Luke tempted them to believe he was an oracle, that he could see around the corner just up ahead; he all but insisted he could do it. But then, when he got what he wanted, all that adulation turned so quickly and uncontrollably to hysteria, and if the pressure of all that he promised and all that he appeared to be could have that effect on ten or twenty million people, just think what the reflection of that adoration beamed back to its source could do to just one. I used to think what it must have been like to get twenty phone calls in an hour, how the rush of popularity would turn to harassment, and besides that there were people knocking on the front door, the back door, they were jimmying open the windows and trying to climb in, telegrams were arriving, FedEx packages of soft shell crabs that had to be cooked within the next five minutes or they would explode into a stench that would kill the Japanese elms for which the gardeners were at that very moment digging holes with their screeching groaning backhoes, and then your mother dies, and your dog bites the neighbor’s adopted Costa Rican two-year-old on the lip, and you just won the Publishers Clearing House grand prize, and the IRS guy who looks like Elvis Costello is on the sofa to discuss your audit, and then multiply the feeling of all that by fifty, pump it up with helium, pump your own sorry head up with helium too while you’re at it—and then you can approximate what it felt like to live one minute of my father’s life.
There. Said and said and said. My father was too busy for me. And he would probably be too busy to see my mother.
I wished I had never made the call.
THE NEXT morning, on my way to my mother’s room, a nurse intercepted me in the hall and silently beckoned me to follow her into an empty nurses’ station. She spoke in a low, conspiratorial voice, with startling fervor.
“You’re her son, aren’t you?”
“Yes. What’s going on? Is she okay?”
She gestured, as if to say, Who knows? I looked down the hall toward Esther’s room.
“Has anything changed?” I said. “Please. Tell me.”
“What have the doctors told you? Have they told you anything?”
“Not really. That It’s too soon to know.”
“Did they tell you that when a great deal of bone matter has been crushed that there is a danger of some of the marrow getting into the bloodstream? Did they tell you that this marrow can cause a life-threatening embolism? Did they tell you that?” She sneaked a nervous glance over her shoulder; she knew she was out of order. Then she heard footsteps and she hurried away, leaving me shaking, with my heart slamming against my chest like a handball against the wall.
I made my way toward Esther’s room. As I was about to go in, two doctors were coming out. The senior doctor (Carey) was in his forties, tall, long-haired, daytime-TV handsome; the other doctor (Jawal) was younger, Indian, with bad skin, mournful eyes, and orthopedic shoes. (He reminded me of the cardiologist at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where my mother took me when I was twelve and had passed out cold in my seventh- grade history class.) The doctors were unhappy to see me; they were on rounds and didn’t want to take time to answer any questions. This taboo against asking questions has its effect, even if you try to ignore it. It keeps the questions short and makes you so nervous you forget to ask half of what you meant to.
Nevertheless, I introduced myself and asked how my mother was doing.
“Stable,” said Dr. Carey.
“Has she regained consciousness? When is she being transferred to another hospital? There was talk about a medevac.”
“Oh no, not today,” said Dr. Jawal. He glanced at his clipboard.
“She’s been in a coma for almost twenty-four hours,” I said.
“That’s not unusual,” Carey said. “Her vital signs remain strong. … Umm. I was wondering. Is this the Esther Rothschild I think it is?”
“Yes, actually.”
He smiled, shook his head. “I was a total Fairchild freak,” he said. “And you know that album, I guess it was his third, with that picture of Fairchild and—that’s your mother, right?”
“Yes.”
“Fairchild and your mother walking down Bleecker Street, with their arms around each other. Man, that picture was everything I wanted my life to be. Anyhow, my kids are listening to that record now.”
I felt myself capable of simply saying: I’m Luke Fairchild’s son. That picture was taken six months before I was conceived. In this case, my aim was not to present myself in a more interesting light, but to focus this doctor’s attentions more vividly upon my mother.
“She and Luke,” I said, with a shrug. “She was the love of his life.”
“I know—he wrote those beautiful songs.”
“Seventeen songs. More songs about my mother than about the atom bomb.”
“Does she ever see him?”
“Oh yeah. All the time. I’m sure he’d be very grateful—to you, I mean. Saving her life. Just, you know, doing the right thing by her.”
Dr. Jawal frowned at me, perhaps knowing I was not telling the truth, or resenting the weird little bribe, but Carey seemed delighted.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. “Is he like his songs?”
“Which ones?”
“Yeah, right. I guess I mean, you know, hip, cynical, angry. Fairchildesque.”
“Oh yes, he’s all those things.” I smiled. Was this doing any good?
“Did you ever listen to Luke Fairchild?” Carey asked Jawal.
“I’m from Madras, not Mars,” the young doctor said.
Together, they started to move away.
“Is she going to be all right?” I asked, quickly.
“She’s getting good care,” said Jawal.
“A nurse was telling me about marrow in the blood. Is that something to worry about?”
The greenish light went on over the door in the next room. Somebody else wanted something.
“It’s wait and see,” Carey said, moving away. He caught my expression. “But that’s not as bad as it seems. Time is on our side. And, Billy, the nurses here have got their panties all twisted up over some union matter. They’re a great bunch of gals, but you shouldn’t listen to what they say about medicine.”
When I entered my mother’s room, I found she wasn’t alone. Sitting in a chair at her bedside was a woman with abundant graying convulsions of hair, wearing a black and red shawl, and smelling of incense. She turned as I came in. Her violet eyes swam behind granny glasses. With her pointy chin, small but heavily lipsticked mouth, and long nose, she looked like one of those madwomen who inevitably come up to you on the street to sell you a rose ten minutes after you’ve broken up with your girlfriend.
“Billy?” She reached her hand toward me; her fingers were plump, each one wore a ring. “I’m Maya Trotman?” Her voice went up, turning each sentence into a glissando of interrogation, the way some teenage girls speak, full of humility and uncertainty and a nervousness about being taken too seriously. She waited to see if the name registered. “Your mother’s friend?”
We shook hands. Maya’s grip was slight, her hand little more than a cool shadow in mine.
My mother was in her bed, breathing steadily. A machine irrigated her. Every piece of equipment in this hospital seemed a few years out of date—clunky, discarded, bargain-basement life-saving technology. I wondered how many people had already died in that very bed.
“How did you know my mother was here?”
She blinked at the bluntness of the question.
“I heard it on the radio?” she said. She breathed in through her delicate nose, the nostrils closed like the petals of a touch- me-not.
“Oh no,” I said.
“It was just a mention? If you’re worried about publicity—”
“I am worried about that.”
“Oh, please don—t. It was just a mention at the end of the news? On a really small station?” She was full of solicitude toward me. “I know—” she stretched the word out, discovered rivers of complicity in the globe of the vowel—“how much
you’d hate to see reporters and all finding out about her, and turning this into a media event? But what about Luke? Are you going to call him?”
“It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t respond.”
Maya shrugged. “I haven’t told anyone about your mother being here or her relationship with Fairchild. Your mother—s feelings about Luke were something she shared with me, and I have respected her privacy?” She got a chair from the other side of the room and placed it near hers, and now she gestured: Sit, sit. “Esther and I met at the Catskills Women’s Center? I was there for a Molds and Yeast Workshop and Esther was learning karate.” A smile. This was a well-worn irony, smooth and pleasing as beach glass. “We’ve only been friends for a few months, but she’s a hell of a lady. I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
“My mother was taking karate?”
“Her goal was to get a black belt by Christmas?” Maya looked over at my mother, silenced, wrapped, hovering, and then she looked back at me, teary. “I guess she’ll be getting that belt a little later than we hoped.” She patted the side of the bed. “Won’t you, Esther? Won’t you.” Suddenly, she took my hand. “Your mother talked about you all the time? She was so proud of you, your teaching, your travels. And you were always so good about calling her, and coming to see her? She appreciated that, Billy, she really did.”
“Thank you.”
She glanced toward the door and then lowered her voice. “What do the doctors say?”
I shrugged and felt, suddenly, as if I might cry. Give in to it? I tried to cover my sorrow with words, but my mouth had its own agenda. It didn’t want to answer questions. The corners turned down, the lips trembled. I turned away from Maya, but she kept hold of my hand, squeezing it, trying to comfort me. In fact, she was comforting me.
“The doctors are noncommittal,” I said, but judging from the look on Maya’s face, my words were barely intelligible.
Just then, someone new came into my mother’s room. It was a woman, about my age, tall, thin, a little awkward, with buzz-cut hair, four or five earrings, baggy green shorts, black tights, and dirty yellow construction boots.
“Mom,” she said, “Tobias called and said if you’re not in the office in an hour you’re fired.” She seemed used to breaking things to Maya.
“Well, I must thank him for his compassion,” Maya said, standing up. She rested her hand on my shoulder. “Billy, this is my daughter, Rosa? Rosa, this is Billy Rothschild.”
“Hi.” She shook my hand. Her skin was exceptionally smooth and cool, like soapstone. She smiled. I had an irrational thought: Why doesn’t Joan smile like that? Joan! I hadn’t yet called her. And she hadn’t called me.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Rosa said to me.
“Thank you.”
“What’s the latest word?”
I shook my head. She let it go at that.
“Come on, Mom,” said Rosa. “I’ll take you to work.”
“I was born and raised on Avenue A,” Maya said to me. “I don’t drive?”
“I could teach you,” Rosa said, clearly for the fifty thousandth time.
“Your mother was a truly excellent driver,” Maya said. “I can’t imagine what happened. She was one of the best drivers in the Hudson Valley.” She rose up on her toes and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Just think positive thoughts? I know everything’s going to be all right?”
As they left, Rosa looked back at me. “See you,” she said.
See you. I thought of Rosa, her earrings, her boots, her life. What would it be like to know her?
And then I was alone, and my solitude was immense, ferocious, and familiar. “Hi, Mom,” I whispered. I covered my eyes with my hands and just sat there. There was no one in the world to whom I could turn.
A nurse came into the room, a red-haired woman with a small, scrubbed face, stout legs. She checked the readings of the machines that monitored Esther’s vital signs. She was accompanied by another nurse, an angular, older woman with thinning hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
“How does it look?” I asked.
“Steady,” she said. “It’s fine.”
“Are they going to move her soon?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her doctor that.”
“I don’t really know who her doctor is. People just come and go.”
The older nurse looked at her clipboard. “Dr. Heilborn.”
“Oh yeah. Him.” I made a sour, skeptical face. I just assumed the nurses disliked the doctors, just as we teachers disliked the school administrators, the people who had the right to give us a hard time while we did all the real work.
“Dr. Heilborn is an excellent doctor,” the older nurse said, narrowing her eyes.
“Fine. If you see him, let him know I’d like to talk to him. I have no idea what’s going on.”
I turned back to my mother and said, “She’s gone now, Mom.”
Oh please answer me.
A WHILE later, I went to the lobby and used the phones near the gift shop. I could no longer put off calling my grandfather. Since my grandmother’s death, Grandpa had been living at the Shoreview Home in Little Neck, New York, in a congested, kind of tough part of Long Island. He was unhappy there, but there was nothing to be done with him. He refused to move in with my mother and he couldn’t very well sleep on the sofa in my apartment. Besides, he was deemed to be in need of constant attention (forgetting, falling) and a special diet. He often wished he was dead. Nearly all his old left-wing buddies were already gone. The books of philosophy, history, and literature he had so vigorously cross-referenced in his table talk had by now faded from memory. His mind was a burned library—the spines and their titles still facing out from the shelves but the pages within turned to ash. He hadn’t been able to work as a general practitioner in ten years. He was bored senseless. His skin crawled. His bowels were petrified wood.
The switchboard at the home transferred me to the fifth floor—last time I called, just a week ago, Grandpa was on the third floor, and I couldn’t help feeling this change was not a good sign. A Jamaican woman answered after several rings. I told her I needed to speak to Irv Rothschild. She said he wasn’t feeling very well and she’d rather not bring him to the phone.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Just having one of those days.”
“Well, I need to talk to him. His daughter’s in the hospital. This is his grandson.”
There was a long pause while she thought it over. Wasn’t there a procedure for this? Why was everything run so shoddily, as if people were just making up tilings to do as they went along? The hospital, the nursing home. It wasn’t as if these stages of life were unpredictable, something that happened out of the blue and then called for improvisation and emergency measures. Being ill, getting hurt, growing old—this is what happened to everyone. Why did rent-a-car offices run more smoothly than nursing homes? Why did banks seem cleaner and more filled with solicitude than hospitals? “I’ll see if he can come to the phone,” the woman said at last.
My grandfather Irv sometimes made the case that everything tragically wrong with this last part of the American twentieth century (and perhaps, by extension, the entire world) could be blamed on Luke. People who knew us, and who were privy to the secret history of our family, tended to assume that Irv’s ferocious analysis of Luke’s historical importance was just a father’s mock-Hegelian defense of a deserted daughter—a lot of fathers have complicated opinions about the guys who get their daughters pregnant and then disappear. But in Irv’s case, the wrongdoing was intensified by the fact that not only did Luke leave Esther, but their breakup was public and protracted, and there were songs about it, songs that millions of people knew, tides that countless strangers would request in concerts: sing “Forgetting You Is Easy”! Sing “Everyone Makes a Mistake”! Sing “Fourth Avenue Fugue”! These songs made millions of dollars and helped to finance Luke’s voyage through a world of willing women. And then add this to the stew: not only did
Luke leave Esther, not only did he put their intimacy on the hit parade, but he left her pregnant, he left her with a son, a son who he would never admit was his, and whom he did next to nothing to support.
Irv was a Communist. He and Grandma were a part of that Red subculture of old New York, and they’d had a pretty fine time of it through the thirties and forties. They were convinced they were on the winning side. They were surfing on a gigantic historical wave. Their meeting halls were filled; every day was an adventure—a socialist America seemed a real possibility, believe it or not. During the war, there was the heady rush of having their own country in alliance with the Soviet Union; you could almost imagine that you were living in Moscow, the fates of our countries seemed so entwined.
But after the war, after Hiroshima, the Cold War began, and soon after that anything that smelled Soviet was considered deadly poison. American Reds were being slammed into jail. They were getting kicked out of the colleges, kicked out of Hollywood, run out of the unions they had helped to build. “They call it the McCarthy era,” Grandpa often said, “but that’s just to get everyone else off the hook. You think one drunken crybaby senator from Wisconsin can do that much harm? Everyone was in on it—Meany, John L. Lewis, Nixon, Eisenhower, General Electric, you name it.”
The Reds had to run for cover, and one of the odd places they ended up was the folk music scene. It gave them a chance to stay political—those songs about cold-hearted mine owners could be taken as odes to expropriation and the songs about the American Civil War could be construed as pleas for racial justice and even as memorials to the heroes of Spain, if sung with a certain knowing fervor. And while the Red hunters might easily track down Communists, ex-Communists, Comsymps, and fellow travelers at MGM or CBS or Time-Life, they were not so likely to monitor hootenannies and the little folk music broadsides, where, under the covers of musicology and ethnology, the causes of unionism, brotherhood, and peaceful coexistence could be modestly furthered in relative privacy.
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