The Other Side of the World

by Jay Neugeboren

  We arrived at the Falzettis’ home shortly before noon. Eugenia invited us in and informed us that Lorenzo had arrived a few hours earlier, and was absenting himself because he didn’t want to cause—his words—more fireworks.

  “Not funny,” Seana said.

  Eugenia brought us coffee, and a snack—ham and cheese sandwiches, cookies, fruit—and filled us in on the current situation: Trish had been transferred to a private residential hospital outside Camden; Gabe was in a facility for developmentally challenged children—further north, near Acadia National Park; a lawyer—Trish’s, not Lorenzo’s—was eager to talk with us. Lorenzo had told the lawyer of their willingness to take care of Anna until the guardianship situation was resolved and, if need be, to have Gabe live with them if and when the doctors discharged him.

  Eugenia assured us that, thanks to Trish’s inheritance from Nick, to excellent insurance policies, and to what she and Lorenzo were prepared to contribute, there would be no problem paying for treatment and care for Trish or for Gabe, even if treatment proved long-term.

  Anna, thumb in mouth, came into the room then, dragging her favorite silk-edged blue blanket behind her. Seana got out of her chair, bent down to Anna’s level, and spread her arms wide. Anna gave her a hug, then came to me and gave me a hug.

  “Why don’t we show Uncle Charlie and Aunt Seana your room,” Eugenia said, and Anna took us to the room she was staying in. Her bed was covered with stuffed animals, including the parrot we’d given her. Eugenia walked to a dresser—its top, diapers and lotions to one side, serving as Anna’s changing table—and opened the drawers to show us Anna’s clothing.

  “It’s been a help in making her feel at home that she still has her own clothes and toys,” Eugenia said. “That was Gabe’s doing. When he ran out of the house, he was mindful enough to take a cell phone with him, and to dial 911. Quite remarkable really. We have an excellent volunteer fire department—they were there in under four minutes—and when they arrived, Gabe was standing outside waiting for them, telling them what had happened, and where the bedrooms were. They were able to keep much of the rear section of the house, including the bedrooms, from being destroyed.”

  A few minutes later Lorenzo joined us in the living room. “I assume Eugenia has provided an update on essentials,” he said. “Given our past history, we three, I thought it best if she be the intermediary in these matters. But I give you my word that she and I stand ready to do whatever is necessary to provide for our daughter-in-law, and for our grandchildren. I believe it was a wise move for Trish to have named you guardians—who knows how much longer we’ll be available?—and I believe the children’s lives will be better served by a younger couple.”

  He looked at me, and then, for the first time, at Seana. “Any questions?” he asked.

  We had none.

  “Good,” he said. “Then I am going to ask you to step outside with me for a minute, young man, for some words best delivered privately.”

  We walked outside together, toward the end of their property, across from Wyeth’s island.

  “I read your story,” Lorenzo said.

  “My story?”

  “I read your story,” he repeated. “I found it in Trish’s room when we were packing up some of her clothes, to bring to her. I know what you thought of my son—that you didn’t especially like or admire him although, like many others, you were clearly drawn to him.”

  “Look…” I began.

  “Do not interrupt,” he said. “I am talking about my son, and you will hear me out.”

  I said nothing.

  “I didn’t like or admire Nick much either,” he said. “I may have liked him less than you did. As for love, that is a word—a notion—I have never quite understood. Like the belief many have in God, or some Supreme Being, it is a concept beneath my powers of imagination, such as they are. But he was my son.”

  “Of course.”

  Then he grabbed me by the shoulders, and even while his voice was low and even, his eyes were on fire.

  “But he was my son!” he said again, his grip on my arms tightening. “He was my son—blood of my blood—and I will see you crushed before I depart this world. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “I have the story, which your friend sent to Trish, and I have been in touch with people in Singapore, and I am informing myself about extradition policies. Your friend’s virtues as writer and woman—her recklessness and devil-may-care attitude—have done you in, you see.”

  “She sent the story to Trish because she cares for her,” I said. “And anyway, the story’s not all true.”

  “Don’t talk crap to me, young man,” he said. “I’m sure Nick told you that I became a self-made man because—the phrase he loved to repeat—I learned to turn shit into gold. So let me tell you the obvious: that I can do the reverse. I can turn gold—your life, sir, which includes, I have discovered, a sizeable inheritance from your father—into shit.”

  “Are you done?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Then wipe yourself,” I said, and walked away.

  “Your father’s smart-aleck Brooklyn lines won’t help,” he said, grabbing me from behind and forcing me to face him.

  “I have your story,” he said again, “and I will use it when and how I see fit, and if you are smart—not wise, which you will never be, but smart—you will tell no one, not even your precious Seana, for if you do, that will serve to hasten my plans, and I prefer not to be rushed. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  He let go of me. “You can go inside now, and I will leave you with Eugenia. I will receive reports on a regular basis, and will expect to see my grandchildren when I choose to see them. I advise you to honor my requests in a timely fashion.”

  The day after we returned to Northampton, it snowed heavily—an early winter storm that made the town seem especially beautiful. Seana, Anna, and I put on boots—the snow was eleven inches deep—and walked across the Smith College campus and down to Paradise Pond, which had not been plowed yet, so that there were no skaters on it. We stood outside the boathouse, and it was there that Seana proposed marriage, saying that she thought the courts would look upon us more favorably as guardians for Gabe and Anna if we were a legally married couple.

  A few days later, with Max’s lawyer, we negotiated a prenuptial agreement. As with going to war, or drilling through the ocean floor, Seana said, we shouldn’t undertake hazardous adventures without having viable and detailed exit strategies. She thought she might, in the next year, sell several of her apartments, have her papers and belongings packed up and shipped to Max’s house—now my house, soon to be our house—and perhaps, on the anniversary of the day on which she had become owner of Max’s archive, we could hold a tag sale of her literary shards, though we might put aside material a university library would find valuable in order to buy ourselves more time for writing and travel.

  Two days after the snow storm, a social worker from Trish’s residence called to tell us that Trish had attempted suicide by trying to hang herself with strips of cloth torn from her bed linens, but that the attempt had been unsuccessful. Later that week we drove up to Maine, left Anna with Eugenia and Lorenzo, and visited with Trish. She was heavily medicated, her speech slurred, and we spent most of our visit—less than twenty minutes—listening to her tell us again and again how sorry she was, and adding, several times, no matter our insisting that her present situation was surely temporary, that she was glad we were going to be Gabe and Anna’s mommy and daddy for the rest of their lives. Before we left, she held me close. Her arms and face were slick with sweat, her body odors foul. “I really, really liked your story,” she whispered.

  We visited with Gabe, and he seemed much the same as he’d been when we’d stayed at Trish’s house: bright, talkative, articulate. He liked his room, and his attendants—they were young, intelligent, well-trained—and he told us about what his days were like: the classes and tutorial
s, the exercise sessions and play groups, the meetings with doctors. He knew that his mother was ill and might not get well for some time, and when we said that he could come live with us in Northampton when he was discharged, he said one word, “Never,” and changed the subject, asking about his model airplane collection and if it had burned in the fire. When I said it had not, he asked if, the next time we visited, we could bring model airplane kits for several World War I planes he wanted to add to his collection. Seana wrote down their names.

  On a Thursday morning three weeks after our return from Maine—Caitlin and Keira driving up to Northampton and staying overnight with us so they could serve as witnesses—Seana and I were married.

  In our new life together, we spent a good portion of our days caring for Anna, and were surprised, even though she was an agreeable and sweet-dispositioned child, at how much sheer time and energy it took: dealing with diapers and baths, sniffles and rashes and ear infections, naps and nightmares and eating idiosyncrasies. She was also, especially during her first three or four weeks with us, subject to tantrums, when she would become inconsolable for thirty to forty minutes, weeping and screaming and not letting us near her, and we could never figure out what had triggered a tantrum, or how and why it could disappear as quickly as it had arrived. In early February, we were able to get her into a pre-school group at the Smith College Campus Day School (where I had gone), and in this way, and by meeting other parents with children her age, and arranging for play-dates and sleepovers, we were able to have more time for writing, and for those matters we came to refer to as the detritus of illness and death: Max’s lawyer, Trish’s lawyer, various accountants and financial advisers, and courts in Massachusetts and Maine.

  I decided not to turn Charlie’s Story into a novel or novella, but instead, from the baker’s dozen Seana had culled from his papers, to pick out one of the other stories Max had not written—Pagello’s Surgery appealed the most—and Seana said she would do the same, and that eventually we’d make books of them all—but that she wouldn’t make her initial choice until after she’d gone through the four books she was already at work on to see if any of them were worth salvaging. When I said that I didn’t feel quite ready to write a novel, and would try to turn Pagello’s Surgery into a short story first, Seana warned that it was often more difficult to write a short story than a novel—that knowing there were no limits of time and space—no page limits anyway—might give me a sense of freedom I wouldn’t enjoy in the shorter form.

  But it did please her that I was thinking of writing about Pagello, and if and when I did, she suggested I focus not on his love affair with George Sand, which took place in Paris when he was thirty-two, but about what she’d talked about my first night back in Northampton—about how, after his life with Sand in Paris, he’d returned to Venice, where he married, had children, practiced medicine, and died peacefully, fifty-nine years later, at the age of ninety-one. And maybe, too, we might just have to go to Paris and to Venice so I could do some research.

  She was also, to my surprise, enthusiastic when I suggested we visit Borneo together. If and when we did, I told her I could arrange to have us fly over some palm oil plantations so we could watch the forests burning and/or blossoming.

  “‘Ne détruisez pas la verdure,’” she said.

  “Sand’s last words,” I said.

  “Yes—and I kept thinking of them when I read your descriptions of Borneo,” Seana said. “Sand has always been my hero, more as a woman—a force of life—than as writer, even though, unlike me, she was an incurable romantic and believed in the divine, transfiguring power of love, in following the dictates of one’s heart…”

  “The way I do?”

  “Probably,” Seana said.

  “Probably?”

  “Probably,” Seana said again. “Her energy—her passion and conviction—puts all of us to shame. She was the most prolific female author in the history of literature, yet she still had time for taking care of her children, her grandchildren, and of people who worked on her estates, as well as for numerous love affairs—with Lizst and Chopin, de Musset, Pagello, others. Such fullness of life, and yet her deathbed prayer, though not her last words, was for peacefulness—‘Calme, toujours plus de calme.’ So yes, Charlie—let’s find a quiet place in Borneo, you and me, and maybe settle there for a while.”

  We began planning a trip to Borneo and, against the time when Trish might get well and take her children back, adopting a child. And we talked about buying a place of our own, perhaps near Kuching, if we could get the courts to approve our taking Anna out of the country for an extended period.

  The chief psychiatrist at Gabe’s institution thought Gabe might be ready for discharge within six to eight months, but he cautioned against having him live with us. His suggestion was that we find a private residential school—he could recommend several good ones—that was experienced in working with children with Asperger’s syndrome. If, however, we chose to have Gabe live with us, he advised against mainstreaming him in a public school.

  I began corresponding with adoption agencies in Boston, as well as in Singapore, where the main offices of several Borneo agencies were based, and it seemed that it might actually be possible to make preliminary arrangements for an adoption before we arrived, or, that failing, to make several brief trips, separately if necessary—without Anna—each of us meeting separately with agencies and children, and one of us bringing a child home when arrangements were finalized. If the adoption went well, it could, we told each other, become the first of several.

  But even if we adopted children and bought a place in Borneo, or sold some or all of Seana’s places, or had Trish’s house in Maine restored for her and her children, we were in agreement about not selling Max’s house, and on one unseasonably warm evening in mid-April, while we sat on our front porch having drinks (a vodka tonic for me, a dry martini for Seana), Anna on the floor nearby, playing with her clothespins and yogurt cups, and Seana looking especially lovely in a white linen sun-dress (since I’d mentioned that for the Chinese white, not black, was the color of death, she’d taken to wearing white virtually all the time), Seana remarked on how sad it was that Max hadn’t lived to see what had resulted from his tag sale. But of course, I said, gesturing to the three of us, were he still here—and were Nick still alive—none of this would ever have happened. ■

  Also by Jay Neugeboren, available from Two Dollar Radio

  1940

  A NOVEL

  A Trade Paperback Original; 978-0-9763895-6-9; $15 US

  Longlist, 2010 International IMPAC Dublin

  Literary Award.

  “Jay Neugeboren traverses the Hitlerian tightrope with all the skill and formal daring that have made him one of our most honored writers of literary fiction and masterful nonfiction.”

  —Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

  SET ON THE eve of America’s entry into World War Two, 1940 is built around a fascinating historical figure, Dr. Eduard Bloch, an Austrian doctor who had been physician to Adolf Hitler and his familiy when Hitler was a boy. The historical Bloch was the only Jew for whom Hitler ever personally arranged departure from Europe, and he must now, living in the Bronx, face accusations over the special treatment he received.

  1940 FOCUSES ON Dr. Bloch’s relationship with Elizabeth Rofman, a medical illustrator at Johns Hopkins Medical School, who has come to New York from Baltimore to visit her father, only to find that he has mysteriously disappeared. The story grows more complex when Elizabeth’s son Daniel, a disturbed young adolescent, escapes from the institution in Maryland where his parents have committed him, and makes his way to New York, where he is hidden and protected by his mother... and by Dr. Bloch.

  YOU ARE MY HEART AND OTHER STORIES

  STORIES BY JAY NEUGEBOREN

  A Trade Paperback Original; 978-0-9826848-8-7; $16 US

  “[Neugeboren] might not be as famous as some of his compeers, like Philip Roth or John Updike, but it’s becoming increa
singly harder to argue that he’s any less talented.”

  —Michael Schaub, Kirkus Reviews

  FROM THE SECLUDED VILLAGES in the south of France, to the cattle crawl in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in South Africa, Neugeboren examines the great mysteries that unsettle human relationships.

  NOVELS

  Big Man

  Listen Ruben Fontanez

  Sam’s Legacy

  An Orphan’s Tale

  The Stolen Jew

  Before My Life Began

  Poli: A Mexican Boy in Early Texas

  1940

  STORIES

  Corky’s Brother

  Don’t Worry About the Kids

  News from the New American Diaspora

  You Are My Heart

  NON-FICTION

  Parentheses: An Autobiographical Journey

  The Story of STORY Magazine (as editor)

  Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival

  Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Mental Illness

  Open Heart: A Patient’s Story of Life-Saving Medicine and Life-Giving Friendship

  The Hillside Diary and Other Writings (as editor)

  TWO DOLLAR RADIO is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry.

  We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.

  Copyright © 2012 by Jay Neugeboren