I kept on breezily, “I had no idea that hospices were an interest of yours.”
“It’s not like I seek out fellow hobbyists. People can be snide about do-gooders. And because it’s AIDS they get scared. You particularly, I thought.”
“AIDS is bad, sure. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Mr. Halsey. Philip. I hope you’re not ignoring it. I hope you’re being safe.”
“Safe how?”
“A condom, Philip. Especially for anal sex.”
I blinked a moment in confusion. Then I threw back my head and laughed. How thick am I? When her meaning hit me, it seemed obvious that Doris was leaving Stalls Associates, leaving me, because I was gay and therefore a noncandidate, after whatever interval she felt appropriate, to become her second husband. It explained her wariness with me after the familiarity she’d shown at Father’s funeral. It was October, the metaphorical month of doom. But in my heart it was suddenly springtime, when animals mate and lovers marry and flowers bloom like madness. I assured her with aplomb that I wasn’t homosexual.
“That’s the office rumor.”
“I spread it! It frees me up for the real thing.”
I knew from her frown that she doubted what I was telling her. I knew I’d have to prove it.
26
My work responsibilities had grown to include most of the duties of head trustee. I was setting day-to-day policy on equity sales and purchases; I signed the allowance checks to the office’s many beneficiaries. But lately, with my head awash with Doris, I’d tried to simplify. I dumped all the proceeds of bonds that had come due into low-risk money funds. I sold every stock that was even mildly top-heavy rather than torment myself over quarter-points of added profit or loss.
On Doris’s next to last day at the office, a Wednesday, my apathy turned outright destructive. I unloaded tens of millions of dollars’ worth of utilities and blue chips, refusing to bear another minute their nonsensical ups and downs. By late Thursday, I’d drastically altered the portfolio profile of every trust Stalls Associates managed. I’d sold stocks held for decades into the roaring bull market. Our assets suddenly were seventy percent in cash, none of it sheltered, all of it languishing in low-interest accounts.
Alarms sounded family-wide. I’d exposed Stalls Associates to huge tax liabilites. An emergency trustee meeting was called for Friday evening. I was upbraided as a mental case, “a loose cannon on the foredeck of our ship of finance” (in the words of Evan Stalls, a yachtsman and toy soldier collector). Yet the trustees’ fury was tempered by that day’s steep Dow-Jones decline. I was ordered to buy back, at the market opening Monday morning, every issue I’d sold; it appeared Stalls Associates would, by luck, end up making money on my irresponsible behavior. The date of that Monday was October 19, 1987. Some people remember it well.
27
The past is overrated. You can ignore it and thrive. To be happy one must live in the present like children and Californians. Seize the day. Take a chance. Tell your father’s secretary that you love her. Which is what, during the drive to work on Monday morning, I impulsively resolved to do. In Newton I asked passersby where the AIDS hospice was and received responses of startling variety.
The hospice occupied a large Victorian residence on a pretty brick-paved side street. A dikey-looking woman welcomed me—Reeboks, crewcut, multiple earrings like industrial staples. She said Doris was upstairs. At my hesitance she offered to fetch her for me. “Not necessary,” I said. “I embrace the danger.”
I passed a common room where some young men were watching TV, some of them even laughing. A chairlift track ran along the stairs to hoist and lower invalids, the chair itself a heedful servant waiting at the top. The second floor had been remodeled into a series of cubicles opening onto a center hallway. I saw neatly-made narrow beds inside the cubicles, straightback chairs for visitors, and bureaus of a size bigger than you’d find in a motel room and smaller than you’d need at a place of permanent residence. “Doris?” The silence scared me. Then from a cubicle with a door half-closed came a hushed reply:
“In here.”
I peered inside. I recoiled. “Jesus. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Doris said. “He gets these bad headaches, and sometimes the medication just levels him.” I made myself step forward, sweating in the high heat of the place. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she said. “What’s wrong? Philip?”
She was leaning over a bed, adjusting a damp cloth over the forehead and eyes of a man naked from the waist up. Her hands were wet and red. Her hair was tied back with a rubber band. I fixed on her as an alternative to him—all knobby at the elbows and shrunken at the belly and ribcage as if fed on from the inside out. The man gave a sound. I couldn’t help but stare. The cloth covered his face like those skewed black rectangles you used to see in seedy crime magazines, covering the victims’ faces. He whispered, “Doe?”
She bent to his ear. “You feeling better, honey?”
“S’here?”
“A friend. He’s helping today.”
The man tried to cover himself. Doris draped his shirt over him. He quieted, presentable now. “I gotta go,” I said.
He raised one hand—to wave goodbye, I thought, so I waved back. Doris smiled at my error. “Just shake.”
His fingers were twigs in my grasp. “I’m Lyle.” He pulled the cloth off his face with his free hand. His gaze took a moment to focus, aiming over my shoulder as if seeing someone I didn’t.
“I’m Philip … Halsey.”
“Philip,” he repeated. “Halsey.” Recognition lighted his face as no doubt it blackened mine. “Philip? Philip!”
“Lyle! Hey!” I shook his hand vigorously, my grin mirroring his, two skulls saying hello. It felt absurd to be looming over him flapping his hand like a lawyer with an accident victim. “How are you, man? Long time no see!”
Doris said, “You know him?”
“Platonically,” I said quickly. Lyle, in the muddle of some medication, began to babble:
“Oh, your child, such a beautiful child! Gershom and Susie and everybody loved you after that. Sholem will love you someday, too.” His voice went singsong. “Philip Halsey had a son—”
“The fuck!” I yanked my hand out of his grip and retreated into the hall. I covered my ears as “Philip! Philip!” resounded behind me like the reaper reading his list. Doris followed me:
“Get a grip! He’s just confused.”
“How long’s he been your patient?”
“Lyle runs this place. Now he’s sick, too. Maybe he’ll die here, I don’t know. Some want to be home for it, some want to be far from home. They should get their wish, at least.”
“Know him well?”
“As well as I want to. It’s hard when you get too close. Now go back in there and sit with him. It’ll do you good.”
“And what he said—”
“I don’t listen when he’s like this. I told you, he’s in and out.” She pushed me toward Lyle’s door. I heard him murmuring my name, saw his head loll sideways on a jelly neck. The sight frightened me, for it seemed an apt summation of my past and future. To lie alone, trapped in my head, hollering “Philip, Philip”? I know destiny when I see it.
I panicked. I grabbed Doris and shoved her against the hallway wall. I kissed her, holding my mouth on hers as she fought in my arms like an animal. I pressed my pelvis hard against her so she wouldn’t misunderstand me.
I let her go. I stepped back and watched her fury subside. Doris spoke in a choked whisper, “Get out of here.”
“You will do me good. Only you. Not playing nurse to some goddamn freak.” At which she struck my face with a punch that really hurt. And the blows kept coming, her fists streaking before my half-covered eyes like bees attacking me. After driving me to my knees, she stepped back to catch her breath.
“You frighten me, Philip.”
“I would never hurt you.”
“You just did.”
I tast
ed blood on my lip. “I’m in love with you. Highly unsuitable, but there it is.”
“You’re just a boy to me, a boy that somehow got big. And trust me, you don’t know me at all. I’m not what I seem.”
“I am.” I said this as a sort of symmetrical rejoinder, not intending much by it. Apparently it made sense to Doris:
“I’ll consider myself forewarned.”
“I just love you in the worst way, that’s all I can say.”
Her hair had pulled loose of the rubber band. Dark strands obscured her face like cracks in a photograph. When she flicked them away, my pulse skipped at the clear sight of her features and the deliberation that ruffled them. It is change in someone that I’ve come to believe is the sexiest thing there is. Whether the change is for better or worse makes little difference. Moral decline is as fetching as virtue if they exist in competition, an angel on one side and a devil on the other. Friction is the key. The friction makes a spark, the spark is alive, and vitality is what I crave since I rather lack it myself. Doris, disheveled and unnerved, but considering, yes, considering my insane proposal, was shooting out sparks like a turbine gone haywire. She’d either short circuit or generate powerful heat in response. I saw her soul expand with possibilities and their consequence. I couldn’t have loved her more than then, no matter what her answer.
“You don’t know me,” she repeated. “There are things—”
“What? That you slept with my dad? To hell with him.”
She half-smiled at my utter whiff. “How do you think I came to this hospice, Philip? I came when my husband was dying. He died here. Of AIDS.”
“You mean he was—a swinger?”
“He contracted HIV through a blood transfusion—not that it makes a difference. And it’s possible he passed it to me.”
“No signs yet?”
“It may not show up for years.” She backed away suddenly, appalled at herself. “How can I talk like this, to you?”
“And meanwhile, what? You wait it out alone?”
“I thought I ought to.”
“I’ll wait, too.”
“That’s stupid. Anyway, I’m too old for you.”
“It’s all the rage.”
“I just buried my husband!”
This I had to respect. I stepped back with a courtly nod, prepared, out of customs of decency, to withdraw for the moment. “I am sorry. And I greatly admire the work you’re doing here.” I floated down the hospice hallway reveling in life’s wonder. Doe (my pet name for her now) might be carrying the virus that causes AIDS: Loving her would be an everyday dance with mortality. I loved myself for wanting to risk it. The feeling was a first.
But when I turned at the top of the stairs for a last look at her, I was stunned to see that she’d slumped to the floor and was leaning wearily against the wall. Doe lifted her head, and in the brave flat tone of a man pleading guilty she offered a grim confession: “I work here because I hate it. I may spend my life at this, but I’ll resent every second of it. Like I resented my husband. Philip, do you understand that?” She got to her feet and stood with her shoulders square and chin upraised, haughty in her disgust. “My husband fought so hard to live. He did it for me. He went without painkillers and medicine in order to be clear and active and loving for as long as he could. He suffered so much before he died, and all I felt was relief to be free of him.” She gave a fierce shrug. “I work here, you see, for ridiculous reasons of guilt.”
“Be guilty, fine. Your life doesn’t have to end.”
“You would say that. You have a cruel disposition, Philip. You’re blessed, I suppose. Being invulnerable. Knowing you’ll always prevail.”
“That’s rather severe.”
Her laugh chilled me. “Not my description. It’s how your dad always described you.”
“As cruel?”
“It was affectionate, in its way. ‘My dear little assassin,’ is how he used to put it.”
“That’s just,” I exhaled, “kind of astonishing.”
“Doe!” sounded behind her. “Doe, come on, I need you!” She moved toward Lyle’s room. “I gotta go,” she said. “Gotta get busy saving my soul.”
“Save mine.”
“Goodbye, Philip.”
“Tell Lyle I’ll visit tomorrow. We have lots to catch up on, it’s clear.” Lyle had borne witness to major parts of my history; the least we could do was hold each other’s hand and compare journeys past and future. “I’ll be here bright and early,” I called after her. “I want a mop and bucket ready and waiting. I want bedpans to empty and toilets to scrub. I want,” as Lyle’s door clicked shut behind her, “a fucking second chance!”
28
Shaken and distracted, I drove back to my parents’ house, where, ever frugal, I’d been living since my return three years ago. Stalls Associates’ trustees had ordered me to buy back today the securities I’d sold last week. Screw it.
Mother was reading in the library. I sat beside her on the sofa. The scene at the hospice had put me in mind of old times. I removed from my wallet the passport photograph of my grandfather, Philip Holscheimer. “Do you know the story behind this?”
“That’s your father, of course. Around the time we met.”
“Can’t be. This man is middle-aged. This man is bald and jowly.”
“David always looked distinguished. He was in his midthirties there, I’d say.” She asked where I’d got it.
“From Father. He said it was of his father—somebody named Philip Holscheimer.”
“If so, it’s an extraordinary likeness. It quite resembles you.”
“Don’t tell me that! Is my face that fleshy?”
“It happens to men as they age.”
I stood and began to pace. “If the guy in this picture is David Halsey, who the hell is Philip Holscheimer?”
“Excuse me?”
“Holscheimer! Holscheimer!”
“I worry about you sometimes, Philip.”
I quizzed her, “Father was born a Jew, yes?”
“So he said.”
“But he was a Halsey when you met him?”
“Yes.”
“What about his parents? Ever hear about them?”
“His parents disowned him, you know that. It was one of those sad things that happen in families sometimes.” Her eyes misted. “For as long as I knew your father, he carried a burden I couldn’t relieve because he never shared it, until too late. It makes me cry to think about it.”
“He shared it with me a long time ago. I never told you.”
She nodded as if unsurprised. “That was cruel of you.”
“Please don’t call me cruel, Mother. I really don’t want to be thought of that way.”
Driftily, “I always felt so sorry for him.” Here’s one law of marriage: When there’s nothing about your lover to love anymore, you must love him because he can’t love himself. I pitied her for swallowing such bull, admired her for keeping it down.
Displaying the photo once more, I felt like a cop with a mug shot. “For the record: Who is this person?”
“He is my husband, David Halsey. The man I loved.” She eyed me from under drooped lids, her expression proudly coquettish. “A girl never forgets.”
I again studied Father’s picture (it seemed now a perfect likeness) and recalled his long ago observation about it: “That man is dead to me. We killed each other.” I felt reprieved, remembering this, for since Father’s death I’d sometimes wondered if I hadn’t murdered him, more or less, if I hadn’t been self-servingly cruel at our reunion in 1984. It was a relief to think he’d killed himself many years before, when he’d buried his name and his past and his culture in order to be reborn in America.
I put the photo back in my wallet where I keep it to this day. I feel peace of mind whenever I look at it. Nothing matters eventually, is its reassuring message. Embracing this truth, I embraced another: I realized how bizarrely I’d behaved with Doris earlier. I stood no chance with her, lucky girl.
Forget the past, despair of the future, was the lesson of the day—a prescription for mental health.
The phone rang in the foyer.
29
“Philip? Get me Philip Halsey!”
“It’s me, Cousin Stalls.”
“Who is this? I want Philip!”
“This is Philip.” I knew what he wanted. Before he could fire me for not following orders about buying back the stocks I’d sold, I preempted him: “I’m sorry, Cousin Stalls. The events of today have made me quit.”
“I don’t wonder,” he said. “I shit, too. Five hundred points it fell! Five hundred points!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the stock market! I’m talking about a historic cataclysm. I’m talking five hundred bloody points!”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“Left early, did you? Too noble to gloat? Not me. I watched the bastard plummet, and laughed.” Stalls laughed. “Oop. Spilled m’drink.”
It began to sink in. “It fell five hundred points. Wow.”
“Wow, he says. Ho! You’re a cool one, Philip. You saved us millions, you know that. Your father would be proud.”
I realized that my outlaw antics of last week, the massive sell-off I’d orchestrated out of despondence, had spared Stalls Associates from a stock market crash of epic proportion. Stalls Rayburn was still raving:
“You’re a genius, son. Everyone says so. It’s your show to run now. What’s our next move?”
“Our next move?”
“The field is ours! Time to rape and pillage!”
“Hmm. I guess we let the dust settle. Our short positions probably went through the roof. Cashing those in should keep us amused a while.”
“Short? You sold short?”
“As insurance, yeah.” And out of pure apathy on my part—hedging our long positions had saved me a lot of worry. At the other end Stalls was giggling.
“It’s too sweet. We made money on Black Monday.”
“I suspect quite a lot.”
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