. He grabbed the envelope. Held it tight. Tossed it in the box. He just couldn’t throw it out. He blew dust off the menorah and spoke aloud, “Hey, God, an eight-day-a-week miracle up your sleeve so Jay will come home? Nah? No answer? ’Course not.”
Outside, a car honked. Moses placed the menorah in the box and grabbed his sport coat and the binder with the proposal and his notes on the Nightingale Foundation. The driver proceeded to Musso & Frank in Hollywood.
Already seated in a leather booth in the back room, Alchemy finished autographing cloth napkins for two teenage boys. He signed three more napkins and put them on the end of the table. If no one else came over, he’d leave them.
He got quickly to his agenda. “What’d you think of the foundation proposal?”
“Looks promising. It can do a lot of good and it will set you up for the political leap.”
“Good things from the foundation. Great things from the Nightingale Party, which is the endgame.” Alchemy finished his vodka and ordered another, along with a glass of wine for Moses. “How much they pay you at SCCAM?”
“Fifty-eight and benefits. Summers off. Why?”
“That’s it? Come work with me.”
“Doing what?”
“I need someone I trust to oversee the foundation’s everyday workings. You’re the only person since I’ve been ‘famous’ who never asked for money or special this or that. I heard about the girl’s music you sent to Andrew. You didn’t put me in that spot.”
Moses hadn’t been sure what he would do in regard to Evie. If she had made an official complaint, would introducing her to Alchemy get her to withdraw it? Alchemy just made the decision for him.
“Mose, I’m going to need your knowledge and smarts when we go political.”
“There are many people smarter and way more experienced than me in working the political game.”
“I’ll hire them when the time comes. None of them is my brother.” Alchemy took a few purposeful gulps of his drink. “Tell me if I’m right about this, during the revolution, Washington used as his motto ‘Victory or Death.’ ”
“I’m not sure if it was his motto. He did use that phrase as the password during the crossing of the Delaware River. One would have to say ‘victory’ and the other had to answer with ‘or death’ to get by.”
“Good enough.
Now, what I’m going to say, I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. I’m not. My mom was taken from me when she flipped out at the gallery and stabbed Lively and herself. When I was thirteen and living in Berlin, she tried to jump off a balcony so she could climb the Wall. Both times I stood by helpless. When I turned twenty-one, the Bickleys maneuvered to take away the small money in the trust earmarked for me and I couldn’t get my mom out of Collier Layne. I had no prospects. No backup plan when we started the Insatiables. It was all or nothing. If we made it, I promised myself two things. First, I would take care of Salome and Nathaniel.”
He took a few gulps of his vodka.
“Now, I’ve kept that promise as best I could. I made a second promise to Nathaniel and myself—to find a third way politically. It’s now time to start that process. I only know how to do things all the way—victory or death.”
With that, Alchemy laid out his offer. He would set aside money in a trust for lifetime health insurance, a $100K salary, and if Moses’s cancer returned, or if it just didn’t work out, he’d still get paid until he recovered or found another job. But more than the money, it was an opportunity to be part of history, not just teach it. “Think about any questions. I got to take a leak.”
When Alchemy returned, Moses posed a more immediate question. “Where’s Salome living?”
“Here some, and Shelter Island. Nathaniel is not doing so well.”
“Sorry to hear that. There’s more to evaluate, and if I take this, it’ll be time to end that charade.”
“Agreed … Mose, should we talk about Jay?”
“No need. Lot of divorces after cancer. And our failure had nothing to do with you. End of story.”
Alchemy nodded.
Moses continued, “Alchemy, there is something we need to discuss. If we’re going to do this, and continue our relationship on any serious level, you can never again lie to me in words or by silence. If I sign on, and I find out any more subterfuge, I walk.”