Backward-Facing Man

by Don Silver

In the mid-1960s, Charlie Puckman was a sinewy little guy with close-cropped black hair and dark little eyes set close together. He was a coarse man with a short fuse and a propensity for swearing and also a way of charming people with what appeared to be plainspokenness. He had a vast store of patience, perseverance, and a salesman’s tolerance for rejection. By the time he was thirty, he’d tried a dozen different schemes to get rich, one after another, including marrying a Sicilian girl for what he hoped would become blood ties to certain successful South Philly entrepreneurs.

  Around the same time, with Cuba’s Communist government in its infancy, Jose Rodriguez was a professor of engineering who made a risky move by petitioning Castro for an exit visa. After five years of harassment, a government official finally delivered it to him, giving the family four hours to pack up their belongings and leave. Two days later, Jose, his wife, and their two children—Rafael and Ovella—were huddling, exhausted, in a church off North Fifth Street in Philadelphia, listening to hymns in a language their father had dreamed about.

  When Jose showed up at the factory, Charlie was two months into a venture he called the Puckman Security Company. He’d gotten the idea to make wrought-iron cages while driving by a pawnshop that was being robbed in broad daylight. In the mid-sixties, the need for security in urban areas was growing, and the economy was good, so Charlie Puckman was up to his ears in orders. He hired Jose on the spot, even though Jose barely spoke English and didn’t have his own tools. Charlie Puckman pointed to the seven on his watch and then to the cement floor, and the two men had an understanding.

  Charlie had won the building in a card game. During the Korean War, he and his friends invited young men—graduates of one of the Friends’ schools who’d drawn deferments or were conscientious objectors—to play poker with them. Through a combination of distractions, deceptions, and an elaborate set of signals, Charlie and his buddies managed to win and win big, including one particular time when Charlie and a fellow from the Main Line squared off and the fellow made a foolish bet near the end of the evening for a pot worth almost $5,000. Rather than pay up, the loser convinced his father, an industrialist, to part with a cluster of run-down factories in Kensington.

  Six months later, Puckman Security had enough orders to keep Jose and his friends from church employed full-time. Jose was a tireless worker and a fastidious organizer; however, his greatest talent was being able to build what Charlie sold, without drawings or specifications. From orders written on place mats, the backs of envelopes, and traffic tickets, Jose cut, welded, stripped, painted, built, and delivered completed units to pawnbrokers all over the city. He was the perfect foil for his boss: focused, humble, detail-oriented, and quiet. He worked fast, using no more materials than were necessary, and he generated little if any scrap. In less than a year, Puckman Security was shipping security guards to Atlantic City and Harrisburg, and Charlie was fielding inquiries from pawnbrokers in Trenton, Wilmington, even Baltimore. The only thing Jose Rodriguez couldn’t do was answer the phone, which is in part why Charlie agreed to hire his oldest son, Arthur.

  Arthur Puckman had been in and out of mental institutions at least a half dozen times by the time he was twenty. In between, he held a succession of short-lived, dead-end jobs, mooching off his mother in South Philly. By the late sixties, when Chuck suddenly and mysteriously quit college, Jose was running the shop, Charlie Puckman was on the road, and Artie was working in the office. Initially, Artie’s job was to answer the phone, make out payroll checks for his father to sign, and source supplies. From the get-go, Artie developed sly methods of duping people—making out checks that were slightly less than they were supposed to be, and setting the clocks in the shop back so as to extract extra labor for free. Indeed, Arthur had a mean streak, and when Charlie was away, he directed it toward the trio of laborers making iron barriers and brackets for banks, taxicab companies, and pawnshops.

  Although Jose’s son, Rafael, was a bright kid, he’d had a rough paper route. Philadelphia was a difficult place to grow up in the late sixties, especially Kensington, where the Italians and the Irish watched angrily as Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Guatemalans, and blacks moved in. Being Cuban was the worst of all worlds, set apart not only from blacks and whites but, because of politics and their affinity and nostalgia for a burgeoning capitalist economy, from other Latinos, too. Rafael was a skinny kid with jet black hair, a beguiling smile, and a wicked wit. He was asthmatic and slight in stature, and therefore uninterested in fighting and sports. Fortunately, he was blessed with street smarts and a sharp sense of humor. He did impersonations of his teachers, talking in heavily accented English and joking his way out of fights.

  A couple years after they arrived, Jose’s wife, Rafael’s mother, died, and Rafael changed his name to Rahim. He bought himself a pair of four-inch-high platform shoes and some eyeliner, and he started running with the pretty boys and the glam rockers under the El; once or twice, even climbing in cars with men on their way home from Center City for money. A few times, he fell in love—with a trash sculptor living in an abandoned warehouse, a PhD historian who worked nights in a hospital, and a mechanic who, for some reason, could perform only in his car. The relationships were exciting, and Rahim was always head over heels, but they didn’t last. In the summer of 1974, after an especially rough breakup, Rahim lost interest in the scene and began playing chess with men in a nearby shelter, and building radios and TV sets with his father on weekends. Soon after, he started hanging around at the shop, where he befriended Chuck.

  Long after the day’s work was done—after the trash was emptied and the wooden skids were ripped apart and stored in bins, after the mail had been carried to the post office, the shop floors swept, and the bins of soaked rags and cigarette butts had been taken out back and burned—Chuck and Rahim got buzzed on hashish and swapped stories. Rahim made his father out to be a hero—part revolutionary, part Communist, part refugee. Chuck exaggerated his sexual escapades at MIT, telling stories about dangerous drug deals he’d done, demonstrations he’d led, deliberately confusing his past with that of others he admired. Sitting on the hill behind the railroad spur, with The Doors and Cream playing on Chuck’s transistor radio, they absorbed each other’s pasts.

  Around the same time, Charlie Puckman found himself in a jam. The business was growing, which required his workers to be more productive. Tasks like taking trash to the Dumpsters, refilling the supply closets, sweeping up metal shavings, and filling out bills of lading weren’t getting done. Meanwhile, Arthur Puckman, looking for areas of the company where he could wield influence, started interacting with workers. When he began taking meticulous interest in workers’ arrival and departure times, their efficiency at their individual tasks, and even their grooming habits, several announced they were quitting. In response, Charlie hired Rahim to keep the shop going and assigned the more mundane tasks to Artie.

  Charlie’s younger son, Chuck, showed up at his father’s factory in the middle of the first semester of his sophomore year of college, owing a New England rock band over $1,500 for a drug deal that went bad. When he first arrived, he carried himself like a man on the run—in trouble so deep, he couldn’t hold his head up or meet someone’s eye. With no money, no way of avoiding the draft, and no prospects for work, he took a position in his father’s firm—something he swore he’d never do. In time, he proved an able salesman, and with Rahim’s and Jose Rodriguez’s help, he learned the ins and outs of the security guard business. Within a year, Chuck had himself a Datsun 240Z and a fancy apartment overlooking Rittenhouse Square. He learned to scuba dive at the YMCA and started traveling—to the Florida Keys, Mexico, Belize. An oral surgeon who lived in his building kept him supplied with Darvon and phenobarbital, which he used to take the edge off the black beauties he used during the week. Socially, he kept a low profile. His friends from high school had established themselves in marriages. Chuck preferred brief encounters and superficial affairs, ones he could make and break easily. In matters of th
e heart, he said he preferred leasing to making a purchase.

  When Chuck turned thirty, he started dating one of his customer’s daughters. Eileen Borowitz was a good-looking girl—tall, thin, well built, with a glossy made-up face and an impish smile that she used to deflect genuine conversation. She had a superficial notion of love, which revolved around using nicknames, purchasing trinkets, and reading rhyming poems on sentimental occasions like birthdays and odd anniversaries. She had a shrill, inappropriate laugh, which Chuck mistook for good nature, and she demonstrated an eagerness in bed that he confused with passion. In the fall of 1980, for the simple reason that he was tired of doing his own laundry, Chuck married her. A year later, before he could do anything to correct his mistake, they had Ivy.

  For certain men, in certain phases of life, having a child can be a magnificent event, allowing them access to what is soft and vulnerable and nurturing inside them. The smell of an infant, the way she looks up at her parent, helpless, but without fear, often quiets the spirit of even the most troubled adult. Not so with Chuck Puckman. Ivy’s arrival was an event that required massive changes to the way the two of them lived at a time when things at work were changing dramatically for the worse. For starters, Eileen decided that Chuck’s apartment in Center City was completely inappropriate for a young family, and her constant badgering convinced him to buy an obscenely expensive center-hall Colonial in Villanova. And as if the mortgage wasn’t big enough, Eileen racked up credit card charges and committed the couple to ongoing debt by furnishing the nursery, buying clothes, and making donations to private schools in which she expected their progeny to be enrolled. Finally, the baby’s arrival seemed to mark the end of any genuine feeling Eileen had for her husband, and although Chuck tried, at least initially, to get to know Ivy, Eileen wouldn’t let him near her.

  Several years passed. Chuck went on the road, partly to expand the business and partly to get away from his wife. By day, he worked for his misanthropic father, selling a product for which he had no real interest, correcting his brother’s mistakes, and enduring Arthur’s not-so-subtle resentment. By night, Eileen harangued him for not earning enough to provide her with an adequate lifestyle. When he objected, she freaked, professing to be too sweet and accepting for his kind, a claim she’d make in the nastiest of ways, like a vicious little animal trapped in a cage. Over time, Chuck seemed to shrink in his own skin—coming to work, going home, disappearing with a drink onto the couch, and opting out of the franchise of fatherhood.

  During this time, Rahim settled down, sharing an apartment with his sister, who worked across the street at Northeastern Hospital. At Chuck’s urging, Charlie increased Rahim’s responsibilities at Puckman Security, and, before long, he was creating a complicated build schedule every week and apportioning work to the various tradesmen and outside contractors, coordinating everything so that units could be shipped and billed to customers.

  Early on, Charlie Puckman had told his boys that the security guard business would someday disappear and that the Puckman designs would become commodities, easily copied, imported for pennies from low-cost overseas suppliers. With three family members on the draw and a shop full of ancient equipment, he warned that no one would ever be interested in buying the business. Yet year after year, they kept cranking out product and meeting their obligations. By the early nineties, the old man was losing energy. He still swept cash from company accounts and drew a large salary, but he actually did very little. When Chuck petitioned his father for commissions on sales or an increase in salary, Artie threw a fit and demanded the same. When Chuck mentioned quitting, the old man reminded him that if he did, he would get nothing. They fought like dogs. Meanwhile, the business underperformed, drawing bank debt in excess of its asset value.

  Chuck and Eileen’s marriage died the long death of relationships that never should have been. By the time Ivy was in grade school, Eileen was a fastidious chronicler of Chuck’s inadequacies, his self-absorption, his dalliances with drugs and alcohol, his bitterness, and his tendency to withdraw. They avoided each other in the house. They seldom ate together, and when they did, it was in silence. Sex, when it occurred, was perfunctory. Eileen blamed Chuck for every bad choice, every piece of bad luck, every mistake she had ever made; he froze inside at the sight and sound of her. There were glimmers of hope now and then—at home, after dinner in a fancy restaurant, or, when stoked with vodka, they danced for several hours at a black-tie affair. One night, Eileen professed to understand how badly Chuck needed to strike out on his own, to get away from his brother and father, how Puckman Security had become a toxic environment; but in the end, she refused to dial down her spending. “Anything that would lighten your load,” she said curtly, “would by definition increase mine.”

  To the outside world, Chuck was distant, expressionless, and mysteriously unhappy, and when other people considered his situation, his station in life, they were baffled. He was the vice president of a successful business; he was married to an attractive woman; he was the father of an adorable preteen—an equestrian with trophies and pictures of herself standing next to beautiful horses and stern-looking instructors—yet something was dead and rotting inside him. One therapist guessed anhedonia, an inability to experience joy; and then acedia, an absence of feeling altogether. Chuck’s mother recommended he suck it up and will himself to feel better. A marriage counselor suggested that Chuck and Eileen sign a contract, promising to date each other as if they were still courting. Reading a battery of tests he’d taken—a depression inventory, a suicide scale, a hopefulness index—a psychiatrist quietly nodded her head. The last summer they spent together as a family was made possible at least in large part by several vials full of mood enhancers and anxiety-reducing medication Chuck began taking. A biochemical orchestra in his brain began tuning up.

  Meanwhile, the business teetered. Puckman Security, which had started by serving pawnshops and check-cashing stores, began losing orders to companies that furnished electronic surveillance. Cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, and sophisticated recording devices replaced mechanical guards. Fat settlement checks from insurance companies made it easier for businesses to survive theft. Competition heated up. Sales flatlined, and costs kept rising. Chuck contributed articles to trade publications, spoke on panels, and made nauseatingly long pilgrimages into territories they’d never sold in before. Still, more often than not, he came home empty-handed. What they should have done was harvest the business, husband their cash, and put the thing up for sale. Instead, they hunkered down and waited. An investment banker could have told them that it was just a matter of time before the Puckman family was squeezed out by new companies—bigger ones with new equipment and better methods of manufacturing. It appeared to Chuck that he had worked his entire life in this miserable place on faith that someday he would be rewarded, and now, he had nothing to show for it.

  Eileen dropped all pretense of being satisfied. She stopped cooking, keeping house, doing laundry, and, on occasion, even sleeping at home. In the mornings, while Chuck worked, she danced aerobically, played tennis, bought Ivy and herself new outfits, and lunched with friends. In the afternoons, she squired Ivy to violin, horseback riding, and acting lessons. That last winter, instead of making sales calls, Chuck spent entire afternoons in hotel rooms—drinking, smoking cigarettes, and watching TV.

  One Thursday evening, Chuck borrowed Eileen’s car to make an emergency service call. On the front seat was her appointment book, filled with the names and places of her activities and liaisons. It suddenly occurred to him: He might be stuck in a trap with his father, his brother, and his business, but there was no law forcing him to finance the excesses of a woman he despised. The following morning, he packed as if he were leaving for a business trip—passport, fancy watch, toothbrush, shaving kit, and a couple of suits—and checked into the Radnor Hotel. The next day, he moved himself into the apartment above the factory and, with Rahim’s help, bought some secondhand furniture and a dozen tropical
fish for the big tank his father had bought years ago. Two days later, Chuck received a petition for divorce demanding full custody of Ivy. When he called Eileen to make a financial settlement, she hung up on him.

  At about the same time, Rahim had some trouble of his own—fever, swollen glands, diarrhea, and strange purple splotches appearing on his skin and then disappearing. In the fall, he developed a cough, and by Christmas, he’d started spitting blood and losing weight. One night, Ovella practically had to carry him into the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. A day later, a somber-looking resident told him he’d tested positive for HIV.

  At the factory, Chuck tolerated Rahim’s latenesses and assigned him easy tasks. He made sure Artie didn’t let Rahim’s insurance lapse. When Rahim was well enough to return to work, Chuck withdrew enough cash from the business for Rahim to sign up for computer classes in the event he had to work from home. Rahim threw himself into this new field, exploring search engines, Web design, and information technology strategies. He studied computer architecture, read books that detailed assembly and machine language, and helped Ovella apply for and get a better position at the hospital.

  Each time Rahim’s symptoms returned and he was forced to stay home and rest, Chuck settled into a pattern of postponing his business trips and working long hours in the shop. When Rahim felt well and the business had a good month, Chuck allowed himself a few days off. Meanwhile, Eileen’s lawyer mounted an impressive offensive, demanding half the value of the business in cash, the house less any mortgage or home equity loans, and alimony for life.

  Monday, January 25, 1999

  Chuck awoke startled on the morning of the third day to the sound of rain, percussive and steady over the tiny apartment, particularly the bedroom, where the metal roof was uninsulated. He went into the kitchen and took a package of Benson & Hedges out of a bag under the sink. Then he splashed some water on his face. Slowly, it came back to him. In the living room, he gathered the empty beer bottles into which he’d dropped cigarette butts. The apartment had a dank, bitter odor, like old coffee grounds. It was hard to believe that only forty-eight hours ago, his biggest problem had been repairing and returning security partitions for a bank in Bristol. The clock on the VCR said seven A.M. The jazz station had switched to classical, its daytime format. By now, the shop would be open, a pot of coffee already brewed, and his brother, Artie, would be sitting at his desk reading the Daily News. Across town, a young man was fighting for his life. He put on some slacks, a pair of socks, shoes, a button-down shirt. At seven thirty, Chuck Puckman opened the front door, stepped out on the fire escape landing, and looked down through a small opening in the brick wall.