Pharmakon

by Dirk Wittenborn

  “Someday, I’ll get you one, Dad.”

  “From you, I’d accept it.”

  Thanksgiving dinner was at 6:30. Willy was in Florence, Lucy orphaning in Morocco. Not knowing Lazlo was bringing Ula, and to make the table seem less empty, my father had invited a German ethnobotanist and a French chemist who worked for a drug company. He’d met both of them the week before at a symposium.

  My mother warmed toward Ula when the ex-stew changed out of her tube top and put on an ankle-length peasant dress that revealed nothing but a desire to please. And when Ula volunteered to mash the potatoes and make the gravy, my mother decided she rather liked the bombshell. The two of them made jokes about Lazlo’s nose hairs and his Hugh Hefner–esque bachelor pad, and they laughed together about men’s snoring. All of which gave me an unexpected glimmer of what my mother must have been like before she was my mom, or anyone’s mom. It was a glimpse of her, not unlike the one the ride in that red Mercedes had afforded me of my father—I was happy they were not always the people they’d had to become.

  My mother and Ula uncorked a bottle of white wine and were smoking Ula’s cigarettes. By now Ula was doing all the cooking and my mother was sitting on the counter having a good time.

  “How did you get your man?” Ula’s accent was singsong.

  “Organic chemistry. He asked to borrow my Bunsen burner.” My mother said it like the punch line to a dirty joke. Ula laughed, likewise.

  “Hot stuff.”

  “Yes, he was . . . still is.”

  My father was in the hayloft that had been turned into a living room with an eighteen-foot ceiling. Logs crackled in the fireplace they had made of river rock picked out by hand.

  My father was having a good time, enjoying listening to the French drughouse guy telling the ethnobotanist how brilliant Dad was. “You know, Will was the first to see the potential of the inhibitors in the reuptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin.”

  Usually, I tuned out when my father and his friends talked shop. But after the ride in the Mercedes, and being startled by the way my father had talked to the cop, and surprised by how my mom talked about sex with Ula like part of her was still a twenty-four-year-old babe, it occurred to me that I was missing something.

  And so I listened as my father shrugged off the compliment. “Back in the sixties I was intrigued by diphenhydramine, and even before that with the synthesis of the first SSRI, zimelidine, from chlorpheniramine, also an antihistamine, but then and now the side effects worry me.”

  The French chemist tried to include me in the conversation. “Your father always worries about the side effects.”

  “Not that they listened to me.”

  The German was listening carefully. “Professor Friedrich, have you ever worked with natural drugs?”

  “No,” my mother answered for him.

  The German looked confused. “But I was led to believe you worked with Dr. Winton.”

  “How did you come to hear that?”

  “A professor of mine, Dr. Honner, had a correspondence many years ago with Dr. Winton that led him to understand that the two of you had worked together on a psychoactive plant native to . . . where was it?”

  “Cool. Dad, why didn’t you ever tell me about that?”

  “Dr. Winton and I were colleagues at Yale, but I wasn’t aware of any correspondence. You’ll have to ask your professor about that.”

  “Unfortunately, my professor is no longer with us.” There was a look of relief on my father’s face. “Perhaps you know how I can get in touch with Dr. Winton?”

  My father shook his head no. The conversation moved on like nothing had ever happened. I had to say something. “She was murdered.”

  High beams arced across the lawn and into the window. Fiona had driven out from New York with “a friend,” i.e., a boyfriend. It had been years since Fiona had brought a boy home, and after the dinner in her loft, I was surprised to hear she was coming.

  When I think back on it, I can see that Fiona kept men at arm’s length for the same reason Lucy toyed with them. The smothering intimacy of my parents’ union scared them. Back then I simply thought Fiona wasn’t that into sex. I wasn’t entirely wrong.

  We were all in the living room looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows as Fiona and her new friend pulled up. They parked directly beneath us. The garden lights illuminated them. We all kibitzed as Fiona’s “new friend” (that’s what my mother called him) got out of his white BMW. He wore a houndstooth tweed suit, a mauve shirt, and a floppy bow tie. He looked to be thirty or thirty-one. “Ja, cute, but not my type,” was what Ula had to say.

  “What do Americans have against American cars?” was the German ethnobotanist’s take.

  The French chemist poured himself another glass of wine. “What is the name of your daughter’s fiancé?”

  My mother corrected him. “He’s not her fiancé.”

  “Not yet, at least.” My father watched the new friend pull a bouquet of flowers and a small gift-wrapped square out of the backseat.

  My mother stood, craning her neck to get a better look. “I think he’s called Michael Charles.”

  “I do not like people with two first names.” Everybody laughed, and Lazlo lit a fresh cigarette.

  “Well, if those flowers are for me, I think he’s very nice.” Everybody laughed again, except for my father. Dad chewed a dry cracker and observed Michael take a silk pocket square from his jacket and wipe away three specks of mud from his fender. He was about five six or seven, with very good posture, so he seemed taller. He had wavy brown hair and the profile of an Indian head nickel.

  As he stood there bearing gifts, waiting for Fiona to finish reapplying her makeup and get out of the car, he looked up at the barn, which at night looked bigger and more impressive than it was, then over at the red Mercedes, then down toward the trout stream, visible through the barren branches of our wood, and smiled, not like it was pretty, but grinned and nodded as if to say, “This will do.”

  My father watched him just the way he watched groundhogs steal the peaches from his trees before he shot them.

  When Fiona’s new friend walked around to the passenger side of his BMW and opened the door for her, my mother called out, “Two points for gallantry.”

  When my sister stood up, Michael Charles slowly brushed the hair out of her face, took hold of her chin like it was a jewelry box, turned her head slightly to the side, and kissed her on the lips. I was the only one that noticed he had to stand on tiptoes to do it.

  The Frenchman and the German clapped, and my father said to no one in particular, “He’s good with an audience.”

  My mother didn’t like that he said that. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “He knows we’re watching. It’s for our benefit, not hers.”

  The bouquet was indeed for my mother. Two dozen calla lilies. The gift was for my father’s benefit. It was a framed black-and-white photograph Michael Charles had taken of Fiona over the summer. She had clearly known him longer than they realized.

  Fiona was the kind of pretty woman who didn’t photograph well. As soon as someone pulled out a camera, the smile would slide from her face. Her expression would change, her eyes would narrow, she’d stick her chin out and tilt her head back and look down her nose at the person who’d dared to try to capture her likeness. When you looked at snapshots of Fiona over the years in our family photo album, you can almost see her thinking This isn’t me. You’ll never get me.

  But in that photo Michael took, posed in a shade garden, her face half hidden by ferns, he had captured a side of Fiona that was softly voluptuous, mysteriously exotic, and as fiercely intelligent as one of those plants that eats insects.

  I could tell Fiona liked how Michael saw her more than my father did. My father said thank you and smiled as Michael pulled a Leica camera out of his pocket and photographed Dad putting his image of Fiona up on the mantle next to my bogus journalism trophy.

  As my father carved up th
e bird, five minutes of small talk revealed that Michael Charles had grown up in St. Paul, Minnesota, attended Stanford Law School, and come to New York to practice corporate law at what he called a “white-shoe law firm.” But he quickly added, “I realized it wasn’t for me.”

  “White meat or dark meat?” my father inquired.

  “I’m easy.”

  “That’s good to hear. What is for you, Michael?”

  “I started my own firm. We specialize in entertainment law. Actors, directors, producers, a few writers. Not many. They’re pains in the ass, and they don’t make enough money.” His voice was casual and cocky, so matter-of-fact his candor came across as honesty.

  “My son Zach’s a writer.” My head spun around.

  Michael looked at me curiously. “You don’t say.”

  “He won the state journalism contest.” My father pointed toward the mantle with the carving knife. “But I think his real talent lies in fiction.” From the way he said it, it was hard to tell whether my father was implying that he knew my prize-winning reportage about the dangers of drugs was not heartfelt, or that I simply was comfortable with something other than the truth.

  “What was your article about?”

  “It’s too lame to go into.”

  Michael looked at me and smiled, not like I was the kid brother, but like winning the trophy made me worth getting to know. I liked the feeling. “Send me something you’ve written.”

  When I put down the peas I was carrying in, he handed me his business card. Fiona chimed in, “He’s my little brother; I get ten percent.” She gave me her usual kind of hug, more headlock than pat on the back. “When did this happen?”

  There was no “this” to tell. Like most teenagers who aren’t good at math or science, I daydreamed about the life of a writer— not the sitting down at the typewriter part, but the making sense of all the bad stuff after it’s too late to do anything about it except write it down. Holding Michael’s card made the fantasy take root.

  Fiona whispered in my ear, “Do it. Michael knows everybody.”

  “Why entertainment, Michael?” My father had already rearranged the place cards. He put Michael across from himself, and sat Fiona and me at the other end of the table.

  “On a personal level, I like working with creative people, helping them bring their dreams to life. And from a business point of view, entertainment’s the future.”

  “How so?” My father gestured for him to sit down.

  “Entertainment’s what America knows how to make best. Dreams, fantasies, movies, television . . .”

  “Everybody in Germany loves Bonanza.”

  “In France, too. Every channel, Columbo! ”

  The news cheered Michael. “Exactly. And I don’t know what your politics are, Dr. Friedrich, but it seems a more honorable way for America to make a profit than exporting wars like Vietnam and making crap cars.”

  “That’s an interesting way of looking at things. But what if we’re exporting our anxieties?”

  The French chemist poured a bottle of St. Emilion that he had brought. “That is why we are in the drug business.”

  My father laughed and focused on a more immediate concern. “So, Michael, tell me about yourself.” Dad asked him so many questions over the next three courses, you would have thought he was interviewing a guy for a job. Which, of course, in a way he was.

  My father kept refilling Michael’s wineglass, all the while making inquiries that seemed casual, offhand, unrelated, but I knew were designed to lull Fiona’s new friend into revealing more about himself than he realized he was revealing.

  “How did you feel about that?” “What did your family think about that?” “That’s an interesting choice of words.”

  Most cunning of all, my father told embarrassing stories about his own youth to prompt Michael to treat him to anecdotes that he would not have otherwise shared with a girlfriend’s father. My dad knew how to pretend he was a nice guy.

  I was on my way for seconds of turkey when I overheard Michael tell Dad about the Halloween he collected $147 for UNICEF by dressing up as a nun. The joke being that at thirteen, he had made such an unattractive nun, people in the neighborhood contributed more than they would have normally. My father ate that one up.

  When I got back to my seat, Fiona was telling Lazlo and Ula about a line of clothes she was designing. When I asked her, “What about your painting?” she answered with a sneer, “There’s this thing the Friedrichs never talk about. It’s called making money.” Everybody got it but me.

  “So you make dresses and stuff?”

  Fiona, unlike my mother, was always good at sewing. “Menswear.” Before I could ask any more, she called out, “Michael, darling, stand up and show everybody how fabulous I am.”

  On command, Michael stood up and showed off his hounds-tooth suit. Everyone oohed and aahed, and my father smiled and said, “I was about to ask him where he got that.”

  Then Lazlo asked, “Do you have clothes that would make me look less bald, fat, and old?”

  Ula called out, “Lazlo, you are the kind of man who is more beautiful naked than dressed.”

  “Ula, how much did Lazlo have to pay you to say that?” Everybody roared when my mother said that, not so much because it was so funny, but because they’d drunk most of a case of wine and it was Thanksgiving, and it felt like there was more fun to be had at our table than any other table in the world. Gemütlich was the word the German ethnobotanist used to assess the day as he and the Frenchman said good-bye.

  I walked Fiona out to the car when they left. Michael was already behind the wheel. As she got in next to him, I heard him whisper in her ear, “I told you your father would like me.”

  When I went back inside, Lazlo and my mother and Ula were doing the dishes. As I looked at the business card I had been given, I listened as the three of them concurred—Fiona and Michael were, as my mother put it, “serious.” And as for Michael, Lazlo put it best. “What’s not to like?”

  My father sat alone at the dining table looking into the sad eyes of the poodle that had ripped out Bambi’s throat. My mother waited for him to give his opinion. When it didn’t come, she said, “Well, Will, what do you think of her new friend?”

  “I think Michael’s intelligent, very well educated, ambitious, and, in general, I like him.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I just don’t like him for Fiona.”

  “Why not?” I was mystified, but not surprised.

  My father spoke slowly, as if he were a spy sending a coded message. “Some . . . women . . . might be . . . comfortable . . . in a marriage with a man like Michael Charles. I just . . . don’t think . . . Fiona is one of them.”

  “Why not?” That was my mother.

  “She’s not that sophisticated.”

  My mother took exception, “Fiona has an MFA. She’s very sophisticated. Why do you underestimate your children?”

  “I don’t underestimate my children, and I certainly don’t underestimate Fiona or goddamn Michael Charles. I just expressed my opinion based on observation.”

  “Well, can you be more specific?” There was an edge to my mother’s voice. Ula and Lazlo were wondering if they’d made a mistake asking if they could spend the night.

  “I will have this discussion with Fiona when and if I think the time is right.”

  “They’re already engaged.”

  “Christ.” My father picked up a meatless bone from the turkey carcass, took it outside, and gave it to Gray. Mother followed him out onto the deck. When they saw I was eavesdropping, they moved away from the house so I couldn’t hear. The parrot waddled after them, calling out the names of the departed. “Fiona, Lucy, Willy . . . Jack . . .”

  Lazlo glared at the parrot. “When is that damn bird going to die?”

  “Parrots can live sixty years. Longer in captivity.” I’d done a report on African grays in the eighth grade. “There’s a gray in Los Angeles that has a vocabulary of seven hun
dred words.”

  “Well, this bird is going to bed.” Ula headed upstairs. Lazlo, out of cigarettes, scrounged a half-smoked Lucky from the ashtray.

  “Lazlo, what’s going on? Why’s Dad hate him?”

  “Gray?”

  “No, Michael.”

  “Your father doesn’t like being a bastard; he just can’t help himself.” Lazlo took two more hits of Dristan. At dinner, he’d told everybody he’d developed a dust allergy.

  “What do you mean, he can’t help himself?”

  “People ask him questions, he assumes they want to hear what he really thinks.”

  “He’s not always right about people.”

  “Not always. But when he says something that seems crazy, especially if he pisses you off, it has a way of turning out to be true. Truer than he wished it was.”

  “You’re just sticking up for him because he likes you.”

  “Once, I owned a company, part of a company. Sold scrap steel to the Japanese. We needed a president, good businessman. I find six, seem good to me. I ask your father if he’ll meet with them, tell me what he thinks.”

  “And he told you which guy was the best and you hired him and he turned out to be great and you made a lot of money.”

  “No, wiseass. Your father tells me this guy named Slaussen, he’s the best one, but I shouldn’t hire him, I should hire the second best. I forget his name. And I tell your father, ‘You’re crazy, why should I not hire the best, the smartest?’ And your father looks me in the eye, and I’m quoting now, and tells me, ‘Slaussen’s too tightly wound. In six months he’ll either have a heart attack or shoot himself.’ I laugh, I say, ‘Thank you for nothing,’ and I hire the best, Slaussen. First six months great, seven months, jumps in front of a subway.”

  “How’d my father know?”

  “He told me there was something about the way the guy ate his steak that told him he was off.”

  “How’d he cut his steak?”

  “Ask your father.”

  My father would not tell me why he was so sure Fiona wasn’t “sophisticated enough” to marry Michael Charles. He said his concerns were no one’s business but Fiona’s. Michael called my father at work a week after Thanksgiving to invite him and my mother to lunch at a restaurant called La Grenouille. He said, “Fiona and I have something important to ask you.”