Up, Down and Sideways

by Patton, Robert;

“Not at all, Cousin Stalls. It’s my opening bargaining position. From which, if you play your cards right, I can be jewed down to where I’ll settle for money and lawyers and forgo weapons altogether. Hah!”

  He glanced at my father. “I see.”

  “As to numbers,” I went on, “I should think half a mil, two attorneys and two paralegals on twenty-four-hour retainer oughta get me through the weekend. That, and any spare change you might have. Hah!” Father’s complexion had gone from orange to scarlet. My heart thundered. My mouth kept moving: “Can we order up lunch, fellas? I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Chinese is fine by me, or maybe bagels and lox—”

  “Please stop.”

  “You said something, Dad?”

  A pause. “You’ve changed, Philip.”

  “Losing my hair, I know.”

  “I don’t mean superficially. You seem afraid. I didn’t think it possible.” The bastard was sharp as ever, not insane at all.

  “So! Messing around on Mom, eh?”

  “What the—” Stalls Rayburn said.

  “You’re talking gibberish, son. Do you realize that?”

  “I am not your son!”

  “But you are,” he sighed, as if in apology. “Just as I’m your father.”

  The windowless room felt like a capsule spinning through space. I began to feel sick. To steady myself I fixed my eyes on the knot of Father’s necktie, a pink triangle that my fevered mind vaguely remembered as representing some small category of age-old persecution. I’m ignorant of history. Oh, had a yellow star been dangling at Father’s throat, or a crucifix or a human bone fragment, some blatant, implacable, bloodsoaked signifier, I might have been shamed into respectful composure. As it was, I focused on his pink necktie as a clothing accessory of such poor taste it was the easiest thing to mock:

  “What’s with the California look, Dad? No more Mr. Mensch? You a Baptist now, or what?”

  I rocked furiously in my chair. The two men at the end of the table, Stalls Rayburn and my father, began to dissolve. It seemed funny: two men whose blood comprised my own dissolving and bleeding together like watercolors rained on, like A-bomb victims vaporizing. I started laughing. I laughed and coughed and then vomited two cups of morning coffee on the glass-topped conference table. My eyes were swimming as Cousin Stalls rose and approached me. He pressed a handkerchief into my hand. Father didn’t move. He stared at me, his complexion again the orange parody of good health. My breakdown had somehow uplifted him. What I said next uplifted him further:

  “Daddy, I fucked up. I’m just really sorry.”

  “We all do, son. We all do.”

  A thick warmth flared inside my chest. With visible effort Father stood and came to me. He put his hands on my shoulders. I was sobbing out of control. I couldn’t stop sobbing. For myself, you see? Because he and I were equals after all.

  His secretary sponged up the vomited coffee; I was too sapped to feel humiliated. Two junior attorneys were summoned from a downstairs office. Stalls Rayburn passed out cigars as I detailed, like a returned adventurer, my financial rise and fall. Father was impressed with the stocks and options I’d picked legitimately over the years; he offered frowns but otherwise nonjudgmental reactions to Peter Rice’s and my insider trading scheme. So indulgent was the atmosphere, I took more credit than I merited for the scheme’s conception and devising, not wanting to seem an utter dupe. I left out the bright side, the sex and prurience that redeemed my exile from being a total waste. And I left out Frank Bakes’s suicide and the birth of my child, things too sacred to tell; left out as well the bit about the abortion.

  I talked a good two hours. Consensus built among my listeners to surrender on all counts, to settle my case with minimum fuss. I felt disappointed, fooled again, enticed into capitulation when I still had straws to cling to. The upshot was I never did jail time. Over the following months, Stalls family lawyers, citing my youth as a mitigating factor, slaked the SEC with payoffs totalling half a million dollars in fines on top of all profits returned. I was wiped out. This hurt. Being banned from trading securities for a period of three years hurt, too, though it was a relief at first. Eventually I began trading through an account in my mother’s name—it’s my craft, after all, the one thing I’m good at, the one way I contribute.

  The lawyers departed to go make the phone calls that would start my guilty pleas rolling. Father and Cousin Stalls mused aloud what should be done with me, a college dropout and admitted felon. As their job suggestions narrowed to clerical versus janitorial, I felt compelled to speak:

  “The fact of the matter is, I’m gifted at money management. Just extend me a moderate, interest-free loan, and I’ll be on my way—much chastened, a good boy ever more.”

  Father chuckled. “I think the feds would complain.”

  “Why me? Corporations steal billions. I’m a punk!”

  “True enough. But while I can forgive your indiscretions, I will not dodge the law. Until your case is settled and your debts paid, you’ll be needing gainful employment.”

  Cousin Stalls proposed a job as “family liaison.” Stalls Associates, he said, had grown remote from younger family members and as a result had become, in their eyes, a coterie of gray old men who toiled in secrecy over their money like witches over a cauldron. Compounding the problem was today’s fashion, unlike the 1960s when wealth was taboo, to live like kings as soon as they inherited their trusts. “They don’t understand our defensive investment posture,” Stalls said. “They think we’re old farts who are either incompetent or hiding something—just as you thought four years ago.”

  “But now I know better.”

  The old fart smiled. “Indeed. There can be no finer ally than one who has seen the other side.”

  Father chipped in, “Your example made quite a sensation in the family. You were rumored to be an international financier.”

  “And now that the ugly truth is known?”

  “Many will still respect you. Flamboyant success and failure is very attractive to some people.”

  “As opposed to failing in private, yes? Which is so common, after all.” My comment jacked up the tension between us. Cousin Stalls went on obliviously, “You’d be invaluable to us, Philip. You, better than anyone I can think of, can instruct the next generation that wealth is a responsibility. They’ll believe you.”

  “He’s not an outsider,” Father said. “We prefer that.”

  “He’s blood,” Stalls agreed. “Blood matters.”

  “Even if it’s polluted?” I asked blithely.

  Stalls cupped his ear. “Say again?”

  “I said: Even if it’s polluted?”

  Father explained, “Philip is referring to his, to my, Jewish heritage. He thinks he’s shocking you.”

  I stared at him. Things had changed around here, evidently. “He knows?”

  “It’s an old story. We really don’t think about it.”

  Was I surprised? After a second, no. He’d always kept one step ahead of me. But I resented his attitude, his dismissal of a secret that had held such power in my mind. I resented it on my account but more so on his, that he should dare downplay what undeniably had been a crucial crossroads in his life. As I considered, however, I sensed something more. Father’s new look, his embrace of me, his offhandedness about a past he once had guarded so ominously—the contradictions were too many to believe, an alibi too pat. There’s desperation here, I thought. Father hasn’t changed at all. He’s merely trying to change. I asked my cousin, “When did you find out? That David Halsey was David Holscheimer?”

  Stalls turned to my father, “When did we have that talk?”

  “Four years ago, perhaps?” I said.

  “No. More recently,” Stalls said. “Last year. When your dad got sick.”

  “Sick, you say?”

  “Well sure. The cancer.”

  I looked at Father. “The cancer?”

  He’d been watching our exchange impassively, as one might watch an ax be
ing sharpened, unsure whom it’s meant for. “Philip doesn’t know I was ill,” he said to Stalls.

  “Oh. Gee. But it’s fine now, right, David? Remission and whatnot?”

  “So they tell me.”

  There was an awkward pause. Stalls creakily rose from his chair. “I think I’ll let you two catch up. But think about that job, Philip—”

  “I accept.”

  “—because we need you. And I daresay,” he slapped my back jovially as he passed behind me, “you need us.”

  Alone now, Father and I sat in silence. I saw the picture complete. My return—my return, that is, in ruins—had imparted a last imprimatur to the codified, cautious, Brahmin existence he’d chosen as a young man. My own existence beyond his controlling benefaction must have been irritating to him. Now he could sleep well. “Everyone knows,” I asked, “about your deep dark past?”

  “Everyone. To have kept it a secret seems silly now.”

  “Its importance was only in your mind.”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “And it’s not important any longer.”

  “I simply don’t think about it. I used to, of course.”

  “I think about it. I don’t know what I think about it, but I do.” I laughed. “So you’re a Gentile now?” Our balance of power had shifted. I’d hit bottom and bounced. I was guessing he lacked the same resilience.

  “A Christian,” he said. “Congregational. I was baptized last year, while I was in the hospital.”

  “A deathbed conversion? How quaint.”

  His face darkened. “Perhaps you will face death better.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll do it just like you.”

  We had a moment of mutual staring. His expression was sadly expectant, as if he knew I was keeping secrets. Strolling around the table, I withdrew from my coat pocket and laid before him the old passport photograph of Philip Holscheimer, Father’s father, my grandfather, baldheaded and glaring up from the table like an angry insomniac. “Found this the other day,” I said, repeating Father’s words to me about the photo, spoken when he’d given it to me four years ago. On a last-minute impulse I’d brought it along today as a protective talisman. Father’s glance flicked down nervously.

  “That man is dead to me. We killed each other.”

  “I doubt it was that dramatic.”

  “Do you? On what basis.”

  “On the basis of my own similar experience. Which came thanks to you.”

  “So I’m to blame,” he gestured toward me, “for this?”

  “I was your experiment. Through me, you replayed your own family disaster. I fizzled—the experiment succeeded.”

  “You give me too much credit.”

  I tapped the photo with my fingertip. “Why else inflict this bombshell on me just as I was making my getaway.”

  “Because it represented the truth—about me, about you.”

  “Hogwash.”

  “All right,” he said slowly. “Tell me.”

  “You wanted to fuck me up.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Philip—”

  “You wanted to mentally sabotage me like your father did to you. It was strictly payback.”

  “No!” His orange face went red. “I gave you that photograph as a warning. I wanted to show you there’s nothing new under the sun—it’s all been done before, and badly. It was a warning, and a plea.”

  “A plea for what?”

  He hesitated. “Not to leave.”

  “Your precious Stalls Associates?”

  “It’s more than that to me. It represents a choice I made. It’s who I am.”

  “Pathetic.”

  Slowly, “That’s not for you to say.”

  “Why? I apply the term to myself as well. I’ve come back to you as nothing, with a past I want to bury. Sound familiar?”

  “Philip—”

  “You needed me to fail! And I provided.” I was standing next to him. A vein throbbed in the parchment skin of his temple. I knew something about the blood in that vein, its addiction to regret.

  Remarkably, he smiled. “No, Philip. I wanted you to thrive. I tried to help. I purposely mailed you our quarterly reports and the minutes of our trustee meetings so you’d know what we were up to, what companies we liked. It wasn’t much, I know. But it was something I could do.”

  “They were useful,” I admitted, surprised.

  “I’m glad.”

  “But what about this photograph? And the legal steps you took to block my freedom, and the money you took in penalties? You tried to wreck me from the start.”

  “I was angry—and jealous. But I came to really hope you would find the success you craved, in all aspects of your life, even as the Philip Holscheimer who scorned his dad to strike out on a path of his own. Especially as that.”

  My mouth had gone dry. “Well, I’m back.”

  His eyes had focused somewhere in the air. “But I had it wrong, too. Because I find now that I dearly want you home. I don’t care what you’ve done. I understand what you’ve done.” His hesitation seemed to come of exhaustion, of effort. “Apparently,” he said, “I love you.”

  The moment might have been scripted, so perfectly did I feel empathy with him, his emotions and mine entwining to the snapping point. My next line would be one of two, the kind thing or the truth. “I love you, too,” I might have said. From there I could have improvised, no solid ground under me ever again, nor under Father either, each of us floating on sentiments lovely to say but not durable, not meant to last, like the pretty webs spiders build time and again, when, in the process of snaring sustenance, the strands repeatedly break. I told him the truth instead:

  “I fathered a child.”

  His head cocked toward me slightly. The focus of his eyes retracted.

  “Born last Friday. A son.”

  I flinched when Father’s hand seized my arm like a claw. He hauled himself to his feet, knocking over his chair behind him. His arm came around in what I thought would be a punch in my nose but proved a desperate embrace. “That’s wonderful,” he rasped at my ear.

  “Whaddaya mean?” I pulled away in panic.

  “You’re a father! You have a son!”

  “Well, yeah. But its mom and I aren’t married.”

  “Do you think I care? I want to meet her. I want to meet him.” His eyes were wet. “My son has a son.”

  “Jesus, Dad. This is out of left field.”

  “What, that I’m thrilled to be a grandfather?” His grin was massive. He hugged me again.

  “Dad! It’s just a baby. And a bastard besides.”

  He recoiled. “What kind of scummy talk is that?” In a fury he shook me by the shoulders. “Wake up! Open your eyes and see!”

  “See what?”

  “I’m dying, goddamn you! Look at me!”

  “I did, you look sharp. I figured aerobics, a tanning salon—”

  Shoving me away, he clawed his face. “The nurse put makeup on me so I wouldn’t look like a corpse. Some fool tailor made me this suit because mine all fall off me. I’ve lost fifty pounds!”

  “And the tie and shoes?” My question brought a stare.

  “Clothes he notices. Yes,” he said, “they’re your mother’s selection. Bought special for today. She wanted me look snappy.”

  “For the trustee meeting.”

  “I’ve been out two weeks. People think I’ve been on vacation. But I’ve been taking treatment in the hospital. I’ve had a relapse.” He shook his head. “It’s finished, you see?” I studied him afresh; he looked pretty damn bad, it was true. “But a lot of people depend on me around here, so I tried to put on a healthy appearance.”

  “Why bother?”

  “You retain your gift for tact, I see.”

  “What I mean is, you don’t owe anyone anything.”

  “I owe myself. I’ve dedicated my life to this family.”

  “There is no family anymore. The connections are monetary, like stock we can’t sell.”
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br />   “Stalls Associates is important to me. It gave me pride and purpose when I thought I would never have either. Because you’re right: I came here in 1952 as nothing. I’d quit my homeland, quit my family—”

  “Your religion. Your name.”

  “—which in themselves meant nothing to me, though they symbolized everything. But the cost, I believe, was a certain humanity in myself, a sense of need. My illness last year forced me to confront these things. I found that faith helped—Christian faith, it so happened.” He faltered, the words suddenly coming hard; they were too candid maybe, or too prosaic, to be easily uttered outside a church or a TV evangelical show, a foxhole or a hospice. “I’ve felt less lost since embracing Jesus.”

  For a moment I couldn’t respond. I was both moved and repelled by Father’s confession, so stunningly out of character for the man I’d known four years ago. I changed the subject like a coward: “No one told me you were sick. No one contacted me.”

  “It was my fight. But looking back, perhaps I should have summoned you home. Would you have come?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Only as a last resort.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Then I’m grateful for your troubles. And to my soul, I’m grateful for your child, my grandson.” His eyes tearing again, he wiped them and smiled fiercely. “It’s a good sign, don’t you think? After everything we’ve suffered?”

  It had come to me, as he spoke, what I had to do. I didn’t want to do it, yet my reluctance was itself compelling; it should never be easy to hurt someone. Our lives, Father’s and mine, had momentarily untangled in my mind, and lay now side by side like string, his mangled youth a version of my own, his later life my future. I was angered and awed to find myself, without asking, in possession of the power to make him confront the same vision, its logic of destined beginnings and ends. I couldn’t help but wield that power. It seemed a heavenly gift, the kind with two edges.

  “About the baby,” I said, swallowing, knowing I was pulling a trigger. “I’ve already given it up for adoption.”

  His smile hung on. “That can’t be true.”

  “It’s true. I’ve never seen him. I don’t even know his name. He’s someone else’s son now.”