Walter came here to escape the plague but the plague found him anyway. It walked up to his doorstep and instead of shutting the door on it, he welcomed it in. For years, men came to this house in need of care and Walter took them in. Men who were once so vital, wasted away to nothing. Men who were once so robust would have to be carried into the house. Walter could not heal their bodies but he tried to alleviate their suffering. He allowed them to leave this world with the kind of dignity they had long been denied while living in it.
I know this because one of the men who came here to die was my son.
His name was Michael.
I was seventeen when I had him, far too young to be given any responsibilities, let alone motherhood. News of my ‘condition’ was not met with joy. Had we been Catholics, we might have blamed it on immaculate conception. But we were Southern Baptists and so we blamed in on bourbon.
You’ve never seen a girl as frightened as I was the day Michael came into the world. I would stare at him as he slept, slipping my finger into his tiny hands, which he would grab on to with such strength. That grip, that unwillingness to let go astonished me. This helpless creature, encountering another human, gripping on to them and holding them tightly, as if fearing that to let go would risk never being held again. It was the first time in my life I understood that I was needed. It was the first time in my life I truly felt love. Michael and I were both children when he was born. Only seventeen years apart in age. I don’t think that I raised him so much as we raised each other.
Michael was effeminate as a child. We called it ‘sensitive’, of course. Others had less compassionate words. I had less compassionate words. However, I cloaked them in faith. I would pray two things about Michael every night: God, please protect him. God, please don’t let him be queer.
I bought him a set of weights. Michael grew muscles. By the time Michael was eighteen and announced that he was moving to New York, he was six foot three and weighed two hundred twenty pounds of pure, solid muscle. I sent him out into the world certain that, however effeminate he might be, at least his imposing physique would keep the queers away.
What the hell did I know?
The night before he left, Michael and I stayed up late talking. I kept putting off sleep because I knew that the morning would bring with it his departure. I told him to find a church when he got there and to find himself a nice girl. Get in good with her family, I said. That way you’ll be sure to get a decent meal every now and again. And then he told me – and I’ll never forget the look of calm, knowing certainty in his eyes as he did – he told me there would be no girls for him, at least not in the way that I meant. ‘Mama,’ he said, ‘I’m homosexual. I’m going to New York to fall in love.’ This was more than I could bear to listen to. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘You’re confused. You’re afraid. You’re still so very young.’ In truth, I was the one who was afraid. Afraid of losing him. Afraid he’d be harmed. Afraid for his soul. And so I did what others had done to Michael his entire life: I attacked him. I told him he could not be my son and be like that. I told him he would die of disease or violence. I told him he would spend eternity in hell. And do you know what he told me? That it was better than spending his life in South Carolina. I admire the moxy now but that night I wanted to hit him. My only consolation it is that I didn’t. But the damage had been done. I was no longer his mother, his protector, his one safe person in the world. In that moment, I became no better – and no less dangerous – than all the others who took grim pleasure in taunting and abusing him.
If I had known that night that he would only live another seven years, I would have held him in my arms and told him I loved him. I would have placed my hands inside his fist, just like I did when he was a baby. I would have comforted him, I would have recognized his desperate need for understanding and compassion. I would have shown him kindness.
But I didn’t do that. I went to bed. I prayed and I cried. I attended to my own needs and I ignored my son’s. By the time I woke the next morning, Michael was gone.
I didn’t see him again until the day he died.
We spoke intermittently over the years. Short, terse conversations over the phone on my birthday and at Christmas. We never talked about his life. I never asked about his feelings or inquired about his heart. Several years went by when I did not speak to Michael at all.
Then one day, the telephone rang and a stranger’s voice was on the line. He said his name was Walter Poole and that he was a friend of my son’s. He was calling to tell me that Michael was sick and that he was taking care of him at his home in upstate New York. He didn’t believe that Michael had long to live and said that if I wanted to visit I should come soon.
‘Does he have it?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Walter replied.
Walter opened the door for me and I walked inside. I climbed the stairs up to the bedroom where Michael lay. I did not know the man I saw there. I said as much to Walter and he assured me that this was Michael Timothy Avery, my son, aged twenty-five years. Asleep and breathing shallowly and hours away from death. My Michael.
He weighed ninety-seven pounds. His hair was short and brittle. His eyes were sunken. His face was covered in lesions. He looked older than I did. I stared at this pitiful creature before me, searching desperately for signs of my child.
I said to Walter: ‘I haven’t seen his face in seven years.’
And Walter asked me why I came.
‘I came to tell him how angry I am at him.’
‘Well,’ Walter said, ‘now’s your chance.’
And I stared at my son, hours away from death, and I answered:
‘I think he must know by now.’
I walked to his bed. I looked at his hands. The skin was dry. There was fungus growing under his nails. I slipped my hands into his, waiting for Michael to squeeze them as he once had.
I kept my vigil for seven hours. Walter brought me food but I didn’t eat it. I couldn’t move from Michael’s side. The sun was starting to come up. Michael stirred, opened his eyes. He smiled at me.
‘Hi Mom,’ he said, his voice no more than a croak.
Michael closed his eyes. He squeezed my hand. His breath grew labored and shallow. I sat there for another hour as Michael faded, faded, faded away from me. His grip on my hands weakening until finally he stopped breathing and he slipped between my fingers and died.
Walter had befriended a man whose family owned a funeral home an hour from here. Gay, closeted. Terrified of being outed. And yet every time Walter called, this man would drive over, take each of the men and have them cremated. He’d return with the ashes and Walter would have a ceremony for them in the grove just beyond the meadow. We buried Michael’s ashes alongside the others.
I went home the next day but I couldn’t leave this place, not in my mind and not in my heart. I returned the next month and stayed with Walter. More men came. Men like Michael, who had nowhere else to go. Over and over scenes like that played out in this house, as Walter and I did what we could to comfort these men. I held their hands as I held Michael’s, as if they were my own child. I asked them about their pasts, their dreams that had been thwarted, their lives that had been interrupted and their futures that had been taken from them. Questions I should have spent seven years asking my son.
Eventually I bought a house nearby. And still the men continued to come. Walter and I buried over two hundred men in that grove over the years. There’s a list of names somewhere upstairs. Walter knew them all by heart. I regret I’ve started to forget them. But only their names. Never their faces. Those faces have stayed with me all these years, like ghosts. Michael’s and so many others. A haunting, if you will. A necessary haunting.
Silence.
Shall we go inside?
I wasn’t given specific instructions. All Henry said was to take care of the things as I saw fit. It took nearly two weeks.
Eric Two weeks? Why so long?
Margaret You had a lot of things delivered.
/> Eric But the movers were told to leave them in the downstairs rooms.
Margaret Which they did. But then it was left to me to sort it all out.
Eric I don’t understand. Sort what all out?
Margaret Your things.
Eric You unpacked my boxes?
Margaret Wasn’t I supposed to?
Eric No. We were just storing my things here.
Margaret That was not made explicit.
Eric How much did you unpack?
Margaret All of it.
She unlocks the door and we see the interior of the house once more. Only now the house is fully furnished. Every book, every piece of furniture. Carpets, paintings, photographs, nick-nacks. Sofas, end-tables, lamps. Bed and dressers. Dining table and chairs. Curtains and drapes. Every room, upstairs and downstairs.
Eric Eric stood there dumbfounded as Margaret began to open the shutters and then the windows, filling the room with sunlight and air. There before him was his life in possessions: his books – hundreds and hundreds of them. The walls were covered with his artwork and photographs. His old sofa and chairs and lamps and end-tables. He had not laid eyes on these things in almost two years.
Margaret For a businessman, Henry can be maddeningly imprecise. ‘Make sure it all gets sorted out.’ Those were his words. ‘Sorted out’ does not mean ‘stacked in a corner gathering dust’. ‘Sorted out’ means ‘sorted out’. Am I wrong?
Eric No. No, you’re not.
Margaret And so … out it was sorted.
She goes into the dining room, opening those shutters and windows as well. The room fills with light.
There were some scratches in your dining table. I did the best I could with it. It’s a beautiful piece.
Eric It was my grandmother’s.
Margaret Your grandmother had very good taste. I’m envious of her china.
Eric Everything fits so perfectly.
Margaret This furniture belongs here. Like Walter did. And you.
Eric Me?
Margaret You fit as perfectly here as the books on the shelf.
Leo You own a lot of books.
Margaret Yes he does. I tried to instill some order. They’d been packed haphazardly. Fiction is alphabetized by author. Non-fiction by subject.
Eric I think I’m in love with you.
Margaret (pointing up the stairs) Shall we?
Eric nods. She heads up the stairs and he follows.
Upstairs, Margaret opens the shutters in the bedrooms.
Eric Margaret, in all your time caring for this house, have you ever felt the presence of – I don’t know how to say this without sounding completely insane …
Margaret You’ve seen them, haven’t you?
A pause, then:
Eric On my first visit. I thought maybe I was imagining things.
Margaret Walter told me about you, in the days before he passed. He said he had found someone he could leave this house to. You remind me of him in a way. I can’t tell you how happy I am to know you’ll be living here.
Eric Oh, no. I’m not going to be living here. I’m just here for a time. Just while Leo gets back to health.
Margaret You can think that if you want. But this is your home, Eric. You may not know it’s yours, but it is. You’re living here now and you have been since you stepped on to the land.
Eric Eric followed Margaret up to the attic.
Margaret There were some things I didn’t know what to do with. Some boxes labeled ‘Toby’. Henry never mentioned anyone named ‘Toby’ so I decided not to open them.
Eric Oh. Yes. Toby’s … I’m keeping his things for him until he wants them again.
Margaret Well, they’re all here for him whenever he does.
Eric Eric went to the attic window and looked out at the property, which was arrayed gloriously before him in the bright afternoon sun.
(To Margaret.) It’s a beautiful meadow.
Margaret I’ve always thought so. Henry never cared for it. It made him sneeze. He and his sons. There’s not one Wilcox that can stand up against a field in June.
Eric Eric Glass and Margaret Avery looked out the window at the property. A breeze picked up as the sun peeked out from behind a cloud, filling the house with light and air.
End of Scene Four.
SCENE FIVE
1. Walter’s House
Spring, 2018.
Eric Eric and Leo had been at Walter’s house for two weeks. They attended to Leo’s physical, mental and spiritual health, starting him on the medications Eric’s doctor prescribed. They made the first of several visits to a local, trusted dentist.
Leo They took hikes of increasing length as Leo’s strength returned. They read under the cherry tree in the afternoons and at night in front of the fire.
Eric They made bouquets of wildflowers to leave at the graves of the men who had passed through the house long before them.
Leo Margaret showed them Michael’s grave and told them stories about his childhood.
Eric Eric waited for the moment Henry (or worse, his sons) would arrive to throw them out. But no one came except Margaret and occasionally her husband.
Leo And so, when Eric finally did hear a car pull up to the house one twilight, he understood that a reckoning had arrived. He simply had no idea which one.
Eric enters from the kitchen and moves out on to the porch. Leo is upstairs in his room, reading.
Toby enters, looking like utter hell. He holds a shopping bag in his hands. He and Eric stare at each other a few moments.
Toby I got lost along the way.
Your directions weren’t very …
The house, it’s … not easy to find.
I brought groceries. Also, a few bottles of ’86 Margaux. And a hundred-year-old bottle of scotch. I can afford shit like that now.
Eric You look awful.
Toby Just … livin’ the dream, baby.
Eric I read your play. It’s a complete mess.
Toby Who are you? Kenneth-fuckin’-Tynan all of a sudden?
Eric It’s also the bravest thing you’ve ever written. I know what it must’ve cost you.
A moment, then:
Toby I think my career is over.
Eric I think you’ve got more than just your career to worry about.
Toby I think you may be right.
Eric If it’s any consolation, I think my marriage is over.
Toby has to think on that and then:
Toby I’m sorry.
Silence, then:
Eric goes into the house, leaving the door open.
Eric Come inside.
Toby makes his way unsteadily inside the house.
Eric goes upstairs to Leo’s room, knocks and enters. Eric sits on Leo’s bed, pulls Leo close to him and whispers into Leo’s ear. Leo reacts in fear and anguish.
As this is happening, Toby enters the house, starts looking around.
Toby Holy shit, it’s all our things. Your things. I didn’t realize you were living here.
All your books. That’s a great fireplace. Remember our old fireplace? Those Sunday afternoons in front of it with the boys. That armchair doesn’t really work there, though, does it? Facing away from the fireplace like that? Oh, but your grandmother’s dining set. Look, you can still see the stain where Jasper spilled his soup that time.
Eric returns.
Eric Toby.
Toby turns in shocked silence, to see Leo at the top of the stairs.
Toby Leo.
Leo slowly approaches. They stare at each other in silence.
Leo stands before Toby, who reaches out to hold him when suddenly Leo slaps Toby hard. He then hits him on his chest and shoulders and back. Toby crumples to the floor in a heap by Leo’s feet. Leo continues to pummel him, letting out a scream of anger than ultimately becomes a cry of anguish. Eventually Eric rushes over and pulls Leo off of him. Leo has by now devolved into sobs and he cries as Eric holds him tightly in his arms, whispering calming, loving wo
rds insistently into his ear. Words only Leo can hear. Eric allows him to sob as he holds him tightly. Toby watches in shame.
2. Walter’s House
Several hours later. Night-time. Leo is upstairs in his room. Toby is on the porch.
Eric comes outside.
Toby I should go.
Eric You’re in no condition to drive.
Toby I’ll get an Uber.
Eric They don’t have Uber up here, Toby.
After a moment:
The day I met you, I remember thinking, ‘This guy is a lot, but this guy is alive.’ You shone with life, with promise. And all I wanted was to be next to you for as long as I could.
Toby I don’t know what the fuck to do, Eric. Please tell me what to do.
Eric There is a box in the attic, filled with your parents’ things. Perhaps it’s time you looked inside it.
3. Walter’s House
Deep into the night. Eric and Leo are both asleep in their rooms. Toby is upstairs in the attic space looking though his boxes. A bottle of scotch by his side, almost empty. He pours another glassful for himself.
Toby Late that night, Toby opens his hundred-year-old bottle of scotch. He goes to the attic and opens the boxes Eric had been storing for him for almost two years.
Envelopes stuffed with family photos, his early writing, movie tickets. Trinkets.
(He picks up a photo.) His mother, once so young and beautiful.
The Inheritance Page 20