The Poison Tree

by Henry I. Schvey

  “It’s my Hen-yee’s birthday today,” Mom sang. She brought out individual shrimp cocktails in glistening crystal sherbet cups. These cups were wedding gifts and were almost never used.

  “Where’s the cocktail sauce?” Dad asked.

  “There’s lemon and there’s ketchup,” she said. “You want ketchup?”

  “What for?”

  “For the shrimp cocktail, of course. You just said—”

  “I like ketchup!” chirped Bobby. No one listened or cared.

  “Don’t bother,” Dad said. He took a large shrimp, pulled off the tail and devoured the meat. Then he sucked the tail to make sure nothing was left. It made a slurping sound.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve been out all day with my Birthday Boy; that’s why there’s no cocktail sauce, Norman.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Porterhouse steaks comin’ right up!” she sang in a falsetto, clearing the shrimp cocktails and exiting towards the kitchen as she sang about moonbeams in jars and swingin’ on stars.

  “Shaddup, Rita!”

  She either ignored, or didn’t hear this, and returned with four huge steaks, gurgling in their own blood with blobs of curdled brown fat.

  “Look at this! Did you ever see meat like this? Special for Hen-yee!” Mom always talked baby talk when she was in high spirits. I usually hated it, but today, for some reason, it didn’t bother me.

  “How do you expect me to cut this, Rita?” My father was sorting through a dense thicket of knives and forks looking for a carving knife. To illustrate, he actually bit into one of the steaks, holding up one end in the air with a fork. Always immaculately dressed and supremely careful about his appearance in public, my father deliberately allowed steak juice to trickle down his chin and onto his plate.

  “I’ll find us some sharper knives.”

  “Don’t worry, we can eat it with our teeth,” he said, winking at Bobby.

  “Yeah, we’ll eat it with our teeth—right, Dad?” Bobby squealed with high-pitched laughter.

  “Stop imitating your father, Robert!” Mom said, as he reached for one of the steaks with pudgy fingers.

  “Look what you’ve done, Norman!” she said, and scurried over to the break-front, rummaging around for a carving knife. “See—the boy’s imitating you.”

  “What I’ve done?” my father said innocently, grabbing one of the knives, and trying to slice the meat. “These won’t cut, either!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry, my ass.”

  Mom didn’t respond, but left and promptly returned with a set of gleaming, sterling silver steak knives, still in their Tiffany blue box.

  “Do you know how hard I worked on this, Norman? All you’ve done is play tennis, sleep, drink Scotch, and criticize. How, after the day I’ve had, can you criticize me? Cocktail sauce? I took him bowling all day long—five games! What did you do? Play tennis? Where’s a boy’s father on his son’s birthday?”

  On the black and white television in the room behind us, Ralph Kramden balled his fist and held it up in the air dangerously close to his wife’s face. “To the moon, Alice, to the moon!”

  “Go ahead and try!” Alice said, defiantly.

  “Bang zoom!”

  “You don’t like it?” Dad challenged.

  “No, Norman, I don’t like it. Not one bit.” Mom put her hands on her hips.

  “Fine, I’ll eat out with Sy.” Dad rose from the table, scraping the parquet floor.

  “I mean it, Alice!”

  “What do you mean, you’re eating with Sy? It’s Henry’s birthday! You’re certainly not eating out with Sy!”

  “Go ahead, Ralph! I’d like to see you try!” Alice said again.

  “One of these days, Alice, one of these days—Pow, right in the kisser!” The TV audience laughed.

  I turned my neck to see the TV screen, but when I turned back, Mom was rubbing her cheek, even though Alice Kramden was unscathed.

  “Bastard! You filthy bastard,” she growled, eyes bright. My father was already halfway down the hall, wallet and keys in hand. “Children, do you realize your father is a filthy bastard? Well, now you know, and you can imitate him some more. How dare you, Norman!” she shouted after him. “And on his birthday, too!”

  The front door slammed, and my mother got up slowly and walked away from the table. After a few minutes, she returned. She reached for the bowl of steaming baked potatoes, each one wrapped in its own tinfoil jacket, with crystal dishes for sour cream and butter beside them. Mom slit a cross in the foil of one of the potatoes, added plenty of sour cream and butter and salt, and mashed it all together in one delicious goop. Then she did the same thing to another potato, then a third, until all four potatoes were fixed that way. Although my stomach started hurting from the moment they’d begun fighting, those baked potatoes looked good, and I could imagine eating one as Mom mashed the soft insides of each one with a fork. But she didn’t offer either Bobby or me a baked potato. Instead, we just sat there watching her smash the potatoes with the tines of her fork, frantically, over and over again for a long time. Then she returned to their bedroom, and emerged with the oblong bag Dad used for tennis. She carefully removed the rackets from their wooden presses, and, with a sterling silver spoon, scooped out all four potatoes and slathered the mixture all over his Slazengers. Then she took his shorts, shirt, and jockstrap, and packed them up in the tennis bag, and ladled the rest of the mess in with the clothes, and zipped it up again. She continued to sing “You Could Be Swinging on a Star” as she worked.

  When she was finished, my mother announced she was leaving.

  “Where ya’ goin’, Mom?” Bobby asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know—when are you coming back?” I asked, voice cracking.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever come back,” she said, “or where they might find me.” Bobby began howling, “Noooo!”

  “I want you to know if I don’t return, or if they find me somewhere dead, I’ve always loved you both, and none of this is your fault.”

  “Mom! Don’t go! Please!” Bobby and I said in unison. I thought about standing in front of the front door, but was frozen to the spot.

  “Farewell, my children, goodbye!” She waved and put a pink silk scarf over her head, shrugged into a light topcoat, and slammed the door.

  Bobby sat with his back to the door, rocking back and forth, Indian style, sucking his thumb. I told him she didn’t mean it; she would be back soon. But of course I wasn’t sure. She had done this before and always returned, but I couldn’t really be sure this time. Not after the mashed potatoes on my father’s rackets. This was something new and dangerous.

  After a while I wandered into their bedroom. In my father’s drawers, everything was perfect: his laundered shirts folded and stacked neatly, back to front, so they formed neat, symmetrical piles, each wrapped with a thick blue strip of paper like a birthday present. He used to fold his handkerchiefs so they had five little points like a king’s crown, and tuck them carefully into the breast pocket of his suit. I took one of the monogrammed handkerchiefs and inhaled its rich fragrance. It smelled like pine trees in Maine or some-place hours from the city. In a box, I saw an assortment of gold collar stays and cuff links, each tucked away in its own neat compartment. Ordered, like a Swanson’s TV dinner. I walked into the bathroom and saw my mother’s nylons splayed out over the radiator, panties in heaps on the floor, a girdle slung over the shower rod like a flayed carcass. The contrast couldn’t have been more marked.

  I went back to the dining room to make sure Bobby wasn’t doing something stupid, but he was in our bedroom, reading a Richie Rich comic out loud, laughing. As I passed the TV, I noticed The Honeymooners was still on, and heard Ralph taking Alice in his arms.

  “Baby, you’re the greatest!”

  I turned the set off.

  That night, my parents must have come home separately. They kissed and made up, sort of like o
n TV. She called him “Normie.” She did that when they were affectionate. Then Dad laid out his tennis things for Sunday’s game, and discovered the mashed potatoes and went crazy. He slapped her and we watched him drag her body through the dining room by her hair. He ordered us to stay in our room and shut the door. We obeyed. We heard our mother screaming “You pock-faced prick!” daring him to lay another finger on her. We listened as he threw her bodily out into the hallway outside the apartment, slamming the door. Bobby and I sat on our beds holding hands in silence as Mom banged on the door and screamed for the police. The police never came, and after what seemed like hours, the banging stopped. Robert fell asleep. Later, I heard the door open softly. Then there was silence.

  And this was what I had been foolish enough to tell Grandma when she handed me that ten dollar bill on my birthday.

  Now, everything I have touched so far on or near my father’s desk, I have put back in its proper place. I’m about to leave, key in hand, and suddenly recall why I’ve entered his apartment in the first place. I’ve been sent to find a small leather address book and bring it back to him in the hospital. It’s there, just as he said it would be, in the left-hand drawer of his desk, on top of a stack of business cards and legal pads. I open the book and check for Fionna Bingley’s address, just to be sure it’s there. The address is written in her own sophisticated British handwriting.

  I close the drawer again, but it jams. After more futile attempts to return it to its proper place in the desk, I lift out the drawer and compare it with its twin on the other side. They do not seem to match. I stick my hand inside the dark hole and feel around with a twinge of unreasonable fear. Will my hand get bitten or lost in there? I press on and touch something odd, a piece of wood, and another drawer springs open—a secret compartment! I open it and shudder. I am cold, feverish. I am relieved that this second drawer is empty; empty that is, except for a slim cream-colored leather portfolio trimmed in gold with initials embossed: NIS. I hold it in my hand, wondering whether to open the clasp. I start to put it away, like I have with the rest of the photos and menus and invitations, but I can’t.

  I release the clasp and open it. What I find inside is an assortment—no, not an assortment—a collection of twenty-eight, 4x6 inch, black and white Polaroid photographs, most going back more than fifteen years, each precisely dated and numbered. My breath catches in my throat, and my chest cavity is invaded with a burning sensation. A corrosive heat seeps into my stomach and begins to spread. All the Polaroid photos are in black and white, and all have the same delicately scalloped edges. They remind me of his white porcelain cup sitting politely on its wire rack in the kitchen.

  I pick up the first photograph. It is of a woman. I think I recognize her. But I’m not sure. She is on all fours in the middle of my father’s bed, the same bed I am sitting on now. She is naked and bound by rope, but the rope does not seem like it has been drawn especially tight. It feels like it’s part of a ritual, rather than a crime. The woman smiles a goofy, embarrassed grin. Her smile is what most disturbs me. It suggests participation in a sexual game, rather than violation. Yet the look on her face indicates the game may have gone on too long, or she no longer wants to play, or maybe, does not want this photograph taken. Maybe she is ashamed and wants this whole thing to stop. Maybe the photographer says just one more picture. Just this last one. I turn over the photo and see there are several more of the same woman in various poses. In one there is a red whip; in another a dildo. As I sift through them, I realize that there are a great number of women, most bound, most in similar poses, all with similar smiles. They are smiles of resignation and humiliation. I am trembling and feel afraid in a way I have never been since early childhood. This is not simply discovering a secret stash of pornography. This is something else. These pictures remind me of something crucial about me, of my father’s treatment of me; they make me feel a sense of personal shame in a way that is clearly disproportionate to the vulgar photos themselves. What could that be?

  I phone my wife in the Netherlands. Patty is still home where we live with our three small children in a 19th century canal house in the sleepy, university town of Leiden, The Netherlands, population 150,000. I teach English literature at Leiden University, one of northern Europe’s oldest universities, founded in 1575. I relish the sense of European history and culture that touches me each day on my walks to and from the Pieterskerk, or biking along the Witte Singel to work. My office at the university is minutes from the house where Rembrandt was born, and a bust of Leiden’s most famous citizen greets me each day as I cycle past. That is why I have stayed in Holland for more than a decade now, and why my children have been born there. It is a world that feels solid and stationary, so different from the violent sounds and smells of the New York in which I grew up.

  Patty realizes instantly that I have not called to ask about her or the kids. She knows this as soon as she hears my voice.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing. I’d like to speak to the kids.”

  She puts my son on the phone. Then I ask to speak to the two girls. Jerusha is five; Natasha barely three. I need to hear their voices. Remember the difference between my present there in Holland and my past in New York.

  She returns to the phone and pointedly asks, “So, what is it?”

  “Nothing,” I say, but of course she knows I’m lying. I just can’t tell her yet because I don’t yet know myself. But her superior knowledge makes me feel that much more defensive.

  “Can you send the children upstairs?”

  “Why? Why should I send them upstairs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what is it?” she asks again, impatience creeping into her voice. “I know you didn’t call just to find out how I’m doing.”

  I’m nervous. This phone call, which I hoped would act as a sedative, is instead increasing my anxiety. My throat constricts. I’m angry. About to say something nasty, something I’ll regret. I choke down the impulse.

  “I came up to my father’s apartment to find something, an address book—and instead, I think, I think …”

  “What did you find?”

  “Look, let me tell it! Stop interrupting! I’ve been looking through … old photographs, and papers, and things.”

  “What things?”

  I don’t feel comfortable talking to her anymore. This phone call has been a terrible mistake. I called to ask for help, but the problem is mine, and I’m unable to face it. I don’t really want to talk about my father, or my parents—or anything else. Anyway, I realize there’s really nothing to say.

  I change the subject. “You remember Fionna … Fionna Bingley? Well, she just had a child in London. And my father wants to write her, so I had to come up here and look for his—”

  “Well, that’s really very interesting,” she says. There is profound sarcasm in her voice. I know she remembers the string of miserable vacations we had with my father and his girlfriend in the south of France, Portugal, and St. Martin. Fionna Bingley was my father’s mistress in those days, and although several years younger than me, she treated me with condescension, correcting me on my French, and pointedly remarking on my inability to drive the little stick shift Renault they rented in Provence. The power dynamic was strange, and those vacations, which seemed to promise luxury, sun, and relaxation, were filled with scenes of raw anger and suppressed tension as my father repeatedly questioned the priority I unaccountably gave to my children’s meals or bedtimes. The worst part was how I transformed myself back into my father’s son. No matter where we were, I reverted to a frightened little boy in his presence.

  “What did you mean by ‘interesting’?” I ask, angry now, turning against her. Why?

  “It just is. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Listen. I can’t talk right now.” The next thing out of my mouth, I know, will be ugly.

  “I knew it,” she said.

  “Knew what? What the hell are you talking about?” I shou
t.

  “I knew it!” she repeats. “He’s disgusting—your father.”

  “How—? What do you know about it?” I respond, awkwardly. What has she intuited, over there on the other side of the world where our cozy, Dutch home looks out on a sleepy canal? She is in the Netherlands, thousands of miles from New York. Yet she knows that something … something has transpired … something about which I am still ignorant.

  “How can you not know about it?” she says mysteriously.

  I hang up the phone.

  I am in New York City, the city of my birth, my childhood. There should be countless people to speak to, myriad places to visit. But there is no one; everyone is either dead or has moved away. I should have destroyed those photos immediately. But I have not done so. I put them back in their secret hiding place, and for some reason I feel almost as though I’m in hiding myself. I wonder, what if he should return from the hospital and find the photos missing? What if he somehow discovers that I have seen them?

  I make my way through his apartment. As I walk out the door, I slam it behind me. I emerge on 2nd Avenue still holding the key in my hand.

  I walk to the Eldorado where Grandma once lived. I need to forget about what I have seen, immerse myself in something different. During junior high, and well into high school, I visited Grandma all the time. She was my refuge and sanctuary, and always had a meal and a strange, compelling story to tell. Besides, I knew the walk would do me good. But I stopped and recalled the one thing I was absolutely forbidden to do as a child. Her words came to mind.