by Warren Adler
There was a big celebration when the book came out. It seemed then that this was the opening gun in the race toward fame and fortune and, perhaps, as everyone silently believed in their heart, immortality.
As predicted, Milton was the first of the group to receive a publishing contract for a novel. It was, of course, predictable. Indeed, it was a necessary validation that he was marked for greatness. Milton, as usual, was gracious in accepting his success and encouraging to the others, as if to say, I’ll point the way and you will all follow. Everyone was sure it would come true.
How long did their little group stay together? At most a couple of years. Life intervened, he supposed. Love, marriage, children, the necessities of earning a living, the usual. He knew, of course, that none of them would ever let go of their dream. It was destined to be their blood-sucking leech, forever feeding on their blood for nourishment as it had for the rest of his life and still would as long as he his heart beat. Imagine, Harry thought, all this had occurred in a mere blip of time. Nearly fifty years ago.
But as he waited there for Milton’s granddaughter on this pleasant spring day under a cerulean sky, nursing his Bloody Mary, protected from the sun by the umbrella over the outdoor table, he still could not shake his anger. How come he had heard nothing, nothing about Milton Horowitz for forty-five years or more?
“I recognized you from the picture on your book jackets,” a voice said. He looked up at her face, blocked by the sun. “I’m Shirley Tannenbaum,” she said, sitting down, smiling, open-faced and eager, her hair glossy with youth, her teeth sparkled by the sun. He noted that she was carefully groomed, wearing a crisp white blouse and jeans, with a bright yellow scarf artfully wrapped around her neck.
He studied her face for any trace of what he remembered about Milton. The eyes, he decided, but he couldn’t be sure. Had he ever looked that deeply into Milton’s eyes?
“I’m so happy you could see me, Mr. Waldman. I’ve read all your books.”
“Really?”
How could he not be flattered, especially by her generational applause? He had done well, he supposed. At least in retrospect. What she did not know or could not know was that this affliction that plagued the real writer could not be cured by worldly success. She would think such an observation was ingenious and he merely thanked her. He thanked her politely. Readers were always welcome.
They ordered brunch and he craftily got her to tell her own story. On the surface it seemed fairly routine. Her father was a lawyer, her mother, Milton’s daughter, was a doctor, obviously super achievers, comfortable, upper-middle class, liberal, savvy, supporters of the arts, traditional. No rebellion here, no sixties angst. She was the daughter of baby boomers. Milton was an Air Force veteran, stateside through most of the war, he remembered. He had been too young to serve. Shirley had majored in English, at Harvard, and was now getting a master's in creative writing at NYU.
It was, he thought, wonderful to listen to her, full of hope and ambition, self-effacing, modest. I could love her, he thought, if I was forty years younger. He had been married twice, been in love six or seven times, had a rocky history with women in general and was now content to be alone with his muse, although it had been years since his muse had provided worldly success. There had been moments, of course. A movie made from one of this books, a number of foreign sales. He was financially comfortable, drifting forward on the stream of life heading toward the open sea. He liked that metaphor.
Expertly, writers of the imagination were adept at such biographical mining; he drew from her the bare facts of her life. No, she was not involved in a relationship. Relationship was the operative word of her generation. What he was doing, he realized, was deliberately postponing the reason for their meeting. The fact was that he had not yet formed a proper response. What he really wanted to know from her was why, why in the name of God, had Milton not made it as a published writer. Not one book published. He felt his rage return and he ordered another Bloody Mary. Finally the subject became unavoidable.
“So tell me about my grandfather?” she asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
She seemed startled by the comment, perhaps it seemed belligerent.
“What I mean is,” he corrected. “I think I know why.”
“Obviously,” she said. He realized that he had touched a nerve. “He was a writer. I mean I was only three when he died, but my mother told me that he had always wanted to be writer, that he had published some short stories and a few poems and had once written a novel that was never published.” She paused. “By some strange genetic chemistry. I don’t understand it myself. You see, I want to be a writer. That’s all I ever wanted to be. Nothing else interests me. I have two brothers who are both in med school. My parents wanted me to go to law school and my mother just hates the idea that I want to be a writer.”
“Why?” he asked. He knew he was being cagey, but it was at the very heart of this interview.
“She thinks that it had nearly ruined their lives. Her father’s ambition. She says it drove him into depression. He was, how did she put it, beyond joy. Oh he was a fair provider. He was a candy salesman. Not a great living. But she and my uncle, her brother, had it OK. Good education. They lived for years in a rental apartment in Rego Park. My Uncle Ben is a businessman. My grandma lived about nineteen years after my grandfather died. Apparently she had never been happy and never did marry again.” For a moment she had drifted off the subject, then she came back again. “I read his short stories and his poems. I think the novel is missing. Apparently, he stopped writing. I don’t know when. He was only fifty when he died. Grandma said he couldn’t make a living as a writer. No way. She had a conniption when I told her what I wanted to be. She said in the end, it killed him.”
“From what?” he asked. Why was it suddenly important to ask?
“Heart attack, I think.” She paused and their eyes met. He was sure now she knew, that she was one of the afflicted. “Broken heart, probably.”
“But why? He had other novels in him. Why stop? Nobody knows for sure about the worth of anything in this game.”
He felt his rage begin again. He had the talent? Why didn’t he have the courage to go on? The staying power? The decision makers fade quickly into the dustbin of history and others take their place. Rejection was an occupational hazard in his world. He had been rejected by battalions, long dead and gone, along with their choices. He had a test. Name five of the Nobel Prize Winners for Literature. Name a half dozen who won a Pulitzer. Inevitably most failed the test. He decided against making his point.
“That’s why I’m here, Mr. Waldman.”
He nodded, drained his Bloody Mary. He knew he was about to play a duet with his mind. His words would not match his thoughts. In his thoughts, he was enraged by Milton’s cowardice, his retreat, his surrender. He was a fucking coward. A real writer goes on the attack, never retreats, wages war to be heard, to be read, to be discovered. His voice must be heard. There is no other choice for a real writer. Why didn’t this stupid son-of-a-bitch know that? Was he so inundated with praise and the surety of success that he could not arm himself against the motley crowd of pigmies who would bar his way? Damned, fucking cowardly fool.
This was your life, you stupid schmuck. Nothing had to stand in your way, certainly not the stupid bleats of the untalented, the unannointed, the pretenders, the fools that barred the door. If you can’t find one door open, find another, then another, then kicking down the next fucking door you come to, you goddamned idiot. Life is war. Your talent is your armor. Let the arrows come. They will not dent your armor. He felt the blood rise in his head. He was conscious of her watching him, perhaps wondering why it was taking him so long to respond. Had his lips or his eyes mimed this diatribe of rebuke?
“If you have half the talent of your grandfather for writing works of the imagination, you will win the game handily. There was no one I knew that was a better writer than your grandfather, including yours truly. Witho
ut his being there, just being there at a certain time of my life, I might never have realized even my far more modest potential. We were part of his hand-picked group of real writers, the true committed, who met every week and read our material to each other. It was, believe it not, the truly greatest, most defining moment of my life. You know what I think?”
He felt a sob coming from deep inside him and knew that tears were starting. He reached from a napkin and blew his nose, then coughed away the sob.
“Damned pepper,” he said.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think . . .” He paused. “I think that, by some miracle, your grandfather’s spirit has reached out to you and handed you a relay stick.”
Really, he thought. Where did that come from? He sounded like some preacher in the Southern sticks. Nor had he ever believed in such things.
“But you’ve never read any of my work,” she said.
Nor will I ever, he told himself, hoping she would not ask.
“Let's say I am psychic about the power of DNA,” he said, rebuking himself for what was little more than clumsy, cheerleading stupidity.
She laughed, perhaps seeing a joke in it. He hoped so. The irony of it was that he believed implicitly in his judgment despite the silliness of the sound of it coming from his mouth.
“I am so happy to hear that,” she said. “It makes it all worthwhile.”
He searched her expression to see if it reflected either ridicule or sarcasm.
“This was important for me, Mr. Waldman. Really. I couldn’t find anyone else who knew him at that time. You are apparently the only seed that grew.”
“Really?” he said, feeling the sob begin again. This time he let a few tears drop before he wiped them away with his napkin. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
They sat for a while longer and he told her other stories about her grandfather’s generosity and kindness, his mentoring and his fondness for other writers. Real writers, but he did not allude to that. If she were a real writer she would know.
When she left, he watched her pass out of his life.
Later he discovered that he was no longer angry.
My Father, the Painter
by Warren Adler
“Cynthia Barish?” the voice said, cracked, clipped, harsh.
Normally cautious and skeptical, unafraid to show her irritation with unsolicited calls, she answered “yes.” Then it was too late.
“Your father’s dead,” the voice said.
“So?”
She hadn’t seen or heard from him in twenty-five years, not since she was five. Her meager memory of his presence, occasionally reinforced by her mother’s remarks, had become less sporadic as time passed.
“Who is this?”
“Feschetti, Mario. Actually I was his landlord. I wouldn’t say he was my friend, but I kind of traded out on some of the rent. He did odd jobs. You know, took out the garbage, cleaned the halls, washed the front.”
“Where did you get my name? I haven’t seen him in twenty-five years. Am I supposed to cry?”
He ignored her question.
“He had this heart attack. Died a few days later in Bellevue. His wallet gave you as next of kin.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, expelling air through her teeth.
“The thing is he left instructions to be cremated, which he was. What I got here is this, his ashes, and a basement full of paintings, which has to be removed. I mean, I don’t really have a choice in this. I don’t know, maybe hundreds of paintings, stashed away. What am I supposed to do?”
“I haven’t got a clue.”
“I suppose I could dump them somewhere, burn them. I don’t know. So I called. He had you as next of kin with an address in Scarsdale. So I took a chance.”
She was baffled by the explanation. Contrary to some practices, she hadn’t used her maiden name since her marriage to Todd. How could he possibly know she lived in Scarsdale?
“And what am I supposed to do, Mister . . . . What was the name?”
“Feschetti.”
“I guess all this stuff is yours. It’s why I called. Somebody has got to move it out. And I got the ashes.”
“What the hell am I going to do with the stuff? As for the ashes, I just don’t know.”
“It’s your stuff, lady. Not mine. You’re the next of kin. You think he left a will?” He snickered. “Look. Here’s my number.” He gave her his number. “Think it over. Call me. I’ll let you into the place. You decide. I really don’t know what to do with all the stuff. You tell me. Call me later, OK?”
“I’ll give it some thought,” she said, finally reacting to the weirdness of it.
“By the way,” she asked before he could hang up. “Where did he live?”
“The Village,” the man said. “Little Italy, actually. It’s no palace. Got eight apartments but I’m sort of holding it for, you know. Developers buying it up now. ‘Gentrification,’ they call it.”
“I don’t believe this,” she said.
“Listen, the man is dead. You’re the next of kin. He was your father. Lou Harris, right? I have his ashes, for Christ’s sakes.”
“I don’t mean that,” she said. “I thought maybe he was far away. Gone, maybe the west coast. But Little Italy. We go there for Italian food.”
“The best in the city.” He gave her his number again and the address of the apartment. “Call me when you decide. I mean tomorrow at the latest. I got to clean out this stuff. Man painted day and night. Paintings all over the place.”
“That’s what my mother told me. Never sold one when she knew him.”
“Looks like he never sold any since. Not that I know about art. Not my cup of tea. Day and night he painted. That I could tell you. As far as I know he never sold anything. I think he was on welfare or something. He paid part of the rent and worked off the other part.”
“I’ll call you, Mr. . . .”
“Feschetti. Mario Feschetti.”
It was mid-afternoon, April, a bit overcast, but that was to be expected in April. The baby was sleeping and Todd would be home in a couple of hours. Oddly, or coincidentally, she was a commercial artist working at home, designing logos, book covers, advertising layouts. Somewhere in back of her mind, she did acknowledge the genetic thing. Her mother embellished the connection by recalling that all he wanted to do is paint and never sold a damned thing. No tickee, no shirtie, she told him, in ultimatum after ultimatum until one day he upped and disappeared.
She got a divorce on desertion grounds, married Jack Nolan, had two other kids, and moved to Texas, where her stepfather had a Toyota franchise. But the picture she painted, the image another irony, was of a man consumed, obsessed with plying his art, unable to make a buck, forcing her to be the breadwinner as a secretary where she had three jobs to do, take care of baby Cynthia, do the housework, cook the meals, the usual cliché.
OK, her mother admitted in those early days. She loved him, in the beginning at least. But, she averred time and time again, he was a wastrel, didn’t lift a finger. Painted from morning until night. No dealer bit. The paintings were probably shit. This was the story Cynthia was weaned on, which got increasingly bitter as her mother struggled to raise her only child who was five at the time.
Cynthia’s memory was vague, although the turpentine aura that hovered around him was something that stuck in her mind. She supposed the memory of odor was quite powerful since she could barely remember what he sounded like. Sometimes it took her a moment to remember his name. Lou. Her mother destroyed all the old snaps, although, for some reason, she retained the one showing the young couple at City Hall, where they were married. The man, her father, had black hair, a long thin face, like her. He was smiling and wore no tie. She had no idea what happened to that picture.
Her mother’s attitude toward her missing husband was contemptuous. Her anger about him accelerated as time passed, and Cynthia’s early life echoed with one long harangue about her missing father, t
he ungrateful, unfeeling bastard, who left wife and daughter in the lurch. Not that he was missed as a breadwinner. Finally it became good riddance to bad rubbish and that tolled the end of any possible fond memories for his daughter. The man had turned his back on her and not once, not a single time, in the twenty-five years had he ever attempted to contact her. There were no letters, not even a postcard, no phone calls, nothing. The man had faded into oblivion. Is this someone she should cry over? Is this someone for whom she must disrupt her life? Was she supposed to care about his ashes and his paintings? “He’s your father,” the man Feschetti said. Really?
After a few years, especially when she met Jack Nolan, her mother stopped talking about Cynthia’s father and he became a kind of legendary ne’er-do-well who disappeared, abandoning his wife and only child, the son of a bitch. Cynthia supposed he had reasons, since her mother was something of a shrew, but now that she had her own baby girl, she could not imagine her being abandoned, certainly not by Todd, who was a most loving Dad, who was steady and smart and climbing the ladder of financial success at Morgan Stanley.
After she hung up from Mr. Feschetti, she called her mother and told her the story.
“What can I say,” her mother said. “He lived so close and didn’t have the decency to visit his only daughter.”
“He wants to know what I should do with his paintings. I guess I’m the heiress.”
“Burn the shit. He never could sell them.”
“The man said he would do it, if I didn’t come up with some solution.”
“Your call, darling. To me, he doesn’t exist any more. As for his demise, I really don’t give a tinker’s damn. I spent six years with the man in some ancient history time warp. He gave me nothing but trouble and misery.”
“And me,” she said. She felt a sudden sensation of loss, which disturbed her.
“Do whatever you want, darling. As you say, you’re the heiress. From what you tell me he was nothing more than a janitor. The man was off the wall. Do whatever you want. Oh yes, there’re the ashes. Might make good fertilizer.”
